There can be few melodic rock/AOR bands from the last decade or so who've had quite the same indelible impact as Giant. Exploding onto the scene right at the tail end of the 80's with their immense debut 'Last of The Runaways', they immediately set their stall out to impress, really giving the established hierarchy something to think about in the process. A couple of years later they hit back with album number two 'Time To Burn', slightly harder edged, but equally as impressive. Unfortunately, by that time the honeymoon was definitely over for hard rock in general as the depressing tide of grunge swamped everything in it's path, and like so many others, the band folded. Recently persuaded back for another shot, the much anticipated 'Giant III' is all set to knock 'em dead once again. DAVE COCKETT spoke recently to drummer DAVID HUFF.

Of all the band's you might have expected to ride the storm out back in the grunge infested early 90's, Giant would've been the one. Whilst slightly heavier than the illustrious debut, 'Time To Burn' still had all the characteristic trademarks, and more importantly, it seemed to come through the general press backlash pretty much unscathed. So why then you'd think, would the band knock it on the head? "Well basically, by the time we'd finished that record," David explains, "music in the States here had changed beyond all recognition. Bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam were the new sensations, grunge was coming in and it was just so totally anti melodic rock. Everything was… the big choruses, the big guitars… grunge hated that with a vengeance. And you know, when that became big, our music just died out. I mean, here in the States you couldn't get arrested, you couldn't get a deal… nobody noticed you at all. We could've tried to change direction, put on the flannel shirts to try and get a new deal, but we made a conscious decision not to. A lot of bands tried that, but we just didn't want to. We did Giant how we wanted to do Giant, and to just change wouldn't have felt right.

"That change meant a lot of things," he continues. "One of the things it meant was that bands who were touring in arenas before were now playing small, tiny clubs, and our music wasn't meant to be played in a small club, it was just too big for that. And like I said, we never wanted to chase a trend. We figured that music was kinda very cyclical anyway, and that everything tends to come back around, maybe not in exactly the same format, but the style always comes back around in some way… so that was our reasoning for putting things on hold for a while."

Perhaps the first signs that things were not quite right came with the departure of keyboard player Alan Pasqua. "During the making of our second record 'Time To Burn'," says David, "Alan had ended up moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is a long way away. And we lived in Nashville, we'd moved from Los Angeles to Nashville, one of the reasons being that our management was out of New York, and our second record company was also based there. And so we were all… Dann moved back first, Mike had always kind of lived here and in LA, and then we all decided that I really needed to move back here so that it kept it easy for travelling. It seemed that every time we'd go on tour we'd start in Florida, and we'd be in LA which was our home… KLAS radio station broke our band, but… it was mainly for logistical reasons that we decided we had to move. But then Alan decided to leave whilst we were making that second album. He was getting interested in other things; he had a jazz trio or quartet or something and he wanted to go off in that direction. I don't think he actually wanted to quit the band, but it kind of got to the point where commitment wise his priorities were changing.

"There was no animosity or anything like that," David adds, "it's just that… we were rehearsing, and because of other commitments he'd made to play in certain places he couldn't be here, and so we ended up getting another keyboard player in to go tour with us after that second record. But there's no bad feeling, Alan is an incredibly talented guy, he brought a ton to the band. We still see him every once in a while when he comes up to Nashville to do some work."

Despite some excellent reviews in the music press, 'Time To Burn' was the unfortunate victim of wrong place, wrong time. "We took a huge dip in sales with that album," David admits, "like I tell everyone, that record… when grunge hit, melodic rock just died. It was like the dinosaurs, you couldn't find it anywhere, haha! Right at the time when we'd finished recording and mixing, just as the album came out, that's when all those bands started to really sell records. So we were definitely excess fat by then and our sales were virtually non existent."

I wondered if there had ever been talk of a Giant reunion before now, especially when the grunge thing finally burned itself out in the mid 90's? "Yeah you know, we all… Dann and I produce a lot of records," David offers, "and we do a lot of different styles; and Mike is incredibly busy; but all the records we've done in between, there's still a part of this rock 'n' roll missing, you know. This style of music is just so powerful, and when we started to pull up some of the songs to do the recording, it was like 'Wow, no wonder we miss this stuff!'. We definitely thought about putting the band back together at some point. The idea for this whole thing came about with, erm… all along I had tried to figure out a way to do another record, just because we had some material lying around that I had always wanted to get out. And so I ended up meeting Mario and Serafino at Frontiers through another friend… I don't know if I was ever looking to take us back to what we were, but I was definitely looking to do this kind of music again, at least in some aspect or other. And you know, like I said, this style of music is so powerful and passionate that you don't really realise what you're missing until you start doing it again. It's like 'No wonder we love doing this stuff, no wonder Giant was how it was because we love this kind of stuff'."

