''Three Friends'' (1972) is the third album by

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Init ...

band

Gentle Giant Gentle Giant were a British progressive rock band active between 1970 and 1980. The band were known for the complexity and sophistication of their music and for the varied musical skills of their members. All of the band members were multi-inst ...

. It was the band's first release to chart in America, peaking at #197 on the ''Billboard'' 200. It is the only album by Gentle Giant to feature drummer

Malcolm Mortimore Malcolm Paul Mortimore (born 16 June 1953 in Wimbledon, London, England) is a drummer and percussionist who has played with Arthur Brown, Ian Dury, Herbie Flowers, Gentle Giant, Spike Heatley, Tom Jones, G.T. Moore, Mick and Chris Jagger, Oli ...

following the departure of

Martin Smith Martin Smith may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Martin Seymour-Smith (1928–1998), British poet, literary critic, biographer and astrologer *Martin Cruz Smith (born 1942), American writer * Martin Smith (drummer) (1946–1997), British drummer ...

. A concept album, ''Three Friends'' deals with three childhood friends whose lives take them very different places. However, each of the three friends are unsatisfied with their new lives. The closing song ends the story on a cliffhanger; whether or not the three friends ever reunite is never revealed. The album is predominantly instrumental, with most tracks having only brief vocal interludes.

Production

Three Friends was the band's first self-produced album. The two former albums were produced by

David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...

and

T.Rex ''Tyrannosaurus'' is a genus of large theropod dinosaur. The species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' (''rex'' meaning "king" in Latin), often called ''T. rex'' or colloquially ''T-Rex'', is one of the best represented theropods. ''Tyrannosaurus'' live ...

producer

Tony Visconti Anthony Edward Visconti (born April 24, 1944) is an American record producer, musician and singer. Since the late 1960s, he has worked with an array of performers. His first hit single was T. Rex's " Ride a White Swan" in 1970, the first of man ...

. Gary Green's guitar solo on "Peel the Paint" uses an

echoplex The Echoplex is a tape delay effect, first made in 1959. Designed by Mike Battle, the Echoplex set a standard for the effect in the 1960s—it is still regarded as "the standard by which everything else is measured." It was used by some of the ...

belonging to

Mike Ratledge Michael Roland Ratledge (born 6 May 1943) is a British musician. A part of the Canterbury scene, he was a founding member of Soft Machine. He was the last founding member to leave the group, doing so in 1976. Biography and career Ratledge was ...

that Green's brother Jeff, a

roadie The road crew (or roadies) are the technicians or support personnel who travel with a band on tour, usually in sleeper buses, and handle every part of the concert productions except actually performing the music with the musicians. This catc ...

with Ratledge's band

Soft Machine Soft Machine are a British rock band from Canterbury formed in mid-1966 by Mike Ratledge (keyboards, 1966–1976), Robert Wyatt (drums, vocals, 1966–1971), Kevin Ayers (bass, guitar, vocals, 1966–1968) and Daevid Allen (guitar, 1966–196 ...

, had borrowed. The song "Schooldays" starts off with the sounds of a schoolyard playground in England. Ray Shulman told Songfacts about the song: "We started off using the sound effects of the schoolyard so it would be very nostalgic, and that's a whole song about being at school together, and how these friends went their own different ways. One goes into manual labour, one goes into white-collar work, and one is an artist."

Release

For the U.S. and Canadian edition, on Columbia Records, the album cover was changed to a modified version of the design from the self-titled UK debut ''

''. The album title and band name were added over the forehead of the giant image and the colour tinting of the cover was changed. The US edition on Columbia also has the marker for track 6 in the wrong place. On this version, track number 5 ends early at 3:23 instead of 5:51 while incorrectly extending the length of track six from 3:04 to 5:32. This mistake remained in place on US releases of the album for decades, being carried over to the CD releases and even to online digital music distributors such as iTunes and Spotify. It has since been corrected.

Track listing

Personnel

Gentle Giant

* Gary Green –

electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...

mandolin A mandolin ( it, mandolino ; literally "small mandola") is a stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally plucked with a pick. It most commonly has four courses of doubled strings tuned in unison, thus giving a total of 8 ...

(track 2),

tambourine The tambourine is a musical instrument in the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zills". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though ...

(tracks 2, 5) *

Kerry Minnear Kerry Churchill Minnear (born 2 January 1948 in the town of Shaftesbury in Dorset, England) is a multi-instrumentalist musician known primarily for his work with the progressive rock band Gentle Giant from 1970 to 1980. He graduated from the Ro ...

–

Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated s ...

