Console fails to start

[Robert X]

I am following the grails3book. At one point is says to:

$ grails console

| Running console...
2018-05-09 18:39:11.708 ERROR --- [           main] o.s.boot.SpringApplication               : Application startup failed

### stacktrace ###

FAILURE: Build failed with an exception.

* What went wrong:
Execution failed for task ':console'.
> Process 'command '/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_172.jdk/Contents/Home/bin/java'' finished with non-zero exit value 1

* Try:
Run with --stacktrace option to get the stack trace. Run with --info or --debug option to get more log output.
| Error Command [console] error: Could not execute build using Gradle distribution 'https://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-3.5-bin.zip'. (Use --stacktrace to see the full trace)