Guy Edward John Patrick Garvey (born 6 March 1974)[1][deprecated source] is an English musician, singer, songwriter and radio presenter. He is the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band Elbow. He has a weekly show on BBC Radio 6 Music titled Guy Garvey's Finest Hour.
Early life
Garvey grew up in Bury, Greater Manchester and comes from a working class, Catholic family. He is one of seven siblings. He told The Guardian in 2015 that he was named Guy after another Catholic, Guy Fawkes. He also told them he was bullied at school, due to his ears, which he had pinned back at the age of 12. His sister Gina told the Guardian that the school bullying may have contributed to her brother's sensitivity. His parents separated when he was aged 12, and they had divorced by the time he was 13. His father was a former grammar school boy who could not afford to go to University; a Trade Unionist, he spent most of his working life as a newspaperproofreader and as a chemist at ICI. His mother was a police officer who went back to university and became a psychologist. Garvey has five older sisters: Gina, Louise, Sam, Karen, and Becky. His younger brother is the trucker Dom Garvey.[2][3]
Career
In the early 1990s, while at sixth-form college in Whitefield,[4] near Bury, Garvey formed Elbow with Mark and Craig Potter, Pete Turner, and Richard Jupp. He serves as the lyricist of Elbow, and has been widely praised for his songwriting throughout his career. As well as vocal duties Garvey has also played a wide variety of instruments live including both electric and acoustic guitar, trumpet, and various forms of percussion. Elbow won two Ivor Novello awards for best song writing for the 2008 single "Grounds for Divorce" as well as best contemporary song for "One Day Like This".[5] He was awarded a lifetime achievement honour by the Radio Academy in 2014.[6] In the same year, he also featured on the re-launched Band Aid charity's single to raise funds for the 2014 Ebola crisis in Western Africa.[6] Garvey, with Elbow, was commissioned by the BBC to write the theme song for the 2012 London Olympics and Elbow performed this song, "First Steps" at the closing ceremony of the Olympics.[7]
Garvey has been a presenter on BBC Radio 6 Music since 2007 (Sunday afternoon 2 pm to 4 pm, British time) and previously presented a show on Sunday evenings on XFM.
He had a monthly column in the now-defunct listings magazine City Life and is a patron of the Mines Advisory Group (MAG),[10] the Manchester-based charity responsible for clearing war zones of mines and munitions worldwide.
In 2015, Garvey presented Music Box, an iPlayer-exclusive series covering emerging and established bands. Garvey has also read several children's stories for the CBeebies "Bedtime Stories" programme on the BBC.[citation needed]
In 2015, Garvey announced that he would be releasing his first solo studio album while continuing his duties as Elbow's lead songwriter. The resulting album, Courting the Squall, was released on 30 October 2015, by Polydor Records in the UK.[12][13] On 27 October 2015 Garvey appeared on BBC Two's Later... with Jools Holland, where he performed "Angela's Eyes" and "Belly of the Whale".[14]
In April 2017, Garvey appeared in the BBC television sitcom Peter Kay's Car Share, playing Kayleigh's brother-in-law Steve.[15]
In September 2018, Garvey appeared in the ITV television series The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco, as the bar singer in the Episode "Fog of War". He sings "I Only Have Eyes for You".
In 2020, the singer collaborated with Wise Owl Films (part of Lime Pictures) on the Sky Arts music series, Guy Garvey: From The Vaults, which features performances and interviews from a specific year in pop and rock history.[16] Archive footage includes Channel 4's The Tube (made by Tyne Tees), Tiswas, Razzmatazz and Get It Together, as well as clips from regional programmes such as So It Goes, The London Weekend Show and The Geordie Scene. Many of the performances were previously unseen or being shown for the first time since they originally aired.[17] The series began on 18 September 2020 and returned to Sky Arts for a fifth series in September 2024.[18]
In January 2024, Elbow performed on The Graham Norton Show and afterwards Garvey joined Norton's guests to promote Elbow's tenth studio album, Audio Vertigo which will be released on the 22 March. Their tour started on 4th May 2024 in Newcastle.[19][20]