Gentle Giant - The parts and the whole

Not everyone plays on every track. The point isn't to give each member a solo moment, as on Yes's 'Fragile'; rather, it's the opposite: a surrender of ego to whatever the music demands, a collective musical conception that is always put into practice by whichever instruments are needed to bring it to life.

(Jim Green, Trouser Press, 1976)

You could call them the ultimate geek band. Looks and flashy gimmicks play no part in their image; they don't season songs and interviews with attention-grabbing proclamations; conveying sex appeal through music is the last thing on their minds. What they do instead is play divinely: tighter and more intricate than anyone else. A gang of nerds avant la lettre. "We were interested in literature, in anything that showed thought processes and skill in action. It was part of our culture, part of who we were," frontman Derek Shulman would explain to journalist Mike Barnes. For decades the best kept secret of British progressive rock, they found greater success in North America and continental Europe than at home, and today are remembered as one of the most genuine and original bands in the genre's history.

While the British music press branded them "music for nerds," the kaleidoscopic tracks of Gentle Giant were enthusiastically championed on Italian radio by the show "Per voi giovani," whose host Carlo Massarini used the notes of their "Prologue" as his opening theme.

Right on this side of the Alps, the band finds an early, warm fanbase capable of fuelling the efforts of the three Shulman brothers, Derek, Phil and Ray, and the rest of the lineup. But the relationship with our country will not always be straightforward, and will go through periods of silence just as approval starts arriving from the most coveted market of all, the American one. Phenomenal live, Gentle Giant criss-cross the States and eastern Canada, triggering an exchange in which they absorb elements of the local Album Oriented Rock and power-pop currents, becoming a point of reference both for successful artists (Kansas, Rush) and for a multitude of underground bands within the fragmented American progressive scene.

Their eclectic style, able to fuse hard rock and madrigal, folk and electronic flourishes, has been labelled over the decades baroque'n'roll, Renaissance rock, proto-math, and even pointed to as paradigmatic of a strand of lopsided pop cutting across genres and eras. Above all, though, their passion for ambitious interlocking structures and layering strikes for the cohesion shown by its parts, broken up into a thousand syncopations and counterpoints yet always serving an overall design. A whole that emerges from the virtuosity of each member the way a painting takes shape from its many colours. In the words of "Giant", the opening track of their debut album:

The rise of a high expectation;

Emerging successful, defiant;

Together the parts make a Giant

In the account that follows, the band's career has been divided into three phases, corresponding to as many sections. The first begins with their origins, moves through the representative Acquiring The Taste (1971) and arrives at the formation of the definitive lineup, closing with the milestone Octopus (1972). The second sees a deepening of their stylistic formula, with a highly recognisable sound whose many possibilities the Giant explore. This is the era of formal maturity, marked by three equally accomplished releases: In A Glass House (1973), The Power And The Glory (1974) and Free Hand (1975), the latter being their most commercially successful album. In the third phase, the band experiments with new solutions, seeking to lighten their sound and possibly consolidate sales — an intent whose failure will lead to the group's split in 1980.

Beyond these three periods, the text also includes two extras: a prologue and a conclusion. The first reconstructs the events that led the Shulman brothers into the music business, through the pop experience of Simon Dupree And The Big Sound. The second contextualises Gentle Giant's music in light of the influence it would exert in the following decades (an influence that persists to this day!) and the numerous initiatives, commercial and otherwise, linked to the band's ever-growing fanbase.

All the section titles are taken from the band's songs.

Prologue

My father was a professional musician, so there were always musical instruments scattered around the house — a trumpet, a set of bagpipes or something else. It wasn't that we wanted to become multi-instrumentalists. It's that the instruments were there and we'd say to ourselves: "Come on, let's give this a try...".

(Derek Shulman su Mike Barnes, “A New Day Yesterday – Uk Progressive Rock & The 1970s”, 2020)

Philip, Derek and Raymond Shulman grow up surrounded by music. Theirs is a Jewish family of a particular kind, one that seems to favour a musical upbringing over a religious one. Phil and Derek spend their early years in Glasgow, in the notorious working-class district of the Gorbals, where the two are born ten years apart (1937 and 1947 respectively). After the war ends, the family moves to the south of England, to the port city of Portsmouth, where Ray joins them in 1949. The brothers soon start following in the footsteps of their father, a jazz trumpeter: the house is frequented by fellow musicians, who gather there for jam sessions after gigs and stir the musical curiosity of the three brothers.

Already in the early Sixties, Derek and Ray see themselves as a band — the Howling Wolves, then the Roadrunners — and carve out the role of manager for their older brother Phil. As time passes, the group takes shape, and alongside schoolmates it eventually comes to include Phil himself. The name changes to "Simon Dupree And The Big Sound": "Simon Dupree" is Derek's stage name, as he drops the guitarist role to focus on vocals and bass. The band plays an r&b shaped by listening to Radio Luxembourg and the offshore stations run by the American armed forces. Thanks to the husband of their sister Evelyn, a BBC producer, a deal with EMI arrives in 1966. A few years follow of TV appearances and genre-hopping, relentless touring across southern England and modest chart successes (alongside plenty of flops). A stressful but formative period, whose frustrations will be the spark that ignites their next adventure.

The band's varied output is now collected on the double Part Of My Past, released in 2004. It's a rich corpus, which besides the 1967 debut album Without Reservations and all the preceding and subsequent singles also gathers the material for a never-released second album. The stylistic range is wide, spanning from the white soul the band had hoped to be associated with (though Parlophone preferred to promote them as a pop outfit) to brilliant baroque and sunshine pop numbers, with clear Beatles-esque influences in the harmonies. "Kites", the group's only real hit, is a psych-pop episode featuring expanded instrumentation (vibraphone, gong, Mellotron, wind machine) and an exotic mood; penned by American songwriters Hal Hackady and Lee Pockriss, it reaches number eight on the British charts, giving the elusive Simon Dupree a measure of visibility. Among the other tracks, standouts include the airy Western-tinged "From Whom The Bell Tolls" (written by the duo Paul Smith/Evelyn King, sister of the three Shulmans), the piratical divertissement "Broken Hearted Pirates" and several pieces penned by the Shulmans themselves: the radiant "You", the graceful "Rain" and the breezy "Laughing Boy From Nowhere". On the latter, the keyboards are played by a then-unknown Reginald Dwight, later to achieve fame under the stage name Elton John: keyboardist Eric Hine falls ill in 1967, and the young musician is hired to replace him. His role is mostly that of a supporting player, but the last B-side the band releases before splitting ("I'm Going Home") will bear his credit.

Two tracks, darker in tone and featuring processed vocals, are recorded in 1968 under the name "The Moles", with neither the records nor the promotional material making any reference to Simon Dupree or the Shulman brothers. It's a parallel mystery band, a prank carried out with Parlophone's blessing by the three brothers. Among the various legends circulating about the two tracks ("they were recorded at Abbey Road using the same instruments as the Beatles", "they're the work of the Fab Four, but with Ringo on vocals"), one holds that the true identity behind the name was revealed by Syd Barrett. This one, however, has a documented rebuttal: the one who exposed it is Adrian Gurvitz, guitarist of the band Guns, in an interview with NME in late 1968. The overlap with the former frontman of Pink Floyd, as biographer Rob Chapman reconstructs in "Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head", stems from a distorted memory on Chapman's own part, who in a 1996 article for Mojo conflates two episodes mentioned in the interview: the one about the Moles and Gurvitz's reference to a recent Pink Floyd performance at which Barrett was supposedly present backstage despite having already left the band. The link between the Shulmans and Pink Floyd proves so convincing, in fact, that even Peter O'Flaherty, the bassist present at the Moles sessions, ends up believing it himself!

