Training a Natural Light on Rock : Pop music: Singer Dave Wakeling enlists the help of acts such as R.E.M. and U2 for ‘Alternative NRG,’ the first album to be recorded with solar power.

Dave Wakeling remembers being in a state of gloom after the Persian Gulf War because of the human carnage, the environmental damage and the prospect that civilization’s continued reliance on oil could lead to more of the same.

At the time, about three years ago, the smoky-voiced British singer known for his work with the English Beat and General Public was about a year into his full-time job in the Los Angeles office of the environmental action group Greenpeace. The mandate had gone out from Greenpeace’s international headquarters in Amsterdam to focus on the energy-related issue of global warming.

Shaken by Desert Storm, Wakeling began to brainstorm. The result is now on record store shelves: “Alternative NRG,” an album that Greenpeace says is the first in history to be recorded with solar power.

The album features 16 live performances by acts such as R.E.M., U2, Annie Lennox, PM Dawn, Midnight Oil and Sonic Youth--all but one captured on recording equipment run with electricity produced by a custom-built mobile solar generator that Wakeling dubbed Cyrus, after the Persian word for sun.

Wakeling, blond and boyish-looking at 37, chatted about the “Alternative NRG” project and his own prospects with a newly reunited General Public as he sat recently in his hilltop home here.

The initial inspiration for “Alternative NRG” came in a 10-minute flash. Turning inspiration into a solar-juiced recording proved to be a painstaking task.

“There followed about nine months of research,” Wakeling said. “We couldn’t dare ask a musician to be on the record until we knew this thing would work.”

Greenpeace wound up with Cyrus, a 28-foot green-painted aluminum contraption that looks like a railroad freight car with black solar panels on top. Its two storage batteries can power a mobile recording studio for as long as 15 hours without recharging.

The intention is not to throw down a challenge to the recording industry to go solar. Cyrus cost $75,000 to design and build, Wakeling said, and would have cost about $200,000 had Greenpeace not received substantial discounts from the designers and builders involved.

“We wanted to try to find a positive and spirited way to bring up energy issues and the threat of global warming,” Wakeling said. “If you could make an LP totally with solar power, you’d be speaking chapters just by doing it.”

Ready to go forward, Wakeling quickly got commitments from R.E.M. and U2, superstar bands that had supported Greenpeace in the past. Others willing to donate performances and royalties quickly fell into line.

Finding a label for the album proved harder than rounding up talent, Wakeling said. At the time, early in 1992, the national recession was deep, and “record companies tended to be sacking more of their own staff than taking on charity projects.” But Hollywood Records struck a deal to market and promote the project.

Although solar recording may not be economically practical (immediate plans for Cyrus call for it to travel the country as a promotional tool, not for it to be used in powering recording sessions), Wakeling does have some ideas on how the music industry can improve its environmental performance. For instance, he questions whether major rock tours really need the convoys of trailer trucks that have been the rule for arena bands.

“I don’t understand why each venue doesn’t just have (its own) PA setup,” he said. “Certainly when you (play in) clubs they all do.”

For the past four years, Wakeling’s own energies have alternated between his full-time environmentalist duties and music as a second job with his band the Free Radicals.

Now the balance is about to shift. Wakeling and Ranking Roger, his old partner in General Public, have reunited and are looking to regain their hit form of the early to mid-’80s. Wakeling said the group expects to sign shortly with Epic Records and will emerge with a new single, a version of the Staple Singers’ gospel-crossover hit “I’ll Take You There.”

Wakeling plans to cut back to part-time or consulting work for Greenpeace, but he is already brainstorming over another environmental benefit album: “There’s a growing need for Greenpeace’s presence in developing nations,” Wakeling said, and a world music release could be one way of addressing it.