David Gray
Singer-Songwriter
David Peter Gray was born on 13 June 1968 in Sale, Cheshire, and grew up in Altrincham near Manchester — until the age of nine, when his family uprooted and moved to Solva, a tiny fishing village on the Pembrokeshire coast. His parents took over a gift shop and started a clothing business selling clothes and gifts quite unlike anything on the high street. That business lives on today as Window on Wales, with shops in both Solva and St David's — well worth a visit if you're in Pembrokeshire. The move was, by Gray's own account, transformative. He has spoken of suddenly being free of the competitive middle-class world of Manchester — catching mackerel, watching adders, roaming the Pembrokeshire countryside. It fed something in him that never left. He was educated at the village school in Solva and later at Ysgol Dewi Sant in St David's. As a teenager he played in local punk bands and appeared at Mathry Hall with the Mathry Players — his earliest known stage performance outside school.
He returned to England to study at Liverpool School of Art — the same institution John Lennon had attended — before signing with Hut Records in 1992. Three albums followed: A Century Ends (1993), Flesh (1994) and Sell, Sell, Sell (1996). All three earned comparisons to Bob Dylan and Van Morrison from those paying attention, but none broke through commercially. EMI dropped him. The Britpop era had little room for a quiet, serious folk-rock songwriter with something to say.
Undeterred, Gray self-financed his fourth album, recording it in his London flat on a drum machine and acoustic guitar. He released it on his own IHT Records label in November 1998. He called it White Ladder. Ireland found it first — it reached number one there in January 2000 and stayed for six weeks, eventually becoming the biggest-selling album in Irish history. Dave Matthews, who had toured with Gray, made it the first release on his new ATO Records label in the US. Babylon hit number five in the UK. This Year's Love became one of the defining songs of the era.
