Kerry Livgren

Kerry Livgren of the rock band Kansas says a few words about Gentle Giant in his book Seeds of Change:

"Gentle Giant was one of my favorite groups. Their albums Three Friends and Octopus had a remarkable originality, good musicianship, and philosophically interesting lyrics. I also had the pleasure of seeing them in concert, and appreciated the energy of their performance."

He also cites Gentle Giant in a discussion of contemporary music, formerly on numavox.com:

Over the years I have accumulated a rather large collection of recordings which covers the whole spectrum of musical styles. Lately I have found that there is rarely time to sit down and simply listen to music, but in one of those rare moments, I pulled a record off the shelf that I have not listened to for probably ten years. It was an early album by a little known British group, Gentle Giant. I happened to notice the liner notes on the album which read:

"It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of being very unpopular. We have recorded each composition with the one thought--that it should be unique, adventurous and fascinating. It has taken every shred of our combined musical and technical knowledge to achieve this."

I think they fulfilled their prophecy of their own obscurity, but what a credo! They stated most succinctly the exact attitude which I think is missing from so much of today's contemporary music."