Derek Shulman has had a remarkable life and a wondrously expansive, diverse and dynamic career within the hurly burly of the music industry. From the days of the British Invasion, through the rollicking 1970s, the hedonistic 1980s, the Grungy 1990s and into the digitalized and virtualized 21st century, the native of humble origins from Portsmouth, U.K. has seemingly been at the centre of it all, first as a musician/songwriter and frontman, then as an executive, for five decades.
First treading the boards on the international stage as co-founder of the pioneering and critically acclaimed progressive rock band Gentle Giant, through his tenure at industry giant Polygram Records, and later through a number of other important and influential label positions, Shulman has made his permanent and inviolable mark on popular music. Gentle Giant was hugely influential, if not hugely commercially successful, while some of the acts he discovered and helped nurture have become – and continue to be – of great significance and monstrously successful – Bon Jovi, Slipknot and Pantera to name just three.
Looking to tell his story in a way that is both revealing, yet still humble and inspirational, Shulman embarked on a journey of self-reflection that has led to the release of his autobiography, Giant Steps: My Improbable Journey from Stage Lights to Executive Heights, co-written by Jon Wiederhorn. It’s obvious even just reading the press material or Shulman’s Wikipedia page that he’s lived a life within the music industry worth reading about. But sometime it takes some urging and prompting from others for the subject of such a work to come to understand that there is a market for these stories.
“My wife and I had gone to dinner with a good friend of mine, who was the book editor of the New York Times [Jack Schwartz, who passed away in 2021 from complications due to COVID at age 82]. He was a little older and we’d go out with him and I’d tell him stories about my life and my career and he always said, ‘come on, you should write this down. You should do a book.’ And he kind of cajoled me, starting in about 2019. And he kept saying, ‘have you started. Have you started,’ and he basically sort of forced me to start writing. So, I wrote about 60, 70 pages and then put it aside. Then COVID hit and I actually got COVID right at the beginning, so I was six weeks or longer in isolation in my bedroom. I had my TV and my laptop and I felt lousy, and decided I had to do something. I was going stir crazy, so I picked up the story from there, and eventually finished the book,” Shulman said from his home in New York City.
For those seeking a salacious tell-all tome, dripping with scandal and impropriety, sex, drugs and the hedonistic tumult of rock and roll, you’re going to be a bit disappointed. Giant Steps is truthful about the excesses of the music industry, especially in the 1960s through 1990s, but the stories aren’t drawn out, detail-filled, click-baiting examples of debauchery. They are to create context for the real story, which is really one individual’s tale of navigating through the two main sides of the music business – the music side, as a songwriter, performer and artist – and as a record label executive responsible for discovering and cultivating the ‘content producers’ of that era with the goal of ‘moving units’ to make money for both the label and the artist. It’s a story of how the intense, sober work ethic inculcated in Shulman as a young man, stood him in good stead and helped him fend off the temptations, while remaining resolutely focused on the success of his own band, Gentle Giant, and later that of the acts he was recruiting, fostering and signing in the next phase of his career.
“It’s a story, I hope, that feels authentic. Which is the word we use a lot these days, but I’ve been getting pretty good feedback from it, and apparently the sales have been good. I chose to go with an independent publisher [Jawbone Press] and they’ve done a great job. I don’t expect it to be number one on the New York Times bestseller list. It’s just my remembrance of my life so far. And working with a small, boutique publisher meant everything was basically left up to me. Even the cover was my idea [it features a close up from Gentle Giant’s 1970 self-titled debut]. The tone of the content was also deliberate. If you wanted salaciousness, then don’t come to me. I certainly have all the information and the salacious stories in there to a degree, but I chose to be sober for the most part and all of that stuff, all the goings on behind the scenes, It doesn’t appeal to me at all. I will tell the stories that are a certain part of my life, but all the sort of usual rock and roll lifestyle thing, you know the sex, drugs and rock and roll and going into rehab and this guy did this and this guy did that – no, that’s not me. That’s not how I was back then and it’s certainly not who I am today,” Shulman said.
