|
|
|
Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950, in Cobham, Surrey, England) is an English musician who first came 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.
Gabriel's departure from Genesis (which stunned fans of the group and left many commentators wondering if the band could survive) was the result of a number of factors. His stature as the lead singer of the band, and the added attention garnered by his flamboyant stage personae, led to tensions within the band. Genesis had always operated more or less as a collective, and Gabriel's burgeoning public profile led to fears within the group that he was being unfairly singled out as the creative hub of the group.
Tensions were heightened by the ambitious album and tour of the concept work The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, a Gabriel-created concept piece which saw him taking on the lion's share of the lyric writing. During the writing and recording of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Gabriel was approached by director William Friedkin, allegedly because Friedkin had found Gabriel's short story in the liner notes to Genesis Live interesting. Gabriel's interest in a film project with Friedkin was another contributing factor in his decision to leave Genesis. The decision to quit the band was made before the tour supporting The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, but Gabriel stayed with the band until the conclusion of that tour. Though tensions were high, both Gabriel and the remaining members of Genesis have stated publicly that Gabriel left the band on good terms, supported by the fact that he officially left 8 months after telling the band it was time for him to move on.
The breaking point came with the difficult pregnancy of Gabriel's wife, Jill, and birth of their first child, Anna. When he opted to stay with his sick daughter and wife rather than go record and tour, the resentment from the rest of the band led Gabriel to conclude that he had to leave the band. "Solsbury Hill", Gabriel's debut single as a solo artist, was written specifically about his departure from Genesis.
Gabriel has been interested in world music for many years, with the first musical evidence appearing on his third album. This influence has increased over time, and he is the driving force behind the WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance) movement. He created the Real World Studios and record label to facilitate the creation and distribution of such music by various artists, and he has worked to educate Western culture about the work of such musicians as Yungchen Lhamo, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Youssou N'dour. He has a long-standing interest in human rights, and launched WITNESS [1], a nonprofit which supplies video cameras to human rights activists to expose abuses. In 2006 his work with Witness and his long standing support of peace and human rights causes was recognized by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates with the Man of Peace award.
In the 1990s, with Steve Nelson of Briliant Media and director Michael Coulson, he developed advanced multimedia CD-ROM-based entertainment projects, creating the acclaimed Xplora CD-ROM which became the world's largest selling music CD-ROM and the later Eve CD-ROM. "EVE" was a music and art adventure game directed by Michael Coulson and co-produced by the Starwave Corporation in Seattle. The CD-ROM won the acclaimed Millia D'or award Grand Prize at the Cannes in 1996 and featured themes and interactivity well in advance of its time. These can no longer be played on modern PCs, due to changes to their operating systems.
He was one of the founders of On Demand Distribution (OD2), one of the first online music download services. Its technology is used by MSN Music UK and others, and has become the dominant music download technology platform for stores in Europe. OD2 was bought by US company Loudeye in June of 2004 and subsequently by Finnish mobile giant Nokia in October 2006 for $60 million.
Additionally, Gabriel is also co-founder (with Brian Eno) of a musicians union called Mudda, short for "magnificent union of digitally downloading artists."
In June 2005, Gabriel and broadcast industry entrepreneur David Engelke purchased Solid State Logic, a leading manufacturer of mixing consoles and digital audio workstations. SSL is among the top 2 or 3 recording console manufacturers in the world of recording.
In July 2007 Peter performed at WOMAD in Charlton Park for the first time in the 25 years of the festival.
Humanitarian initiatives:
In the late 1990s, Gabriel and entrepreneur Richard Branson discussed with Nelson Mandela their idea of a small, dedicated group of leaders, working objectively and without any vested personal interest to solve difficult global conflicts.
On July 18, 2007, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nelson Mandela announced the formation of a new group, Global Elders, in a speech he delivered on the occasion of his 89th birthday. The founding members of this group are Desmond Tutu, Graça Machel, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Jimmy Carter, Li Zhaoxing, Mary Robinson, and Muhammad Yunus.[2]
The Elders will be independently funded by a group of "Founders", including Branson and Gabriel.
Desmond Tutu serves as the chair of The Elders—who will use their collective skills to catalyze peaceful resolutions to long-standing conflicts, articulate new approaches to global issues that are or may cause immense human suffering, and share wisdom by helping to connect voices all over the world. They will work together over the next several months to carefully consider which specific issues they will approach.
In 1992 Peter Gabriel founded WITNESS a non-profit group that equips, trains and supports locally-based organizations worldwide to use video and the internet in human rights documentation and advocacy. In 1995 he was one of the two winners of the North-South Prize in its inaugural year.
|
|
|
|
Peter's first solo album, released in February 1977. Peter was 26.
