I’m not sure it was our best show ever, but one of my favorite Gentle Giant concerts was in 1974 at Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Everything clicked, and when I sang, I wasn’t thinking about the lyrics, the melody, or even what song we were on. Everything just came out of me—perfectly timed, delivered with passion and heart, and I had nothing to do with it. I was the vessel. I practically left my body, and I could see myself performing, watching in awe like a fan in the front row. The mix was perfect, and Gary, Kerry, Ray, and John were a precision orchestra, feeding one another’s impulses and playing every note with clarity and conviction. It was beautiful. At that moment, we were the best band on the planet. After two encores, the seven thousand people in the audience refused to leave. They continued to roar, and we felt obliged to go out again. We told the audience that we didn’t know any more songs, but still they refused to leave. We looked at each other and John suggested we play ‘In The Midnight Hour,’ which we always jammed in soundcheck. It was a magical moment for the band.
It was what all musicians strive for—all the elements coalescing in harmony—to be cherished all the more since it isn’t all that common. When you’re a touring band, there are so many moving parts, many of which you have nothing to do with, and any of them can malfunction at any time. Sometimes they involve support staff, who can wind up being far more consequential than anyone could have guessed. After working for us for almost two years, our friend and tour manager Eric left the music business to go to law school. We were happy for him, but at the same time, we had no idea who could fill his shoes. Terry suggested we hire a woman named Rita, a buxom blonde who had been Jethro Tull’s first violinist.
‘That’s all well and good,’ I told Terry. ‘But what does she know about being a tour manager?’
‘Oh, don’t underestimate her,’ Terry replied. ‘She’s sharp as a knife, and she’s a no-nonsense businesswoman. She’ll be a great replacement for Eric. And why not give a woman a chance?’
‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘We’ll absolutely give a woman a chance.’
We brought Rita onto the team, and she proved right away that she was smart. She was well-read, a great conversationalist, and able to de-escalate stressful situations. Then we learned her flaws. She liked to party, and when she was wasted, she became less professional and more unpredictable. One night after the show, she was hanging out with a few of the crew guys in one of their rooms, drinking and smoking weed. High as fuck, she went outside to get some air, and while she was out there laughing loudly to herself, Gary walked by.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked—a reasonable question to ask someone who’s standing by herself cackling. ‘What are you doing?’
Rita’s face turned as red as her lipstick. ‘What do you mean?’ she snapped. ‘What are you implying?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I Just wondered why you’re out here alone.’
‘I don’t like your attitude!’ she said, then began a profanity-filled tirade that went from obnoxious to intolerable: ‘You’re fired, Gary! I don’t trust you and I’ve had enough of your shit! You’re out of the band.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ Gary snorted. ‘You can’t fire me. Go lie down and sober up.’
When Gary told me about his crazy confrontation, it was definitely a red flag. Rita had seemed pretty level-headed when we brought her on board. I knew she drank too much, but I thought she had her shit together. We started watching her more closely and found out that not only did she like to party but she also had quite a healthy libido and slept with just about anyone. One night she hooked up with two guys from the road crew—at the same time. Well, good for her. This was rock’n’roll. I couldn’t fire her for being horny. It wasn’t my idea of time well spent, but that’s me. Then she started fucking up.
When we were in Germany, a gig promoter went apeshit. ‘Your fucking road manager just gave me the clap,’ he shouted. She denied it, and I couldn’t prove anything, though I have to admit, the accusation made me question her judgment a little more. The tipping point came when we were in Ohio. Rita hooked up with someone who said he worked for the venue. The next morning she was late to breakfast, and when she finally arrived, she lacked her usual swagger. She sat down looking as uncomfortable as someone on a terrible first date.
‘I think I made a mistake,’ she hesitantly said. ‘I had someone in my room last night, and I think he stole some money.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
She told me we had been paid $15,000 in cash for the gig, and that she had the money in her purse, and, in the passion of the moment, left it on her dresser. When she woke up, it was all gone, and so was the thief. That was the end of Rita’s tenure as road manager for Gentle Giant.
When we finished touring Free Hand, we were tired of being on the road and ready to go home. So, did we take a well-deserved break to recharge our batteries? Of course not. We went right back into writing mode for our next album. We were never slowed by alcoholism, drug dependency, or the other stereotypical vices that trip up bands. Workaholism, however—that was a habit we couldn’t kick.
We came up with some good songs, but no matter what we did, it felt like it was becoming harder to naturally evolve. We had spent more than five years feeding our creativity and developing the Giant into a fully formed being. And, like the Giant, we had grown up. We were no longer kids with the youthful hunger to destroy boundaries and succeed at all costs, and I think, for the first time, I started to understand why Phil had left the band. It was no longer just about us. There were greater concerns. We were all either in serious relationships or questioning our next steps in life.
While we were still heavily invested in the band, exhaustion was starting to set in as we all became more heavily invested in our personal lives. By not taking a six-month break, we accepted that we would forego further growth and continue from where we had left off with Free Hand. From a lyrical perspective, I didn’t have anything new and revelatory to express, so I decided to create a concept album that restated what we felt we were and why we did what we did. There used to be two music papers that came out every week in England that covered us regularly, Melody Maker and NME, as well as other monthly music magazines and daily papers that were also interested in Gentle Giant.
Having to fill so much space in every issue was a challenge, and there was great competition from other titles, so the editors of these publications made their articles as scintillating as possible, often at the expense of the truth. To keep the material fresh and retain their readers, every six to twelve months the British music papers found a new scene or movement to champion, which often meant abandoning the last music movement they’d glorified. The catchphrase was to ‘build them up and knock them down,’ which seemed to us to be a terrible way to treat hard-working musicians. Bands were criticized not because they weren’t good anymore but because they were deemed no longer fashionable.
No matter what we did, the new breed of UK journalists insisted on using words like ‘self-indulgent’ and of course ‘pretentious,’ yet they chose other, often more complimentary descriptions when writing about many of our peers whose music was equally challenging. It reeked of hypocrisy, and the crazy thing is that these publications that were writing negative reviews of our shows and taking pot-shots at us were still obliged to interview us since we were popular and their readers still wanted to know what we were up to. In that respect, our next release, Interview, was a big ‘fuck you’—a concept album about the types of questions we were being asked by a biased, uninformed music press.