To be honest, Gentle Giant wasn’t a band I had given much thought to in recent years when I received a press release, announcing that seven albums they had made were going to be available online. All at once though, it came back to me in a flash — I had seen Gentle Giant open for Yes. This was in 1976, and I was heavily into progressive rock. Unfortunately, perhaps because I was young and naive, I didn’t realize Gentle Giant were capable of taking it much further than most of their more popular peers I followed. Even listening now, the music of Gentle Giant seems beyond reproach — the vocal harmonies, the layers of strings, woodwinds and other embellishments added to guitars, bass, drums and keys — all played and executed at an incredibly high and sophisticated level. Maybe it just took a few years for me to catch up.
Gentle Giant began in 1970 and ended in 1980. During their 10 years, they issued 12 albums, but the seven Capitol/Chrysalis releases — In A Glass House (1973), The Power & The Glory (1974), Freehand (1975), Interview (1976), Playing The Fool: The Official Live (1977), The Missing Piece (1977) and Giant For A Day (1978) — are considered by many to be the best of the batch. Remastered and available digitally, plans are set for the seven to come out on CD in 2010. There are also box sets, DVDs and other reissues in the works. But that’s as far as it goes. Unlike other bands, Gentle Giant will not reunite to promote these reissues. That was made clear to me during my chat with two of the group’s former founding members — singer Derek Shulman and his bass-playing, multi-instrumentalist brother Ray.
During the course of the following conversation, I pressed the Shulmans on why Gentle Giant couldn’t have gone on like so many of their contemporaries. But they remain steadfast and adamant in preserving the group’s legacy as it is. That and the fact that they — specifically Derek and Ray Shulman — have gone on to do other miraculous things in the music world. Derek is an extremely successful record executive, having worked A & R for a few years, signing groups like Bon Jovi and Dream Theater, then becoming president of both Atco and Roadrunner Records. Today, he oversees his own label, DRT Entertainment. Ray is a prolific music producer, and has worked with numerous acts including the Sugarcubes, Björk’s first group. With Derek in New York, Ray somewhere in England, and me in California, I felt like I was on a rollercoaster cruising around the world. And through it all, though they are no longer a working band, you could tell that Gentle Giant was and still is an important part of their lives.
It’s great to have you two on the line.
Derek: Thank you. Where are you calling from?
I’m in Long Beach, California. I think you played a gig here a while back.
Derek: We did?
Yes. In my research, I found out that you played at the Long Beach Terrace Theater, although I think it was actually the Long Beach Auditorium back then.
Derek: It wasn’t Don Kirshner, was it?
Ray: Yeah, I think it was. Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert.
Kirshner used to film his show right down the street from me. It was the Beach Auditorium back then, but they tore it down and built the Long Beach Terrace Theater in its place
Ray: That’s exactly right.
I attended some of those Kirshner shows back in 74 and 75, but I didn’t see you there.
Ray: Oh wow.
I did see you in 1976.
Derek: Where did you see us play?
I saw you with Yes and Peter Frampton at Anaheim Stadium.
Derek: That was a gigantic place. I do remember that one.
Ray: I don’t think we enjoyed that very much.
Derek: It was miserable actually (laughs). I was just speaking with Ray, and this is kind of the first interview we’ve done talking about the digital releases. I called Ray just two minutes ago, and asked, “What are you going to say?” And he said the same thing to me: “I don’t know, what are you going to say?” We have no clue as to what we’re supposed to say or do.
That’s OK, we’ll just play it by ear. With that in mind, let’s get into these digital reissues of seven Gentle Giant titles. Why digital and why now?
Ray: Well, basically, we now own the catalog. They were originally on Capitol.
Derek: These releases are on EMI. They’ve been very proactive, certainly on the digital side, which has become obviously quite important for people to hear music. When they get their iPods and PDAs, we figured we’d give fans access to the music, especially to those who haven’t bought the old releases, the LPs and ultimately CDs; but you know the CDs have only been available on a very limited basis.
Just for the record, we are remastering from the original tapes next week, and putting out the albums — which are coming out digitally — early next year, in January or February. And then some more music that Ray and Kerry (Minnear, the band’s keyboardist) actually put together that I don’t even remember we did — bits and pieces that fans of the band will be intrigued to hear when we were getting together. These are some of the songs that didn’t appear on the albums.
