“Mercy Street” by Peter Gabriel

"Mercy Street" sits on So, Peter Gabriel's fifth album, from 1986, and it had been brewing for years before those sessions began. Its roots are in Brazil: Gabriel had racked up enough Pan Am miles to fly free, picked Rio de Janeiro to go hunting for new rhythms, and the song started from percussion that Djalma Corrêa recorded there, his congas, surdo and triangle all on the finished track. The words come from somewhere else, the confessional poetry of Anne Sexton, whose collection To Bedlam and Part Way Back Gabriel had found in a New York bookshop; she had written a play called Mercy Street and a poem named "45 Mercy Street".

Gabriel produced it with Daniel Lanois and plays piano, synthesizer and sampler, with Richard Tee also on piano, Larry Klein on bass and Mark Rivera on saxophone. Matt Mahurin shot the video in black and white.

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