I can’t say the same for Phil. Since Phil was considerably older than Ray and me, he thought he deserved to be the head of our musical family. He was older, and as a teenager he’d often taken care of Ray and me. He was our big brother, and we looked up to him. When we played cricket together, he coached me to up my game. ‘C’mon, bowl harder!’ he’d say. ‘You can give me more than that.’ So, I kept working at it, got stronger, learned to bowl faster, and made the county team. When I heard the news, it seemed like Phil was as proud as I was. When he became a teacher, he was equally supportive and assertive with his students. But he was used to being in control, and he had trouble accepting that our ideas regarding music and the band were just as valid as his, if not more so.
Phil couldn’t change the way things were. I was the frontman. Everyone was looking at me onstage, and when we weren’t under the spotlight, I still got most of the attention. Even people at management or the label would ask me how and when things were done. That Phil was unable to reverse the natural order of band hierarchy was frustrating to him. You can’t very well go up to a journalist or a radio interviewer and say, ‘Hold on, I’m older, and I bought the van. Ask me all the questions.’ But Phil got increasingly frustrated, to the point where he started to hate the press.
The sibling rivalry that began with Simon Dupree & The Big Sound continued for years and would be part of the reason why Phil eventually left Gentle Giant. I’ve been called a perfectionist, and there may be some truth to that, but I’ve never been a control freak. In the band, we tended to do things my way because my way usually seemed to work. While Ray accepted this, Phil always wanted to argue when he didn’t agree with me. And when we argued, we went at it. We share a gene for stubbornness, and we rarely compromised without a fight. Maybe Ray was the smartest of the three of us. He wanted us all to get along and for the band to benefit from the kinship, even if we agreed to disagree. Our brother Terry was wise enough to stay away from the fraternal fray and made his living as a sculptor and artist. He was possibly the most genuine artist of the Shulman clan.
As everyone from Ray Davies to Noel Gallagher will tell you, it’s very hard to be in a band with your brother. I had two, and that made everything confusing as hell. On the one hand, I still instinctively saw Phil as my mentor, but he was also a rival when we didn’t want the same thing. I was the head of the band, and I wanted my way. And Ray wanted us to do whatever would stop us from arguing.
I could be wrong, but I think Phil was jealous. Before Simon Dupree, Phil had been at the top of the brotherly hierarchy, and I accepted him as such. Now, I was the young cub taking over the older lion’s role in the pack. So, naturally, Phil fought back. We both loved the band, and we both thought we knew best how to steer it. I can’t say I always made the right decisions, but I always believed in whatever choices I made, and I usually got my way. Sometimes that made Phil resentful, so he dug in his heels. He would yell at me about missing a line in a song or holding a note too long, which threw off his tempo. He gave the other players equal time. He shouted at Ray on the rare occasions Ray goofed, and the same went for Kerry and Gary in Gentle Giant. And vice versa. We all scrutinized every element of our playing, and, after gigs, we each pointed out every tiny mistake that was made in an effort to improve. The funny thing is, in both Simon Dupree and Gentle Giant, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, we would bicker about onstage mistakes that only we noticed. No one in the crowd could. We rarely made major mistakes. We were all talented and experienced, and we had great chemistry.
Whenever the volume of our rows got loud enough to bleed through locked dressing room doors, the rest of the band would cower in the corner. Ray always waited out the storm, knowing Phil and I would eventually stop fighting. I can only imagine what the other guys were thinking.
Oh shit, they’re going to break up the band. They’re going to start punching each other, and that will be the end.
We never did, though. We wouldn’t ever have resorted to blows, because physical violence was off-limits for the Shulmans. Ray knew that, but the other guys in the band were always ready for a bloodbath, and we freaked out more than a few musicians along the way.
Maybe Phil’s angst and irascibility stemmed from his youth. He and Evelyn were born in pre-war Glasgow and grew up in the Jewish ghetto with my parents before Ray and I were born. During the war, Dad enlisted in the military, so, at a critical stage of his development, Phil lacked a father figure. Meanwhile, Dad was assigned to be a paratrooper, and the whole family had to move out of Glasgow and live with scores of other military families in the slums of England. They weren’t just living in squalid conditions; they were living in fear and desperation. They were constantly under threat of bombing from the Germans, and frequently there wasn’t enough food to go around.
When Dad came back from the war, he probably had post-traumatic stress disorder, which might have contributed to his excessive drinking, late nights out, and early death. Regardless, Phil was subjected to an absent parent far longer than I was, and when Dad died, Phil was robbed of whatever connection he had with our father. He was already a natural cynic and had this existential Jean-Paul Sartre attitude: Nothing matters because we’re all dust in the end. That only fueled his pessimism when our father died. We were all shocked and saddened. More than the rest of us, Phil was also angered, and his anger always simmered under the surface, which might be why he had a shorter fuse.
In his defense—and maybe to his detriment—Phil was also intellectually brilliant, and he questioned everything. He was an academic who found his way into the rock life, and those two worlds don’t always mesh. There are plenty of smart musicians, but most rock stars are guys from working-class roots, and their education comes from making music, touring, and performing. Primarily, they focus on what they’re good at, and they don’t always ask questions.
At the same time, you have to give credit to bands like Cream, Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and so on, because regardless of how much they drank, how many drugs they did, or how many girls they slept with, they were brilliant musicians. Had they not written great songs and played together really well, they wouldn’t have lasted. You can fluke your way to fame, but you can’t stay successful without talent. The best bands all got their chops down back in the day, long before they were playing for sold-out crowds and trashing hotel rooms. They had to because image and outrageousness meant nothing on their own. Without serious talent, you went on to become a pallbearer or a plumber’s assistant.
Ozzy Osbourne worked in a slaughterhouse and Tony Iommi worked in a sheet-metal factory before I met them. That was a miserable existence, but that’s what most people did in post-war Britain. Being a musician wasn’t glamorous until you were a star, and it was damn hard work. Most musicians were looked down on by the upper class. Fortunately, the working-class people who worked at factories and other blue-collar jobs loved rock’n’roll because it spoke to them—as long as it was fucking good.
Today, there’s somewhat less separation between the upper class and the middle class. When I grew up, England was a place of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots,’ and most people had very little. Ninety percent of society in the 60s and 70s was working class, and only about ten percent came from the upper class and had money. Another five percent of the population was middle class, which meant they were maybe college-educated or owned businesses and didn’t have to work menial jobs. Hardly any popular musicians were from the upper class and very few were middle class. And for the working class, it was either make a living as a musician, play professional football, or work in a factory. Because of my upbringing and schooling, I think I would have gone to university and become an academic like Phil, but fortunately, rock’n’roll saved our lives.