So, these recordings were not remastered for the 35th Anniversary series released in 2005?
Ray: Those were taken from the best tapes available at the time. A lot of these tapes, because they get passed around, you never know where the originals — you know, the actual tape we recorded onto in the studio — were located. Even Capitol and over here, Chrysalis — they didn’t know where they were. Eventually, we found the quarter-inches and that’s what we’re going to work from next week.
Will these digital remasters be available through outlets like Amazon and iTunes?
Ray: Everywhere.
Will these also be available through your own dedicated web site?
Ray: We thought about that, but I don’t think we’re going to do it on our own, are we?
Derek: No, no. We’re going to leave it as is.
One last technical question: Are these going to be distributed as MP3s or as high-end lossless files like FLACs and SHNs?
Ray: MP3s. We may make them lossless once we’ve remastered them.
Any plans to reissue other Gentle Giant titles?
Derek: The first two albums were signed to what was Phonogram at the time, which turned around multiple times and became Universal and it was a worldwide deal. I’m working on accessing the release of those next year. For Three Friends and Octopus (the third and fourth albums), I think we have a very good opportunity to do what we are going to do with these albums early next year also. I think that’s certainly in the cards. I’m working on that here in New York. Again, the fans of the group and the people who haven’t heard it will hear it mastered better with the original quarter-inch tapes. Yes, there is a plan, but unfortunately we can’t institute it yet because of ownership and licensing situations. The catalog that reverted back was only the Capitol years, which are the seven albums. I think seven albums, right Ray?
Ray: Yeah. If you look at our original Phonogram contract, it’s almost a joke now…
Derek: So was the Beatles’ I think.
Ray: Yeah, pretty much like that.
Derek: It was two percent — two percent royalties. It went up afterwards with Ray and our attorney in England. The Beatles had the same deal.
Ray: It was equivalent to a producer royalty these days.
Derek: That’s right.
When you listen back on these recordings, what sort of memories do they conjure? Do you remember anything particular about the sessions? Writing the songs? Putting the concepts together? Figuring out which instruments to put where?
Ray: One of the outlets asked us each to write a like a two-word sentence about each song. I haven’t heard these since we recorded them and it feels strange. It really takes you back. And you kind of remember the sessions.
Derek: I remember In A Glass House, the whole album actually. The writing process usually, on the musical side, was Kerry and Ray for the most part. They’d come up with a song that was either mostly structured or completely structured. And it was brought to the band, to chip in something and the lyrics.
Ray: You were responsible for the lyrics.
Derek: Yeah, I was responsible for the lyrics. I do remember some of the sessions for particular albums and some of the songs. Yes, you do remember how they were done — I’ll let Ray speak about that. I remember In A Glass House being an extremely tough record to make because our older brother Phil had left the band. We became a five-piece from a six-piece. Although we regrouped and toured, and it seemed that we didn’t lose any momentum — in fact, we gained a little momentum — it was still kind of shocking for personal reasons. It was an extremely tense record to make. In that respect, I couldn’t actually listen to it for quite a few years, even though we toured on it. I couldn’t reflect back because I felt the shock of my brother leaving, and we had to reassemble our whole attitude about what Gentle Giant was kind of resounded to me, so I do remember that record being a tough record. The other one, I think for me also, was the one we did in Holland. Ray, wasn’t it The Missing Piece?
Ray: Yeah, The Missing Piece.
Derek: We went to…was it Relight Studios in Holland?
Ray: Yeah, it was in Holland.
Derek: I hated it. It was a place where you shut yourself away.
Ray: I have a few memories of that one. You had to walk across this kind of pig farm to get there. I couldn’t even listen to that album. It probably influenced what we played.
Derek: You’re right. It was in the middle of a farmland in flat Holland.
Ray: I can’t figure out why we went there.
Derek: I’ll tell you why. I think we heard Genesis had gone in there and they were getting bigger than we were, so we figured that must be the reason (laughs).
