The Missing Piece is Gentle Giant’s album of two halves — one side of short, accessible songs, including a cheerfully sarcastic stab at punk, and one side of the intricate music that made them famous. Released in 1977, it divided their audience, and contains ‘Memories of Old Days,’ one of the loveliest things they ever recorded.

The short version

The Missing Piece (1977) is the ninth studio album by Gentle Giant, self-produced in the Netherlands and released on Chrysalis. Made by the quintet of Derek Shulman, Ray Shulman, Kerry Minnear, Gary Green and John Weathers, it splits neatly in two: a first side of concise, radio-minded songs ranging from pop-rock to punk pastiche, and a second side that returns to the medieval melodies and knotted arrangements of old. It puzzled long-time admirers, and still divides them.

A hostile year

1977 was not kind to progressive rock. The press had turned, punk was ascendant, and bands who had spent a decade perfecting complexity found themselves suddenly unfashionable. Gentle Giant’s response was neither surrender nor defiance but something more interesting. Kerry Minnear has said it was Ray Shulman who took to punk earliest, drawn to its raw energy and to the liberating notion that you did not need to play brilliantly in order to communicate. The band’s own reputation for cleverness had begun to feel like a straitjacket, and there was a small rebellion in the air. Four of the songs had already been road-tested on tour, so the sessions moved quickly.

The sound

The two sides could almost be different records. The first strips the music back: strong hooks, plain rhythms, guitar and organ to the fore, and Derek Shulman singing with unusual directness. The second restores the old machinery — interlocking voices, shifting metres, medieval cadences, Kerry Minnear’s keyboards weaving through everything. What is missing throughout is the multi-instrumental riot of earlier albums: fewer violins, recorders and vibraphones, less dazzle. Gary Green has since admitted the record shows some confused thinking, and that the seams are visible. He is right, and it is still an enjoyable album.

The songs

‘Two Weeks in Spain’ is a bright, bouncing pop-rocker about the modest joys of a package holiday, and won them some radio play. ‘I’m Turning Around’ is an anthemic break-up ballad, and ‘Betcha Thought We Couldn’t Do It’ a two-minute punk pastiche delivered with a grin — too many chords to fool anybody, and all the funnier for it. Side two brings the medieval lilt of ‘As Old as You’re Young,’ the surging ‘Winning,’ the intricate closer ‘For Nobody,’ and above all ‘Memories of Old Days,’ seven minutes of acoustic beauty that would grace any album in their catalogue.

Reception and legacy

Many fans felt betrayed, and said so. Others heard a band adapting with wit rather than panic, and for them The Missing Piece is the last truly great Gentle Giant album — the point before the pop turn of Giant for a Day! went further than most could follow. It is emphatically not a punk or new wave record, whatever the smoke around it suggests. Steven Wilson’s 2024 remix brought it fresh attention and unusual clarity, and the surviving members have said they are happier with the album now than they were when they made it.

The verdict

The Missing Piece is not where to start — Free Hand, Octopus and Interview come first — but it deserves far better than its reputation as the beginning of the end. Approach it as two half-albums, one playful and one profound, and there is real pleasure here: the sly humour of the punk parody, the swing of ‘Two Weeks in Spain,’ and the quiet magnificence of ‘Memories of Old Days,’ which alone is worth the price of admission. A flawed record made by musicians who could not be dull if they tried.

Browse the bookshelf in the footer →