Peter Gabriel: There was a lot of discussion about whether we should continue with music. At that time, you know — the school now would be very proud of Genesis and our history — they weren’t really supportive. They sort of tolerated a rock group. I remember, Mike Rutherford was told not to carry on playing and mixing with disreputable types. So this was something that for us was really important because it was not quite Tom Browne’s School Days, but it was a formal English public school with discipline, not a lot of compassion. And you felt — there was a film Lindsay Anderson did called If, which sort of captured, I think, the emotion of the experience.
But the tighter the discipline, the more human nature wants to rebel against it. So music was our way, and we would go down — there was a room where you could play billiards downstairs, but it was a small Dansette record player. And so the very few visits we were allowed to make to the town, I would go down to Godalming and buy Otis Redding or Nina Simone or whatever it was that was firing me up and turn it up full volume in this little room. And then we’d go upstairs to the dining room where the only piano was. And there’d be a big competition. Sometimes you’d have to run into the kitchen and climb through the hatch in order to sit down because it was first-come, first-served at the piano after the lessons finished. So there was a lot of competition.