Unlike Genesis, of course, you guys were multi-instrumentalists, so when you were putting these records together, how did you figure who was gonna do what? What’s gonna go where? It seems pretty complex.
Ray: The basic arrangements were pretty complex. The earlier ones were much more of a collaboration; In fact, there’s a few songs, having just listened to it, on In A Glass House where I can’t tell who wrote what because it’s so mixed up. They’re either my compositions or Kerry’s, who wrote the bulk of it. We kind of lost that toward the end where we wrote and arranged entire songs by ourselves. But early on, we were definitely more collaborative in terms of the whole structure of the songs. In the studio, everything was worked out. We never took that long — I think our longest record was about five weeks.
Derek: Yeah, that was the longest by far.
Ray: We’d work it all out before we went into the studio, you know, with specific arrangements. Often, overdubbing was kind of improvised and we’d get together and Kerry would play something and we’d say, “Yeah that’s good. Develop that.” Other times, he’d (Kerry) actually write out manuscript parts, certainly for the vocals. Then he’d say, “Here you are. Sing this bit.” And we’d go and rehearse it.
Derek: I think that one thing we did as a group was push each other to be better than what you even believed you could be. The things you wouldn’t ordinarily think about because it was OK as it is. We’d push ourselves to be better for each other, as opposed to being better for an album. I think that went across the board. I just saw a quote from Ian Anderson — you saw that Ray, right? — where he said that we are his favorite group, but he said he never saw anyone argue so much.
I saw that quote in Prog magazine.
Ray: Ian was quite the task master really. And he wouldn’t let sloppy or small mistakes get by. So he picked up on it after the show with us. Other people didn’t quite understand because it seemed we were in serious arguments, but we got over it in a couple of seconds.
Derek: We’d be backstage after the show. And even though the crowd was out cheering for another encore, we’d be — it probably was me — saying,”You played a bum note in song number three.” They’d say,”What are you talking about?” And I’d say, “It was B flat instead of a C,” or whatever.
You were perfectionists.
Derek: We tried to push ourselves across the board. That’s my memory of how the band played live. When you’re talking multi-instrumental stuff, by the way, we tried all sorts of things in the studio because it was available to us. The stage versions of the songs were never the same as the album versions. We treated the albums totally different to our live and stage shows. They were always rearranged into something visual or acoustically different for the best effect possible.
Listening to the music — and Ray, you touched on this — it seems so well constructed. Was there any improvisation taking place in the studio, as well as on stage?
Ray: More on stage probably. I mean, you develop a part from improvisation, that’s the major part of composition anyway. Like I said, sometimes Kerry would sometimes write it out on manuscript paper. Otherwise, it was usually an acoustic piano that would play and you’d take that recording and a germ of an idea would come from that. And then you develop that. It wasn’t improvised or loose in a free-form way: it was very structured.
Derek: Ray’s assessment is right. There was room for improvisation to a degree on stage, but on record, it was improvised to a point with solos.
Ray: Yeah, solos with something like the xylophone, where you just go out and do it.
Derek: Yeah, go in and do it and see if it works. And if it didn’t, we’d all jump on whoever did it and say it didn’t work.
Ray: But the ensemble playing was very much structured.
Gentle Giant often gets lumped in with other British progressive rock bands like King Crimson, Yes and Genesis, but the music is more sophisticated, on par with what people like Frank Zappa were doing.
Ray: I love to hear that.
Derek: Me too. No influences, but certainly one of my loves. “Peaches En Regalia” and the Hot Rats album. We actually played with him.
I was wondering about that. How did those shows go?
Derek: They were amazing. I think we had similar influences.
Ray: We had a similar kind of thing. It was probably similar in that Frank Zappa never took himself too seriously, but he was a very serious musician. We were the same way. We never took ourselves too seriously.
Derek: I think pomposity was something that set us apart from some of the other bands you were talking about. We were a rock band playing interesting music, but we weren’t sitting there with bow ties and tails. And Zappa was similar. He played this amazing music, but he didn’t consider himself — although he was — an incredible musician and composer. The backgrounds of us individually were similar. We had all sorts of influences. Kerry was classically trained. And as Ray said, he has a degree in composition.
Ray: Our dad was a jazz trumpet player. When we were growing up, be-bop was still around. Our dad and other musicians would have jam sessions at the house.