Although both Mike Brignardello and particularly Dann Huff have made quite a name for themselves on the session circuit over the past decade, David instead has concentrated more on production work. "It had actually started when Giant split," he recalls. "What got me into it was that I was always into programming… keyboards, drum machines, all that kind of stuff because I got into writing that way. That led to a lot of work for me in Los Angeles as a programmer, and it just kind of evolved from there. I always loved the aspect of production, loved it. We were involved a little bit in the production of the second Giant record with Terry Thomas, and it just seemed to be a kind of natural progression for me because it was something I'd always wanted to do. Even when we first moved to LA, I always wanted to get involved in that side of the business."

Certainly nobody would argue that it offers a more secure career path. "Well yeah," David laughs, "but honestly, I was the drummer in Giant, and I also wrote songs… but I never saw myself as just a drummer. Dann and I come from a really musical family, my father was a string arranger. He'll occasionally do some stuff now, but he's been involved with some huge, absolutely huge pop records throughout his working life. We had a lot of classical influences; he was the director of the Pops symphony in Nashville, Tennessee for ten years… so we have the classical kind of background, of course our rock 'n' roll, and then pop music too… so I guess when I look back it was probably inevitable that I'd get involved in production. And Dann as well too by the way. Dann was so busy playing guitar for everybody, and honestly I was like 'Oh man, you've gotta be the best producer in this town, why aren't you producing, why are you just playin' guitar?', haha! And you know, he literally had to break from what he was doing to get into production, which now he does all the time of course. He's incredible."

By not restricting himself to producing acts from within the rock sphere, David has managed to maintain his drive and enthusiasm for the music. "Absolutely," he agrees. "I think… somebody asked me the other day why melodic rock died, and it's like everything else you know, when you start going through the motions you're not making music anymore. You're just going to work and punching the time clock, and people that are buying records… you have to totally respect the fans that are buying records. You've got to make music great, it's all about quality not quantity, and so being involved with different styles of music doesn't ever allow you to get into a rut. When you produce, you're using different players, you're using a different side of your brain… you have to think differently, and so it does tend to keep you on your toes, yeah."

So why is now the right time to launch another Giant record? "Well, I had talked to Serafino and Mario," David explains, "and we'd kind of developed a friendship. Honestly, when we first started this idea of putting together the Giant record, I was really hesitant about it. I said 'I love the idea of doing another record, I just don't know if there's any fans left.' I felt like we'd been totally removed, especially in the States here, you'd be hard pushed to find a Giant fan in the mainstream. But obviously, Mario and Serafino put me straight on that one, haha!"

"I guess the fans over in Europe are totally different to here in the States," he adds." Here it's all about catching the latest trend, whereas they tend to follow your career… and it took me just a little while to gain a trust in somebody. For us to do another record… we didn't need to do another record. Everybody's real busy, it's not like we're doing it out of desperation. And I really wanted to develop a trust in somebody that had a passion for the music because I think that's the best ever combination you could get into. When we signed with our US labels, I mean, they were knocking down our doors, they were totally passionate about what we were doing… loved us! And you want that kind of combination, because that's the way we feel about music too, and when I met Mario and Serafino, that's what developed. I totally got to trust them and I knew that they'd take care of whatever project we were doing. So I guess it was probably all down to timing and finding some label that believed in this project, which they do. They're really supportive, and it's a really nice feeling to have someone supporting you like that."

Once a deal had been struck, both Dann and Mike were quick to come on board. "They were always into the idea," David affirms. "I seem to be the ringleader as far as co-ordinating all the details of this thing. They always said to me 'If it's something you'd put your name on, count us in'. I've been involved with a lot of record dealings over the years; I've done a lot of negotiations, a lot of licensing deals all over the place, I do a lot of things like that. Part of one of the things I do is that I own a lot of records both throughout the States, and through Europe. It started out as a bit of a side business, but I ended up kind of doing it a lot. So they trusted me. They said 'If something hits you that seems to be right, count us in, we'd love to do it'. And I mean, over the years we've had a lot of offers to make another Giant record, and for one reason or another it's just never been the right time to do it. Whether it was logistics or whatever it was… and one of the things, it was like 'Well, let's try this and see' - we didn't want to just try something, it had to be right, it had to be all or nothing. Or we'd get 'Maybe you could experiment and try some songs', but to me, Giant is Giant. It is what it is, both then and now. It's got it's own entity, and it's got its own sound, and it needs to stay pretty close to that. Which meant it was kinda weird there being a ten year gap between records, haha!"

