Peter Gabriel's fox head and red dress doubled Genesis's fee overnight
Midway through a Dublin gig in 1972, Genesis's singer slipped offstage and came back wearing his wife's red dress and a fox's head. His bandmates later said they first took him for a fan storming the stage. The stunt made the front page of Melody Maker, and the group could suddenly charge twice as much.
Born on 13 February 1950 near the Surrey village of Chobham, Gabriel grew up on a Victorian farm estate. Hymns were his first taste of something like soul, songs he could belt out until he got shivers. He wrote Sammy the Slug at 12, and when an aunt gave him money for singing lessons he spent it on the Beatles' first album. At Charterhouse School he drummed in trad jazz and holiday bands; Mike Rutherford later called him a frustrated drummer.
With schoolmates Tony Banks, Anthony Phillips and Rutherford he formed Genesis in 1967, after Charterhouse old boy Jonathan King heard their demo and loved the vocals. Their first single was a deliberate Bee Gees pastiche. Gabriel took up flute, accordion and tambourine partly because he hated standing idle during instrumentals, and began improvising stories to fill gaps while the band retuned. On 19 June 1971 he leapt into the crowd expecting to be caught; the audience parted, and he broke his ankle.
Tensions grew around the concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and he left in 1975, with Phil Collins taking over vocals. His solo records yielded Solsbury Hill and Biko, and So, released in 1986, turned a cult figure into a superstar. Its Sledgehammer video took a record nine MTV awards, and Time later reported it as MTV's most played video ever.
Beyond the charts, he co-founded the WOMAD festival in 1982, scored Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, and built Real World Studios in Wiltshire. He was an early backer of online music downloads through OD2, co-created the human rights group Witness in 1992 and helped Nelson Mandela launch The Elders. Nobel peace laureates gave him their Man of Peace award in 2006.
Source: Peter Gabriel