In 1969, the manager books Simon Dupree & The Big Sound for a touring "cabaret pop" show: the financial returns are good, but the schedule is punishing; above all, though, the band members have no interest whatsoever in that kind of show. By year's end, the Shulman brothers disband the group, intent on setting off in a new, more ambitious direction: a project proudly independent of record-label constraints, for which they decide to take all the time needed to find the right collaborators.

Drummer Martin Smith had already joined the three Shulmans back in the Simon Dupree And The Big Sound days: a versatile musician equally at home with rock, jazz and blues, he will prove essential to the shift in direction. The most significant meeting, however, comes in early 1970, with keyboardist and composer Kerry Minnear: a graduate of London's Royal Academy Of Music with a major in composition, he is one of the very few artists of early prog to boast a high-level classical pedigree (the other greats of the era, from Keith Emerson to Rick Wakeman, via Tony Banks, had far less formal training behind them). His contribution will prove crucial in building complex, genuinely polyphonic scores rich in harmonic and contrapuntal surprises: one of the future band's trademarks.

Blues-rooted guitarist Gary Green arrives to complete the lineup after an ad in Melody Maker and a long series of auditions. The musician recalls being initially puzzled at the sight of the name "Simon Dupree And The Big Sound" on the bass drum: "Ray put me through a series of musical tests: [...] he showed me things with complicated rhythms, then asked me, 'can you play a C6/9 chord? An A7sus4?'". Although the pop of the previous lineup had been more complex than appearances might have suggested, the people behind the ad are determined to distance themselves from it resolutely.

The Advent Of Panurge (1970-1972)

Our aim is to expand the frontiers of contemporary pop music, at the risk of being very unpopular. We recorded each composition with one thought in mind – that it should be unique, adventurous and compelling. Achieving this required all our musical and technical knowledge. From the outset we abandoned any preconceived notion of blatant commercialism. Instead, we hope to give you something far more substantial and rewarding. All you need to do is sit back and acquire the taste ("sit back and acquire the taste").

(Liner notes, "Acquiring The Taste", 1971)

The newly formed band chooses "Gentle Giant" as its name. The idea comes from the new manager (and childhood friend of the Shulmans) Gerry Bron: it conveys the idea of a compact force, equally in its element with power as with delicacy. And the first album, Gentle Giant, confirms just how fitting the choice is. Produced by Tony Visconti and released on Vertigo, it offers dynamic pieces that juxtapose contrasting styles: hard-tinged blues-rock ("Why Not?"), horn-driven jazz-rock (especially on the opening "Giant"), acoustic atmospheres and classical flourishes (again "Why Not?", but certainly also "Funny Ways" and "Nothing At All").

Most of the tracks are fairly compact in length, a trait that will persist throughout the band's discography; however, two of the longer pieces, "Alucard" and "Nothing At All", are the album's most surprising. The former puts front and centre the gurgle of a Minimoog, set to a piercing, coarse patch that places the sound somewhere between a sax and a distorted guitar. The track is tense and intricately arranged, with sections built on guitar-Moog-organ-horns interplay and stagnant passages dominated by a pulsing, multi-layered vocal achieved through creative use of recording techniques. Clearly King Crimson-esque in inspiration, the track contains some of early progressive rock's most intriguing proto-math passages, with the instruments repeatedly trading melodic lines just before the finale. After the gypsy-Beatles-ish divertissement "Isn't It Quiet And Cold" comes the nine minutes of "Nothing At All", which threads together an enchanting folk opening built on descending arpeggios, a hard/blues turn that leads into the song's centre, and then a long, imaginative drum solo, its sound run through a flanger that alters its timbre and gives the beats an unusual melodic quality. Over the drum's evolutions comes Kerry Minnear's piano, first with romantic phrasing echoing Chopin, then with a decidedly atonal twentieth-century turn. The close returns to the opening theme, restoring the song's fairy-tale, melancholic aura and affirming its lyrical core, simple yet well played: “Now she sits by the riverside/ Watching the waters glide by/ With a sigh/ […] / Ah this, little girl who had everything finds/ She’s nothing at all”.

Varied and in its own way centrifugal in radically broadening the stylistic range compared to the Simon Dupree era, the debut album is a kind of "field test" of the new band's possibilities: it doesn't yet have a defined style, but it certainly explores many of the paths it will follow in the future. It's also a chance to get acquainted with the instrumental versatility of the Shulman brothers and the new musicians involved: the record features guitars (electric, acoustic, 12-string), keyboards (Minimoog, Hammond, Mellotron, acoustic and electric piano, honky-tonk), melodic percussion (xylophone, timpani and vibraphone, played by Minnear), strings (Ray Shulman's violin, Kerry Minnear's cello and that of guest Claire Deniz), horns (trumpet, sax and flutes played by Phil Shulman, plus the tenor horn of session man Paul Cosh), drums and triangle, and electric bass handled depending on the track by Kerry Minnear, Derek or Ray Shulman.

Fans regard the album as not yet fully progressive, yet it still serves as a brilliant introduction to what was to come. But it's not only longtime fans who keep its memory alive: for "Madvillainy", the landmark album by US duo Madvillain, producer Madlib extensively samples "Funny Ways", immortalising its atmospheres among experimental hip-hop fans as well.

Even before their debut, Gentle Giant had already played a handful of British dates (plus one in Hamburg) and had been given a boost by the BBC's "Sound Of The Seventies" programme; in the months following the album's release, live dates intensify and the band already begins sessions for the new LP. Acquiring The Taste hits shops in July 1971, after a packed run of concerts in Britain and Germany (plus a date in Paris and – perhaps – one in Novara). The mission statement quoted at the start of this section, taken from the liner notes, reflects a newfound clarity of purpose: the goal is to build surprising compositions that don't reveal themselves on first listen and offer listeners a kind of musical "adventure", a journey that demands time and dedication but leaves those who experience it changed from who they were before.

From the 11/4 riff of the opening "Pantagruel's Nativity" onwards, it's clear the band's personality is now sharper, and there's a palpable will to raise the stakes considerably compared to the previous album. The track combines early music, horn-driven jazz, convoluted hard rock, and synthetic touches in a continuous flow of moods that demonstrates how well the band has learned to blend distinct elements. Here, as elsewhere, the counterpoint is impeccable, with instruments and vocal lines bouncing off each other, drawing on Gregorian ideas and the medieval technique of hoquetus ("hiccup") or cantus abscissus: several parallel melodic lines slot into each other's pauses, combining into a single development that also takes on a strongly rhythmic character (often with that very "hiccupping" gait). Continuous interlocking and recombination are likewise the key to "The House, The Street, The Room", which opens on a mighty bassline whose gait is nonetheless impossible to pin down: the time signature is 4/4, but the phrase is broken up into a myriad of anticipations, slowdowns and accelerations, giving it a feel that's both rock-solid and darting. Initially doubled by the piano, later in the track it's revisited (this time in 6/4) by a heavily distorted Hammond organ, over which Gary Green's psych-blues guitar runs blaze. At six minutes, with its frequent tension/release shifts, the track is a pillar of the album and, although rarely revived live, would become a firm favourite among fans.

Two other tracks, "Wreck" and "Plain Truth", follow a hard/folk vein in which a tortuous riff is the compositional hinge on which the violin and other instruments build their variations. The structure of these themes has something in common with the future ideas of Led Zeppelin, Kansas or AC/DC: harmonically quite simple too, the motifs are made dynamic by a brilliant shifting of accents, splitting them into several sections of differing character, pairing "call" and "response" within a single musical phrase. "Plain Truth" is a track with live-jam elements dating back to the band's early days, and it had been played live since before the debut album: the band waited until they'd honed the intricate 9/4 interplay before recording it, and the fiery performance shows just how right that choice was. Considered a crowd-pleaser in concert, it would be the only track from Acquiring The Taste to remain in the setlists of years to come, and over time Ray Shulman's electric violin solo would expand considerably both in length and in sound, thanks to the addition of quadraphonic echo effects.

