There was no way I was going to stay inactive for two months. When I started feeling better, I started working with Kerry and Ray on songs for our next album. A month in, I told them I was fine and insisted we go back on tour. We spent the first part of 1975 in North America, and we started off with a wallop, performing a headline show on January 14 at the twenty-thousand-seat Montreal Forum. To poke a bit of fun at ourselves, we had the rear projector flash the word ‘pretentious’ over our heads at the start of the show. Good thing we could spell. Not everyone can. A few days later, a New York marquee at a major venue read ‘Presenting Genlte Giant.’
When we headed back into rehearsals in the spring of 1975, we were confident and fired up. Fueled by the waves of positive energy on tour, we vowed to turn the new songs we had written into the most uncompromising statement anyone had ever heard from us. It had to be adventurous, it had to rock, it had to be ebulliently melodic—and more than ever, we had to be able to explain the intent behind every note. We had watched from afar as the Giant played in the sandbox, found meaning and direction, questioned the world around him, and set out on a path that earned him recognition and longevity. Now, we were six albums in, and it was time for him to make his mark as a fully formed, sentient, and empathetic entity.
We worked through the spring and summer and then went into Advision seeking a new form of validation. We had survived crippling interpersonal turmoil, fought our way out of inequitable contracts, circumvented undesirable situations, and endured agonizing illness and injury. Now, we were self-produced, self-managed, and driven by an intangible force to succeed on our own terms. We had never been part of a scene, and we didn’t need industry powerbrokers to break us. We were still living on the South Coast of England, and we were still quite popular. Other bands moved to London because, hey man, it was the thing to do. We wanted no part of that. I’m sure most people at the record company thought we were a pain in the ass, and maybe, in their minds, we offered them less than we delivered, but this was our lives, our careers. We had come too far to compromise and learned too much to be willfully obscure. We knew exactly what we were, and it was time to show everyone our hand.
Having focused on nothing but Gentle Giant for five years, and having played with John for almost three, we were at top form musically, personally, professionally, and lyrically. We were clear-headed and focused like night owls. That’s the spirit from which Free Hand was born. And, as much as we loved The Power And The Glory, Free Hand came out when we were at the top of our game.
Free Hand was our first record with Chrysalis in the UK and our second with Capitol in the US. We knew there was some great stuff on it, but we had no idea how solidly the public would connect with it. The album hit #40 on the UK chart and reached #48 on the Billboard 200 in America and #49 in Canada. We couldn’t have been happier, but we couldn’t figure out whether listeners recognized and appreciated the undiluted artistic expression involved, or if they liked that the songs were hooky, melodic, and rocked like an earthquake in hell. Either way, we never expected Free Hand to take off in the way it did—and maybe that’s one of the reasons it did. Throughout our time in Gentle Giant, we never thought about legacy or where we’d be in ten years. It was all about the here and now. We did what we wanted because we liked playing what we wrote and listening to what we played, and no one was doing anything like it at the time.
So, why did we combine so many styles and sounds into our diverse, multifaceted music? Maybe it has something to do with feeling confined in Simon Dupree, but I think it has as much to do with willful isolation. We were cocooned on the South Coast and operating solely within the microcosm we created. We were a close-knit family, not outcasts who escaped their upbringing and never looked back. As such, we wanted to share our good fortune with friends and family, and we even took Uncle Chaim and Gary’s father, Jim, on the road with us on occasions, which they loved. As I would learn in my later career as a music executive, we naively made the right moves—at least for ourselves.
Being authentic and proactive is the only way you can achieve anything worthwhile, as opposed to trying to be like someone else or to follow their path to success. Knowing that the formula worked and had yielded our best-selling album confirmed to us that we were doing something right. And it gave us a bit of leverage heading into our next tour, which, as was so often the case, was back in North America, where we commanded the largest crowds.
During the tour, we played some shows opening for Steppenwolf, Jefferson Starship, J. Geils Band, Strawbs, and Rick Wakeman, but we headlined most of the time and performed with an elaborate full-scale stage production that included a slide show synchronized to the music. We already had a reputation for switching instruments onstage, and on the Free Hand tour we continued the tradition. I played bass on several songs while Ray played violin. Ray played bass and horns. It was fun for us, and it was interesting for the crowd to see us present some of our songs in a different fashion. We also created medleys of songs from different albums and sometimes added new instrumentation and visual effects to keep audiences paying attention. I’ve always been impressed by bands that recreate their album songs note for note, but I find it more enjoyable to see groups improvising, switching up arrangements, and revising their music on the spot.
We could never have done it without John’s exceptional drumming, so it’s a good thing we didn’t lose him for good in Quebec City. After we’d finished playing, he was still feeling energized, so he stayed at an after-party long after the rest of us returned to the hotel. It was January and way below freezing when a young couple offered him a ride back to his hotel, which he gladly accepted. During the drive, the couple started snapping at each other. As the bickering turned into shouting, John tried to tune out the dissonance, hoping the driver would remain in control of the wheel. Then the driver slammed his foot on the brake pedal, and the speeding car swerved and slid to a stop.
‘Get the fuck out!’ the man screamed. Assuming the driver was kicking his girlfriend out of a warm car and into the freezing winter, John opened his mouth to suggest he reconsider. But the driver had no intention of booting out his girlfriend. Irrationally, he was kicking John out in the middle of nowhere at three in the morning, and his girlfriend wasn’t protesting.
There was nothing John could do. He stepped out onto streets glittering with snow and ice. The car sped off, and John had no idea where he was, so he stumbled toward what looked like a distant stoplight, unaware whether he was headed toward his hotel or away from it. Either way, he was miles from his destination, and his fingers and toes were growing numb. He saw a few cars and tried to flag them down, but the drivers either didn’t see him or didn’t want to pick up a potential serial killer in the middle of the night. Fearing he would freeze to death, John rambled toward the light, and in one of those incidents that’s so unlikely it seems like an act of fate, a cab pulled to the curb at the traffic light and let out a passenger. John waved his arms and screamed louder than a heavy metal vocalist. The cabbie honked back at John, then waited as our drummer stumbled to the car and back to the hotel.