Happy the Man Quotes

The band was founded in 1972 by me and David Bach (the original keyboardist). We went to Frankfurt High School in Germany where we were exposed to King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Van der Graf and many others in 1969. We graduated in 1972 and spent the summer touring all the army bases in Germany with a group called Shady Grove. This is where we met Rick Kennell. We had a lot in common musically, (I remember him jamming with us on "The Knife" by Genesis) and he had a drummer friend in Ft. Wayne, Indiana named Mike Beck who'd be real into it. We told him we'd wait for him to get out of the army since we were moving back to the United States to go to Madison College in Harrisonburg, Virginia and put Happy the Man together.
Stan Whitaker

My older brother Ken came up with the name Happy the Man. He had gotten it from Goethe's Faust and the Bible. We liked it because we felt it fit our music and who we were. A bit different... We weren't quite as 'dark and brooding and plodding' as many of our prog contemporaries. We felt our music had some spiritual undertones to it and would hopefully uplift the people who 'got it' and be transforming for us as well them (especially in a 'live' setting). We had three very different composers with Kit, Frank and me and yet it all seemed to fit together quite nicely
Stan Whitaker