The remaining tracks are less frenetic in tone, but they also show even more clearly how interested the band is in refined, jagged constructions. "Black Cat" is in 7/8 and, amid yowls and screeches, combines something of King Crimson of that era with a decidedly chamber-music flair, also indulging – always with great polish – in harmonic contrasts and dissonance. "Edge Of Twilight" even borrows a melody from "Heimfahrt", in Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire". The title track, on the other hand, is a playful instrumental lasting just over a minute and a half, composed by Kerry Minnear, who with a certain frivolity pairs synthetic timbres with bold yet delicate counterpoint.

The record is again produced by Tony Visconti and sees the band tackling an even greater number of instruments: alongside those already heard on the debut, this one introduces the mandolin (Gary Green on "The House, The Street, The Room"), harpsichord, clavichord and celeste (Kerry Minnear and Derek Shulman), viola and organ pedals (Ray Shulman), clarinet (Phil Shulman), plus a host of percussion including even skulls and donkey jawbones (for "Black Cat").

Reception back home is limited, but interest on the Continent keeps growing: at the end of 1971 the band returns to Germany and makes a stop in Austria; in January 1972 they're repeatedly in Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Germany again; in February they play at least five concerts in Northern Italy opening for Jethro Tull, winning strong support from audiences. Of those dates with the band, Ian Anderson recalls: "They kept having rows backstage! It wasn't exactly sibling squabbling: it was always over musical matters. They'd get angry because someone had missed a cue or a time change or something like that. They really put a huge amount of passion into their music."

By today's standards, the compositions on Acquiring The Taste don't fully fit the parameters of progressive rock: they have substantial sections of out-and-out hard rock, frequent forays into blues and jam-rock, and often lack that fantastical, grandiose element that many today see as the essence of the genre. But it's largely thanks to music like this that, at the time, the "progressive" label came into use, understood in a purely etymological sense, to denote an unpredictable, unconventional style capable of boldly combining opposing sounds and venturing into unexplored territory, without worrying too much about critical or commercial reception. After all, in the early Seventies, Cream and Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and John Mayall were all seen as "progressive": the boundaries were loosely defined, and for many musicians and fans, moving freely across such a broad field was truly exhilarating.

The next album, Three Friends, comes out in the first half of 1972 (probably in April in Italy and perhaps in England, in July in the States). It's a concept album devised by Phil Shulman, and the first work fully self-produced by the band – with support from engineer Martin Rushent, who a few years later would produce the Human League's "Give". The narrative follows the story of three childhood friends, united in their early years ("Schooldays") but later split apart by different career paths: labourer ("Working All Day"), artist ("Peel The Paint") and executive ("Mister Class And Quality?"). Phil Shulman would recall many years later: [in the school years] "you get sorted and divided up for the rest of your life, and there's no way out of it. That's exactly what happened, to me and my friends."

Musically speaking, Three Friends is a more cohesive album than its predecessors, and not only because of its shared narrative thread. The keyboard parts play a more prominent role and are better integrated with the other instruments, and the many styles coexisting within the compositions no longer seem merely juxtaposed, but fused together – or rather "interlocked", in that byzantine, unexpected way that would in time be identified as the band's defining trademark. This new synthesis is evident right from the long instrumental prologue, which weaves horns, synthesizer and guitars into a zigzagging theme that alternates with and overlaps, pared down to the essentials, the voices of Phil, Derek, Ray and Kerry. More light-hearted, "Schooldays" relies on vocal layering and jazzy stop-and-go moves to capture the playful, radiant mood of childhood. On the lines “We made friends/ We broke friends/ No more friends” the mood shifts, turning first nostalgic and pensive, then decidedly bleak, almost ghostly. It's a kind of flashforward, closed off by a return to the playful tone of the opening section, but now with the realisation that those days, which seem eternal, in fact are not: “How long is ever?/ Isn’t it strange?/ Schooldays together, why do they change?”.

The tracks dedicated to the three friends' professional lives are the most stylistically divergent on the record: "Working All Day" is a rather square jazz-rock number with organ and horns well to the fore; "Peel The Paint" revisits the hard/folk glories of the previous album, also making ample room for Crimson-esque excursions and bluesy solo flourishes; "Mister Class And Quality?" (which fades into the closing "Three Friends") is instead a bold, swaggering number that, more than any other track, develops that intricate sound which by this point seems to be the most congenial to this band of virtuosos. Counterpoints, sudden shifts, metric inlays all seem to suggest a role for the band as rock's watchmakers: absolute masters of rhythmic and melodic machinery, yet constantly ready to challenge their own skill in pursuit of ever more fanciful and baroque inventions.

Although the album marks a further stylistic step up, its songs come across as somewhat muted in terms of impact: the most striking is "Peel The Paint" (a live staple at the time), which is also, compositionally speaking, the one most reminiscent of the past. The band, in fact, is going through a period of readjustment: besides the decision to self-produce, several other changes cluster in the period immediately preceding the recording sessions. In mid-1971 manager Gerry Bron leaves the band due to disagreements, though he does help them strike a deal with Worldwide Artistes Management (known at the time chiefly for its ties with Black Sabbath); around the same months, Martin Smith opts to pursue a career as an antiques dealer and is replaced by eighteen-year-old drummer Malcolm Mortimore, whose drumming is thoroughly functional but rarely surprising. Following an accident, Mortimore is forced to leave the group as early as spring 1972. His replacement is a drummer with a distinctly rock touch: Welshman John Patrick Weathers (known as "Pugwash"), formerly of Pete Brown and the Grease Band. He will stay with the rest of the lineup for the remainder of Gentle Giant's existence.

After another round of British dates and a further, substantial stint in Germany, in August 1972 Gentle Giant set sail for the United States, supporting label-mates Black Sabbath. On several occasions the band is well received by the Sabbath crowd; at other times, however, the reception is dreadful: deafening heckling, bottles thrown, firecrackers hurled onto the stage... Fortunately, from mid-September onward the group tours the States first alongside Yes and then with Jethro Tull, both of whom have far more disciplined audiences (and ones genuinely curious about the sextet's music). On a few occasions, such as the brief Canadian leg of the tour, the Giants get the chance to headline and go down well. When they finally return to the UK in November, the foundations have been laid for a solid bond with American audiences, one destined to grow in the years to come.

Presented in a sleeve designed by Roger Dean, the fourth album, Octopus, hits shops in December 1972, though it was recorded between July and August, before the departure for the States (in Italy, in fact, it had already come out in October). For fans then and now, it's the band's most unmistakable masterpiece, the record where the virtues honed up to that point shine at their absolute peak. It's also the most compact album released up to that point: barely thirty-four minutes long, despite a tracklist boasting eight songs. The title is a pun on "Octo Opus", suggested by Phil Shulman's wife Roberta for what was meant to be a concept album featuring one track dedicated to each of the six Giants, plus one for the roadies and one about the band as a whole. Of this original scheme, only two tracks actually survive: "Dog's Life" and "The Boys In The Band" (for the roadies and the band, respectively).

It has often been observed that the album's tracks sound "heavier" and more "rock" than their predecessors; this description, however, risks giving an inadequate picture of the record. It's certainly true that the sound is more dynamic and cutting than ever, but the effect is achieved not by echoing rock – and blues and hard rock in particular – but by moving away from it. The Giants never wrote songs built on endlessly repeated chord progressions, but the first three albums were full of riff-based pieces, where a guitar or bass line served as the backbone for much of the arrangement. On Octopus, by contrast, riffs disappear, replaced by multiple, segmented rhythmic-melodic phrases that pass from one instrument to another and interlock in ever-new ways within a single song. Granted, new arrival John Weathers's drumming can be decidedly direct, but the tracks are a catalogue of anti-rock'n'roll devices: accelerations and sudden about-turns in "A Cry For Everyone" (with the same musical phrases layered out of sync with each other), found sound and shifting tempos in the instrumental "The Boys In The Band", a chamber-like, ticking sound in "Dog's Life", sharper than ever thanks to touches of xylophone and acoustic guitar – and to Kerry Minnear's use of an unusual instrument, the regal, a kind of Renaissance reed organ that, by construction and timbre, can be considered a forerunner of the harmonium and the accordion.