Derek: That’s what we heard: Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie got played instead of the pops of the day.
So it wasn’t Elvis. It was jazz.
Derek: That’s right. Ray, of course, was a classically trained violinist. In fact, he was being trained to join the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, but he decided — we decided actually — to use his violin as a guitar in the first group we ever had. I think I was probably an influence there, so I’m sorry Ray. What can I tell you? An apology 40 years later (laughs).
Better late than never, I guess. Looking over the seven reissues — you have In A Glass House, The Power & The Glory and Interview, which are conceptual, whereas Freehand, The Missing Piece and Giant For A Day were a little more straightforward and accessible. And, of course, Playing The Fool is the live album with a little bit of both. Did you ever struggle to find a happy medium?
Ray: I think so, certainly in the later years. There was definitely an effort to try to be more commercial, which, when I listen back now, I find it quite bizarre because our attempts at commerciality made it less commercial.
I was listening to Freehand and I remember hearing “Just The Same” when I saw you at Anaheim Stadium. That was a very accessible song that could have been a hit. And I believe that album was your most successful in the States, right?
Derek: Yeah, it did very well. We were kind of a popular group actually in certain places, but then we saw radio and the acceptance of hit singles when FM radio became AOR. Bands who would sometimes tour with us as back-up bands became bigger because of a big hit. I think there was an element of us chasing a hit. And as Ray said, in retrospect, to look back at it, it was a dumb thing to do, but we did it. There were elements of envy, I will say that.
Ray: We saw Genesis and Yes cross over to the mass audience, and there were certain territories where we did play stadiums, like in Canada and parts of Europe. But we didn’t have a mass audience everywhere. There was also — certainly in the latter part of the 70s — a big cultural shift in this country, in Britain, of punk music. It was a bit more cultural because of what was going on in Britain. I think we made an album where there were three days we used a generator because there no electricity. And you could see in just that, the kind of complicated music and lyrical themes — they weren’t relevant any more in this country. Obviously things were changing, so you had to kind of change yourself. Or you give up (laughs).
Derek, I read in a recent interview where you said you could understand how and why Gentle Giant remained sort of a cult band, and bands like Genesis became huge. Does this mean you don’t think the group could have gone any further in the 80s with a more streamlined sound like Genesis and Yes? Or was Gentle Giant simply a band of its time?
Derek: I think we tried, believe it or not. It was a hopeless attempt (laughs). Not hopeless. I think we tried, but we realized that they had a sound. Maybe the sort of one-note bass, but we didn’t do that. Our music was much more complicated and complex. To get to a simple melody and have a hit song, if you like, wasn’t part of our repertoire. Although we tried to do it on a couple of albums, it just didn’t catch fire. We started losing elements of what the fans liked about the group because we were reaching a bit. On the other hand, we were struggling to keep up with ourselves and the times. It was difficult.
I will say in retrospect, an album that everyone discounts, including myself, but I just listened to it and it’s not part of the package was an album called Civilian. It was the last record and a horrible record to make. However, I think on that record in particular, we came closest to what Genesis and Yes were doing. Only it was too late by then. And for lots of reasons — personally, professionally, musically — we’d all moved on. It was time to shut down.
Ray: In terms of our time, I think our records are more timeless. Certainly the first six, maybe seven, probably up to Freehand actually. I think they hold together pretty well.
Derek: Even Interview to a degree. That was kind of the leeway to where we were gonna go. That was where the switch in the road came. Then we did the live album after Interview. And the live album was kind of us playing, what we had done for five years. It was a retrospective of the live show. Some of the music on the last couple of records, there are some good parts. Some of it is not listenable. However, I’ll say the same thing about the first couple of albums — which are not part of this. We weren’t defined as a group and entity then. We were new. We weren’t integrated as a musical entity.
Derek, as a record executive, I know you signed Dream Theater and have since developed a lot of progressive metal bands. Have any of these younger musicians you’ve encountered acknowledged Gentle Giant as an influence?
