Mercy Street Lyrics by Peter Gabriel from the Shaking the Tree: Sixteen Golden Greats album- including song video, artist biography, translations and more: Looking down on empty streets, all she can see Are the dreams all made solid Are the dreams all made real All of t…

Songfacts®:This is based on the book of poems of the same name by Anne Sexton. An American mental patient, she wrote as a form of therapy. Gabriel was impressed that she wrote entirely for herself rather than an made five suicide attempts, the fifth being successful: She died of carbon monoxide poisoning in title came from Anne Sexton's 1969 play Mercy Street. She was also working on a poem similarly titled "45 Mercy Street" at the time of her could relate to Sexton as a deep thinker with a troubling depression who searches for meaning through her art. He used the image of darkness on Mercy Street to signal her end of this song was very intense when Gabriel performed it during live shows, where he used a high-pitched wail to simulate Sexton's video is a subdued black and white piece directed by Matt Mahurin. It's quite a contrast to his extravagant "Sledgehammer" song also came out of an experience that Gabriel had on a plane. He told Mojo magazine September 2013: "Pan Am had started doing mileage programmes. I got up to 100, 000 miles from touring, so I booked a free flight from LA to Rio. The catch was that I had to travel economy. On the way onto the plane, I said hello to the bass player in Earth Wind & Fire (Verdine White).""After we took off," Gabriel continued, "the plane developed a fault - something with the landing gear - and the pilot told us we had to fly over the Pacific and dump some fuel. That's when everyone became very scared, writing farewell letters. I even scribbled some notes. Earth Wind & Fire's bass player came back from First Class to see me in economy and just said (in a sonorous voice ) 'Pray brother.' The pilot got us down, thank God. In Rio, I met the drummer Djalma Correa. I worked on some ideas with him, and that led to the track that 'Mercy Street' was built around." This was used in episodes of Miami Vice ("Killshot" - 1986) and Cold Case ("The River - 2006), and in the movies Waking the Dead (2000) and Life or Something Like It producer Daniel Lanois co-produced So with Gabriel in between co-producing two U2 albums: The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua is a special song for Larry Klein, a noted jazz musician and producer who contributed bass to the track. He recalled in an interview with Berklee: "I was in England working on producing an album for Ben Orr of The Cars, when Peter Gabriel called me to come in and play on some songs of his that were to become part of his album So. This was an incredible honor for me, as I had been a big fan of his work since his Genesis days. I came into the studio and the first thing that Peter and Daniel Lanois asked me to play on was a song about Anne Sexton, who was one of my favorite poets. The piece just about brought me to tears, and I set to putting together a part composed of two bass parts. The piece still moves me immensely."

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