References to pre-Baroque eras, always present in the band's music, are in fact considerably amplified on Octopus, and are certainly among the aspects that strike the listener most. The opening "The Advent Of Panurge", the third track with an explicit "giant" theme after "Giant" on the debut and "Pantagruel's Nativity" on "Acquiring The Taste", references from its very title the French writer François Rabelais, the 16th-century master of a strand of literature later dubbed "anti-Renaissance" for its frequent recourse to the grotesque and its rejection of lofty tones. "Raconteur, Troubadour" evokes, both in its lyrics and its courtly atmospheres, the wandering musicians of the late Middle Ages. Above all, though, it's the madrigal-like textures of "Knots" that catapult the listener back in time, with an interlocking vocal game that the liner notes describe thus: "R.D. Laing, eminent psychologist, stimulated us with his intriguing, logical and poetic riddles, prompting us to compose this present-day madrigal — as well as a kind of musical puzzle".

The album's two closing tracks, "Think Of Me With Kindness" and "River", are the most atypical: the former is a delicate, piano-led pop song that, while retaining the hallmarks of the Giant style, ventures into the most radio-friendly territory heard from the band so far; the latter returns to a jagged sound, but allows itself, right at the close, the album's only genuine blues digression, a torrential electric solo from Gary Green.

Despite some positive reviews, like its predecessors the album fails to sell well in the UK, and in Italy – where the likes of Ciao 2001 and Gong had been championing the band since its early days – it doesn't repeat the chart success of Three Friends (which reached number 25). Released only in February 1973 in the United States, the LP reaches number 170 on the American chart – not a spectacular result, but still an improvement on the 197 achieved by its predecessor. In early March the crew sets off once again for the States, but they carry with them a significant problem still to be resolved: in the first days of January, during a short Italian mini-tour alongside Area, Phil Shulman had announced to the other members his decision to leave the band.

Playing The Game (1973-1975)

A machine made by human art is not a machine in each of its parts, for example the tooth of a brass wheel has parts or fragments which, to us, are no longer anything artificial, and have nothing in them to indicate the machine in relation to the use for which the wheel was intended. But the machines of nature, that is to say living bodies, are still machines even in their smallest parts, ad infinitum. This is the difference between nature and art, that is, between divine art and our own.

(Gottfried Leibniz, Monadology, 1720)

Among the reasons for his departure, Phil Shulman cites certain artistic differences with his brothers, but above all the feeling that the life of a touring musician doesn't suit him or his family. The remaining Giants choose to carry on as a quintet: after all, Derek can play sax too, and Ray can handle the trumpet. Over the span of three months, they criss-cross the United States and Canada, sometimes headlining (with Steeleye Span in support), but more often opening for other British artists: King Crimson, Procol Harum, Strawbs, Humble Pie. In July 1973, after a handful of German dates, the band is back in the studio to record an album, released in September under the title In A Glass House.

The new record is marked, besides the absence of Phil's horns and voice, by a change of label: rather than Vertigo, the album comes out directly through WWA Records, the label tied to the band's management company. Across the Atlantic, Columbia, the label that had handled the American pressings of the previous albums, fears that the band's new direction has too little commercial appeal and drops them. For this reason, In A Glass House will not be released in the United States – a decidedly bizarre circumstance, given the growing support the band had built up through sales and live shows (the 1992 reissue by Terrapin Trucking Records would later report that import sales were substantial, citing a figure of 150,000 copies).

Seen by some as the start of a decline, the album is for other fans the turning point toward an exciting new phase, in which the sound becomes leaner and the "clockwork" element takes compositional precedence. It's hard not to side with this second view when listening to the track that opens the record: "The Runaway" is one of the most startling and oblique songs of the band's career. The track builds its rhythm on the sound of shattering glass, then goes on to unveil a riff (yes, the album marks the return of riffs) that is twisted and thorny in the extreme. A figure in 6/8 that becomes one with the scraping guitar sound, a world away from the conventions of the era and, on closer inspection, even anticipating wave and post-punk. Between one tempo change and the next, the riff keeps resurfacing at the most unexpected moments, creating a hammering, disorienting sensation: the whole piece feels like a constant flight from the initial breaking glass, one that periodically is forced to start over as the melodic theme of the "pursuer" reappears. A fitting structure, given that the song tells the story of an escaped prisoner's state of mind.

The wave-like premonitions continue with "Way Of Life", fuelled by Weathers's driving drumming and the diagonal darts of Minnear's Minimoog. A few medieval shades reappear on the horizon in "Experience", which at several points also brushes up against minimal/mathematical territory, close to what King Crimson would do eight years later on "Discipline". More than the comparisons, though, it's the unique touches that stand out: take, for instance, the chameleonic folk-rock of the title track, which halfway through coils itself around a dizzying 7+10+12 riff, thoroughly catchy despite its cerebral nature – or perhaps precisely because of it.

"Inmates Lullaby", exceedingly delicate, features only percussion instruments (celesta, glockenspiel, marimba, vibraphone, timpani), all played by Minnear; "A Reunion", by contrast, is a piece for string instruments alone, with the sole exception of the electric piano. A peculiar, contorted and languid eccentricity, yet as irresistible as a crossword puzzle, now seems to be the band's defining trait. Audiences show their appreciation for this new direction, at least in continental Europe, which has always rated the band more highly than its homeland. Although the band itself initially feels it was recorded a little too hastily, in Italy the album leaps to number 16 and stays in the top 20 for five weeks. The subsequent European tour brings them to Italy for around ten dates (with Acqua Fragile, led by Bernardo Lanzetti and one of the Italian bands most clearly inspired by the Giants, as opening act), before moving on to Switzerland and Germany, supporting Procol Harum on at least a couple of occasions.

A feature published in September 1973 by Melody Maker, with mini-interviews of the individual members, offers a snapshot of the band's musical passions at that moment: Kerry cites Stravinsky and Palestrina as influences; “Hot Rats”, Nucleus's “Elastic Rock”, Mahavishnu Orchestra's “Birds Of Fire” and “Aqualung” are among the favourite albums of Gary, Ray and Derek; Joni Mitchell and Ian Anderson are the most recurrent names among the artists they love (though there's also room for Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson and James Brown). A few years later, Frank Zappa would in turn express his appreciation for the Giant's music.

Sessions for the following album, The Power And The Glory, already begin in December 1973 and carry on into the following month, after which the band resumes with British and European shows, supported by the Scottish group String Driven Thing. The album's release is scheduled for June '74 through WWA Records, and the label insists on simultaneously putting out a single, which shares the same title but doesn't actually appear on the LP (it would nonetheless be included on several reissues starting in the Nineties).

The eight songs once again develop a concept, centred on the dynamics of power and deceit. Entirely coincidental as it may be, the timing is perfect, coming right at the institutional climax of Watergate, which would lead Richard Nixon to resign from the office of President of the United States that August.

Fortunately, the distribution problems on American soil are sorted out and the album comes out in September through Capitol Records. The following month, the group kicks off a new American tour, selling out five consecutive nights as headliners at the Whisky A-Go-Go in West Hollywood, California, a 500-capacity venue that, on two of those dates, books them for two shows in a single day. The album climbs to number seventy-eight on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape (today's Billboard 200), a remarkable result for an outfit that would never make the British charts.