"The album cover was done with Hypnosis who I worked with a little bit at the end of Genesis period. Storm and Peter particularly from there and I think they are, are very important in the way that album sleeves have developed over the years, this was actually his car that I was sitting in on the front cover and I liked the idea of the, the water and the sort of black and white and blue colour."
|
|
|
|
|
Peter's second solo album. Produced by Robert Fripp in the late spring of 1978. The record features Bruce Springsteen's keyboard player Roy Bittan: "He plays exactly what I would if I could play the piano as well as he could" (PG). Tony Levin and Larry Fast were carried over from the first album, and Jerry Marotta joined the band on Drums.
|
|
|
|
|
One of Q Magazine's top 100 Greatest British Albums. .Produced by Steve Lillywhite, this album of May 1980 features Jerry Marotta and Phil Collins drumming, the guitar of Robert Fripp, David Rhodes, Paul Weller and XTC's Dave Gregory, with vocals from Peter and Kate Bush. The album produced the 1980 hit single "Games Without Frontiers", and the anthemic "Biko".
|
|
|
|
|
In September 1982 Security went straight into the UK charts at number 6, and the track "Shock The Monkey" on this album gave Peter his first US Top 40 hit. "The artwork on album 4 was something that I'd been working on with a sculptor called Malcolm Pointer who's work I thought was really strong, he used to do these things out of very dark heads." "There was a book I'd seen too, on distortions. A little like fairground mirrors and we started using that with some Millonex? which is a sort of bendy mirror."
|
|
|
|
|
A single disc release, featuring 12 live tracks. Released in 1983, taken from the 1982 tour and now re-released in a remastered and repackaged form.Plays Live summarizes the first four Peter Gabriel albums. These performances are fearless, and PG's passion is apparent throughout the record.
|
|
|
|
|
An intriguing film score created for a film by Alan Parker. .Gabriel utilises both existing material, remixing, editing, and adding to as needed, after stripping away the vocals, and newly recorded pieces. The result is at once both familiar and different, an album with haunting passages that demand a closer listen.
|
|
|
|
|
May 1986 saw the release of So, and within three months it and it's singles had topped the charts in both the UK and USA. Sledgehammer was both a huge hit musically and as a video, charting new territory in the relationship between contemporary film and video work, and music.
"I think part of the reason So worked so well was that that the band was really firing off each other, we had great sound and production team and it was sort of compact in a way, in the process and in the way it was put together."
|
|
|
|
|
Peter Gabriel's remarkable musical collage for Scorsese's 'The Last Temptation of Christ', 1990 Grammy Award winner.
"One of the most important records for me was the Passion record which was an opportunity really to try as a writer to do a whole different sort of job than I usually do."
"I wasn't intending to sing on it, I ended up doing some sort of background singing but it was with the brief for The last Temptation of Christ for creating something that had references to that time and that part of the world but really had it's own character and was to be sort of timeless in a way."
|
|
|
|
|
Shaking the Tree has artwork which was done by Robert Mapplethorpe who I think, you know, is one of the great photographers, the results I was really happy with and I had this idea to do some with my eyes shut, some so you have one which is on the front with eyes shut and then eyes open."
"It also gave me a chance to do another version of Here Comes the Flood, I wanted to to take a simpler more emotional sketch version of it and do it more with voice and piano so I used Shaking the Tree as an opportunity to do that."
|
|
|
|
|
In 1992 Peter Gabriel delivered Us, his sequel to So. Featuring ten impressive tracks. "Digging in the Dirt" has an insistent pulse, "Blood of Eden" and "Come Talk to Me" are quite beautiful, "Secret World" is quietly anthemic.
|
|
|
|
|
15 tracks taken from Peter Gabriel's Secret World tour. A double disc album, feautring some of PG's best known hits.
|
|
|
|
|
As well as drawing on many references within our own folk traditions, the music also draws on the cultural origins of the many peoples that now comprise contemporary British culture. It layers Asian, African, Middle Eastern, Australian and European elements against a mostly contemporary British backdrop. From 12th century hurdy gurdy to didgeridoo, from the pulsing rhythms of the Dhol Foundation and the nostalgic brass of the Black Dyke Band, from Arab laments over drum and bass to meditative moments with string section - the soundtrack is a really eclectic mix. It is also a story of forbidden love.
|
|
|
|
|
Up not only fills several years but spans several continents.
"The album is a 'bookends' record, looking more at the beginning and the end of life than the middle". This is a personal album, reflecting on the life that grows out of death and recognizing patterns and forces at work above and beneath our normal focus.
Most of the recording and mixing has been done at Real World Studios, although some of the initial recording was done in Senegal, France and on a boat on the Amazon.
|
|
|
|
|
The Golden Globe-nominated score for Phillip Noyce's film of the powerful true story of hope and survival. At a time when it was Australian government policy to train aboriginal children as domestic workers and integrate them into white society, young Molly Craig decides to lead her little sister and cousin in a daring escape from their internment camp. Molly and the girls, part of what would become known as Australia's "Stolen Generations," must then elude the authorities on a dangerous 1,500-mile adventure along the rabbit-proof fence that bisects the continent and will lead them home.
|
|
|
|
|
The 30 track double CD HIT is an extensive and eclectic collection of Gabriel's best known songs, together with more recent tracks, previously unreleased material and new remixes, - a musical autobiography of a solo career which has spawned 14 albums over 25 years. Tracks from Peter Gabriel 1, 2, 3 and 4 sit alongside key songs from his latter solo albums: So; UP and US.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