Derek: Yeah, I’m surprised and amazed and gratified. These bands — I think they’re quite good. It’s a different era and a different kind of music. A lot of musicians and a lot of people have no clue. They would even be interested in the group or have any kind of idea that I was even in a group because both myself and Ray have moved on from being stage musicians to doing different things. Some don’t have any clue that there ever was a group called Gentle Giant.
I’m surprised because now I sit in an environment which is almost the enemy, as it were, from being a musician. And the good thing about that for me — and probably for Ray as well — it puts me in a good situation on a personal level because I can empathize with the musician who is on the road and is not making that much money. I understand all the processes of what it is to be in a band and on the road and making music for a living.
The influences — it’s gratifying. There’s lots of bands, that when they hear I was in a group, it makes it’s easier for me to speak to them about progressing their career because I’ve learned, obviously, being on this side of the fence, how this side of the fence works. It’s different today than it was 10 years ago. It gives me a good standing, in that respect.
How you Ray? You worked with Björk when you produced the first Sugarcubes album. Did she draw inspiration from Gentle Giant?
Ray: That was one of the things we never really talked about it. The way I got into production was — and, in fact, throughout the early 80s, I actually got into TV adverts, that was my main kind of living — I was working in the studio with a guy there called Derek Birkett. He had his own label and he found this band from Iceland called the Sugarcubes and said, “What can you do? Can you record them?” And I said, “Yeah, I’ll record them.” So basically, with a few sessions here and a few sessions there, we put together that album. I became kind of the de facto, unpaid house producer for One Little Indian Records. We made lots of records there with anyone who wanted to put a record out. That was how I got into production and that was the most fun time I ever had producing records. It was for nothing, but then it became more serious after that because we started selling a lot more records. Gentle Giant never came up…
You listen to some of the stuff Björk is doing now, and you have to wonder.
Ray: Well, I played on that record as well.
You have a song on In A Glass House called “A Reunion,” yet Gentle Giant is one of the few bands left that hasn’t reunited. You guys are still on good speaking terms, aren’t you?
Ray: We’re very much on speaking terms. I think from Derek’s and my point of view is that we reserve the right not to this. It has no interest. What are we supposed to play? We’re not going to write new music for the band. Therefore, we’d be left to play the music we left how long ago now, almost 30 years ago?
Derek: Yes, almost 30 years since the last gig.
Ray: We were a progressive band — a progressive band in the most positive way, in the way the term is used. I equate it with someone like Miles Davis. Miles Davis made Kind Of Blue — I still play the record because I love it — but he never did. He always moved on. He always played something different. He didn’t care what the audience thought. He played pop tunes toward the end, turned his back on the audience. That’s progressive music to me, therefore I can’t see what we’d do if we got back together. That’s my view and Derek’s point of view. And also, what would it be? Nostalgiafest, I guess…
Derek: From what Ray said — you move on in your life, in your career, in your musical tastes, in whatever you want to do and whatever you want to aspire to. To go back and be your own tribute band, for me, would be kind of embarrassing. I’ve seen a couple of these reunions. When we said that’s it — that was it. It didn’t trickle to a stop — it stopped.
Ray: It’s not like we don’t see each other. I talk to Kerry all the time and we have these records out, so we’re doing the business side of it now together, the packaging and all the rest of it. There certainly is no acrimony there at all.
Derek: We moved on musically and professionally. To leave it — and this is me, it may not be Ray — when history is written, that chapter is closed. For me to revisit that, for me personally…I mean, I can reread it but I already read that part, so why go back and reread it. I understand from the fans’ point of view that they want to reread it, but we’ve all moved on chronologically, personally and musically. It couldn’t be the same for us unless, and the truth is, we just wanted to go out there “for money.” And I won’t do that. And I don’t think Ray will either.
Not even a one-off for a big charitable one-time event like Live 8? Or would you just as soon not go there?
Ray: I don’t want to go there. I wouldn’t think so, but whatever.
Derek: I have to agree with Ray.
How about the three Shulman brothers — you and your older brother Phil. Do you ever get together and have a friendly jam?
Ray: We haven’t actually, because often we have been separated by geography more than anything else. But there’s no reason not to.
Derek: Yeah, in a hotel, that’s something that may well happen. But we wouldn’t try rewriting In A Glass House or Freehand.