The music on the record is at once the most cerebral and the most direct that the Giant had recorded up to that point. On one hand, it marks a certain melodic “streamlining” and the return of the hard-edged guitars that had characterised their early work; on the other, it features more convoluted arrangements than ever, with tonal choices that emphasise the “mechanical” flavour of the arrangements. Derek Shulman would recount a few years later to the American monthly Musicians Guide: “Around that album we became a bit suffocating, things got away from us. We ended up putting counter-melodies on top of melodies. The vocal line was working against the songs. We became too esoteric, and I started getting bored.” Kerry Minnear saw it differently: “The album developed very naturally out of the theme. Some of the songs on it are among the best we've ever written.” And Gary Green: “It's perhaps the best-crafted album we ever made. It combines our most musical side with a healthy rock sound.”

Building on an element already present on Octopus and In A Glass House, the album opens and closes on “concrete” sounds: the chatter of a crowd on “Proclamation” and a tape rewinding on “Valedictory”. The two tracks echo each other, sharing melodies and lyrics that appear in both pieces, along with a line that returns inverted (“It can change, it can stay the same”/ “Things must stay, there can be no change”). Both are among the most rollicking episodes on the record, with the band's usual metric puzzles made even sharper by the introduction of an unprecedented funk attitude — and of the instrument that reigns supreme in funk, the Clavinet.

Here, as in “So Sincere” and other tracks, a kind of dichotomy emerges between the timbres used. On one side, the more forceful ones like guitar, bass, drums, Wurlitzer and Hammond organ; on the other, a multitude of sharp, metallic sounds: acoustic and electric violin, Clavinet, marimba, vibraphone, tambourine, bells. The two souls express themselves at full power on “Cogs In Cogs”, programmatic from the title alone: the result is a paradoxical kind of music, sounding as mighty and as convoluted as a clockpunk automaton that has slipped free of its creator.

The album also features more straightforward tracks like “Play The Game” and “Aspirations”. The latter is the closest thing to a ballad the Giant had released in their career up to that point, and at the time of writing this monograph it is the band's most-streamed track on Spotify, Deezer and Last.fm. The single “The Power And The Glory”, on the other hand, has never really won over fans, then or now: a sort of cocky nursery rhyme, it was described by Ray Shulman as “atrocious” and “the worst” of the three tracks the band put together to give WWA the hit single it so badly wanted (and which would meet with no commercial success whatsoever).

In the UK and in Europe, the results for The Power And The Glory are disappointing. Part of what slows the album's momentum is the oil crisis (for several months vinyl production is severely curtailed by the shortage of raw materials), but more than anything else it's the dismal organisation of the live tours. In Italy, in fact, the Giant, supported by Arti e mestieri, play only a handful of shows: the growing reluctance of Italian audiences to pay for concert tickets convinces the band to head back home. The British tour, meanwhile, is initially pushed back to the end of the year, and ultimately cancelled altogether. In the following months, WWA gets caught up in a bitter dispute with Black Sabbath over the handling of royalties, and the label's attention towards the Giant dwindles to almost nothing. All these factors combined push Shulman and co. to look elsewhere, and their interest turns towards the management and label of their friends Jethro Tull. Thanks to an advance on the next album secured from Capitol Records, the Giant terminate their contract with WWA and move over to Chrysalis.

Free Hand is the most successful album in the band's history. Recorded in April 1975 after another three months of shows across Canada and the States, the new record comes out that summer and reaches number forty-eight in the US (forty-first in Canada). As usual, the response in the UK is lukewarm: several positive reviews appear in the music press, but the British tour doesn't start until December, following yet another string of North American and European dates. It consists of just thirteen shows, none of them in London (where the band had played a single one-off date back in September).

Compared with the angular attack of The Power And The Glory, the feel of Free Hand is looser and more sparkling. It's apparent right from the opener “Just The Same”, with its guitar pirouettes and the bouncy sound of the Minimoog, but it's also confirmed by the springy echoes of the Clavinet on “His Voyage” or the videogame-like sounds that punctuate “Time To Kill” (apparently lifted from the famous “Pong”).

Even where the band shows its more rock-oriented side, as in the almost Aor-like passages of the title track or in the bluesy guitar solo on “His Voyage”, the approach remains looser and more playful than on the immediately preceding records. As ever, odd time signatures and intricate interlocking parts abound, but increasingly it's John Weathers's tight, driving pulse that steers the songs, his great skill at pushing ahead of the beat making even the trickiest twists and turns groovy.

The other obvious feature of the record is a return to old or old-sounding references. “On Reflection” opens with a vocal fugue that will remind many listeners of the splendid “Gaudete”, with which Steeleye Span had cracked the British Top 20 three years earlier. Echoes of that electric folk group's incisive sound are also evident in the Celtic-tinged “Mobile” that closes the album (worth remembering that the two bands shared stages, and that both are quite clearly devoted to the terse style of Jethro Tull guitarist Martin Barre). The evocative “Talybont”, meanwhile, owes its medieval allure to its origins: composed by Minnear as a theme for a Robin Hood TV drama, once that project fell through it was folded into the album then in the works, where it does in fact fit quite naturally.

Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It (1976-1980)

Undoubtedly, beyond the adoration of a few thousand devotees, Gentle Giant never received any particular recognition at home. So allow me to coin a title for them: The Most Unknown British Band Ever To Release Ten Albums

(Phil Sutcliffe, journalist for Sounds, 1977)

The commercial breakthrough of Free Hand, modest as it was in the grand scheme, still marks a clear before-and-after in the band's musical trajectory. While the three albums following Octopus had been marked by the consolidation and exploration of the possibilities of the "Giant style," the works that follow Free Hand show a group now fully in command of its own abilities, opening up its formula to outside influences. As is natural for a period of experimentation and re-examination of one's own horizons, the results are decidedly uneven, both in terms of the genres tackled and the effectiveness of the songwriting. A common thread is the search for a more direct language, both in sound and structure, but the gambit seems to work best when the music manages to keep a foot in both camps, pairing the band's usual knottiness with a certain pop-rock immediacy.

Biographical and relational factors also weigh on this phase. The band's now-evident reputation as an outfit that performs best (at least financially) live translates into extremely punishing schedules, which leave less time for studio work and, above all, for family life. Used to treating the band itself as home, Giant are confronted with new challenges following Gary Green's marriage and Derek and Ray Shulman's wish to spend as much time as possible in the United States.

Meanwhile, the relationship with the music press shows no sign of improving. The first album of this new phase, Interview (styled on the cover as ĭn′terview), is a loose concept album sparked by the band's growing weariness with the stereotypical questions journalists kept putting to its members. Recorded in just three weeks between February and March 1976, the album contains four (fictional) interview snippets, staged in the studio with the help of Phil Sutcliffe of Sounds magazine. "Ah, how curious! Are you related?", "How would you describe your music?", "What game are you playing?" are some of the oddball questions that several of the songs on the tracklist answer. The title track is the most explicit of all: "But why do you ask? You surely already know." And then, with disillusionment: "Now that he's gone, turn off the faces, wait for the next one. The same song again, sung for the next one." As blunt in its message as it is, the track is also strikingly plain in its sound: while not giving up on the band's usual contortions, it has a clear rock edge and, like other tracks on the album, a particularly charismatic vocal line that stands out above the other instruments rather than sitting level with them in the usual interplay.

"Another Show," "Timing" and "Give It Back" kick off the band's forays into new genres. The first two stray into the broadly adjacent territory of AOR, even making room for southern-rock inflections that the American fanbase would certainly recognize. Here too the sound is energetic and direct, with particularly percussive, almost boogie-like piano parts and a dizzying blues-rock solo that seems tailor-made to tear the roof off in a live setting. "Give It Back," on the other hand, is a funny, lopsided reggae-rock number, built on an off-kilter time signature (12/8 instead of 4/4) and featuring an instrumental theme that spirals in on itself until it disappears. Poorly received by audiences at the time, it was soon dropped from the live setlist, but it remains one of the most eccentric tracks in Giant's already rather peculiar songbook. The closing "I Lost My Head," by contrast, sounds like a nod to the band's immediate past: a delicate, eccentric first section carried by the ramshackle sound of the RMI Electra, followed by an abrupt break and a surprising Zeppelin-esque turn.

