From The Grey Havens - Music

Gandalf The Grey Was The Name Used In The 1970s And 1980s By American Psych-Folk Musician Chris Wilson From Glen Cove Long Island. Singer-Songwriter Wilson Was Right In The Midst Of The Hippie Influx That Poured Into The Greenwich Village Folk Scene In The Early And Mid-'60s. Not Long After Moving To New York City In 1966 He Was Befriended By Columbia Records Executive Bob Hughes Whose Partner Nicholas DeMartino Would Soon Become Wilson's Manager And Greatest Advocate. DeMartino Incidentally Was Also Manager For An Agit-Rock Band By The Name Of Elephant's Memory And Had An Integral Role In Pairing The Outfit With John Lennon And Yoko Ono After The Couple Moved To New York In The Early '70s. Wilson In Fact Was The First Artist Signed To The Recently Formed Hughes And DeMartino Company Diamond Productions. Still Just A Teenager He Was Also Added To The Columbia Roster. With And Without His Band The Other Half He Began To Make The Rounds Of The Coffee House Circuit Often Playing At Manny Roth's Café Wha And Hobnobbing With Such Future Stars As Bill Cosby Jimi Hendrix And Bruce Springsteen Among Others. Naïve Spirituality-Minded And Unlike The Other Members In The Group Drug-Free He Was Even Billed In A TV Guide Piece As The "square Hippy." Wilson Would Move Into The Relatively Straight World Of Television Production In The Next Decade But Throughout The Late '60s And Early '70s He Continued To Write And Perform His Songs Around New York With Frequency And To A Devoted Following. In 1972 He Settled Into His Long Enduring Artistic Alter Ego Gandalf The Grey. It Had The Desired Result Helping Wilson And His Music To Stand Out On The Crowded Scene. Both The Character And The Garb — He Performed At Times With Pipe Frock And Wizard's Hat And Sometimes With A Second Guitarist Billed As Legolas The Elf — Were Of Course Inspired By J. R. R. Tolkien's Classic Fantasy Novels As Were His Songs Though They Also Had A Strong Element Of Autobiography To Them. While He Had Recorded Previously Including An Unreleased Album Of Pastoral Glen Cove Juvenilia All My Thoughts And A Full Album The Tin Angel Shelved By Columbia The Grey Wizard Am I Became His First Official Full-Length LP Release In 1972. Recorded Entirely By The Artist In His Bedroom And Pressed In A Run Of 1000 Copies The Album Was Mostly Given Away To Family And Friends Though It Was Also Sold In A Few Stores. Today A Mint Copy Can Fetch Upwards Of $1000.00 In Collector's Circles. Gear Fab Reissued It On CD In Late 2003 With A Bonus Track. From The Late '70s On Wilson Settled Into Full-Time Video And Television Production Among Other Things His Company Grey Wizard Music Released The First Video Single In The United States In 1982 A Fact Officially Acknowledged By Billboard Magazine And Family Life. But His Love Of Music Never Ceased And He Continued To Perform Occasionally And Compose Songs Gathered Into The As Yet Unreleased Album The Orchestrated What's The Excuse And On Conversations With Mom And Dad Available Exclusively At Wizardtv.Com As Well As Acting In An Unproduced Broadway Musical. Biography By Stanton Swihart read less