Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English musician and songwriter. He first rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career. More recently he has focused on producing and promoting world music and pioneering digital distribution methods for music. He has also been involved in various humanitarian efforts. Peter Gabriel was awarded the Polar Prize 2009.

Early life

Gabriel was born in Chobham, Surrey, England. His father, Ralph Parton Gabriel, was an electrical engineer, and his mother, Edith Irene Allen, from a musical family, taught him to play the clarinet at an early age. He attended Cable House, a private preparatory school in Woking, Surrey, then Charterhouse School from 1963.

Genesis

Main: Genesis (band) Gabriel founded Genesis in 1967 with fellow Charterhouse School pupils Tony Banks, Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford, and drummer Chris Stewart. The name of the band was suggested by fellow Charterhouse alumnus, the pop music impresario Jonathan King, who produced their first album, From Genesis to Revelation.

A lover of soul music, Gabriel was influenced by many different sources in his way of singing – mainly Otis Redding and other soul singers, as well as Family lead singer Roger Chapman. He also played the flute on Cat Stevens' Mona Bone Jakon album in 1970.

Genesis drew some attention in England and eventually also in Italy, Belgium, Germany and other European countries, largely due to Gabriel's flamboyant stage presence, which involved numerous bizarre costume changes and comical, dreamlike stories told as the introduction to each song (originally Gabriel developed these stories solely to cover the time between songs that the rest of the band would take tuning their instruments and fixing technical glitches). The concerts made extensive use of black light with the normal stage lighting subdued or off. A backdrop of fluorescent white sheets and a comparatively sparse stage made the band into a set of silhouettes, with Gabriel's fluorescent costume and make-up providing the only other sources of light.

Among Gabriel's many famous costumes (which he developed to visualize the musical ideas of the band, and to get them press coverage) were "Batwings" (for the usual opening number, "Watcher of the Skies"), "The Flower" (worn for "Supper's Ready", from Foxtrot), "Magog" (also worn for "Supper's Ready", from Foxtrot), "Britannia" (worn for "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight", from Selling England by the Pound), "The Reverend" (worn for "The Battle of Epping Forest", also from Selling England by the Pound), "The Old Man" (worn for "The Musical Box", from Nursery Cryme), "Rael" (the protagonist of the album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), and "The Slipperman" (worn during "The Colony of Slippermen", also from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway).