Kevin Gilbert
Kevin Gilbert (born November 20, 1966 in Sacramento , California, † May 18, 1996 in Los Angeles ) was an American musician .
Life
Kevin Gilbert played keyboard , guitar , drums , electric bass , cello and sang. He was also a composer and producer . During his school days he received classical piano lessons. At the age of 15 he went to a recording studio for the first time with his band NRG and quickly took over the recording management himself. In the same studio he got his first job as a sound engineer - he recorded bands during the day and worked on his own projects at night.
After a few years of studio work, he began studying at UCLA , but dropped out after a year to go on tour with Eddie Money's band in 1987 . Unsatisfied with the environment on this tour, he left the band after a short time to found the band Giraffe in Sunnyvale, which was supposed to present the music he had recorded in his 24-track garage studio live with him.
With Giraffe, he won the Yamaha music competition called “Soundcheck” in 1988, first for the California region , and then finishing second at the world finals in Tokyo .
The jury of the Californian finals included Madonna's producer Patrick Leonard , who enjoyed Kevin Gilbert's music. Since the other members of Giraffe were not ready to move to Los Angeles to continue the band career, Gilbert and Leonard worked together for several months on the album Toy Matinee , for which the two wrote all the songs together and with a newly formed band - produced by Bill Bottrell - recorded and released in 1990. Patrick Leonard's record company did not support the album, however, and so this project also came to a quick end after Gilbert's small tour with other musicians and only regional radio success.
Bill Bottrell then took Kevin Gilbert to the recordings for Michael Jackson's album Dangerous and Madonna's album I'm Breathless , where he worked as a unit manager, keyboard and drum computer programmer , composer and producer.
During the tour of the Toy Matinee album , Kevin Gilbert met Sheryl Crow , who played for him as a keyboardist. Between 1991 and 1993 Kevin Gilbert brought her to the so-called Tuesday Music Club , a songwriting collective consisting of Gilbert, Bill Bottrell, David Baerwald, David Ricketts, Brian MacLeod and Dan Schwartz, who met regularly at Bottrell's studio Writing and recording songs. Soon after, after the Sheryl Crow debut album produced by Hugh Padgham was rejected by the A&M record company , those Tuesday night meetings were used to complete an alternate debut album for Crow. The result of this work was tellingly titled Tuesday Night Music Club by Crow . The album became a huge success and sold about eight million copies. As a co-author of All I Wanna Do , Gilbert received a Grammy in 1995 in the Record of the Year category . The royalties from the sale of the album made it possible for him to set up his own studio, the Lawnmower and Garden Supplies in Pasadena .
The downside of this success was Sheryl Crow's falling out with Bill Bottrell and the other musicians on the album, as Sheryl Crow was being publicly marketed as the sole manager and creative force of the album, and other people's ideas were passed off as their own. She also split up with Kevin Gilbert, who was the real creative force behind the TMC. In particular, the fact that she gave the song Leaving Las Vegas to David Lettermann as autobiographical, although she was neither involved in the creation of the text nor in the music, deepened the rift even more.
Parallel to the TMC sessions, Gilbert began to work on his solo album Thud , which he released in 1995 on the indie label PRA Records. With a few exceptions, he played all of the instruments himself. However, there was no success. He had only made a name for himself in local insider circles and with some Californian radio stations.
One of the central projects in the last years of his life was the performance of the Genesis classic The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway at the 1994 Progfest music festival in Los Angeles , for which he brought in some of his old “giraffe” companions. Jon Rubin, Gilbert's manager, had sent recordings of the performance to Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford , who were looking for a successor to Phil Collins . Paradoxically, shortly after Gilbert's death, Rubin actually received a request for an audition in England from Genesis' management.
Gilbert died at the age of 29, allegedly from suffocation during autoerotic asphyxiophilia .
Posthumous publications
Gilbert's second solo album, an autobiographical rock opera entitled The Shaming of the True , was only released after his death. Nick D'Virgilio , then the drummer of Spock's Beard and one of Gilbert's best friends, completed the album, which was largely incomplete at the time, together with producer John Cuniberti (including Joe Satriani and Chickenfoot ), another friend of Gilbert's.
In 2002 followed the publication of the Kaviar-Sessions, a collection of not very serious punk and industrial rock recordings from the mid-90s.
With Nuts and Bolts , some of Gilbert's previously unpublished recordings from various creative periods were finally released in 2009. The singer / songwriter then reinterpreted some of his older NRG and Giraffe works.
In the years that followed, various re-releases of Gilbert's earlier works followed, as well as the official release of a live recording of Toy Matinee from 1991.
Discography
- NRG - No Reasons Given (1984; remastered & rereleased 2012)
- Giraffe - The Power of Suggestion (1987; remastered & rereleased 2011)
- Giraffe - The View from Here (1989; remastered & rereleased 2011)
- Toy Matinee - Toy Matinee (1990; remastered & rereleased 2001)
- Kevin Gilbert - Thud (1995; remastered & rereleased 2014)
- Giraffe - Giraffe (1999)
- Kevin Gilbert with Thud - Thud Live at the Troubadour (1999)
- Kevin Gilbert - The Shaming Of The True (2000)
- Kaviar - The Kaviar Sessions (2002)
- Kevin Gilbert - Nuts (2009)
- Kevin Gilbert - Bolts (2009)
- Kevin Gilbert Performs Toy Matinee Live (2010)
- Toy Matinee - Acoustic (2014)
- Giraffe - The Lamb lies down on Broadway (2014)
swell
- ↑ Richard Sine: All Rocked Out . In: Metro Silicon Valley . August 1, 1996. Retrieved May 20, 2014.
- ↑ https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/More-Than-The-Piano-Player-Dumped-by-Sheryl-2966770.php
- ^ John Cuniberti: Notes on my experiences mixing The Shaming of The True . In: kevingilbert.com . 2011. Archived from the original on May 8, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 20, 2014.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Gilbert, Kevin |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 20, 1966 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sacramento , California |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 18, 1996 |
| Place of death | los Angeles |