With such an instantly identifiable sound, the band would never have been allowed to get away with anything else anyway. "Exactly," David agrees, "and like I said, that's not what we're about. We had all the opportunities, especially back then, to jump labels and go into the studio, write back to back to try and make a hip record… but to us, that was our music, and we stayed pretty true to that."

Whilst 'Giant III' is a brand new album, some of the songs on it are considerably older. "It's a mixture of both old and new songs," David explains. "We had some songs that were actually done during the second record, and… actually even in between records. We had quite a catalogue of stuff on tape. That was one of the hardest things for me, to go through all the stuff we had on tape, pick the songs, and then mix the stuff… and then we ended up cutting some new stuff, so it's a nice combination. Then we had some live stuff… I mean, after ten years… I specifically remember one day I went over to my brother's house. I had some stuff in my vault, I keep a lot of masters and stuff, and Dann… he has a studio too so I went over to his place to sort through some tapes. Man it was chaos! All the tapes that he has, none of 'em are labelled or anything, which is kind of the charm of him I guess, it's just… that's just him, that's the way he is. I'm a bit anal about marking and categorising, that's one of the main differences between us, ha ha! So I went over to his place and I had boxes and boxes of tapes to go through... I was just totally overwhelmed. But it was kinda fun. I got a big cup of coffee and just started going through tapes… it took me a long time, but it brought back a lot of great memories."

Even though the bulk of the songs had been written for some while, getting them into a suitably fit state to release was quite a task. "That took a lot of work," David agrees. "There were a couple of songs that were already mixed that we had in the can, but some we had to pull together, we had to mix 'em and finish 'em up. Some things were close to being finished, but they weren't quite finished, you know, and some others we had to kind of reconstruct and start over. I remember on a couple of songs we just kept the vocal and maybe one rhythm guitar track, the rest we just rebuilt up from scratch. There was quite a bit of re-recording to do, but that was one of those kind of surreal moments when we were in the studio cutting tracks, it was great. Like I said, that kind of music, when you actually play it, it's so intense. I think there's a real void in music over here right now… I love all kinds of different styles of music I honestly do, but man, the power and the passion of this kind of music, you just don't see it out there all that often anymore."

Unusually, the band have absolutely no preconceptions whatsoever as to how the album will be received. "We were definitely pleasantly surprised with the outcome," David admits, "and I've been asked the question before, you know 'What are your expectations?' And honestly, we're proud of the record, but hell, we just don't have any expectations from it. My view is that I want to get people's reactions to it, to see if they like it or if they don't. I'm very curious to see what the fans out there think of it. In recording it … some bands are like 'Oh, we gotta do this', or 'We gotta top that', but musically that's not how we did any of our records. We go in and record 'em and they come out how they come out. We're not trying to compete with ourselves. All we like to do is to make passionate, great music… that's our only expectation. We don't like to put anything out unless we can really stand behind it."

Which brings us around to the question of whether this is to be just a brief distraction, or whether Giant has a longer term future. "Well, honestly it's not anything yet," David confesses. "To me the options are all wide open right now, we're honestly just waiting to start to get some feedback from people. If there's a great response, then I'm sure there'll be talk of another record. Mario and Serafino, they definitely want us to do another record, and like I said, that's totally open. Firstly we want to know whether there's a market out there. I mean, if it doesn't sell, it doesn't mean that it isn't any good, it might be a timing thing or whatever… that's why we have this understanding with the record company, let's just see what it does. Let's see if there's a real passion to get Giant to come and play over there. I'm in contact with the record company at least a couple of times a week by phone or by Email, and I'm sure they'll keep me posted, and I know Serafino well enough to… I'm sure he's gonna make us do another record, haha!"

On a final note, David still seems quite surprised at the high regard in which Giant are held by the melodic rock brethren over here and in Europe. "I was really surprised," he admits, "when they asked me to make a statement about us actually signing with them (Frontiers). They asked me what I wanted to say to the fans, and I said 'Well, if there are any fans out there, I hope that this record will satisfy you'. And he was like 'You hope there's fans!?', haha! And it made the guy from melodicrock.com [Andrew McNiece] … he did a tribute page, and they called me up and said 'You gotta go to the web page and read every single one'. You know, and I was expecting maybe four or five Emails, haha! … and then I opened the page and it was like 'Wow! There are Giant fans out there!"