“I just want to tell my truth in my way of telling it without besmirching anyone else in any way, and using other people’s issues and drama just to sell books. So, realistically, my audience will be people who like music, especially my band, Gentle Giant, which is why the book’s called Giant Steps. But I also have information about what I did afterwards. I really want people to get a sense of, and I’ll use the word again, authenticity, in the sense of being who you are as an individual. Through my story I hope people see they don’t have to look anywhere else or to anyone else to follow. Just be who you are, and be good at what you are, or be great at what you are, and just follow your dreams. Don’t rely on the priorities of social media, or the number of TikTok followers you have. Be who you are and trust that you’ll find success in some other way that the prevailing culture seems to be dictating. I was lucky in having success both as a musician and sometimes as an executive, but also in my family life, and that was very important to me too. Thinking about it during the writing of the book, especially with the group, Gentle Giant, we were a real band. We lived together, we stayed together, we did everything together, and the interesting part of that is we all got married and had children, and we’re still married – everyone in the band is still married after maybe 50 years. We all have the same partners, which says a lot about the people you want to associate with.
“I am glad that aspect is being picked up by readers. That’s what I wanted to convey in the book, because that was important to me and my brothers [Phil and Ray who were alongside Derek throughout Gentle Giant’s run] and the whole family and the people around me. Yes, I did see a lot of stuff that I would never have gotten involved in, but at a very young age, that was the value system of my family. Even though my father was a professional musician and did things to excess [mostly drinking] I start the book off with basically being scared straight, if you like. Those experiences with my father affected me for the rest of my life, and I think I’m pretty honest about that too. The idea of being cool was never on my agenda. It still isn’t. Cool is just in somebody’s head and not mine at all. It’s about being honest and honorable. I never had any issues saying no, because I was offered a lot of substances in a lot of circumstances over a long career. I may have looked uncool, but I didn’t give a shit. I think anyone who is attracted by that lifestyle, who glorifies people like Jim Morrison and thinks it’s cool to do what they did is on the wrong track completely.”
Gentle Giant was considered to be a bit of a cult band both at the time, throughout the 1970s, and in the decades since they disbanded in 1980 after releasing 11 albums. They were incredibly well respected by other artists and bands, and those who did appreciate their music, were exuberant and profoundly loyal. But there was never the sort of commercial breakthrough that happened with other so-called progressive rock bands of the time, particularly Genesis, Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and to a lesser degree, King Crimson.
But the Shulman brothers and their bandmates were happy in the sense that they were in complete control of their artistic offerings, and also increasingly throughout their tenure, with the business side of the operation, which Derek became more and more involved in, out of necessity and sense of independence than anything else.
“The experience of doing that for the band helped me with the transition even though moving into the corporate side of the music business wasn’t on my mind at that point. I wasn’t even close to getting involved in that world. But when I think back about it, it probably was not a good idea for me to get involved as much as I did, especially with my brother Phil [with whom he had a significant falling-out, long since resolved] because you kind of lose on both ends. You lose your perspective of objectivity about the band and the business side starts to play a little more into your psyche rather than just being involved in the creative side. It’s a yin and yang that you have to balance, and it’s a very tough one, and it’s very hard for a lot of bands. Very few bands I’ve seen or been involved with are like that and only one has become a great success and that’s Bon Jovi. But for me I realized looking back, it’s not really a smart thing to do but after the event it did help me after the band ended because I did get to see and get to know what the record business was about to a certain degree, even though I was in the band still,”
An interesting aspect of Shulman’s career as a record company executive is that even though he came from one particular genre of music as an artist, he developed an eye, or perhaps had an innate sense of when an artist or band had potential, regardless of genre. The same individual not only helped discover and cultivate 1980s pop metal bands like Bon Jovi, Cinderella and Enuff Z’nuff, but also thrash legends Pantera and prog-metal masters Dream Theater, and later Slipknot and Nickelback. He also dabbled in the pop world, helping Canada’s Men Without Hats, and even explored Hip Hop and Rap music throughout his career with labels ranging from Polygram to Roadrunner, and his own DRT label.