The album's release is accompanied by an extensive North American tour and a string of European (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands) and British dates. Usually topping the bill on this side of the Atlantic, Giant on a few occasions perform alongside the Dutch jazz-rock ensemble Solution. In Canada and on some dates in the States, they are instead supported by the heavily Yes-indebted Starcastle, freshly debuted and among the very few American prog bands with a major-label deal. Elsewhere on American soil, Giant perform as opening act for the usual wide roster of tier-1 artists: Ted Nugent, Yes, Peter Frampton, Gary Wright, Todd Rundgren's Utopia. While it doesn't repeat the numbers of Free Hand, the album still charts in several countries: it reaches number 22 in Italy, 56 in Canada, 29 in Sweden and 19 in Norway, while in the US it peaks at 137.

In 1976/1977, live activity is essential to the financial sustainability of the Gentle Giant project. Not only because the packed touring schedule is the quintet's main source of income, but also because, given the band's reputation as a phenomenal live act, Chrysalis decides it makes sense to capitalize on their on-stage victories and release a double live album. Playing The Fool: The Official Live hits stores in January 1977, collecting recordings from shows held the previous year on the European tour that immediately followed the band's return from the States. The eleven tracks come from performances in Düsseldorf, Paris, Munich and Brussels in September/October 1976; during that period, the band also stops in Sweden, Switzerland and even Liechtenstein, often with Banco as support act.

The album is only partly faithful to the setlists of the time: at the label's request, every track drawn from the recent Interview is excluded (realistically "Interview," "I Lost My Head" and "Timing"), and the first track doesn't include its introduction in full, which consisted of a portion of the instrumental "Talybont." As was standard practice at the time, the tracks also feature some studio overdubs, added in particular to beef up the Clavinet sound. Even so, the album preserves many essential aspects of Giant's live shows. First of all, the setlists, always "deep," favoring the songs that work best live regardless of their release date. Moreover, the live renditions are never merely dutiful, and feature substantial reworkings compared to the studio versions. Medleys abound: "Proclamation"/"Valedictory," "Peel The Paint/I Lost My Head" (the only inclusion from Interview, since it couldn't be left out) and above all the fifteen-minute tour de force "Excerpts From Octopus," for years already an unshakeable live staple. The additional passages matter too: the vocal interplay of "A Reflection" is introduced by an instrumental section composed specifically for the occasion by Kerry Minnear, while "So Sincere" evolves into a chameleonic drum solo. Unfortunately, with "Timing" gone, listeners lose the chance to hear one of the unmissable elements of the live experience: Ray Shulman's quadrophonic electric violin solo, with the sound bouncing from one speaker to another, creating a sense of spatiality celebrated in countless fan accounts.

One last aspect necessarily missing from the record is the raw, self-mocking quality of the live performances. Then again, these are elements often underrated by the press of the era too. The image crafted by some British magazines dismisses the band as kitsch and accuses them of excessive pomposity. According to journalist Mike Barnes in his monumental "A New Day Yesterday: UK Progressive Rock & the 1970s," at one point the New Musical Express went so far as to nickname them "Genital Gnat." In response, Giant, never particularly grandiose for the era in their choice of stage clothes and sets, started appearing on stage with a sign reading "PRETENTIOUS," and in 1977 itself they titled one of their compilations Pretentious: For The Sake Of It. Those who followed the band closely, however, developed over the years a more nuanced view. An article that appeared in April 1976 in the American fanzine Trouser Press reads: "Although Gentle Giant, if forced into a category, fall under the broad umbrella of progressive rock, they certainly don't conform to the genre's stereotype. They don't butcher classical music, they don't indulge in excess and melodrama; they don't preach sermons on the cosmic forces of Nature and the Universe; they don't act on stage as if complex musical ideas were incompatible with a sense of humor; they don't replace the integrity of musical creation with sterile, emotionless displays." Even granting, for argument's sake, that these slights were an adequate description of any given prog cornerstone, Giant's uniqueness is plain to see.

All of the first months of 1977 are devoted to continuing the North American tour, alternating between shows paired with Renaissance (and, on one occasion, with Electric Light Orchestra) and headline gigs. In Québec, the band performs alongside two local acts, Et Cetera (clearly influenced by Shulman and co.'s music) and the more AOR-leaning Symphonic Slam. Back on the European continent, Giant head to Relight Studios in Hilvarenbeek, in the Netherlands, and in just twelve days complete the recording of their new album, some tracks of which had already been road-tested on stage in the preceding months – an unprecedented occurrence in the band's history.

The Missing Piece comes out in August/September and is a hybrid album, with a bolder (though not necessarily more successful) first side leaning toward pop-rock, and a second side more rooted in the medieval/progressive comfort zone the band navigates with ease. The sparkling "Two Weeks In Spain" opens proceedings, perhaps the most convincing case of hybridization between constructive wit and pop immediacy. On the following tracks, the sound shifts toward more "American" territory, with the big AOR ballad "I'm Turning Around," effective in terms of atmosphere but missing that extra something (even just a bridge!) that makes the genre's great classics soar. "Betcha Thought We Couldn't Do It" comes across as an experiment crossing punk with power pop, while "Who Do You Think You Are" and "Mountain Time" play respectively in southern-rock/Steely Dan territory (hear it to believe it) and rhythm'n'blues (complete with backing singers). Among the tracks on the second side, which broadly offer a streamlined version of the usual Giant sound, the gamble of "Winning" stands out: over the skeletal rhythm of a drum machine, the ever-versatile John Weathers layers his own variations, creating an effect that is at once robotic and lively.

Despite the decisive pop turn, the chart results continue sliding down the slope begun with Interview: number 81 in the States and in Canada, number 50 in Sweden, number 21 in Italy (which, after a brief hiatus now over, confirms itself as very receptive to the band's music). And yet, both Giant and the label seem convinced they're on the right track. Then again, those very same years see acts like Yes and Jethro Tull keep posting strong numbers while abandoning their epic-length suites, and the Genesis of Banks/Rutherford/Collins/Hackett climb the American charts with the run of "A Trick Of The Tail"-"Wind And Wuthering"-"…And Then There Were Three…" The resumption of American dates after a brief continental tour then confirms the enthusiasm of overseas audiences. By now Giant are firmly headliners, and they bring along a British band much admired by Derek Shulman, Dr. Feelgood, whose pub rock is nonetheless received very poorly by a fanbase utterly unaccustomed to blues-rock formulas verging on punk.

After a handful of dates, the support act packs up and flies back to England. Support for the rest of the tour comes mostly from local bands, whose lineup offers an interesting snapshot of North America's limited prog scenes, unable to break through on a national scale: in Ontario there's the progressive pop of Garfield, in Pennsylvania Baby Grand with their progressive/soft rock/power pop hybrid, while in Virginia the opening act is Face Dancer, from Rhode Island, who started out as a pomp-rock band before evolving in turn toward power pop/AOR.

In April 1978, the band returns to the studio to record its tenth album with a clear goal in mind: it will be a record of pop songs. Giant For A Day!, as the title goes, is once again recorded in London, where Giant lay down tracks at the studios of the Who (Ramport) and Jethro Tull (Maison Rouge). Unlike The Missing Piece, but in keeping with previous albums, the sessions begin with no song already finished: this time, though, ideas seem to be in short supply. John Weathers, who with "Friends" gets his first and only songwriting credit on a Gentle Giant track, recalls: "I showed up at the sessions and said: 'I've got a simple little song...' and Ray said: 'I like it!' We recorded it and put it on the album. I think we were a bit short of material." And Kerry Minnear: "It was a difficult album for me because I couldn't figure out what my role should be. I had trouble writing, because the general idea was to produce something less convoluted, and, even though that was fine by me, I didn't feel comfortable. There wasn't any of my usual skills I could use to improve the result, or even just make a meaningful contribution."

