He is a multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter,
born in Chobham, Surrey.He attended CharterhouseSchool and was a
founding member of the band Genesis
.He was influenced by the musical styles of Nina Simone, Cat Stevens
and Gary Brooker of ProculHarum
and is a lover of soul music.He had
a huge stage presence and had many spectacular wardrobe changes
throughout a Genesis
show as well as telling a story about each
song as its introduction.He
started stage diving while performing the song "The Knife", and
this is now part of many hard rock and heavy metal concerts.He also used to "crowd
surf" but stopped that as he got older.The album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was seen as one of his "concept" pieces
and in 1975 he left the band to further a solo career, being
replaced by Phil
Collins
.One reason for his departure was the
difficult birth of his first child, Anna, and he chose to stay with his family
rather than tour.He felt a
sense of resentment by the band and his decision to leave is lyrically
described in the song "Solsbury
Hill".His first four
albums were untitled.This was
because he wished the albums to be looked at like magazine covers with just
the cover illustrations changing each time. The fourth one was given the
title Security in the U.S.
at the request of Geffen Records.He has since titled his albums in short, single words, such as So, Up and Hit.Phil
Collins worked with him in
devising the drum patterns without cymbals for his third album, and the
result of this work is heard in the track "Intruder".He has been a successful artist in
the US and UK
with songs such as "Sledgehammer" and "Big
Time".He has
worked with artists including Kate
Bush
, Sinead O'Connor, Steve Lilleywhite, Cat Stevens and Stewart Copeland as a
singer and producer.He also sang backing vocals with
Sting on the Phil
Collins
album No Jacket Required.He released the soundtrack Passion for the film The Last Temptation of Christ and
was the singer of "That'll Do", written by Randy Newman,
for Babe, Pig in the City which
they sang together at the following year's Oscar ceremony.He
wrote the back text for Chris
Stewart, the ex-Genesis
drummer, for his publication of his book A Parrot in the Pepper Tree.He has been heavily involved with
the work of Amnesty International and is very involved with the WOMAD
movement (World of Music, Arts and Dance). He was one of the founders of
On Demand Distribution (OD2) which is involved with music download
technology and he is the co-founder of the musician unionMudda,
which he formed with Brian Eno.Recently he has been working with
the sound production for video games companies.His daughter, Melanie, was a back up
vocalist for him during his 2002 tour.
