Their early band names – The Anon, The Garden Wall – are testament to their diffidence, although musically they were well-organised from the start. Back inside the Charterhouse gates, simply forming a band was regarded as an act of rebellion against the establishment, regardless of how whimsical the early efforts of Gabriel, Banks and their school mates Michael Rutherford and Anthony Phillips actually were. But then words were never Keith Emerson’s strong point,” he adds.īut that was a couple of years down the line. “When we wrote The Knife, that was very much inspired by Tony Banks’s and my enthusiasm for The Nice. There was a time when Jimi Hendrix wanted to join The Nice, and nowadays people might look back and wonder why, but if you saw The Nice they were exciting both musically and in terms of showmanship, which I think was part of the appeal to Hendrix. I always thought The Nice got branded by ELP in some ways. And hearing the voice and the emotion of Otis Redding was just beyond words.
I’m someone who goes for the feel of something and tries to build pictures. “I’ve never really been a technical singer as such, or a musician. It was a bit of a moment for me,” he recalls proudly. “I got to see Otis Redding in 1967 at the Ram Jam Club in Brixton. Gabriel’s formative rock’n’roll experiences outside the gates of Charterhouse – frequently illicit, which only added to the thrill – were Otis Redding and The Nice. Lipstick, powder and paint, Gabriel gets ready to take to the stage in the mid-80s (Image credit: Getty Images)īut sitting in a cosy corner of the Covent Garden Hotel restaurant, Gabriel is allowing himself to wallow in a little nostalgia.