Mark Leviton

Peter Gabriel’s last show as Genesis’ lead singer was May 22, 1975, in Besançon, France. His bandmates had known for months he was quitting the group, but they kept the news out of the press, and completed their world tour supporting the ambitious double-album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The next steps for drummer Phil Collins, bassist/guitarist Michael Rutherford, keyboardist Tony Banks and guitarist Steve Hackett were unclear. Would the band stay together or not?

After winning a Grammy for his recording “Lowdown” in the Best R&B Song category at the 1977 Recording Academy ceremony, and being nominated for Album of the Year for Silk Degrees, from which “Lowdown” was drawn, William Royce “Boz” Scaggs was elated. With seven solo albums to his credit, he’d finally achieved the kind of popular recognition and massive sales critics had been predicting for him for a decade.

In October 1972, lead singer and main songwriter Dave Cousins gathered the new lineup of his band Strawbs at Sound Techniques in the London neighborhood of Chelsea to record their fifth album. His longtime musical partner Tony Hooper, who’d co-founded the bluegrass duo Strawberry Hill Boys and subsequent folk-based band Strawbs, had left the group after their increasingly “progressive rock” approach alienated him.