It was a simple idea; to create a festival out of all the brilliant music and art made all over the world, stuff made outside of the mainstream – music that wasn’t getting on the radio and was even harder to find in record stores… the very first WOMAD Festival took place at the 240-acre Bath and West Showground, Somerset, UK over the weekend of 16–18 July, 1982. With the dream ‘not to sprinkle world music around a rock festival, but to prove that these great artists could be headliners in their own right’. Across the three days ‘an evening concert series’ took place in the Showering Pavilion on the festival site.

On the Friday night that concert featured Tian Jin (a song and dance troupe from China), Simple Minds and, with a ‘special festival set of non-album material’, Peter Gabriel. Live at WOMAD 1982 is a recording of that Friday night concert. The non-album material in question are seven of the eight songs that would make up the album Peter Gabriel 4.