33 ⅓ minutes with... Kerry Minnear

Kerry Minnear joined Gentle Giant in 1970. Whereas the core of the band - brothers Phil, Derek and Ray Shulman - progressed from popsike hitmakers Simon Dupree & The Big Sound, Minnear came more or less straight from The Royal Academy of Music where he graduated with qualifications in musical composition, piano and classical percussion.

- Daryl Easlea

His contributions to the group, one of the most mysterious of all prog outfits, added to their unique sound, utilising cellos, glockenspiels, and recorders. Never to reunite after their 10-year stint (1970-80), Gentle Giant remain much loved, and their 1977 double live, Playing The Fool, is reissued this month, fully souped up and raring to go.

Playing The Fool has always been dear to GG's collective hearts, has it not?

That album is really special, because we played with a lot more freedom once we knew the songs really well. When we recorded, it was very often after just learning it all. But when we went on tour, we started to put our characters into our own parts, so there was a lot more personality. Plus, there is that element of boredom when you're playing the same things regularly, so we started to put each other off by changing timings and adding in practical jokes. There was a lot of fun when we played live, and we changed the songs often so that we didn't have really difficult things to play, so that we didn't all have our heads down concentrating, because we always wanted to look out at the audience. The energy was more important than the intellectual perfection . . . If there was a groove going, we wanted to keep it going longer.

There was always an element of - and I mean this in the best way - a showband about GG live . . .