When I felt pretty good again, we got back to work on our next record. We had already written most of the songs for The Power And The Glory on the road, so we were ahead of the game. After a bit of tweaking, we returned to Advision Studios in December 1973 and worked for a solid month to perfect the songs. I played a bit of tenor sax on ‘So Sincere,’ but there weren’t a lot of horns on the record. Instead, we emphasized Gary’s guitars and Ray’s violin (acoustic and electric). Kerry played an assortment of keyboards, including piano, Hammond organ, RMI Electra Piano, Fender Rhodes, Minimoog, Clavinet, and Wurlitzer, as well as marimba, vibraphone, and cello.
Despite the abundance of time we spent in the studio recording all of the different tracks, the process was smooth, almost effortless. Music doesn’t often come out of thin air. Even great songs usually require at least some pushing and pulling, sweating and screaming before they’re born. That wasn’t the case for The Power And The Glory. Every morning, we couldn’t wait to get back into the studio to try out new ideas. We arranged the songs without much exertion, and even with all the instrumentation, producing the album was a breeze. After the angst and turmoil that went into In A Glass House, The Power And The Glory was like a gift—affirmation that we still loved being together and making our original style of music. And we had gotten damned good at it.
If every album we did represented the evolution of this metaphoric Giant, The Power And The Glory was our reinvention after a bad divorce. Having survived the bitterness of In A Glass House, it was like getting remarried to a band I loved being with. The record came so easily and without drama, we felt powerful and glorious. That would have been reason enough for the album title, but really it came from the lyrics I wrote about the corruption that stems from having too much power. The songs weren’t exactly political, in that they didn’t address specific people and events, but they were inspired by feelings of uncertainty and distrust that had developed in First World nations between the people and their governments. England is no stranger to governmental scandals, and having toured the US numerous times, we were aware of how much the Watergate fiasco—which dominated news headlines—and the arms race had shaken people’s confidence in their leaders. Without being preachy, I wanted to address the adversarial relationship between leaders and those who vote for them. More specifically, I had been thinking about how the people at the top of society wield the most power, and how the majority of society, who are at the bottom of the hierarchy, have practically no power at all, aside from their votes at the ballot. It was the closest we came to making a protest album.
We submitted the album as our final contractual obligation to WWA and signed to Capitol Records in the US. Everyone was relieved to discover that The Power And The Glory was Gentle Giant at our best. It was challenging and multifaceted yet melodic and upbeat enough for mainstream audiences, and it was well-received wherever we went on tour. At the same time, we were eager to get back to the studio again, to start work on the first album for which we’d have complete creative control. We would make all decisions regarding musical content, marketing, promotions, and management decisions—since I was now officially managing the band.
To our delight, The Power And The Glory charted at #78 in the US—a wonderful surprise, given that our last official release there was Octopus. We headed back to the States to open for Traffic on October 8 in Denver, Colorado, then played a five-night headline run in West Hollywood at the Whisky A Go-Go. The five-hundred-seat club was packed every night, with hundreds more fans lined up hours in advance of the shows but unable to get tickets.
In a very tangible way, the Whisky shows marked a turning point for Gentle Giant. We no longer felt like we needed to prove something to win over American crowds. We had already won them over, and they were jumping around, singing along, and smiling with sheer joy as we played. It beat the hell out of the days of playing to hostile audiences and dodging debris. After our Hollywood triumph, Capitol immediately pressed thirty thousand more copies of The Power And The Glory. To celebrate, we went to San Francisco for a few days, but aside from some good Chinese food and a pleasant stroll through the artsy Haight-Ashbury district, we were too consumed with thoughts of making new music to be tourists. We spent the bulk of our time in the hotel, putting together ideas for new songs. One of the reasons we never took long breaks was because we didn’t like to sit around. Why risk sightseeing and losing momentum when you could be building the path, brick by brick, to your next victory?
Our catalogue was so eclectic at that point that we could play with just about anyone. On the Power And The Glory tour, we performed shows with Aerosmith, Golden Earring, Quicksilver, J. Geils Band, Chick Corea’s Return To Forever, Dr. John, and Frank Zappa &The Mothers Of Invention. To our delight, we found out Frank was a big fan, and when he was asked in an interview if any new bands were inspiring him, he said he couldn’t think of anyone except Gentle Giant. Loftier praise we couldn’t have asked for.
Then, right when we were risking getting a tiny bit too big for our britches, we did a poorly attended Friday afternoon in-store appearance in Cleveland at Record Revolution, which was near the venue where we were playing. Every time someone walked through the door, a representative from Capitol asked them if they were ready to meet Gentle Giant, only to be greeted with blank expressions. The customers didn’t know who we were! The signing was scheduled while schools were still in session, so the bulk of our teenage fans were in class.
To go from the absurd to the ridiculous, as we took our seats for the signing, one of the store’s employees picked up a mic and a written note to introduce us: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give a big Cleveland welcome to …General Grant!’
Whoever scribbled the intro must have had atrocious handwriting. In response, we wrote on the wall signed by bands visiting the store, ‘Gentle Giant, not General Grant.’
Not long after that, we were scheduled to open for J. Geils in Philadelphia, but when the headliners canceled, the label got us another gig opening for Dave Mason at a college outside Trenton, New Jersey. I guess I should have taken a closer look at the itinerary. When we stepped onstage, I went up to the mic and said, ‘Hello, we are Gentle Giant. It’s great to be here in Pennsylvania with all of you!’
Aaaargh! I might have been better off introducing us as General Grant.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
IN THE
MIDNIGHT HOUR
I hadn’t realized I was pushing myself too hard until we got back to Portsmouth. I woke in the middle of the night, stood up, and felt an inferno raging in my stomach. I doubled over, flopped back into bed, and curled into a fetal position. I called out to Ray, who urged me to try to relax, get some rest, and pay more attention to my health. I didn’t exactly listen until a few days later when I collapsed on the floor. It was time to return to the gastroenterologist.
He conducted a series of tests and then performed an endoscopy to remove a couple of bleeding duodenal ulcers. I was advised not to overexert myself for two months and to rest my voice, which meant no singing, no interviews, and minimal talking. To my dismay, we had to cancel a string of UK shows. But in retrospect, I’m lucky I didn’t do more damage to my body than I did. During our five weeks in the States, I had been in denial about developing another ulcer—or suffering again from an earlier one. I had endured chronic stomach pain and acid reflux on tour, but I’d convinced myself it was anxiety and tried to fight my way through it. I guess I lost.