British singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel was born at 4:30 PM GMT
on February 13, 1950. This makes him an
Aquarius, although his moon was in Sagittarius.
(Insert tasteless joke here.) He
was born in the little-known English town called Cobham, located in the county
of Surrey. In an interesting
coincidence, Peter was born exactly day after guitarist Steve Hackett, his band
mate in Genesis.
Doesn’t seem too hard to get wrong, does it? And yet somehow in the 1980s, many books and
magazines were erroneously reporting that Peter’s birthday was May 13 and not
February 13. There have been some rumors
that the source of this misinformation was Peter himself (purposely telling
people the wrong date as a joke), but those rumors have never been
substantiated.
Publications Listing
Wrong Birth Date
I’ve been a fan of Peter’s since 1986, long before the
Internet (or my ability to get a driver’s license, come to think of it.) I was one of those folks who thought that
Peter’s birthday was in May. Why? Because that’s what it said in a comic strip
illustrating the lives of pop stars that appeared only on Sundays in the late
1980s. Sadly, my copy of the strip has
not survived and I cannot remember the name of the short-lived strip. If you
know, please add it to the comments section below. Thanks in advance.
Anyway, here is a partial list of publications that printed
Peter’s birthdate as May 13 (or 13 May, if you prefer):
- · USAToday (Really – is anybody surprised that they got it wrong?)
- · Chase’s 1997 Calendar of Events, 40th Anniversary Edition. McGraw-Hill; 1997. (They also got it wrong all throughout the 1990s.)
- · The Great Rock Discography. Martin Charles Strong. Cannongate; 2004.
- · The Essential Rock Discography. Martin Charles Strong. Cannongate; 2006. (Yes, those two books are basically the same.)
- · The Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll. Mark Clifford. Harmony Books; 1986.
- · The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock and Roll. Rolling Stone Press/Summit Books; 1983. (This is my guess as to how the wrong birthdate spread. Anything with Rolling Stone’s name on it sold well to many a reference library.)
Currently
For about nine years, Peter’s birthdate was put up on his
official website (PeterGabriel.com) but since the site’s redesign in 2012, his
birthdate and extensive biography have somehow disappeared. Before the redesign, the website featured a
Peter Gabriel FAQ page for fans, compiled by the one-time head of Peter’s fan
club (who has since retired -- Come to think of it, the fan club seems to have
retired, too). The FAQ page included his
correct birthday and that “somewhere down the line” the wrong birthday was
reported.
