[2] O'Connor left suddenly in October, and American singer-songwriter Paula Cole was quickly recruited to fill her position, earning high praise for her performance.

[5] The core of Gabriel's touring band was composed of long-time collaborators: bassist Tony Levin, guitarist David Rhodes, drummer Manu Katché and violinist L. Shankar.

[6] A few days after Cole joined the tour, the show was filmed and recorded in Modena, Italy, to produce the concert video Secret World Live.

The railway idea proved impractical, so Gabriel and Lepage met with German design firm Atelier Markgraph for a brainstorming session, to formulate a tour concept.

Early the next year, British director Dave "T" Taraskevics joined Gabriel and Lepage in meetings with scenic designers and the team from Atelier Markgraph.

Extensive radio-frequency wireless technology provided freedom of movement for Gabriel and most of his band, except for drum sets, guitar amps and keyboard rigs which were connected by cabling.

Gabriel's front of house mixer Peter Walsh said that the main speaker system was essentially running six loudspeaker zones in monaural (mono) sound rather than stereo, with occasional musical elements given a directional emphasis.

The outboard gear included Lexicon PCM70 reverbs, TC Electronic graphic equalizers, and BSS Varicurves—all of these digital devices were controlled by an Apple PowerBook sending MIDI scene changes.

For some concerts, this was followed by solo duduk played by guest musician Levon Minassian interpreting the composition "The Feeling Begins", also from Passion.

An extended performance of the feminine-themed "Shaking the Tree" was used by Gabriel as an opportunity to introduce the three longest-serving band members individually on the circular stage.

[11] A stream of luggage moved down the conveyor belt to the square stage, reminiscent of an airport baggage handling system, to indicate that the musicians were leaving.

[12] By contrast, Susan Richardson of Rolling Stone found that the focus on male–female tension was successful: "The result is tantamount to a religious rite, merging grandeur with the intimacy of feeling, the public with the secret.

McKeough praised "the continuity of ideas and images" projected on the video screen, but he criticized the technical failures he witnessed, including several microphone malfunctions, the unforgivingly boomy room acoustics of the Rosemont Horizon Arena, and the uneven mix marred by occasional voices or instruments delivered piercingly loud.

Singer Paula Cole was named as "one of the real stars" of the show, proving that she was equal to the task of covering Kate Bush, and superior to Sinéad O'Connor.

Unlike Askew, O'Connor did not support the production with additional keyboard parts, so Jean-Claude Naimro of Kassav' was hired in July for that role.

Real World Studios engineer Kevin Killen suggested singer-songwriter Paula Cole in San Francisco, California.

Cole was only a few days into the tour when the performance was filmed for Secret World Live, a concert video which earned a Grammy Award.

French-Armenian musician Levon Minassian played alone on the duduk at some concerts, following the pre-recorded "Zaar" intro with "The Feeling Begins"—both tunes from Gabriel's 1989 album Passion.

Walsh was reluctant to leave the studio, but he warmed to touring and stayed with Secret World to the end, totalling 162 concerts in a year-and-a-half.

Walsh found his thorough knowledge of the show to be an enormous asset later in the studio, mixing the 96 channels of multi-track recordings to create the live album and concert video.

[21] In early August 1993, one of the crew tour buses collided at speed with a heavy dustbin lorry on a highway in Leesburg, Florida, seriously injuring the 18-year-old American bus driver, and sending assistant stage manager John Gray to the hospital for surgery to treat a deep cut on his leg.

[22] Members of the production crew produced a humorous secret newsletter titled Us and Them, containing tales of tour hi-jinks and "unpublishable" anecdotes.

Many of the crew were involved in practical jokes played on each other and on Gabriel: among these were plastic "trick" dog faeces the crew placed on a stage lift that brought Gabriel up from the floor to the stage, and a seven-foot-high (2.1 m) model of the Statue of Liberty that was purloined from the props department of a Paris concert hall, and placed on the conveyor belt during the finale that night.

A few times Gabriel performed a stripped-down solo version of "Here Comes the Flood" as a third encore, at least once in the German language as Jetzt kommt die Flut.

The first official Secret World Tour date with extensive staging was performed on 13 April 1993 in Sweden at the Stockholm Globe Arena.