Supper's Ready
Not everybody in the band was that sure about whether the length of Supper's Ready would be appreciated by their audience. The fact that it was possibly as uncommercial (read: radio-unfriendly) as it got and might therefore be gunned down in reviews made some band members rather nervous, but since they were all very satisfied with the end result, they decided not to worry too much about that and just leave it as it was.
Some of the music of Supper's Ready was written at a doctor's house near Chessington, though most of it was written in the rehearsal room at Una Billing's School of Dancing in Shepherd's Bush with the banging of feet over their heads. It probably does not come as a complete surprise to hear that the track was a combination of a lot of different ideas. Willow Farm was originally a song that Gabriel had written that started off with a guitar piece of Banks's (Banks did also regularly play guitar at that time), which was turned into something that sounded a bit like The Musical Box. Banks thought it would be good to stop the song all of a sudden and then jump straight into Willow Farm because of its "great introduction." This sense of experimentation was used throughout the song; cutting and pasting all kinds of ideas together, not necessarily in a logical order, and jamming to fill in the gaps.
To me, Supper's Ready feels like a nightmarish dream - chaotic, patchy and in many respects a combination of reality, horror and fantasy - but the lyrics were actually based on a strange experience that Gabriel had had at some point. In an interview, he explained the background behind this strange song. "There was one particular incident which gave me the inspiration for 'Supper's Ready'. There was this room at the top of Jill's [Gabriel's wife] parents' house. This room was the coldest part of the house. I always used to get the shivers when I went in there. It was covered in strong purple and turquoise wallpaper. Everything was bright purple and turquoise. Anyway, we had this strange evening up there which ended with Jill feeling like she'd been possessed. It was extremely frightening. I don't know how to explain it - it was as if she had had a fit, or something. I experienced a sense of evil at that point - I saw another face in her face. I don't know how much of this was going on inside my head and how much was actually happening, but it was an experience I could not forget and was the starting point for a song about the struggle between good and evil."
While writing the lyrics, Gabriel had the feeling of being led by some force or other. He bases this assumption on the fact that there were a number of odd coincidences; unlikely facts suddenly coming to light, certain names suddenly leading to other things. He ended up reading the Book of Revelation in the Bible, which explains the presence of the apocalyptic part at the end of the track.