The push toward simplification stems chiefly from the Shulman brothers' own wishes, and, contrary to what one might assume, has very little to do with the concurrent rise of punk (a phenomenon tied to the British market, which the band had by then long since given up on). The models instead are mainly power-pop and AOR, which by the late Seventies densely populate the American charts with Cheap Trick, Cars, Knack, Player, Boston, Journey, Jefferson Starship, Foreigner, Styx, the early glories of Toto and REO Speedwagon... Unfortunately, the tracklist of Giant For A Day! contains no potential chart-busters capable of launching Giant into the same pantheon as the bands mentioned above. The singles theoretically meant to carry the album – the opener "Words From The Wise," the slow pseudo-country "Thank You" – are flat tracks, both in sound and composition: incredibly, the band that had made surprise its stylistic trademark now builds songs entirely devoid of internal variation. Compounding the record's already shaky commercial prospects is a promotional gimmick that is, to say the least, bizarre: a die-cut cover which, once properly torn, turns into a giant's mask.

The flop is inevitable, and few people notice the faint bright spots hidden in the tracklist: the tongue-in-cheek "Spooky Boogie", the almost Devo-like techno-rock of the title track, and Gary Green's excellent guitar work, finally free to dig into his best rock/blues vein. Not only does the album fail to chart anywhere, but no tour is organized either in Europe or North America. This could spell the end not just of Gentle Giant's commercial ambitions, but of the band altogether.

Among progressive rock fans, Gentle Giant enjoy a reputation, rare among the genre's greats, of never having "sold out" sonically in the late Seventies. In light of Giant For A Day!, it's hard to credit that reputation. In the years when Genesis were pushing hard into jazz-rock territory ("...And Then There Were Three...", released in 1978, is indeed the album of "Follow You Follow Me", but also of "Down And Out" and "The Lady Lies"), Yes carried their epic grandeur into new stylistic territory with "Tormato", and even the much-maligned "Love Beach" by Emerson, Lake & Palmer retained all of their synthetic visionary streak plus an entire progressive side, the Gentle Giant of Giant For A Day! not only strip out every prog element, but no longer sound recognizable at all. The change of direction, moreover, stems from a confused but entirely deliberate attempt to chase market tastes, in the hope of catching the same "American dream" train they had edged closer to in previous years and which was now giving new life to other big names in the field. Of course, since it flopped, Gentle Giant's "pop turn" would leave no mark on popular culture: perhaps that's why fans show far greater indulgence toward it than toward the lucrative stylistic about-faces of the genre's other big players.

After the failure of Giant For A Day!, the band takes a break. While the others attend to their family lives, Derek Shulman relocates permanently to California, where among other things he works to secure a deal for the Giant with an eye toward a possible comeback. Capitol Records has in fact dropped the band, leaving them without an American distributor. The new opportunity arises thanks to Columbia coming back into the picture, and in the spring of 1979 the full Giant lineup gathers in Los Angeles to make the new album. The mindset is still geared toward a radio-friendly sound suited to winning over new audiences on American soil. But this time the group doesn't intend to allow itself any missteps, and so it enlists the advice of Lee Abrams, a big name in American FM radio who played a decisive role in the rise of the Album Oriented Rock format. The recordings, meanwhile, are overseen by Geoff Emerick, the Beatles' legendary sound engineer. Recalling his contribution to the album, John Weathers would state: "Although the credits only list him as sound engineer, he gave us a whole series of crucial input. He knew exactly what we were trying to create: an album with a truly massive, truly rock sound".

Although "massive" and "rock" aren't the first words that spring to mind when trying to describe Civilian, it must be acknowledged that its sound is decidedly more focused than that of the previous record. The AOR/power-pop garb is now worn with more personality, and the resulting style manages to be both unprecedented for the band and clearly continuous with its historic trademark. The circular riff of the single "All Through The Night" has just the right radio stickiness, but also an internal segmentation that ties it directly back to the group's cult tracks. "Convenience (Clean And Easy)", the only song co-written by Gary Green in ten years with the band, combines the Giant's more oblique aggression with sparks that are almost new wave; "Number One" is a solid arena rock piece that nonetheless makes room for Kerry Minnear's Wurlitzer and the more elfin side of Derek Shulman's voice. Even on the rare occasions when the songs seem to don the clothes of Yes ("Underground") or of a more brooding Tony Banks ("Shadows On The Street"), the sound retains its own credibility.

Be that as it may, attracting new listeners is not among the album's merits. Released in May 1980, it only charts in Canada (reaching number ninety-one), and in Europe promotion for the band's "comeback" is minimal, to put it mildly. A six-week North American tour is arranged, often hitting smaller venues and - aside from a few sold-out shows in Ontario and California - posting lower-than-expected sales. The Giant's name is always top of the bill, with support coming from a roster of local acts comparable to that of the previous tour: particularly interesting are 805, who open the shows in New York state and would go on to release a solid album in 1982 straddling AOR, prog-rock and new wave. In Toronto, opening duties go to the progressive electronic/minimal wave hybrid of Nash The Slash, former violinist of FM and a respected name in Canadian prog. In Houston, finally, the Giant share the bill with Texas's Heyoka, purveyors of a flashy pomp-rock with heavy and prog shades. The audience, however, shows little appreciation for the material from the new album, and by the time the band returns to Britain, Kerry Minnear and Derek Shulman have made clear to the rest of the members their wish not to continue the band's adventure any further. It's June 1980, and Gentle Giant are no more.

Valedictory

All things considered, as a band we simply weren't cut out for the role of rock stars. Sure, we would have truly loved to be as famous as Genesis, Rush or Yes. But over time I came to understand how and why Gentle Giant remained a cult act, while a band like Genesis managed to break through

Many years after the split, Derek Shulman would reflect thus, in the pages of the webzine Sea Of Tranquillity. Success, in fact, would come to him later on. For himself and for others. Starting in the very early Eighties, he begins working as a talent scout for Polygram Records, and over the years brings names such as Bon Jovi, Tears For Fears, Def Leppard, Cinderella and Kingdom Come into the music market. After becoming vice president of A&R (Artists & Repertoire) at Polygram, in 1988 he moves to ATCO Records, where he serves as president and CEO and signs Pantera and Dream Theater. In the Nineties he then moves to Roadrunner, again as president and CEO (until 2002): among the artists who join the label under his watch are Nickelback and Slipknot.

His brother Ray also moves to the United States, thereby abandoning the Shout! project he had just started with Gary Green (the only trace of the band remaining a 1982 new-wave-style single, "Starting Line"). In the years that follow he devotes himself to studio work, producing the landmark "69" by A.R. Kane as well as records by Sundays and Sugarcubes (one of the early projects of Björk). Having always been interested in computers, he moves into electronic music as a composer and in the early Nineties puts out two techno-trance EPs under the name Head-Doctor along with some video game music soundtracks. Meanwhile, he specializes in image and video editing and turns the production of music DVDs and Blu-rays into his main line of work: among other things, he works closely with Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree), overseeing his multimedia releases.

Having stayed in England, Gary Green plays with Eddie Jobson (violinist for Roxy Music, Frank Zappa, Curved Air, Jethro Tull, UK) on the eclectic prog-synth-pop album "The Green Album" (1983) and joins Billy Sherwood (Yes) on several all-star tribute albums. Kerry Minnear, meanwhile, devotes himself to music teaching, while John Weathers returns to his native Wales and records three albums with the historic prog jam band Man.

