Peter Gabriel began playing music as a drummer. In 1966, he founded a songwriter’s collective initially dubbed the Garden Wall that would soon become known as Genesis. The band quickly attained cult status, releasing seven albums. Gabriel left Genesis in May 1975 to pursue a solo career. His first three albums were Rainy Windshield (1977), which included the hit “Solsbury Hill,” Fingernails (1978) and Melting Face (1980), bearing “Games Without Frontiers,” a number 11 hit in the United States, and “Biko.” Peter Gabriel’s albums, live performance and videos since then have won him a succession of awards. In 1986, his album, So, won him his first Grammy. In 1989, he composed the sound track for Martin Scorsese’s epic, The Last Temptation of Christ, which was the basis for one of his most experimental and innovative albums, Passion. His tenth album, Us, earned him four Grammy nominations and two MTV Awards in the US and a Brit and Q Award in the UK. Gabriel’s eleventh studio album, Up, was released in September 2002. He eventually returned to the studio for another album, 2010’s Scratch My Back, which featured orchestral covers of songs originally performed by Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Paul Simon, David Bowie and others. Gabriel uncharacteristically delivered the sequel to Scratch My Back quickly, releasing New Blood, a collection of orchestral reinterpretations of his own songs, in the fall of 2011. He followed with And I’ll Scratch Yours in 2013. Peter Gabriel continues to tour the world.