“All of the bands that I worked with that had success are all authentic in their own fashion, and they weren’t followers. They were the leaders in their field. I remember going to see Pantera when I was running Atco Records [a subsidiary of Atlantic Records] and I went to see them in a club and said to myself, ‘they have three songs to impress me.’ I saw a tape of the band and I was familiar with them because they had several albums out before [singer] Phil [Anselmo] came in the band. Within those three songs, I was a fan. I just knew that they had this magic to them. I almost jumped into the mosh pit. I was a fan of rock and metal but at the time, to me, this was extreme. But with Phil, I saw an amazing, incredible frontman, and ‘Dimebag’ Darryl [Abbott, the band’s late guitar player and co-founder] was an amazing songwriter and guitar player. So I signed them, but I knew they would not get a shot on MTV because they were so extreme. It would also be very hard to get them on radio, but I knew that if they blew me away like they did, they would blow other people away. So I put my marketing dollars behind them for touring. They went out there and toured and when they put out the Cowboys from Hell album, it went straight into the top five and eventually to number one. The head of Atlantic Records didn’t know who they were and asked, ‘who is this band Pantera? Is it some kind of Hip Hop or rap band?’ I told him it was a band that we put on the road for the last year and we did the album and they were smashing it. They had something. There’s something that hits you in your gut, in your chest, in your stomach and your head and your soul when a band has ‘it.’ And I’m proud to say that most of them are still around and still as big as they were, if not bigger,” he said, adding that coming from a poor, working class, urban environment in Portsmouth helped him to understand the mindset of the similarly poor, working class, urban artists who were turning Hip Hop and rap into the rock and roll of its time.
“I believe that the best Hip Hop is the most progressive kind of music out there. Some of it’s just schlock from the computer, but you can say that for pretty much every style of music these days. But there are so many artists out there who really have something to say. Who come from these disadvantaged backgrounds, who are scraping and grasping and seeking a way out, but also a way to express themselves – just like a lot of the early great rock bands. And the craziest thing for me and Gentle Giant is that the Hip Hop community has kind of adopted us. We’ve been sampled a lot. It was just recently that we won Songwriters of the Year in England at the BMI Awards because Travis Scott started his album off with a sample from Gentle Giant’s ‘Proclamation.’ I went to a couple of his shows and there are a lot of rock and metal fans there in his audience and it was surreal and cool and funny all at the same time to hear them singing along to Gentle Giant. I guess that’s what kind of makes me feel some pride is that I have been able to connect with different styles of music over the years, sometimes without even really realizing it. Although to be perfectly honest, country music was never an area that I really understood. I’m still very much a Brit, even though I’ve lived in America most of my life. Americana, country music, that sort of stuff, never had an appeal to me. I didn’t and still don’t really get the whole ‘southern’ thing. I mean, intellectually I understand it, but for me to delve into it would have been the wrong thing for me to do.”
Eventually, the priorities of large multi-faceted, multinational corporations, which the big labels turned into by the later part of the 1990s and into the 2000s, started to wear on Shulman, who still put creativity, artistry, uniqueness and authenticity first, before marketability and salability. First he jumped to upstart hard rock/metal label Roadrunner, then later helped Italian AOR label Frontiers get up and running before eventually starting his own ventures. As with the ethos surrounding the music of Gentle Giant, where maintaining artistic integrity trumped commercial gain, the move to smaller labels was also an opportunity for Shulman to try and reclaim some of the passion and imagination and joy of his earlier run in the industry.
