Maybe you guys have heard of Gentle Giant, and maybe you haven’t. If you’ve heard of them, though, you’re probably a huge fan; they’re that kind of band. And, if you haven’t heard of them, guess what, as per the above premises you are now a huge fan. And since you’re a huge fan, you’ll be thrilled to know I scored an interview with frontman Derek Shulman. How exciting is that? I found out about them in high school and have been a pretty rabid fan since then, the kind of fan who buys the import editions of the stuff he can’t find in U.S. stores. You might not have to go to such extreme lengths if you’re just now getting into them: EMI is doing reissues of seven of their albums, everything between In a Glass House and Giant for a Day. The reissues come out today, by the way; I’d definitely snap them up if I were you.

I’ve got prog in my veins (first concert I ever went to was Yes, with Alan Parsons opening, no foolin’,) so I tried to prog it up with Derek. What did I learn? Well, for one thing he’s sick and tired of people calling Gentle Giant a prog band. Which makes sense, I think: it’s like the similarly-meaningless label ‘hipster‘: part of being ‘hipster’ is that you have to deny it. But c’mon: Gentle Giant wrote madrigals about R.D. Laing and wickedly complex rock songs about Rabelesian literature, and they all play like thirty instruments. This is why you probably haven’t heard of them, and, also, why you’re a GG fanatic if you know the least bit about them. Nobody did what these guys did. And hey, it was a long time coming, but it’s reissues time.

The musical selections are from Derek’s favorite GG albums. I was happy when he mentioned Civilian; I like that one a lot and it’s an underdog. “Way of Life” is off of In a Glass House, which is one of the reissues and my favorite; never a dull moment on that record. The interview itself is longish, so it’s after the proverbial jump.

Gentle Giant – “Way of Life”
Gentle Giant – “The Boys in the Band”
Gentle Giant – “Underground”

TMH: In the notes for Acquiring the Taste you explicitly acknowledged that your style of music wasn’t likely to become popular. Do you think you could have made it as a pop group, and did you ever sincerely try to, or want to?  Did your perspective change over your career? Were your later albums like Giant for a Day and Civilian genuine attempts to appeal to the pop market, or was the group’s music developing organically in that direction?

Derek Shulman: There is absolutely no question that the band could never have made it as pop group. Myself and my brother were in a fairly successful rock/pop group (Simon Dupree & The Big Sound) before we started Gentle Giant. We wanted to get as far away from the millstone of the top 40 chart success as possible. To answer the second part of the question I have to say that yes, there was a benign attempt to mainstream the sound of the band. We tried to keep our ‘integrity’ as musicians intact and I think we did. Obviously we didn’t come up with the big hit single so the question you ask is rhetoric. Gentle Giant could never have been ‘pop’.

TMH: I’ve always found GG’s bipolar prog/pop sensibilities to be really interesting. For example, following a song like “Giant” with “Funny Ways,” or “Alucard” with “Isn’t It Quiet And Cold.” Certainly, there were albums where one sensibility dominated: In A Glass House was pure prog, and at the other end of the spectrum, Giant for a Day was pretty much pure pop. Were there particular GG members that pulled the group one way or the other?

Derek Shulman: My remembrances were that the group always acted as a singular entity. Obviously the composers, Shulman, Minnear, Shulman would generally influence what the band would ultimately play, however the perspective of where the group as whole was going was never contentious.

TMH: How do you see the relationship between pop and prog? Bands like Yes and ELP achieved popular success with complex music, but the conventional wisdom is that music must be simple to be popular. Yet you made music rich with complex ideas and techniques that is still perfectly catchy and easy on the ears. Is is that pop audiences and prog audiences listen for different things, specifically, that prog audiences seek out and enjoy complexity for its own sake?

Derek Shulman: I am not sure what the term “prog” really means. We attempted to put together a group of musicians from various backgrounds who pushed each other musically to excel as best we could for our own indulgence in our compositions and ideas. The fact that we garnered a fan base was icing on the cake. Bands like ELP and Yes leaned heavily on ‘classical’ keyboard oriented material. Gentle Giant’s music was a little more ‘orchestrated’ and hence a little more ‘complex’.

TMH: Where did you enjoy touring the most? Where did you have the most enthusiastic fans?

Derek Shulman: I always enjoyed playing to where the band was most popular of course. Italy, Germany, Benelux,  Canada and some parts of USA (NYC/Chicago/LA).

TMH: Gentle Giant is full of talented multi-instrumentalists. If a band’s bass player only plays bass and the guitarist only plays guitar, songwriting sessions are probably pretty straightforward compared to situations where every member can play half a dozen instruments, and probably will over the course of a given song. How did songwriting work? Would a single member have an overall idea of the flow of a song, or would everybody contribute their ideas to crafting different sections? To me, your music sounds too intricate to have come together though jamming, but if you tell me that’s how it went down, I’ll believe it.

Derek Shulman: The music was always structured. There was never a song created when we would jam as such. In essence Kerry and Ray and occasionally myself would come up with a theme, a piece of music and occasionally a complete piece. Occasionally we would work together at this. We would then record it and bring it to the band to divvy out the parts and work out the kinks. I would generally contribute the lyrical content.

TMH: I’ve always been struck by the sharp, radical transitions that show up in your songs. Sometimes it seems like you would write a passage, figure out what the exact opposite of that passage would be, and immediately launch into that antipode. I’m thinking in particular of “The House, The Street, The Room,” in which you switched back and forth between tinkly xylophones and heavy guitars. How did you write these pieces? Was it a matter of purposefully doing the opposite of what was expected, or, on the other hand, did you have all these elements in mind at the beginning of the songwriting process?

Derek Shulman: I think we loved the element of surprise in our compositions. Complacency was never GG’s signature. Although the instrumentation and time patterns would change there would always be an underlying theme in the composition that held all of this together. In that respect the music was was quite orchestral in its structure.

TMH: Did you ever have any interest in working with electronic music? In the 70s, musicians were starting to work with these new instruments; Kraftwerk started the same year you did. Gentle Giant seemed to go the other direction, using instruments I would consider less modern, like mandolins and recorders. Was this a reaction to the electronic trend, or did you just prefer the more traditional instruments?

Derek Shulman: I believe that the band would utilize anything that made a musical note. There was no snobbery as far as electronic instruments and devices. However, I don’t think at the time any of us were very adept at them so we stuck with instruments that we could actually play.

TMH: What do you think of other bands lumped together under the ‘prog’ label? Were there contemporary bands you particularly admired or felt a kinship with? Where there other bands of which you thought poorly?

Derek Shulman: Again, the lumping of Gentle Giant as a “PROG” group confused me. I admired many types of musicians and artists. Frank Zappa obviously for his amazing music as well as his humor. He never took himself too seriously, a trait the I believe Gentle Giant had/has. We were never ‘holier than thou’ with airs of ‘pomposity’. That irked me in some of the groups that were are associated with in the ‘prog genre’.

TMH:I’m sure you’re asked this all the time, but what are some of your favorite albums and songs, from both your own discography and by your peers?

Derek Shulman: Gentle Giant LP’s, Free Hand, Octopus and Civilian! Others. . .way too many to say here. The Beatles, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Four Tops, Otis Redding, Everly Brothers,John Lee Hooker, Frank Zappa, The Move, Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Jethro Tull, Pantera, Doctor Dre, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, and on and on.

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