Despite numerous requests, the Giant never stage a reunion. Since 2008, however, Gary Green and Three Friends drummer Malcolm Mortimore have toured performing the band's material, under a lineup fittingly named "Three Friends", in which, for a brief period, Kerry Minnear also took part. Among the songs performed, alongside the classic live staples of old, are also a few tracks never before heard outside of album format.

The giant hasn't returned, but its music has remained. Even during the band's active years, its influence on other acts was already noticeable. As confirmed by musician and musicologist Franco Fabbri (Stormy Six) in his "Album Bianco²" (2002), Kerry Minnear's contrapuntal interweavings and twentieth-century references were an essential contribution for several bands on the "left wing" of European progressive music, that Rock In Opposition scene which, through British act Henry Cow, Swedish act Samla Mammas Manna, Italy's own Stormy Six and many others, would carry on a continuous experimentation blending folk, prog, post-punk, improvisation, world music hints and contemporary art music into the following decades as well. Across the Atlantic, on the other hand, where the band had the bulk of its fanbase, Gentle Giant's music was an essential model for at least two phases of progressive rock's troubled history, made up chiefly of local scenes and releases on small labels. At first, tied to largely imitative styles, Gentle Giant stand alongside the far more famous Yes as the most important point of reference for bands like Cathedral, Hands, Mirthandir, Yezda Urfa, Pentwater and Window (as little known outside fan circles today as they were back then).

Later on, also thanks to the surprising major-label debut of Washington D.C.'s Happy The Man, a new underground crop of bands emerges, inspired by symphonic progressive as well as by the Canterbury sound or Rock In Opposition (as well as by Frank Zappa, jazz, contemporary composition, new age...). Bands such as Cartoon, However, Rascal Reporters, Thinking Plague and later Echolyn, U Totem/Motor Totemist Guild or 5uu's often feature classically trained composers within their ranks (a trait that, as we've seen, was peculiar to Kerry Minnear within the British scene of the Seventies) and view Gentle Giant's hybrid style as a natural "bridge" between their many influences, ferrying their cult-band status all the way through to the Nineties and the explosion of neoprog.

Although it has rarely broken through at a mainstream level, interest in the genre has never since died out, allowing a dense underground of bands to meet, thanks partly to the internet, an equally varied array of fans. Today, the long shadow of the Giant sound looms over such eclectic projects as the prog revival of Änglagård and Wobbler, the eclectic prog-metal of Haken, the art-pop of Dutch Uncles and the nu jazz of Kneebody. Another field in which, perhaps surprisingly, Gentle Giant have found admirers is hip-hop: besides the already mentioned Madlib, who has repeatedly sampled their tracks, the disjointed beats that abound on the Giant's albums have been borrowed by J Dilla, Run The Jewels, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul and others besides (for a complete list, see the Whosampled page).

Curiously, Gentle Giant are also cited as patron saints of a bizarre retroactive non-genre that gathers together some of the most eccentric acts in pop history. The style, characterized by "hyper-stuttering rhythms and an alternation of harmonic and/or cacophonous bleeps and boings", has been christened "zolo" after the radio show that first brought this stylistic constellation to public attention: the Zany Zolo Music Hour, hosted on a Portland college radio station by Terry Sharkie around the mid-Nineties. Initially little more than a joke, the label has gained traction online over recent decades, and now has its own dedicated tag on Rateyourmusic, used to describe a wide range of music somewhere between lopsided prog and playful post-punk, with ample forays into camp territory and the occasional electronic flare-up. A few names besides the illustrious Giant (whose key period for the genre would be from Octopus onward) make clear just how broad the field is: XTC and Split Enz, Devo and Oingo Boingo, Godley & Creme, Bill Nelson, Cardiacs, Fred Frith, Sparks, Gong (and the list could go on).

Like many other historic British progressive rock outfits, the Gentle Giant catalogue has, since the Nineties, been the subject of a series of reissues, archival digs and remasters, offering the fanbase built up over the years an acceptable tradeoff between personal finances and a listening experience enriched compared to those who lived through the band in real time. Since 1997, these operations have been overseen by Alucard Music, founded by Kerry Minnear and his wife Lesley. Besides a vast array of live releases, the label has put out the two compilation sets Under Costruction (1997) and Scraping The Barrel (2004), collecting rarities and previously unreleased archival material. The first gives listeners the chance to hear, among other things, live versions of tracks from Interview dating from the Playing The Fool era (including the famous quadraphonic violin on "Timing") and bold electronic material contemporary with "Talybont", prepared for the never-completed soundtrack to the Robin Hood project. In the second compilation, meanwhile, the points of interest are the early-Eighties pieces Kerry Minnear pitched to Chrysalis as a possible solo follow-up to Civilian (and which the label rejected), tracks by Gary Green and Ray Shulman's Shout!, other Minnear pieces realized in Midi and used as a portfolio to pitch himself to TV networks, and two tracks of videogame music composed by Ray Shulman.

Also thanks to the solid relationship between Ray Shulman and Steven Wilson, in recent years Alucard has launched a project to remix the band's main releases, overseen by the Porcupine Tree frontman in much the same way as he did with the Jethro Tull classics. Currently available are Octopus, The Power And The Glory and Free Hand, plus a compilation of tracks from the first three albums called Three Piece Suite. The restoration work is decidedly faithful to the originals, aiming to boost the brightness of the audio by sharpening the definition of the sounds and the separation between instruments. Tracks like "Proclamation" and "On Reflection" benefit noticeably.

Other significant releases, tied to third-party labels, include the Bbc recordings Out Of The Woods (Band Of Joy, 1996, later expanded into Totally Out Of The Woods, Hux, 2000) and Out Of The Fire (Hux, 1998). Hardcore fans will also appreciate the colossal box set Unburied Treasure (Madfish, 2019), which collects all of the band's albums, fifteen unreleased live recordings and the debut Gentle Giant remixed by Steven Wilson. The collection also includes two hefty books covering the band's concert tours (information on which is also available on the Gentle Giant Tour History site) and the band's history. It is from this latter book that the quotes in this article are drawn, when attributed to band members without further indication.

Always essential to the group, fans have helped keep the Gentle Giant cult alive through direct initiatives of their own, many of which date back to the resurgence of interest in progressive rock that began in the Nineties. The fanzine "Proclamation", whose complete archive is freely accessible, was active between 1992 and 2000, publishing interviews, updates and detailed analyses of the Giant's music. Since 1994, the On-Reflection mailing list, hosted by the University of Oregon, has also been running, connecting fans from all over the world, and for more than twenty years it has organized a regular annual meeting (GORGG: Global On-Reflection Giant Gathering). Tied to the convention is also the release of tribute albums featuring original music inspired by the Giant, composed and performed by the band's own fans. Finally, 2008 saw the creation of the Gentle Giant Home Page Wiki, a goldmine of information as well as historical material.

Staying on the subject of tribute albums, at the very least the two double all-star compilations "Giant Tracks – A Tribute To Gentle Giant" (HyberNation Music, 1997) and "Giant For A Life" (Mellow Records, 1997) deserve a mention. Among those behind the reinterpretations on the first are Kevin Gilbert (Giraffe, Toy Matinee) and Mike Keneally ("stunt guitarist" for Frank Zappa, later a renowned solo artist); on the second, the standouts are American avant-progger outfit French TV and Italy's own Zauber. Both also feature American band Advent, regarded by many fans as "the most Gentle Giant band ever" ("Cantus Firmus", from 2006, is generally considered their finest album). Also worth noting is the album "Knots" (Thousand, 1999), which collects tracks composed by electronic musicians built entirely out of audio fragments released as free samples on the double album Under Construction.

This is obviously material for the die-hard fan, but it shows just how much potential for reinvention and recombination the Giant's music still holds today.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google