Biography of Gentle Giant

Formed at the dawn of the progressive rock era in 1969, Gentle Giant seemed poised for a time in the mid-'70s to break out of its cult band status, but somehow never made the jump. Somewhat closer in spirit to Yes and King Crimson than to Emerson, Lake & Palmer or the Nice, they didn't especially sound like anybody else, and that may have been one of their biggest problems -- their meld of hard rock and classical music was difficult to describe, especially as one of the hallmarks of their sound was a medieval approach to singing.Gentle Giant was born out of the ruins of Simon Dupree & the Big Sound, an R&B-based outfit led by Derek Shulman (b. Feb. 11, 1947, Glasgow, Scotland), Ray Shulman (b. Dec. 3, 1949, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England), and Phil Shulman (b. Aug. 27, 1937, Glasgow), who had switched to psychedelia in 1967 and had their only major hit that year with "Kites." The new group abandoned both the R&B and psychedelic orientation of the previous band -- Derek sang and played guitar and bass, Ray played sang and played bass and violin, and Phil handled the saxophone, augmented by Kerry Minnear (b. Jan. 2, 1948, Shaftsbury, Dorset, England) on keyboards, and Gary Green (b. Nov. 20, 1950, Muswell Hill, London, England) on guitar. Their original line-up featured Martin Smith on drums, but they went through several percussionists in the first three years of their existence.In 1970, the group was signed to PolyGram's progressive rock oriented Vertigo label, and their self-titled first album came out later that year. Their first album was a shockingly daring work, mixing hard rock and full electric playing with classical elements. Their second album, Acquiring the Taste, released the following years, was slightly more accessible and saw some distribution as a direct import in the United States. Their third album, Three Friends, featured Malcolm Mortimore on drums, and was their first record to get released in the United States, on Columbia Records. (There was a peculiarity about this album vis-a-vis their self-titled debut record; both used exactly the same cover art, of a cartoon giant holding the band members in cartoon form in his hands, at different angles; this regularly led to some initial confusion on the part of Americans who began checking out the imported and domestic releases by the band). Their fourth album, Octopus (1973), had them poised for a breakthrough in the United States -- it seemed as though they had finally found the mix of hard rock and classical sounds that the critics and the public could accept. Moreover, they finally had a drummer, in the person of John Weathers (b. Feb. 2, 1947, Carmarthen, Glamorganshire, Wales), an ex-member of the Graham Bond Organisation, who seemed prepared to last in the line-up.In 1974, however, the group began coming apart just a bit. Phil Shulman decided to give up music after the Octopus tour, and became a teacher. Then the group recorded the album In a Glass House, their hardest rocking record yet, but for reasons that remain unclear, Columbia Records in the United States rejected it as too uncommercial. As it turned out, something close to 150,000 British copies ended up being imported into the United States, which would have been more than enough sales to have justified an American release. The two-year gap in their American release schedule hurt their momentum in this country, and they weren't heard here again until the Capitol release of The Power and the Glory in 1975. The quintet was even a tighter group that the sextet, and it seemed as though Gentle Giant was still in the running for success.They released Free Hand, their most commercial album and their best selling album in England, in 1976, but then they followed it up with the jarringly experimental Interview, which cost them a lot of the momentum that had been built up by the earlier album. Their 1978 double album Playing the Fool had actually been issued in response to a pair of bootlegs that had surfaced, taken from radio concerts, and it was a superb representation of the group's sound, and a revelation for fans who had never heard them in concert. The group then went through a seeming change of heart and issued a series of albums aimed at mainstream audiences, with even a disco component to one of them -- this failed to endear them to mainstream listeners, but it did alienate their longtime fans, and by the end of the 1970s, the band's popularity was in free-fall. Kerry Minnear, who had been playing an ever-more central role in the band's music since the mid-'70s, had already left the group when Gentle Giant called it quits in 1980.Their music is almost all available on compact disc (with the two Vertigo albums in print in the United States for the first time, along with the two Columbia albums), and they maintain a cult following. Ray Shulman later became a producer and had considerable success in England working with bands like the Sundays and the Sugarcubes, while Derek Shulman is a New York-based record-company vice president (following a route previously taken by the Zombies' Paul Atkinson) -- ironically, Derek has been quoted as saying that if Gentle Giant were auditioning for him today, he would not sign them, but this seems to reflect more the changing times and tastes of the public than the merits of their best music. ~ Bruce Eder