Peter Gabriel, B.C. (Before Charterhouse): 1950 - 1963

"NO! NO! NO!" screamed Peter, blue-eyed and red-faced.

Irene Gabriel could scarcely believe it. Her adorable and angelic nine-year-old son was actually throwing a tantrum. Her daughter Anna looked worriedly back and forth between her mother and brother.

It was 1959 in a Victorian-accented upper middle class home in Southwest England. This was also years before parents read the advice of Dr. Benjamin Spock or used phrases such as "acting out." Children were to be seen when convenient, not heard except when told to speak and disobeying parents was tantamount to disobeying God.

"What's gotten into you, Peter? We'll be late for your lessons if we don't hurry."

"No more piano lessons!" cried Peter, frowning and drawing his dark brows together. "No more riding lessons! No more French lessons! No more dancing lessons! No more ANY lessons!"

Both Anna and Mrs. Gabriel were taken aback. "No lessons? Well, what will we do with you, then?"

"I want to watch television!!!"

Mrs. Gabriel sighed. She knew Peter's mind was set. "All, right, then. No more lessons. But you'll be sorry."

"And I was," Peter would laugh when retelling the story of his rebellion to reporters. He has no idea that later on his life would need music, French and dancing. Neither did his family.

****

The psychologist Alfred Adler theorized that artists create art in order to compensate for their real or imagined shortcomings.

But the young Peter Gabriel seemingly did not have any shortcomings. Decades later, the adult Peter would insist that he had a happy childhood. Yet he began expressing his creativity early. He would spend hours building forts and tunnels out of hay bales. He would build dams and fires by the banks of the River Bourne at low tide and then watch the river slowly rise to put out the fire.

Although Peter was not born into the higher classes in British society, the Gabriel family was quite wealthy, even by modern standards. Peter's illustrious ancestors included Lord Mayor of London Sir Thomas Gabriel and the legendary maker of the family's fortune, Christopher Gabriel (1746 - 1809.)

Born poor, Falmouth native Christopher Gabriel left school at 12 to apprentice with a carpenter. He began a planemaking business and then founded a timber merchant firm of which owned a fleet of barges on the Thames. After a couple of name changes, the business was called Gabriel, Wade & English by Peter's time. Peter's grandfather could secure good jobs for any Gabriel family member - including the screw-ups or boys who refused to take lessons to better themselves.

But Peter was determined to not grow up into yet another Gabriel screw-up. He found the expectations heaped upon him both supportive but suffocating. In 1959, it was unthinkable that any proper Englishman could be both rich and respected by singing or writing songs.

As an adult, Peter would sometimes talk to interviewers about his love of trees. In his 60's, Peter's blue eyes widened and shone as he described that he did not want to be buried in a coffin - but at the base of a tree, so his decomposing corpse could help to feed this beautiful tree.

It must have been extremely confusing for a tree-loving boy to discover that his family's livelihood depended on killing trees. But Peter was comforted in looking to his father, who did not work in the tree-killing business.

Ralph Gabriel, born 1912, was a man more puzzling and eccentric that his rock star son would turn out to be. He took up yoga decades before it became fashionable; piped in soothing music for his dairy cows and helped invent the first fiber-optic cable television systems. Ralph never received money or recognition for this feat, which made a huge impression on Peter. Even when he became rich and famous, Peter would gripe at interviewers that his father was robbed.

Ralph Gabriel and Irene Allen met on a skiing holiday. Besides skiing and Ralph, Irene loved riding horses and playing the piano. Two of Peter's four maternal aunts graduated from the Royal Academy of Music. Holidays and weekends were full of music - although not the kind of music Peter liked.

Peter sang in choirs as a small child. When he was six, one of his teachers wrote to Peter's parents about the exceptionally sweet voice. Peter heard compliments about his singing when very young, but did not believe them. People hear their own voices differently from anyone else in the world. Even a vocal recording cannot accurately re-create how a man hears his own voice in his head.

Peter didn't pay much attention to music until 1962, when he was at the seaside and first heard the Beatles' "Love Me Do." Music, hovering at the background of his life, suddenly moved to the forefront with the force of a lightning strike. Those piano and clarinet lessons started looking good.

A year previously, he had a dream that at the time puzzled him deeply, but would make sense to the adult Peter. He described the dream to Spencer Bright about 25 years later:

"I had this dream when I was 11, and I saw a fork in the path where I could either be an entertainer or singer or farmer. I used to dream very vividly then …But I never thought that I would be a singer, because I didn't think that I could sing."

Sources

Bright, Spencer. Peter Gabriel: An Authorized Biography. Sidgick & Jackson, Ltd; 1988.

St. Michael, Mark. Peter Gabriel: In His Own Words. Omnibus Press; 1994.

Fielder, Hugh. The Book of Genesis. St. Martin's Press; 1984.

Gallo, Armando. Peter Gabriel. Omnibus Press; 1986.

Welch, Chris. The Secret Life of Peter Gabriel. Omnibus Press; 1998.

"Christopher Gabriel (1746 - 1809): British Planemaker." Jerry Billings. ToolTalk; July 1994. http://www.pasttools.org/articles/christopher_gabriel.htm

Gabriel, Peter. "Peter Gabriel Fights Injustice with Video." TED Talk. February; 2006.