Gentle Giant were a British progressive rock band active between 1970 and 1980. They were known for the complexity and sophistication of their music and for the varied musical skills of the members. All of the band members were multi-instrumentalists. Although not commercially successful, the band achieved a cult following.
The band stated that their aim was to "expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of becoming very unpopular",From the sleeve notes of the album "Acquiring the Taste" although this stance was to alter significantly with time.
Gentle Giant's music was considered complex even by progressive rock standards, drawing on a broad swathe of music including folk, soul, jazz, and classical music. Unlike many of their progressive rock contemporaries, their "classical" influences ranged beyond the Romantic and incorporated medieval, baroque, and modernist chamber music elements. The band also had a taste for broad themes for their lyrics, drawing inspiration not only from personal experiences but from philosophy and the works of François Rabelais and R. D. Laing. In 2015 they were recognised with the lifetime achievement award at the Progressive Music Awards.
Band history Prehistory (including Simon Dupree and the Big Sound) The core of what was to become Gentle Giant comprised three brothers: Phil Shulman (born 1937), Derek Shulman (born 1947) and Ray Shulman (1949–2023). The brothers were of Scottish-Jewish descent. Phil and Derek were born in the Gorbals, which was then a notorious slum area of Glasgow, Scotland. The family moved to Portsmouth, England, where Ray was born. Their father was an army musician turned jazz trumpeter, who continued his musical work in Portsmouth. He encouraged his sons to learn various instruments; and Phil, Derek, and Ray all became multi-instrumentalists. During the early 1960s, Derek and Ray became interested in playing rhythm-and-blues and formed a band together. Phil – originally acting as a manager figure in order to look after his much younger brothers – eventually became a band member himself.
By 1966, the Shulmans' band – initially called the Howling Wolves, then the Road Runners – had taken on the name of Simon Dupree and the Big Sound and were pursuing more of a soul/pop direction. As lead singer and frontman, Derek Shulman took on the 'Simon Dupree' pseudonym while Phil played saxophone and trumpet, and youngest brother Ray played guitar and violin. (Both Ray and Phil also played trumpet and sang backing vocals for the group which, during its lifetime, briefly featured the future Elton John as pianist as well as recording a single with Dudley Moore as guest). Signing to the EMI record label, Simon Dupree and the Big Sound produced several non-charting singles before being pushed by their management and label in the direction of psychedelia. This resulted in the UK Top 10 hit "Kites" in the autumn of 1967 (and the release of the Without Reservation album later in the year).
Success only served to frustrate the Shulman brothers, who considered themselves to be blue-eyed soul singers and felt that their change of style was insincere and insubstantial. Derek Shulman was later to describe "Kites" as "utter shit". The Shulmans' opinion was confirmed, in their eyes, by the successive failure of follow-up singles to "Kites". Attempting to escape their new image, they released a pseudonymous double A-side single in late 1968 as the Moles – "We Are the Moles (parts 1 & 2)". This compounded their identity crisis as the single was subsequently caught up in a rumour that the Moles were, in fact, the Beatles recording under a different name and with Ringo Starr as lead singer. The rumour was eventually debunked by Pink Floyd leader Syd Barrett, who outed Simon Dupree and the Big Sound as the band behind the record.
In 1969, the Shulman brothers finally dissolved the group in order to escape the pop music environment that had frustrated them. They did not return directly to rhythm and blues or soul, but instead chose to pursue a more complicated direction. Ray Shulman later stated, "We knew we couldn't continue with the musicians we'd had before. We weren't interested in the other musicians in the band — they couldn't contribute anything. We had to teach them what to do. It got rather heavy when we could play drums better than the drummer, and even on record we were doing more and more of it with overdubs. It got stupid having a band like (that). The first thing was to get some musicians of a higher standard."
Formation of Gentle Giant Gentle Giant was formed in 1970 when the Shulman brothers teamed up with two other multi-instrumentalists, Gary Green (guitar, mandolin, recorder etc.) and Kerry Minnear (keyboards, vibraphone, cello, etc.), plus drummer Martin Smith, who had previously drummed for Simon Dupree and the Big Sound. The classically trained Minnear had recently graduated from the Royal College of Music with a degree in composition, and had played with the band Rust. Green was essentially a blues player and had never worked with a band above the semi-professional level, but adapted readily to the demanding music of the new band. The Shulman brothers, meanwhile, settled into typically multi-instrumental roles of their own — Derek on saxophone and recorder; Ray on bass and violin; and Phil on saxophone, trumpet, and clarinet (with all three brothers playing other instruments as and when required).