“When Warner Music Group got together in the merger with AOL, there was all of this backstabbing and bullshit going on, which had nothing to do with the music. Music really didn’t seem to be a priority anymore. I remember sitting around a big oval table with the heads of companies at Warner Music Group, and I was one of them because I was in charge of Atco at the time, and we were talking about next year’s budget and it was simply about how much Band X would sell compared to Band Y and how much revenue that would generate, and no one was actually talking about the bands themselves or their music. I wanted to know what Band X and Band Y were all about, but that didn’t seem to matter anymore. So one day I ultimately looked in the mirror and I saw myself as someone who I didn’t recognize. And that’s why when the mergers had started to happen and Warner became a different kind of company I said, ‘that’s it. I can’t do this. I don’t recognize myself anymore.’ I knew it was the end of that chapter and that I had to stop and restart and revamp myself. The same thing happened at the end of Gentle Giant too. You have to be free. You have to be happy. And I didn’t feel like I was either of those. When something hits you in your face and you say you don’t recognize yourself, that’s when it’s time to stop and do something else.”
Shulman really doesn’t involve himself in the music business anymore, as a creator or executive. He has observed and noted the seismic changes that have occurred, though, and understands that challenges that bands in particular face in the current industry climate.
“The business itself is a completely different business. It’s not even close to what it was when I started or even when I was involved in the music business side. It’s a whole different paradigm. It’s all about likes and views and all of the other stuff, which I think is nonsensical, to be honest with you. A&R these days is based on how many plays on Spotify or streams you’ve got etc. etc. It just makes zero sense to me and I think it’s dumbed down music for the masses considerably in the last 20 years. I think there’s certainly great music out there, but it’s not being given the chance to make an appearance and break through the cracks because of what technology has brought us. I’m not saying that there are some great bands that haven’t broken, but there’s less and less by far. The management thing is a whole different animal now too. Back in the day, the manager, and even the record company, even if they ripped you off, and this sounds really bizarre, they still did it for the music and for the band. They still loved what you were doing creatively. People like Don Arden [notorious British music manager, and father of Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy’s widow and manager] they still loved the creative aspect of it. Today, it’s just so different. It’s just a different atmosphere – I think it’s lost that soul, if you like,” Shulman explained.
“It’s so much harder for bands. When I was starting out, way back when [in the late 1960s in a pop/rock group called Simon Dupree and The Big Sound, also alongside his brothers] there were so many places you could play. I mean, we literally would sometimes play 12 or 13 gigs a week – I’m serious. Look at The Beatles who, as you know, started in Hamburg and how many gigs a week did they play? You got your chops down and you learned your craft and your art and your creativity, but also your work ethic and sense of professionalism. We had so many places to play. A band will find it much more difficult today than it was when I was in a band, even in Gentle Giant. But I still believe there is room for a band, if you really believe in yourself, if you really are great – not good – great, but also unique and you’re authentic and you do something that nobody else is doing, a crack will open. I think there’s a whole mindset today which is sad, that rich and famous is the most important thing for a lot of kids and people online. They want their fame first and to be rich first. No, do it because you love it and if you love it and you enjoy it, then other people will come out and love it too. It takes a while. Real success doesn’t take 10 minutes, it takes a lot of hard work. And bands will break up because they’re doing it for the wrong reasons. I hate to say it, but they were destined to break up. If they were truly great, they wouldn’t have broken up. If I were putting something together today, I would go back to where it started. I would love to put a band together, or at least see a band that literally has three mics, one set of drums, a guitar and wore a uniform and wrote great songs like the Beatles did. No pyro, no fireworks, no big production or backing tracks, and band that just stands there, plays their heart out and has some great music. That band would absolutely, 100 per cent make it today.”
Besides working on his book, Shulman said he has spent much of his creative energy working on Atmos 5.1 remixes of the Gentle Giant catalogue, which has been rewarding in the sense that old fans get a chance to hear their favourite band with the best sound and mix possible, but also because the trend that has seen younger music fans exploring older bands in new digital and physical formats directing them also to that same catalogue.
“There are actually a couple of documentaries coming up, which is very interesting. I can’t remember which are in pre-production, but they are looking at the Hip Hop community and Gentle Giant. I am really looking forward to that. But I really don’t do anything else. You know, I get tired. I need my naps,” he said with a chuckle.
For more information on Derek Shulman, Gentle Giant and the Giant Steps book, please visit https://gentlegiantband.com. It is available through Amazon and most online and physical booksellers.
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