Peter Gabriel was born on this day in 1950 in Surrey. The son of an electrical engineer father and a musical mother, the future Genesis member started singing and began piano lessons at an early age, but also enjoyed percussion and was playing a floor tom tom at age 10. Gabriel played drums and sang in his first band as a young teenager. He was 15 when he teamed with classmates Tony Banks and Chris Stewart to form a band the three dubbed Garden Wall. The trio split-up in 1967, but all three were invited by Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips to work on some demo songs in a studio. That collaboration led to the formation of Genesis
Other Noteworthy Classic Rock events on February 13 include...
1943 Producer, engineer, tech genius, Bill Szymczyk is born. His credits include work on 6 Eagles and J. Geils Band albums, 7 Joe Walsh solo releases and albums by the Who, Santana, REO Speedwagon, Bob Seger, Johnny and Edgar Winter, Rick Derringer, the Outlaws, Elvin Bishop and many more.
1952 Foreigner’s Ed Gagliardi is born.
1961 Henry Rollins is born.
1967 Beatles release single of Strawberry Fields Forever backed by Penny Lane in the US.
1970 Black Sabbath release self-titled debut.
1970 Thin Lizzy makes its live debut at the Cloghran School Hall in Dublin.
1972 Officials in Singapore refuse to let Led Zeppelin members off their plane because of their long hair.
1975 Lou Reed gets smacked in the face by a brick thrown by a political activist at a Milan, Italy concert.
1980 Police raid the home of Johnny Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols, and confiscate a canister of tear gas.
1981 Dark Side of the Moon eclipses the 402 week mark on the Billboard albums chart
1982 The headstone from grave site of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Ronnie Van Zant is stolen from Orange Park, Florida cemetery. The marker gets found and recovered two weeks later.
1992 Motley Crue announce Vince Neil's exit.
2007 Rod Stewart pockets $1 million for performing at the birthday party for the CEO of The Blackstone Group investment firm...
