Images of Peter: Finding Peter Godwin

Popshifter:: Your album Correspondence came out in 1983 and yielded “Baby’s in the Mountains” as a popular fan favorite. After that, you seemed to have disappeared off of the musical map for a while. I am aware that you branched out into acting. . . I heard (through the grapevine) that you were part of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut? Do you care to elaborate about this, or any other forays into acting?

Peter Godwin: Things are often not what they seem in musical careers. When “Baby’s In the Mountains” hit high in the dance charts and the video was all over MTV, I was already demoing the follow-up album to Correspondence. I’ve always found writing songs flows for me. . . I never have “writer’s block.” So actually there is an unbroken stream of musical composition from “Baby’s In the Mountains” right up to this very day.

I started writing as a child and once I started, I just kept doing it, because I loved the process and it came naturally to me. Today it’s easier for people to put their work somewhere in front of people online. It’s also easier and cheaper to record music. I can put Nuevo on my website, and it is like Field Of Dreams: “build it and they will come.” Well, with a little of this kind of thing, some gentle publicity, some networking. . . some people will at least get to hear what you’re doing.

At the time of Correspondence, it was all in the hands of record companies, and recording studios could cost $2,000 a day or more. You could be signed by someone who loved your work, then two months later that person gets a job somewhere else and overnight you lose that someone to “lobby” for you for recording and marketing budgets. This happened to me more than once, but not only to me—to hundreds of acts that had not yet reached the kind of fame and commercial power that makes them almost. . . and I mean almost. . . invulnerable.

So I had a full album of songs and I also had a spectacular list of people who were interested in collaborating with me as producers, because they liked something about my music. To name two, Giorgio Moroder and Alex Sadkin. But there was a small problem. These people were all at the peak of very successful careers working with top artists and consequently, their fees weren’t cheap. Unfortunately, my record label was. They just wouldn’t fund me working with these people. Now this was artistically frustrating, if you can understand that. Not because I wasn’t very happy with my previous producer Georg Kajanus. I was. I love what we did together. But every artist likes to try new things, new adventures, and these kinds of opportunities only seem to come at certain moments in your career. . . and I could sense this was one of those epiphanal moments.

My manager felt the same way, so we basically negotiated our way out of a major record deal amidst a world of promises from other major labels that they were dying to work with me. The process took time, as these things do. Even with commercially huge artists like Prince or George Michael, it’s a risky game. With hindsight, for me, it was probably a dumb move. I lost a lot of my “buzz” of the time and my career momentum, as years slipped by without any follow-ups to “Images of Heaven” and “Baby’s In the Mountains.” By the time I was free to re-sign with a new label, the whole landscape had changed.

Click here to read more from Peter Godwin on. . .

Setting The Scene
Influences
Cult Following and Italo-Disco
Benitez, Bowie, and Electronic Music
French and Spanish Inspirations
Producing and Writing
The English and European Aesthetic
Working with Steve Winwood
Off The Map
Working with Others
Forays Into Acting
More On Acting

Introduction:

Cherchez la femme: “Images of Heaven”
Discovering Peter Godwin
Rediscovering Peter Godwin

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