The Nightmare of J B Stanislas

Garrie was born in Ripon in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to a Russian father and Scottish mother whose surname he adopted. After spending most of his teens in a boarding school in France, he attended the University of Warwick in England, and began writing songs as well as poems. Around 1968, while backpacking around Europe, he began performing in bars and restaurants, and recorded an unreleased LP in Brussels.

He resumed his studies at Warwick, and was then contacted by the Paris-based record label DiscAZ, headed by Lucien Morisse, who offered him a recording contract. Garrie recorded an unreleased single, "Queen of Spades", with producer Mickey Baker, and then an album, The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas. The album was produced by Eddie Vartan, who had previously worked with his sister Sylvie Vartan and her husband Johnny Hallyday. Vartan hired a 56-piece symphony orchestra for the sessions, against the wishes of Garrie who "later bemoaned the detrimental effects of such lush orchestration on his delicate, uncommonly literate songs"