Peter Gabriel says Thom Yorke has streamed his “Street Spirit” once

Peter Gabriel says Thom Yorke has gone quiet on their song swap, and seems to have played Gabriel's cover of “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” just once. The artists covered on Scratch My Back, Gabriel's album of other people's songs, were given codes to hear his versions on a stream, and Gabriel's side could see how often each of them played theirs.

I think he's only streamed 'Street Spirit' once, which isn't a good sign, but who knows?

Peter Gabriel¹

The idea was that each artist would record one of Gabriel's songs in return, for a companion record. Yorke wrote at the start to say he wanted to do “Wallflower”, from Gabriel's fourth self-titled album of 1982, but Gabriel has not heard from him in months.

In a podcast on his website in January, Gabriel said “Wallflower” was a song he thought had mattered to Yorke at 14. Early reports of the podcast had the band planning or even working on it. Two days before they appeared, Radiohead had closed their Haiti benefit in Los Angeles with “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”.

Gabriel's version closes Scratch My Back, as David Bowie's “Heroes” opens it. John Metcalfe wrote the album's orchestral scores, and Gabriel told The Quietus in late January that the end of this one was not planned.

John messed around with some of the chords at the end and I couldn't get the original melody to work, so what you hear is an improvised solution to that problem.

Peter Gabriel⁴

Talking to the Sun's Something For The Weekend, three days before the album comes out in Britain, Gabriel says he still wants Yorke involved. He has no idea whether Yorke likes or hates the cover, and admits not everyone does.