‘Shaking The Tree’ has artwork which was done by Robert Mapplethorpe who I think is one of the great photographers. That was the only new piece the rest was some of the favourite songs that had been selected from previous albums.
![peter gabriel discography wiki peter gabriel discography wiki](https://www.rollingstone.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/rs-169653-88426538.jpg)
I wanted to take a simpler, more emotional sketch version of it and do it more with voice and piano, so I used ‘Shaking The Tree’ as an opportunity to do that.
![peter gabriel discography wiki peter gabriel discography wiki](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/Peter_Gabriel_(self-titled_album%2C_1978_-_cover_art).jpg)
I’d done a demo prior to that with Robert Fripp, and he then did a version, which was much more like the demo on his record. We’d done one on the first album which was a grand thing with orchestra, which I think had some beautiful textures in the verse, that I liked a lot, but the chorus ended up a little too bombastic, I think. It gave me the chance to do another version of ‘Here Comes The Flood’. Normally people do their greatest hits, but it would be more like greatest ‘hit’ for me. “’Shaking The Tree’ was somewhat ironically called ‘Sixteen Golden Greats’. Here Comes The Flood, originally from that 1977 debut, is also revisited, this time in a deeply effective (and affecting) piano-and-voice treatment. Here it reappears, albeit it with a new vocal from Peter. The compilation’s title track, a playful duet between Peter and Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour, hadn’t previously appeared on a Gabriel album, just on Youssou’s The Lion album. Released in 1990, Shaking The Tree is a career-spanning overview of Peter’s solo years (up to that point) from the first self-titled album of 1977 up to the 1989 Passion soundtrack with a few curiosities and rarities to grab the ear of the completist. Shaking The Tree Released 19th November, 1990