Peter Gabriel Plays Live equipment

Plays Live is Peter Gabriel debut live album (and fifth solo release), released in June 1983 on the Charisma label.

It consists of songs performed on the Security tour (officially titled "Playtime '88" tour), with recordings selected from a few of the November-December 1982 North American concerts and compiled into a double album. See the Security tour equipment page for more details on the musicians' gear.

As revealed in the liner notes, some additional recording was done at Peter's Ashcombe House studio in Bath with the help of co-producer & engineer Pete Walsh. While the whole aim was to retain the essence of the gigs, including human imperfections, additional touch-ups needed to be done afterwards for technical & sonic reasons - overall, mainly the vocals and keyboards. For instance, the sound quality of the vocals were compromised on "Lay Your Hands On Me" (when Peter fell backwards into the audience as part of the stage act) and "Shock The Monkey" (sung while hanging upside down from scaffolding), so those had to be redone.

In addition to that, another reason for the touch-ups & re-recordings was for consistency between the songs, to flow as if they were all from one show. The setlist order of the songs was also rearranged for the album, so spoken introductions were re-recorded for the same reason, to make those as authentic to the live shows as possible.

Post-production equipment
Equipment details for the album are not entirely known.