IT would be easy to assume that former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel was probably whacked out on drugs through most of his earlier career.

Not so, says Leigh author Daryl Easlea, who has just written a book about him.

“It’s easy to think that,”agrees Daryl. “The time when he went on stage in a policeman’s helmet pretending to mow a lawn at the beginning of I KnowWhat I Like (In Your Wardrobe) you’d think, ‘what’s he on? I’ll have some of what he’s having’.

Echo:

“But he only took drugs twice in his life and even when he did, he recorded what he was doing.

One of those times he had eaten a hash cake on the way home and recorded himself, so even when he w a s high, he still came at it from an artistic point of view.”

Daryl was a fan of Gabriel’s before he started on the book, entitled Without Frontiers: The Life & Music of Peter Gabriel, but confesses to liking him even more now he has completed it.

He jokes that his publisher, who has put out several more of Daryl’s books on soul music, didn’t think he could write about any other genre. But Daryl has a huge interest in different music and says he was too young to understand it wasn’t cool to like the Sex Pistols and Genesis at the same time.

“I knew that Peter Gabriel had an interesting storyand he has got that spark. There are few characters like him – one man who is known for being a pioneer of digital distribution music, making world music, being an activist, and having a flower on his head in 1973.”

Speaking to Daryl about Gabriel, you get a sense of the huge amount of admiration he feels for his subject, not just from respect for his creative genius and his distinctive, soulful and emotive vocal, but about the personal man too.

“He is a real gentleman,”

says Daryl.

“I spoke to about 40 people about him, and all the way through this is what you keep hearing.

“One of the people I spoke to was Nile Rodgers (famous producer who has managed to make hits with some of the biggest names in music) who worked with him in the Eighties and he said he was one of the only people he couldn’t get a hit single out of.

“He said to Peter he was sorry he couldn’t do it, and Peter said he was sorry he couldn’t deliver the material.

You know, he had very good manners. He was very polite. A lot of rock stars may have blamed the producer, but he didn’t do that.

“I think people are very protective of him and love him.”

Daryl says he found learning about Gabriel’s background really interested him.

“The thing about Genesis is they never pretended to be anything other than what they were, posh boys from private school. Usually, in those days, bands would play that sort of thing down.

“It was interesting to find out about his father too, who had a love of technology. He helped invented cable TV in the Seventies, before people wanted it, and helped invent a radio system in the Second WorldWar.

“It was interesting to see that Peter’s inquisitiveness must have came from that.”

He added: “There were lots of little interesting things I learned, lots of little stories.”

Daryl explained how Peter would be notoriously slow at anything he did.

“One of his producers said if there was a pixel out of place, he would spend hours on getting that right. One actually locked him in a barn, because he wouldn’t finish his lyrics.

Another gaffer taped him to a pole to get him to finish recording the vocal. A lot of patience is needed to work with him, but the end results were always worth it.”

Daryl didn’t speak to Gabriel himself for the book, although his people were aware of him doing it and were happy for friends to talk to him.

“I have met him a few times though and he has always been very pleasant. You just want to put your arms around him really,” says Daryl.

“He didn’t want to speak to me for the book, but if he had, well I don’t think I would have finished it now.”

Without Frontiers: The Life & Music of Peter Gabriel is in the shops now. Visit www.rocksbackpages.com to find out about more of Daryl Easlea’s past publications.