Being back in school was strange. No one knew or seemed to care why I was absent for two days. It was almost like nothing had happened. None of the students or faculty said anything to me, and as I drifted from class to class, I kept to myself and remained silent. On some level, I think I was embarrassed to be a kid who suddenly had no father. I already felt weird because we were poor, and I played this strange music with my brother. Now, I felt like even more of an outcast.
When I got back from school, people started coming over to sit shiva with us. After someone Jewish dies, friends and community members visit the family every day for between three days and a week. They bring food and drink and keep the bereaved company, which was comforting but also confusing. I’d go to school and pretend everything was normal, then come home to people who wanted to help mourn my father’s death. Some of them told funny stories about my dad, which was amusing but bittersweet, since my father wouldn’t be telling any more stories or playing any more gigs. After shiva, the house was empty, and entering the front door was like walking into a hole.
Everyone tried to go on with their daily lives. It was hard, and my mom was the glue that kept us together. When there were melancholy lulls, Phil and my sister, the eldest siblings, tried to keep the conversation flowing. To me, it seemed like we were all putting on a play. I tried to march along through my normal routine, but my steps had no grounding. There was no floor under my feet.
The terrible dreams began within a week after Dad’s death. Night after night, I’d relive that horrid morning in vivid Technicolor, starting from the sound of my father coughing right up until the moment the doctor told us he was dead. But then, at the end of the dream, my father would always wake up and say something like, ‘No, it’s okay. I’m fine. Let’s go make some music.’ And he’d get out of bed. The dream recurred every night for nine months. Despite the happy ending, it was terrifying.
Ray also had trouble sleeping through the night. That didn’t stop us from practicing music as hard as ever. We were determined to continue the band we had formed. It gave us something to focus on, so we weren’t always thinking about Dad being gone. And it made us feel good. We were getting better, and we knew it. Even before Phil joined and brought his musical abilities into our group, we were finally playing songs that moved well. They were soulful and catchy. We were learning how to combine the sounds of our biggest influences—The Beatles, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Muddy Waters, and B.B. King—with the romantic fervor of English pop, without sounding like anyone else.
We wished Dad was alive to see us improve, become popular, ascend the national charts, and play Top Of The Pops as Simon Dupree & The Big Sound a few years later. But at least he saw us perform at a small soul and blues club. We were nowhere near ready for the big time, but whenever I looked over at Dad during the show, he was smiling. He was so proud of us for carrying on the Shulman music tradition.
For a good year after he died, I went to Saturday morning Shabbat services as often as I could to honor my father, just as Uncle Chaim had asked me to do. Sometimes that meant rushing home from Friday night gigs so I could get enough sleep to get up early the next day and be awake enough not to fall asleep at temple. During a service, the rabbi repeatedly instructs the congregation to stand up and sit back down, so it’s glaringly obvious if you’re deep in slumber. As Simon Dupree & The Big Sound started playing more shows outside of Portsmouth, it became harder to make it to services, and eventually I stopped going. But even now, on the rare times I’m in a synagogue, I say the mourner’s Kaddish for my dad and other loved ones I’ve lost over the years.
Losing our father at such a young age had a profound effect on all of us. None of us thought we were going to live past the age of fifty, which was one reason we progressed and performed like we had the proverbial noose of time around our necks. During the fifteen years or so between the nascent days of Simon Dupree & The Big Sound and the end of Gentle Giant, we drove in fifth gear at double the speed limit. We knew we couldn’t do this forever, so we were non-stop as if our lives depended on it. We were determined to succeed. Failure wasn’t an option, and if it took working twice as hard as any of our peers, that was what we would do.
At the very least, we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were making music that we loved and that would have impressed our dad and made him proud; for most people, that was a tall order, since he was a natural and could play any instrument five minutes after picking it up. More importantly, we wanted—no, needed—to succeed on a national and international level. In Dad’s absence, we had to help our mom so she didn’t have to work so hard. She gave up everything for years to support us. It was our turn to give back. We didn’t want to spend money on cars, girls, and materialistic indulgences. We wanted to take care of her and the rest of the family. When I reached the point with Simon Dupree where I had a solid income, I bought my mom a house, and I was happy to do it. We lived there with her for a while, but I made all the payments, and, after all she had done to support me, I was proud to be able to provide something tangible for her.
In my late teens and early twenties, I felt like my experience proved I needed to stay clean, run like the wind, and grab every opportunity by the balls just to remain in control and not wind up like my dad. It took some intensive therapy as an adult to realize I had been suffering from post-traumatic stress that whole time, and long after my dad died. Aside from the nightmares and the relative certainty that I wasn’t going to live past fifty, I’ve had various psychological issues, some of which are still with me to this day.
I could never call my dad’s death a mixed blessing. It was a horrible tragedy, yet some of the fallout from that tragedy was positive. I knew Dad’s lifestyle had contributed to his heart attack, and I vowed to take care of myself and avoid dangerous indulgences. I wasn’t opposed to the idea of sin, and I didn’t fear eternal damnation. I just didn’t want to die before I made a significant mark on the world. So, I’ve tried to eat healthily, exercise regularly, and avoid the temptations that brought down my father, because I didn’t know how much of his undoing was in his genes—and mine—and how much was due to his smoking and drinking.
I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I’ve only done hashish a couple of times, and I didn’t enjoy the brain fog. I’ve never been drunk (although I do enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner). I’ve never tried quaaludes, meth, cocaine, or heroin, and I’ve only done LSD once, when I was dosed (more on that later). Seeing my father transform from living to dead in a mere thirty minutes scared the hell out of me and scarred me for life. Knowing that I could start coughing, suffer cardiac arrest, and become as inactive as a wound-down cymbal-clanging toy monkey shook me to the core.
All my siblings were affected by my dad’s death in their own way. Phil and Eve smoked at the time my dad died—almost everyone did—but they quit immediately after. Strangely, while I’ve rushed to the doctor whenever my stomach’s hurt or I’ve had a headache, my sister refused to see a doctor until her dying day. Phil has flat-out refused to talk about the day my dad died. If you ask him about it, he’ll change the subject. And I’m sure it contributed to his negativity and cynicism. And Ray dealt with his own psychological torment, though he was still young enough when our dad passed that he wasn’t as affected as the rest of us. Ah, the resilience of naïve youth.
I just know the inoperable mental shrapnel that struck me that day was indelible. I’ve suffered several panic attacks, some of which were understandable and signaled something that desperately needed to be changed about my current circumstances. Others were sparked by nerves, paranoia, and the memory of my father’s last thirty minutes on earth. In Gentle Giant, I was always overly concerned about my health, which I always felt explained my need to be in top form as a singer in a perfectionist band. My therapist later convinced me there was more to it than that.