That was before Syd Barrett burst the bubble. In an interview with the weekly Melody Maker music paper, he said, ‘The Moles are just that shitty group Simon Dupree & The Big Sound.’ Once he’d intercepted our galactic flight, the engine stalled, and ‘We Are The Moles’ dropped right off the charts. It was such a dick move. Rather than allow the mystery around us to build—at no expense to him—he ratted us out.
Having the mysterious shroud of The Moles yanked off instantly halting our forward momentum was aggravating and made us want to escape the back-stabbing English pop scene and do something more obscure that catered to our musical interests instead of the fickle tastes of the mainstream. We needed new blood. I needed a change, and I got it. I just didn’t realize how much change I would experience over the next few months.
In late 1968, we went into Abbey Road to record the single ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls,’ which had chirping birds, a ringing bell, horns, and marching drums, but was otherwise a baroque pop song with yearning, mellifluous vocals. Eric Hine and I wrote the B-side, ‘Sleep,’ which had soulful vocals and prominently featured both Ray on violin and Phil on trumpet. I was credited on that one as Dupree—as in Simon Dupree—which I thought was funny. The song got some radio play, and we played many shows that year.
In 1969, we returned to the studio and recorded ‘Broken Hearted Pirates,’ a silly, up-tempo song that starts with a seafaring pop melody and features seagull sounds, piano, whimsical flutes, horns, and lyrics about, well, sad pirates. It was a disaster and a bad career move.
We had already been convinced to change course and record a psychedelic song that was outside of our milieu, and ‘Kites’ was huge. So, John King thought we should try another quirky song written by an outside songwriting team. At the time, The Foundations had a hit called ‘Baby Now That I’ve Found You,’ which featured an orchestra and big arrangements, and suddenly, every label wanted their bands to do a song like that. So, we did ‘Broken Hearted Pirates’ by Michael & Anthony, which was practically a parody of what we were doing before ‘Kites.’ It wasn’t just redundant; it seemed like we had lost our footing. When we performed the song on the popular German music program Beat-Club,
we embarrassed ourselves horribly by further fueling the parody by dressing up like pirates and hopping around the stage like idiots.
The only consolation of recording ‘Broken Hearted Pirates’ was hanging out with the actor and comedian Dudley Moore, who came into Abbey Road to play piano on the track (though for some reason he wasn’t credited). Long before he was nominated for an Oscar for his lead role in Arthur, Moore was best known for performing with Peter Cook in the hysterical comedy revue Beyond The Fringe. He told us he liked our music, and we enjoyed chatting with him. All three Shulman brothers wrote the B-side of ‘Broken Hearted Pirates,’ ‘She Gave Me The Sun.’ The music was buoyant and sparky, and Phil nailed the horn parts, which sounded great. Maybe that one should have been the single.
After ‘Broken Hearted Pirates,’ it was clear we had slid off the rails and needed to get back on the track or board a new train. We were annoyed with John, who had pushed us in musical directions we didn’t want to pursue. Ray and I were reluctant to confront him since he was our sister’s husband, so Phil did the honors. He had often argued with John about business decisions, anyway, so, in no uncertain terms, he told John how unhappy we were with his recent decisions. That ended our relationship with him.
For the sake of accuracy, we didn’t fire John King, and he had no plans to leave. But one day in the middle of one of several arguments with Phil about the unsatisfying creative path we were on, John slammed his fist on the table.
‘I don’t need this shit,’ he shouted. ‘Fuck it, Phil. You’ve pissed me off one time too many.’ Phil was the bad cop. For the sake of Eve, Ray and I played the good cops and asked John not to leave. If we had known they would eventually get divorced, we would have shown him the door ourselves. As it was, we were just paying him lip service. We were ready to move up to a more professional level of management. Sometimes everything works out for the best.
CHAPTER
SIX
COLD
FEET
Our search for a new manager brought us to the esteemed English record producer Gerry Bron, who had worked with tons of big acts including Gene Pitney, Uriah Heep, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and Manfred Mann. We knew Gerry through the Abbey Road scene, and he was the one who’d connected us with Elton John’s first manager, Dick James, about having Reg (Elton) fill in for Eric Hine on our Scotland tour. Gerry liked Simon Dupree, and he believed in us as pop stars and musicians. But he also had a greater vision for more forward-thinking music, and he was starting a new label and looking for groups to invest in as well as manage. It seemed like a great match—and, for a while, it was.
The last single we put out in Simon Dupree, ‘The Eagle Flies Tonight,’ was another song by Michael & Anthony. It was a pretty, earnest pop song with bursts of horns, splashes of strings, and a syrupy melody made for the radio. Except radio had moved on. Still, we could have kept going for a lot longer than we did. Our concerts were still packed, and the press couldn’t get enough of us. I was on the cover of Rave, Melody Maker, and other publications, and wherever we went, crowds of kids were there waiting.
It’s important to realize that the record business in the 60s wasn’t like today. We put all our singles together along with some other songs we tracked at the studio during our three-hour sessions, and Parlophone released it as our only album, Without Reservations, in August 1967. That was before we’d recorded ‘Kites,’ though the song was added to later pressings. Our fans loved it and were delighted to have all of our songs, including some that had never been released, on one album. Playing shows throughout the UK and some of Europe and releasing nine singles (not including the Moles seven-inch) between 1967 and 1969, we were constantly in the spotlight. So, even though some of our singles weren’t hits, our biggest songs—‘Kites,’ ‘I See The Light,’ ‘Reservations,’ and ‘Day Time, Night Time’—were real crowd-pleasers and kept the kids screaming like we were the second coming of The Beatles. So, it’s easy to understand why EMI balked at the idea of the Shulman brothers changing course musically after only one album with Simon Dupree & The Big Sound. We had a good thing going, and they didn’t want us to fuck it up. In some ways, we were getting to the point where we were beyond caring. We wanted to move forward as musicians, and the pop community was holding us back.
Maybe I would have been more aggressive about breaking up Simon Dupree before we recorded our last two singles if something else wasn’t weighing heavily on my mind. In 1968, after returning from a major tour, I proposed to Jennie. It seemed like the right thing to do. I needed more stability. I wanted a family, Jennie was Jewish, and I hadn’t met anyone else who seemed like marriage material. Was I crazy about her? I don’t know. I loved her, but I’m not sure I was in love with her. Nevertheless, she accepted my proposal. We were engaged.