Secret World Live is the secondlive album and tenth album overall by the Englishrock musicianPeter Gabriel, released on 30 August 1994 in the UK.[6] The album documents the concert experience of theSecret World Tour. A concert film released on DVD, also calledSecret World Live, was released simultaneously whose track listing omits "Red Rain" and adds "San Jacinto" after "Blood of Eden".
The album was recorded over the two nights of 16 and 17 November 1993 at the Palasport Nuovo inModena, Italy.[7] A companion release,SW Live EP, recorded over the same two nights, included the live tracks "Red Rain", "Digging in the Dirt" and "Come Talk to Me" from this release, as well as "San Jacinto" and a recording of "Mercy Street" fromLive in Athens 1987, though the specific track listing varies by release by country.[8][9][10][11][12]
The artwork for the album cover was directed by Michael Colson and co-ordinated byMartha Ladly (formerly ofMartha and the Muffins) who was working for Gabriel at the time, with cover images by Fab 4 and Danny Jenkins. It received a nomination for the 1994 Grammy Award for Best Record Sleeve Packaging Design. Danny Jenkins said of his photograph: "I have always been interested in making images and had amassed an extensive collection of 80s office detritus for my digital montages [...] The core photograph of the album was shot in my studio back yard with my Pentax K1000 camera [...] The receiver was randomly picked from a pile of phones and the hand actually belongs to my long-suffering studio assistant Becky Jemmett. It was pure luck and chance that the phone and hand were a convincing enough match for Peter's on-stage version."[13]
All tracks are written by Peter Gabriel, except "Across the River", written byStewart Copeland, Gabriel, David Rhodes, andL. Shankar, and "Shaking the Tree", written by Gabriel andYoussou N'Dour.
