Kerry Minnear
“In 1974 I was 16, and when I heard Gentle Giant for the first time it was In A Glass House. It wasn’t easy to find the albums in Sweden at the time, and there were rumours about where you could find them, but I quickly began buying everything they’d done. I think Gentle Giant were outsiders and legends at the same time. My friends were divided into two camps: those who loved Giant Gentle and those who hated them.
“I saw them in Lund in 1976 and the concert was very impressive indeed. They were so good it almost put me off playing for a while. In retrospect,
I understood that they’d raised the bar, the standard I had to strive for. As a composer and musician, Kerry Minnear is not only original but also has a character that very few keyboardists can measure up to. On those albums, Kerry will often play the organ the way you play piano, and he manages to weave together complicated things completely naturally, along with incredibly beautiful lyrical melodies. It was only later that I understood he was using overdubs, which I didn’t realise at the time because I was young.
“The great thing about being inspired by Kerry is that it isn’t easy to steal his music ideas and musical expression, because what he created really isn’t beginners’ stuff. His way of expressing himself on his instruments is hyper-interesting. I thought this work was impressive. He obviously knew all the parts backwards and forwards. It was liberating to listen to him and how he used the instruments in such a creative way, mixing folk, prog, minimalism. He had an amazing technique used in a highly musical way without ever attempting to impress.
“I enjoy interplay, canonic features and contrapuntal parts, when several melodies go against each other, living their own lives, then coming together with percussion which in turn binds the music together in a natural way. I’m not comparing anything I do with what he did with Gentle Giant, but I am convinced that something of his work has rubbed off on me as a composer. I don’t even know if he would want to call himself a progressive rock icon, given his musical breadth. Compared to other names like Emerson, Wakeman, or Banks, he’s overlooked.”