"It's like stepping back in time," writes one admirer; "I feel like I've discovered the Holy Grail," says another. A reviewer for New Gibralter Progressive Rock Encyclopedia writes: "HTM produced some of the most stirring, complex, melodic, and MUSICAL works I have ever heard."

I came to know of Happy The Man in 1982, while as a high school senior. An oddball--never given to New Wave or Top 40--I was addicted to progressive rock and so were all my friends: early Genesis, Yes and Pink Floyd, Gentle Giant, and less apparent maestros, like John McLaughlin and his Mahavishnu Orchestra, the Dixie Dregs and French electric violinist Jean Luc-Ponty. Thinking-man's music. Call it a "cast of mind": Why some enjoy watching Gilligan's Island and others prefer a Discovery Channel documentary on life in a coral reef. Who knows?

But on the day that I stopped into Tower Records, a lifetime ago, and read in the then-latest in-house Tower music magazine that Peter Gabriel considered something called "Happy The Man" his "favorite band," I endeavored to know everything there was to know about this mysterious confederation.

By 1974, six young American men, five college students and a recently-discharged Army grunt, with a passion for British progressive rock and classical strains of Stravinsky and Ravel, forged a creative partnership that has morphed and spun out and yet endured, quietly over time.

The first years of HTM's existence were fraught with the usual hits and misses. Keyboardist Christopher "Kit" Watkins, son of a classical composer and James Madison university professor father, provided much of the band's chops in the early days, drawing upon improbable time-signatures (5/4, 11/9) and creating unique textures, a la Brian Eno, with his Moog synthesizer. A little too derivative of very early-Genesis, early on, perhaps, as the "airy-fairy" "Gretchen's Garden" (from the newly-released Beginnings CD) proves. And there was always a struggle with the concept of using the services of a vocalist. (The battle was lost when Cliff Fortney departed, sensing the band's desire to head in the direction of symphonic music, allowing the band to concentrate on composition and experimentation in rhythm. All-told, in three official Happy The Man LPs, only six tracks contain lyrics, which are brought off ably by guitarist Stan Whitaker, though prog-rock purists like to bitch about it.)

By 1976, roadie friends for Genesis and Little Feat began popping in and out of the band's communal home in Reston, VA, to listen to the newest licks and spoke to Happy The Man in whispers of great things in the offing, if only they'd stick around. It was about this time that Whitaker would step up and, in a collegial way, begin competing with Kit Watkins and woodwinds-man Frank Wyatt for songwriting credit. And is also when Peter Gabriel discovered Happy The Man.

Recalls Whitaker: "Peter came to the Happy the Man rehearsal warehouse in, I believe, the Arlington area (on the Virginia side of Washington D.C.) on June 26th, 1976. I remember distinctly because it was Amerika's bi-centennial and the day before my birthday. I had met him at a couple of Genesis concerts previously and I remember him once saying to me after some question on spiritual beliefs, "I'm a warbler . . .", which he said was a British warlock . . . okay . . . needless to say he is a bit of a foreboding character, one of my favorite singers/artists/performers of all time and I'm sure we were all just a wee bit nervous about meeting him and playing with him. (Especially with him walking out on the previous bands shortly after arriving . . .)

"He spent over seven hours with us. We had very natural chemistry with him. He seemed a little 'spacey' when he would sit at the piano to play us one of his new songs. He would stop singing in mid sentence while holding the piano chord down . . . and then 'out of nowhere' he'd seemingly come back into his body and continue singing right where he left off! I remember looking at each other and nudging each other like "what the fuck . . . is he doing!" Talking about it now, I realize the songs were so new and fresh to him (first post-Genesis stuff ever) that he didn't really know exactly where they were going without a band's input . . . and would pause to 'channel' in a little more; or, shit, maybe he just forgot the words!

"We mostly concentrated on two songs: "Slowburn" and "Down the Dolce Vita" [from Gabriel's first solo LP, 1977]. We had them both sounding pretty tight as a band and you could tell Peter was digging it. He was starting to loosen up a bit and actually smile. He wanted to leave with a tape of those two songs w/o vocals (probably so he could tighten up the vocals and lyrics) which we gladly gave him. Shit, we were 21-22 years old, we were close to being signed to Arista Records, and we were playing with Peter-fucking-Gabriel! Life was good . . ."

Sometime in late-76, the band found its groove; and through a series of jaw-dropping concerts at the long-running Cellar Door Theatre, Washington, D.C., which attracted an A&R guy from Arista Records, run by the legendary (love him or hate him) Clive Davis, who brought it all together and provided for the group a 48-track studio in the Big Apple. "At first he didn't get it," says Arista's Rick Chertoff, of Davis's take on Happy The Man, after its official studio audition. "You could hear a pin drop in that studio. But I stood up and began clapping."

Mr. Davis, who was and still is accustomed to courting pop divas--from Whitney Houston to Britney Spears--deferred to his A&R associate, and Happy The Man was signed to a five-year series of renewable one-year deals. He would also call upon the production services of Ken Scott, a recording legend, engineer and producer of David Bowie (Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Hunky Dory), the Dixie Dregs (Night of the Living Dregs) and Supertramp (Crime of the Century).