PETER GABRIEL POST-AMNESTY

Peter Gabriel was having trouble readjusting to the pop world after two weeks on the road promoting Amnesty International. The amiable but reserved Englishman seemed uncomfortable that he was now back to promoting himself.

“The truth is, I feel a little sad and empty at the moment,” Gabriel said, sitting in a chair in a Warner Bros. Records conference room for an interview about his new, best-selling album, “So.”

He stared into a freshly made cup of tea for several seconds, then added, “I think we all got quite close on the (Amnesty) tour even if it was only two weeks . . . the gigs, the press conferences, the visiting on the airplane.

“I was a little apprehensive at first about how everyone would react on the road . . . whether egos would surface. I was very pleased to find that wasn’t a problem at all . Something happens when you are selling something other than yourself. . . .

“It was a great pleasure for me to be able to talk about Amnesty rather than the new record.”

Gabriel, who left Genesis a decade ago for a solo career, was one of the hits of the six-city Amnesty tour that concluded two days before the interview with an 11-hour concert at Giants Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, N.J.

Using striking, highly mannered body language to act out the rich emotional undercurrents in the songs, Gabriel offered a dazzling display of sophisticated, synthesizer-based songs. His themes, sometimes playful, but often dark, revolve around a struggle for identity in an age where science and government can be threats.

For many of the Amnesty officials, the emotional heart of the tour was Gabriel’s stark, haunting rendition of “Biko,” a tribute he wrote in 1980 to Steve Biko, the black South African activist who died in prison in 1977.

“It’s a funny thing about that song,” Gabriel said, still finding it easier to talk about the Amnesty tour than his own career.

“My involvement with Biko’s story was partly by chance,” Gabriel said. “I saw a story about his plight in the newspaper and I began following it. The thing that shocked me was the fact that he died (in custody) after he received all this publicity.

“I had felt quite comfortable that all that worldwide attention would serve to save him. I felt so empty when he was killed. It showed how vulnerable people are when their freedoms are taken away. That’s what moved me to write the song.”

Gabriel, 36, had spent most of the day after the New Jersey concert resting, but he had been up late doing a syndicated radio talk show and he was trying--a little past noon--to begin a series of interviews.

He had brought his lunch--a king-size grapefruit--with him in a paper bag. He pulled the pieces of fruit apart slowly, as if stalling for time.

Most pop stars have a clearly defined image. Bruce is the working-class hero. David Lee Roth is the ultimate party animal. But Gabriel always seems to have simply the slightly disheveled appearance and unfocused expression of a man who just woke up from an afternoon nap.

He’s not the free-wheeling extrovert who can give you an hour of colorful talk on any topic. He’s a shy man who finds it hard to phrase concise answers to questions about his thoughtful and frequently complex music.

The interview impasse was resolved by a phone call.

While in Atlanta on the Amnesty tour, Gabriel--an outspoken foe of capital punishment--had become interested in the case of Jerome Bowden, a man with an IQ of 65 on Georgia’s Death Row for robbing and killing a 55-year-old woman. The caller was saying that Bowden had been granted a 90-day stay of execution.

(The news would later prove incorrect: The U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a stay on June 24 and Bowden was electrocuted the same day in Jackson, Ga.)

But the report had brightened Gabriel’s mood and he finally was able to concentrate on his new album.

“So” is the singer-songwriter’s most accessible album since his 1977 debut. While there was frequently a dark edge to much of his moody, art-conscious music, there’s a brightness to the new album that helps explain why it has jumped into the national Top 10 after just four weeks.

Songs like “Don’t Give Up”--a deeply moving look at the loss of self-esteem which features Kate Bush on backing vocals--serve as a serious foundation.

But tunes like the playful, dance-oriented “Sledgehammer”--with its exaggerated sexual innuendo--help combat Gabriel’s image as an oh-so-serious pop figure. “Sledgehammer” is the first Top 10 single of Gabriel’s career. His previous high was the quirky “Shock the Monkey,” which went to No. 29 in 1982.

On the question of image, he said, finally loosening up, “Sometimes people do seem to think of me as this white liberal . . . this very serious, guilt-ridden guy. In a way that suggests dullness, and I don’t feel I am like that.

“I see humor and some (outgoing touches) in my work that other people don’t always find. That’s one of the things that pleases me about ‘Sledgehammer’ and ‘Big Time’ on the new album. They show that side of me very clearly.

“We had lots of fun in the studio on those songs. (Producer) Daniel Lanois, (guitarist) David Rhodes and I would put on these yellow hats when we were working around with ‘Sledgehammer.’ We danced around the studio like the Three Stooges or something. It was a way of getting loose, in the spirit of the song.”

Show-biz egos are the target of the sly “Big Time.” The song is about a guy who is fed up with his small-town environment. Sample lyric:

I’ve had enough. I’m getting out

to the city, the big big city.

I’ll be a big noise with all the big boys

There’ll be so much stuff I will own

And I will pray to a big God

As I kneel in the big church.

Gabriel said the song, in part, is a slap at his own show-biz ego. “Sure, there’s a hungry animal in me,” he said, smiling broadly. “There’s the ego that is longing for all the gross aspects of fame and fortune. It’s a little battle I have within myself. Part of me revels in all that, like the success of the new album, yet I know that the (quality of the) music should be the only reward.”

Gabriel had a very proper English private-school upbringing, so he was attracted to the “freedom” and “spontaneity” of rock ‘n’ roll.

He enjoyed recalling smuggling a little radio into school and listening to Beatles and Motown records. “I would sometimes go down to this little basement and turn it full blast and listen to Otis Redding and dance myself into a frenzy,” he said, waving his arms about to re-create the excitement.

Though Genesis, the band he formed with schoolmates in the late ‘60s, is now ridiculed as hopelessly soggy and middlebrow by many of Gabriel’s more demanding fans, the singer and writer himself looked back with fondness on much of his time with the group.

“At the time, it felt like pioneering music,” he said. “I’d go to record companies and they would say, ‘We can sell folk groups and we can sell rock groups, but what the hell are you trying to do--trying to put acoustic and electric music in the same number?’ ”

By 1974, however, Gabriel believed the group was losing creative momentum and he opted for a solo career, turning the lead vocal duties over to Genesis’ drummer, Phil Collins.

His debut album, the first of three LPs titled simply “Peter Gabriel,” was a far more relevant and compelling work than anything he had done with Genesis. He seemed on the verge of stardom, but he didn’t court that mass following in his subsequent LPs.

Instead of following up on the tuneful immediacy of songs like “Solsbury Hill” and “Modern Love,” he began experimenting with electronic textures and unfamiliar (non-U.S. or European) musical styles to find interesting new sounds and rhythms. The triumph of “So” is that it combines the adventure and the mass appeal. Among the musicians working on the new album: French-African drummer Manu Katche and Brazilian percussionist Djalma Correia.

Besides giving the music freshness, Gabriel believes the search for new rhythms stimulates him as a songwriter. One reason there is so little attempt to grow or reach out to other cultures for influences, he said, is the hectic pace of the rock life.

“Once you get to a certain level of success, there is a lot of pressure on you to come up with a new album and go out on the road and to repeat that cycle until you are burned out and the next act is ready to take your place,” he said, flatly. “That is the way the business works. So you’ve got to be pretty strong willed, even obstinate, to say, ‘I can’t follow that schedule. . . . I need to learn a bit. I need to go and explore.’

“The truth is, you need to build in your sabbatical unless you can write songs very fast. Most people get caught up in the trap of thinking the world will forget them if they don’t rush back with a new album or a tour. They are willing to sacrifice the music, where I think it is far wiser to sacrifice a little time.”