(tracks 1, 3–6),

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

(tracks 1, 2, 5),

electric piano An electric piano is a musical instrument which produces sounds when a performer presses the keys of a piano-style musical keyboard. Pressing keys causes mechanical hammers to strike metal strings, metal reeds or wire tines, leading to vibrations ...

(tracks 2, 3, 5),

Mellotron The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. A ...

(tracks 2, 6),

Minimoog The Minimoog is an analog synthesizer first manufactured by Moog Music between 1970 and 1981. Designed as a more affordable, portable version of the modular Moog synthesizer, it was the first synthesizer sold in retail stores. It was first popul ...

(tracks 1, 4, 6), Moog Modular (track 4),

Clavinet The Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds by a rubber pad striking a point on a tension ...

(track 3), Baldwin

spinet A spinet is a smaller type of harpsichord or other keyboard instrument, such as a piano or organ. Harpsichords When the term ''spinet'' is used to designate a harpsichord, typically what is meant is the ''bentside spinet'', described in this ...

electric harpsichord (track 2, 3),

vibraphone The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist,' ...

(track 2),

bongos Bongos ( es, bongó) are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed hand drums of different sizes. They are struck with both hands, most commonly in an eight-stroke pattern called ''martillo'' (hammer). The ...

(track 2),

triangle A triangle is a polygon with three Edge (geometry), edges and three Vertex (geometry), vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, an ...

(track 2), lead vocals (2, 6) *

–

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, concert snare (track 2),

hi-hat A hi-hat (hihat, high-hat, etc.) is a combination of two cymbals and a pedal, all mounted on a metal stand. It is a part of the standard drum kit used by drummers in many styles of music including rock, pop, jazz, and blues. Hi-hats consist o ...

(track 2),

bass drum The bass drum is a large drum that produces a note of low definite or indefinite pitch. The instrument is typically cylindrical, with the drum's diameter much greater than the drum's depth, with a struck head at both ends of the cylinder. Th ...

(track 2) *

Derek Shulman Derek Victor Shulman (born 11 February 1947) is a Scottish musician and singer, multi-instrumentalist, and record executive. From 1970 to 1980, he was lead vocalist for the band Gentle Giant. Career Born in the Gorbals, Glasgow, Scotland, Shul ...

– lead vocals (3–6) *

Phil Shulman Philip Arthur Shulman (born 27 August 1937, The Gorbals, Glasgow, Scotland), is a Scottish musician who was a member of the progressive rock group Gentle Giant from 1970 to 1973 and performed on their albums ''Gentle Giant'', ''Acquiring the Taste' ...

–

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

(tracks 1, 3, 4),

alto saxophone The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in E, smaller than the B tenor ...

(track 3),

baritone saxophone The baritone saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of instruments, larger (and lower-pitched) than the tenor saxophone, but smaller (and higher-pitched) than the bass. It is the lowest-pitched saxophone in common use - the bass, contra ...

(track 3), lead vocals (1, 2, 4, 6) *

Ray Shulman Raymond Shulman (born 8 December 1949) is a Scottish musician, and the youngest of three brothers in progressive rock band Gentle Giant. Shulman was born in Portsmouth. His father was a trumpet player in a jazz band, and that was the first inst ...

– bass,

fuzz bass Fuzz bass is a style of playing the electric bass or modifying its signal that produces a buzzy, distorted, overdriven sound, as the name implies. Overdriving a bass signal significantly changes the timbre, adds higher overtones (harmonics) ...

(track 1),

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

s (track 4),

electric violin An electric violin is a violin equipped with an electronic output of its sound. The term most properly refers to an instrument intentionally made to be electrified with built-in pickups, usually with a solid body. It can also refer to a violin fi ...

(track 5),

twelve-string guitar A twelve-string guitar (or 12-string guitar) is a steel-string guitar with 12 strings in six courses, which produces a thicker, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar. Typically, the strings of the lower four courses are tuned in o ...

(track 1), vocals (track 6)

Additional personnel

* Boy's voice on "Schooldays" – Calvin Shulman *Engineer –

Martin Rushent Martin Charles Rushent (11 July 1948 – 4 June 2011) was an English record producer, best known for his work with The Human League, The Stranglers and Buzzcocks. Early life Rushent was born on 11 July 1948 in Enfield, Middlesex. His father ...

*Sleeve Design – Rick Breach *Publisher – Excellency Music * Phonographic Copyright (p) – Malibu Record Productions, Inc.

Charts

References

{{Authority control 1972 albums Gentle Giant albums Columbia Records albums Concept albums Repertoire Records albums Vertigo Records albums