That’s not because the songs aren’t good. Even with the band in accelerated motion, Kerry and Ray wrote some excellent, creative, and forward-thinking material, and the performances were good as well. But I found the chaos of spontaneous creation unsettling. I prefer order to disorder. We weren’t fully prepared to be thrown into the shark pool. We frantically thrashed around to stay afloat, and we did so quite successfully, but for me, it wasn’t an enjoyable experience. Critics loved the album, which was not like Gentle Giant yet just as adventurous and free-spirited and inspired many of the same reactions.
We recorded Acquiring The Taste back with Tony Visconti at AIR and Advision Studios in London. Recognizing that we were experienced musicians with a working knowledge of the studio, Tony allowed me and Ray to sit at the boards and work the machinery. It seemed like he was training us to produce, and he encouraged us to choose the sound design and effects that best complemented the compositions.
‘These songs have your mark all over them, so I don’t want to be heavy-handed with the production,’ Tony said. ‘If you have an idea, go for it, and I’ll help you to make it work.’
I’m so grateful to Tony for handing us the reins. He didn’t allow us to make mistakes that would damage the album, but he was open to any new ideas that would enhance our vision and felt the project benefitted from the different perspectives we put into it. So many producers are territorial and want the musicians to steer clear of the board. Tony was more like a guide and a guru. He showed us how to work together as a band under extreme pressure. He had the insight to know that we were the best people to judge how we should be recorded and what we should sound like, and he opened the doors for us to be self-sufficient.
Maybe I didn’t like writing and recording the songs with the frenetic energy of a manic painter who has a gallery show in a couple of days and is starting from a roomful of empty canvasses, but I loved learning how to control the session. Phil, by contrast, was frustrated by the whole process. Maybe he resented Tony for making me his wingman. Maybe he was frustrated that we were being forced to produce on a corporate deadline and didn’t have the time we usually took to fine-tune our music. Phil and I were like oil and vinegar when we weren’t recording, but put us in a bottle, shake us up, and everything comes out well-blended and flavorful.
Even when he was unhappy, Phil was devoted to the band and always played his parts well. He was a Shulman, after all. He, Ray, and I always rose to the occasion, as did Kerry and Gary. The broken link in the chain was our drummer, Martin. He was a jazzer, not a freeform, adventurous player, and he missed a lot of the changes. He managed to get by on the first album because we’d practiced so damn much, but during the sessions for Acquiring The Taste, he wasn’t cutting it. He hit the drums with the wrong feel. We needed a solid rhythm section behind our experimental music, but Martin played like he was still stuck in a pop group from 1969. He couldn’t keep up. We needed someone sharp and forward-thinking, yet he was more like an apprentice, which held us back. We’d already done our apprenticeship in Simon Dupree. We were no longer in the here and now, learning every step of the way. We were consistently aiming for the future, and we didn’t have the patience to lock ourselves in place to tutor and teach.
We knew we would have to put up with Martin’s shortcomings until we could find a replacement. That was partially on us, since we’d hired him, but it was a major source of frustration. What happened next was far more frustrating. We finished Acquiring The Taste in time to make our 1971 release deadline and proudly handed the tape to Gerry, who hadn’t heard anything we had done in the studio with Tony. At first, it seemed like he was in a good mood. He was upbeat and looking forward to his first exposure to our latest sound. Soon after he hit play, his smile turned sour. With every song, he grimaced and clenched his teeth. His eyes started to bulge.
‘What the fuck is this?!’ he blurted out.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘It’s the album.’
‘Okay, but it’s a demo, right?’
‘No, this is what Tony gave me. It’s done.’
To our shock, Gerry hated Acquiring The Taste. He said it was the worst piece of shit he’d heard in his life. ‘I can’t work with this!’ he exclaimed. ‘Experimental music is one thing. I don’t know what the fuck this is.’
This was a huge problem. Gerry hated the album, yet he had funded the band, and he was still our manager. He set up tour dates for us, but his heart wasn’t into it. Whatever he saw in us when we put out Gentle Giant was no longer exciting to him, which I couldn’t understand. Our debut album was more labored over than Acquiring The Taste, but we had improved as performers and songwriters by the time we wrote and recorded the new songs, and we were clearly the same band. We hadn’t reached the peak of our powers, but we were getting there. Yet Gerry saw the album as a huge step backward and said he could no longer tell where Gentle Giant was going.
We were dumbfounded, frustrated, depressed, angry. We were a progressive rock band. No two Gentle Giant albums sounded the same, and we didn’t want them to. For us, that’s what being progressive meant. Our greatest fear was to parody ourselves the way we thought Simon Dupree & The Big Sound had done with ‘Broken Hearted Pirates.’ When we signed with Gerry, he had been on board with our desire to constantly evolve, expand, and progress.
As a symbolic ‘fuck you’ to anyone who called us pretentious and thought our demanding music was an exercise in self-indulgence, or worse, shitty songwriting, Phil and I designed the controversial cover art, depicting a saliva-dripping tongue protruding from an open mouth and toward what appears to be a bare butt. When the gatefold sleeve is opened, the drawing extends to reveal the buttocks as a juicy peach. We thought it was clever, if not entirely subtle. We were tired of being compared to Simon Dupree & The Big Sound, we felt betrayed by label people who wanted us to be more mainstream, and we wanted to be judged on our own merits, not on the success of other so-called progressive bands. So, we put out album art that said we weren’t going to lick anyone’s ass to be successful, and we weren’t going to listen to anyone who told us what to do. The only ones we answered to were ourselves.
Along with the controversial cover art, the packaging for Acquiring The Taste included an essay by Phiclass="underline"
Acquiring The Taste is the second phase of sensory pleasure. If you’ve gorged yourself on our first album, then relish the finer flavours (we hope) of this, our second offering. It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of being very unpopular. We have recorded each composition with the one thought—that it should be unique, adventurous and fascinating. It has taken every shred of our combined musical and technical knowledge to achieve this. From the outset we have abandoned all preconceived thoughts of blatant commercialism. Instead we hope to give you something far more substantial and fulfilling. All you need to do is sit back, and acquire the taste.’
Ultimately, Gerry Bron quit managing the band. He still liked us as people, but he felt so betrayed by the album we had submitted to him that he could no longer support us or our music. That’s where Simon Dupree & The Big Sound’s gangster connections came back in. Wilf Pine and the Kray brothers’ compadres in London were Don Arden (father of the future Sharon Osbourne) and Patrick Meehan, who conducted business together and founded Worldwide Artists Management in 1970. So, when we severed ties with Gerry, Pine’s people suggested we contact Meehan, their colleague in the mob. Worldwide’s biggest clients at the time were Black Sabbath, who by 1971 had transformed from a straight, serious psychedelic blues band to a dark, drug-and-alcohol-fueled ‘metal’ band (before the term was coined) with demonic iconography and some Satanic lyrics. The team also managed The Groundhogs and The Edgar Broughton Band and co-managed Yes with Brian Lane. They had a far greater profile than Bron, so we were happy to make the leap.