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It seems that Peter Gabriel has been busy over the past few decades since his days as a singer in Genesis:

When Charles Grimsdale, a British investor, started the Internet music venture OD2 in 1999, he had a hard time persuading large record companies to license their music. But when he approached the rock musician Peter Gabriel about putting his music catalog online, he got a very different response: Mr. Gabriel was not only willing, he also wanted to take a stake in the company.

"When most labels were banging their heads, he got it and saw the liberating value of Internet distribution to artists, and that's what excited him," says Mr. Grimsdale, a partner at Eden Ventures, of Mr. Gabriel. "He has a very good sense technologically of what's going to work."

MR. Gabriel, 58, was born in Cobham, a town in the English county of Surrey. His father, now 96, worked for Rediffusion, the pioneering British commercial television company, and was an early proponent of on-demand programming. But "his company never believed people would pay for television," Mr. Gabriel says.

And while Peter inherited his father's interest in exploring new technologies, he credits his maternal grandfather with his investment activities. "My mother doesn't like me to say this, but her father was a bit of a gambler," he says. "If you feel like you're riding a wave that hasn't hit before, that's a great feeling."

Friends and business associates say Mr. Gabriel has always been entranced by the lure of new ideas.

"In the early days, we'd go skiing together and Peter would have an idea every 30 seconds," says the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, whose Virgin Group includes more than 200 companies. "We'd be sitting on the lift with me scribbling madly in my notebook, trying to get everything down. He's worse than me."

It's a fascinating profile of this very smart, almost old, Rocker - and businessman.

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