Big Time (Peter Gabriel song)
song by the English singer-songwriter and rock musician Peter Gabriel (1987)
"Big Time" is a song by the English rock musician Peter Gabriel from his fifth studio album So (1986). It was his second top-ten single on the US Billboard Hot 100, peaking at no. 8. Elsewhere, the song also reached the top 20 in Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, New Zealand and the UK.
Recording
"Big Time" underwent many permutations before being finalized; Jerry Marotta remembers an early version of the song, which he described as more intense and so far out from the released version that it "would not have been a hit".
The song's bass guitar part is unique in that backing bassist Tony Levin and drummer Marotta teamed up to record it. Levin handled the fingerings while Marotta hit the strings with his drumsticks, resulting in a percussive sound; it was inspired by a technique developed by Gene Krupa in the 1940s or early 1950s. Inspired by this sound, Levin later invented funk fingers, small drumstick ends that could be attached to the fingertips in order to reproduce it during live performances.
The drum parts were a considerable challenge to record – Gabriel requested that Marotta, Manu Katché and Stewart Copeland each play a take over a guide drum pattern from a LinnDrum. Marotta recorded a drum part with a harder rock feel, but Gabriel instead opted for Copeland's "lighter, poppier approach". Gabriel liked Copeland's drum take but felt that it did not quite lock in rhythmically with the Linn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q587020. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Big Time (Peter Gabriel song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.