The new band also featured three lead vocalists. Derek Shulman sang in a tough rhythm-and-blues style and generally handled the more rock-oriented vocals; Phil Shulman handled the more folk-or-jazz-influenced songs; and Kerry Minnear (who had a particularly delicate voice) sang the lighter folk and chamber-classical lead vocals. Minnear did not sing lead vocals at live concerts, because of his inability to support and project his voice at a level suitable for live amplification (Derek and Phil Shulman handled Minnear's lead vocal parts when the band played live).
According to a booklet that was included in their first album, the band's name was a reference to a fictional character, a "gentle giant" that happens upon a band of musicians and is enthralled with their music. The character is reminiscent of those from the Renaissance tales of François Rabelais.
From the start, Gentle Giant was a particularly flexible band because of the exceptionally broad musical skills of its members. One Gentle Giant album would list a total of forty-six instruments in the musician credits — all of which had been played by group members — and five of the six members sang, enabling the band to write and perform detailed vocal harmony and counterpoint. The band's approach to songwriting was equally diverse, blending a wide variety of ideas and influences whether they were considered commercial or otherwise.
Early Gentle Giant: the debut album, Acquiring the Taste and Three Friends The band's first album was the self-titled Gentle Giant in 1970, produced by Tony Visconti. Combining the collective band members' influences of rock, blues, classical, and 1960s British soul, it was an immediately challenging effort, although it has sometimes been criticised for having a slightly disappointing recording quality.
Gentle Giant was followed in 1971 by Acquiring the Taste. This second album showcased a band who were developing rapidly. Far more experimental and dissonant than its predecessor, Acquiring the Taste was shaped primarily by Kerry Minnear's broad classical and contemporary classical music training. It also showed the band expanding their instrumental palette (although many years later Derek Shulman would admit "we recorded [Acquiring the Taste] without any idea of what it would be like before we got into the studio. It was a very experimental album and we still didn't have an ultimate direction".)" The band's sense of challenge was made evident in the liner notes to Acquiring the Taste, which contained a particularly lofty statement of intent even by progressive rock standards. Producer Tony Visconti has claimed authorship of this liner note as well as the "giant" story accompanying the first album.(source: "Bowie Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy" [book], Visconti)
After Acquiring the Taste, Martin Smith left the band, apparently because of disagreements with both Ray and Phil Shulman. He was replaced by Malcolm Mortimore.
Gentle Giant's next recording was Three Friends (1972). This was the band's first concept album, and was based around the theme of three boys who are "inevitably separated by chance, skill, and fate" as they become men. Over the course of the album, the three friends travel on from being childhood schoolfriends to becoming, respectively, a road digger, an artist, and a white-collar worker. In the process, they lose their ability to relate to each other or understand each other's lifestyles. The development and fate of each character is musically represented by separate yet integrated styles, from hard rhythm-and-blues-edged rock to symphonic classical stylings.
In March 1972, Malcolm Mortimore injured himself in a motorcycle accident. To fulfil tour obligations in April, Gentle Giant hired John "Pugwash" Weathers (born 7 February 1947) (ex-Grease Band/Wild Turkey/Graham Bond's Magic). Weathers was a harder-hitting player who also sang and played melodic percussion and guitar, further expanding Gentle Giant's instrumental performance options. Because of Mortimore's extended convalescence, the band opted to formally replace him with Weathers at the end of the 1972 April tour.
Octopus and the departure of Phil Shulman The new line-up of Gentle Giant released the Octopus album later in 1972. The band's hardest-rocking album to date, Octopus was allegedly titled by Phil Shulman's wife Roberta as a pun on "octo opus" (eight musical works, reflecting the album's eight tracks). It maintained Gentle Giant's distinctively broad and challengingly integrated style, one of the highlights being the intricate madrigal-styled vocal workout "Knots" (whose lyrics are taken from various verses of poetry from R. D. Laing's book of the same title).
The release of Octopus is generally considered to herald the start of Gentle Giant's peak period. In 2004, Ray Shulman commented "[Octopus] was probably our best album, with the exception perhaps of Acquiring the Taste. We started with the idea of writing a song about each member of the band. Having a concept in mind was a good starting point for writing. I don't know why, but despite the impact of the Who's Tommy and Quadrophenia, almost overnight concept albums were suddenly perceived as rather naff and pretentious."
Before embarking on the Octopus tour, the band played a gruelling set of dates supporting Black Sabbath, during which they proved to be very unpopular with the majority of the headlining band's fans. Derek Shulman recalled, "It was perhaps the most ridiculous pairing of groups ever in the history of show business. For the most part we got booed off the stage". Following the tour, Gentle Giant underwent their most significant line-up change when a burnt-out and discouraged Phil Shulman left the band following disagreements with his brothers. Derek Shulman took over all lead vocals for live concerts, becoming Gentle Giant's de facto lead singer (although Kerry Minnear continued to sing his own share of lead vocals on records).