Peter Gabriel's Real Name: Peter Gabriel

Quick answer: The musician is known professionally as Peter Gabriel. Encyclopedia.com, in one compiled fact box, gives the fuller form Peter Brian Gabriel and dates his birth to February 13, 1950, in Cobham, Surrey, England. Britannica independently dates the birth to February 13, 1950, in Woking, Surrey, and does not use the fuller form. Because that fuller form is not independently repeated here, this page titles the public name. The same Encyclopedia.com compilation also includes a May 13, 1950, wording, which is recorded as a conflict below (Britannica; Encyclopedia.com).

Real name and early life

He is known professionally as Peter Gabriel. Encyclopedia.com gives the full name Peter Brian Gabriel in a personal-data box and places the birth in Cobham, Surrey, on February 13, 1950. Another entry on the same Encyclopedia.com page dates the birth to 13 February 1950 in Woking, Surrey, and a third wording on that page says he was born May 13, 1950, and grew up on a farm in Woking. Britannica independently uses February 13, 1950, and Woking, Surrey, matching two of those Encyclopedia.com date-and-place pairings but not Cobham and not May 13. This page records those conflicts rather than silently picking a town or treating May 13 as confirmed.

Career highlights

Encyclopedia.com says he was a founding member of the British band Genesis, helped it gain a reputation for artistic rock music and performances, and left the group in 1975. Britannica independently says he was the lead singer of Genesis, left in 1975, and later cofounded the WOMAD festival in 1982 and Real World Records in 1989. It highlights the 1986 album So as a multimillion-seller, names the video for Sledgehammer as voted best video of all time by Rolling Stone in 1993, and lists Grammy Awards for Passion: Music for "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1989) and for later videos from the 1992 album Us, as well as for the song Down to Earth from the film WALL-E in 2009. Encyclopedia.com independently names So and its chart hit Sledgehammer, as well as the single Games Without Frontiers.

Name notes for searchers

People looking up Peter Gabriel or Peter Brian Gabriel are looking for the same British musician. The fuller form appears in Encyclopedia.com but is not independently used by Britannica in the article cited here.