We had planned to return to the studio immediately after we got off tour to start work on the follow-up to Octopus, but without a co-lyricist and key musician, that wasn’t going to happen. Ray and I even questioned whether we wanted to continue without Phil. We were never the Three Musketeers, but from the moment Simon Dupree & The Big Sound took off, we had been the three Shulmans. Now, the dynamic was different, and it seemed like our game was thrown off.
One day, Ray and I were walking the streets of London in the drizzling rain. I sniffed and gazed dazedly at the slick, shiny road. ‘You know we can replace Phil,’ I said after a long silence. ‘Things are different, but, I mean, you and I are still the Shulman brothers. We started all of this, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna throw it away.’
‘I don’t know, Derek. Everything feels weird and not exactly right.’
‘Do you want to quit?’
Ray paused and I felt a gnawing sensation in my stomach. ‘No, he finally said. ‘I want to keep going. If Phil wants out, I guess that’s his deal.’
We didn’t know how Phil’s absence would change the band, but the most important thing was we were both still in. Kerry, Gary, and John didn’t want the band to break up either. Neither did our fans. The separation with Phil was acrimonious, which was a shame, and in the fallout, Ray and I completely cut off contact with him for the next ten years—long after Gentle Giant called it a day. As a bittersweet consolation, any power struggles in the band were over. I was now the frontman and major decision-maker, and everyone was comfortable following my lead.
Like our father, Ray was a masterful musician who could play any instrument placed in front of him. I was no slouch either, and I was already handling some of the bass, saxophone, and recorder parts. So, when Phil left it, wasn’t too hard to carry on as a live band without him. Our first show as a five-piece was on February 23, 1973, at the Corn Exchange in Devizes, England, opening for Thin Lizzy. We were due to return to the US in March and wanted to play a couple of warm-up gigs beforehand.
To a large extent, you can choose your venues and tour bands, but you can’t pick your audience. We expected to have to work on some of the new musical cues for our touring show, maybe toss in some jokes to win over members of the crowd who were there for Lizzy (I often introduced myself as a celebrity rock star like Mick Jagger or Eric Clapton, which was usually good for a laugh). We didn’t expect to face a wild, aggressive crowd, let alone members of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, who came to bust heads. Violence erupted without provocation, and all I could think about was the stabbing at Altamont in 1969. I urged everyone to stop fighting, but to no avail. So, we finished playing and got the hell out of here. Good thing security arrived before anyone was severely injured.
Our next show was on March 4 at King Alfred College, a teacher-training institution in Winchester, where we confirmed to any of the scholarly folks in the crowd that their counting skills weren’t off and there were just five of us up there. ‘For anyone who was wondering where Phil is, he’s no longer in the band. He’s gone back to teaching,’ I said, which elicited laughs from some members of the crowd, who thought I was joking.
Octopus came out in Italy in October 1972 and in England in early December. We were worried that it wouldn’t be released in America in time for our tour, and that our fans wouldn’t know the new songs. It eventually hit American record stores in late February, with a different cover. For some reason, Columbia Records decided not to use Roger Dean’s fantastic artwork of an angry-eyed octopus surfacing from the depths (maybe because they thought it might be confused with all the work he did for Yes). Instead, they went with an image by artist Charles White of a dead octopus inside a jar. The lid was screwed closed and marked with the band’s name. It looked okay, though, and it arrived in time for fans to familiarize themselves with the new, heavier material on the album—and John’s fierce drumming.
Trying to break America was always a challenge for us and our team. We didn’t always see eye to eye with our label reps, and some promoters seemed to be on a different planet altogether. Shows with Wishbone Ash, Humble Pie, and even J. Geils made some sort of sense, and we had a good time opening for King Crimson. Why someone booked us a handful of shows with Sha Na Na, on the other hand, is anyone’s guess. Our fans showed up and gave us a standing ovation. Conversely, some of their crowd didn’t think much of our challenging music and took to chanting ‘Sha Na Na’ between our songs. Playing tunes from Octopus was a nice break from our prior set, but the songs, and especially the lyrics, reminded me of Phil, which was depressing.
By mid-1973, we were keen to return to the studio to record our next album. Ray and Kerry had a batch of songs, and I worked on some musical stuff, but we were a little gun-shy about recording the first Gentle Giant without Phil. Everything we worked on reminded us that he wasn’t there. The lack of fervent discussions about different ways to present the songs was unsettling, and without Phil’s literary references, I was unsure how to start writing my lyrics. After extensive brainstorming, we solved the problem. Instead of allowing Phil’s absence to be the elephant in the room, we made it the focus of our music. Driven by John’s four-to-the-floor beats, we wrote passages that were more concise and direct than any we had done before, but which were also shaded by our frustration and anger at having been abruptly abandoned, and our determination that we would persevere and succeed despite the abrupt change.
The new songs took shape quickly and triggered a rebirth of Gentle Giant. Entering Advision Studios in July, we worked efficiently and effectively, though not always joyfully. I wouldn’t say it was stressful. We were at the top of our game musically and determined to make a great album, which we did, but for me and Ray, love for music was the only thing that masked our depression. For the first time ever, I wasn’t happy to be in the studio. Singing didn’t lift me up. I didn’t enjoy producing. It wasn’t a labor of love but was closer to an obligatory chore. And I felt fucking awful—sad, anxious, annoyed.
Ray, who was usually well-adjusted and even-keeled, was also down, and since our moods always marked the music we wrote, In A Glass House was dark, aggressive, and much less progressive. It wasn’t purposeful, it was entirely subconscious, and it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say it was Gentle Giant’s post-traumatic stress album.
As much as Phil and I had fought, he was our older brother. We respected his intelligence, wit, musical skill, and business acumen. Now, he was gone, and we were in grief. Phil hadn’t reached out to us, we were stubborn, and we intuitively knew he was going to be out of our lives for a long time, maybe forever. The emotional turmoil was evident in my lyrics and the melancholy tone of some of the music. Even so, we rose to the occasion and finished the album in time for its scheduled release two months later.
In A Glass House was an entirely different beast for Gentle Giant, and it created a daunting dualism in me. I knew the music was good—maybe even great—but I felt so bad. It was an album marked by ambivalence. After we wrote the songs, we listened back with a certain amount of trepidation and said, ‘Okay, what did we do here? Is this good? Is this us? Are we Gentle Giant without Phil?’ It was a very strange cycle. At the same time, I don’t think Gentle Giant couldn’t have grown into the band we became if Phil hadn’t split. Left to our own vision, we were able to focus on groove and feel and become a much more rock-oriented band.
Though he was relatively new to the band, John Weathers took control and threw us a lifeline when we were foundering. The way he drummed on Octopus gave us extra dimensions to explore. He could play intricate, tricky meters and soft, subdued beats as well as anyone. Yet, it was his ability to shift effortlessly into overdrive and propel us in a more straightforward rock direction that took Gentle Giant to our next musical plateau. I can’t overstate how important John was in providing an accidental, unwritten, unspoken form of therapy when we needed it most. Subconsciously, In A Glass House was like putting the old Giant in his coffin, saying goodbye, and continuing as a new Giant with our reputation and integrity intact.