Gentle Giant

At the outset of the progressive rock period, Gentle Giant looked set during the mid-1970s to move beyond cult status, yet the leap never occurred. Their singular approach fused hard rock and classical music while adopting an almost medieval vocal style, aligning them more with Yes and King Crimson than with Emerson, Lake & Palmer or the Nice.

The group arose from the dissolution of Simon Dupree & the Big Sound, an R&B ensemble fronted by brothers Derek, Ray, and Phil Shulman. After pivoting to psychedelia in 1967 and landing their lone major hit that year with “Kites,” the musicians, now operating as Gentle Giant, abandoned both the R&B and psychedelic directions of their earlier project. Derek supplied vocals, guitar, and bass; Ray contributed vocals, bass, and violin; Phil played saxophone; Kerry Minnear handled keyboards; and Gary Green played guitar. The original lineup featured Martin Smith on drums, though several percussionists rotated through during the first three years.

Gentle Giant signed with Vertigo in 1970, and their self-titled debut—a daring fusion of hard rock, electric playing, and classical elements—appeared later that year. The follow-up, Acquiring the Taste (1971), proved slightly more approachable, while Three Friends, recorded with Malcolm Mortimore on drums, became their first album issued in the U.S. on Columbia. Their fourth release, Octopus (1973), seemed positioned for a breakthrough, having refined a hard-rock-and-classical balance acceptable to critics and audiences alike, and the band finally secured a permanent drummer in John Weathers, an ex-member of the Graham Bond Organisation.

By 1974, however, Gentle Giant began to unravel. Phil Shulman retired from music after the Octopus tour and took up teaching. The group then recorded In a Glass House, their hardest-rocking album to date, which Columbia’s American division rejected as insufficiently commercial. The resulting two-year gap in U.S. releases stalled their progress, and the band remained silent until Capitol issued The Power and the Glory in 1975.

Gentle Giant released their most commercial album, Free Hand, in 1976, only to follow it with the starkly experimental Interview. After the 1978 double album Playing the Fool, the musicians shifted direction and produced a series of mainstream-oriented records that even touched on disco, but their popularity collapsed by the end of the decade. Gentle Giant disbanded in 1980. Ray Shulman later worked as a producer and achieved notable success in England with the Sundays and the Sugarcubes, while Derek Shulman became a record-company executive based in New York. Ray Shulman died in London, England on April 1, 2023 after a long illness at the age of 73.