Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
E-mail from Thomas Fornash:

David Gans wrote:
I don't understand the question.  It's his field of expertise,
right?

------------------------------

Actually, this question comes from a couple of different places. First, is 
the phenomenon of chefs who don't cook at home, mechanics who don't fix 
their own cars, and people who work on STD/AIDS Hotlines can have second 
thoughts about having sex. Once you see what goes on behind the scenes it 
can be pretty tough not to become cynical and disgusted at the whole 
process. Not to mention tired of it over time. The music industry can, and 
has, chewed a lot of good people up and spit'em out. Hell, I'm cynical and I 
don't write about for a living. Making a living at your passion can ruin it 
for a lot of people.

Second, I must confess to knowing David personally and I long ago realized 
he's not a one trick pony. Like any well adjusted human being, he's got a 
variety of interests and he could write about a lot of different things. 
Which explains him stretching out recently. I've had this conversation with 
him in a couple of different forms but, you know, I've never asked him 
directly why he continues to write about how the sausage is made. I'm as 
curious about his motivations as anyone might be. Since I read just about 
everything he writes maybe more so than the average joe. Knowing him 
personally also explains why I take such delight in tormenting and heckling 
him in forums such as this. ;^)

To further this point, I have another question for David. What's the 
saddest, most heartbreaking story you have about musicians and the industry?
  

    
>To further this point, I have another question for David. What's the
saddest, most heartbreaking story you have about musicians and the
industry?>

Ooh, that's a tough one; hard to narrow down.

There are any number of old-time R&B types who were just totally,
royally hosed. Consider Ruth Brown, who basically got Atlantic Records
off the ground and eventually had to take a job as a maid to get by. I
don't have the exact quote in front of me, but Courtney Love says
something along the lines of, "Name 5 hit records, and I'll show you 4
broke and desperate artists who never got paid." I can't tell you how
many people claim to have never been paid a penny of royalties -- Roger
McGuinn, for Chrissakes, how is that possible?!

One of the weirdest hosejobs I ever heard about involved a North
Carolina band called Hobex, who were turned into a literal pawn in the
big Universal/Polygram merger a few years back. Through a very
complicated and weird set of circumstances, they wound up stuck on the
roster of a Universal-owned label (London Records) with a record out on
a Warner-owned label (Sire Records). This was a record everybody
loved, and the band had worked as hard as any I've ever seen. They did
all the right things, made a record that by all rights should have been
a hit -- and which sank without a trace, because of corporate power
struggles they had nothing to do with. The band's lawyer described it
as "a pissing contest" between Universal and Warner; it happened in
part because the head of Universal had been the top guy at Warner, and
wanted to stick it to his former place of employment. But guess who got
pissed on the most?

A lot of the really sad situations involve just plain bad luck, or
human weakness -- bands like the Minutemen and Jody Grind, shattered by
fatal van wrecks; or the orphans of Kurt Cobain, Shannon Hoon, that
guy from Sublime. It's rough out there.
  

    

When I was writing about the music biz (1976-1986, roughly), I saw a lot of
really good music just knocked off the table by the ugly realities of music
merchandising.  A great record by a new artist would get no support
whatsoever from the sales and promo people because a major act put something
out that same week.
  

    
>A great record by a new artist would get no support whatsoever from
the sales and promo people because a major act put something out that
same week.>
>

Let me tell ya, the business has not grown any kinder since 1986. It
used to be you could at least get great records out; they might not get
the support or promotion they deserved, but they would at least make
their way into the world. But the days of record companies being any
sort of patron of the arts are long gone. One of the best records I
heard last year was by singer/songwriter Patty Griffin, "Silver Bell."
Unfortunately for her, she was signed to A&M -- a label that was
dissolved in the UniGram merger. "Silver Bell" is in limbo and might
never come out.

Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is another example -- amazing record,
guaranteed to sell at least the same 200,000 copies their other albums
have done; and Reprise gave them the heave-ho. Fortunately, it's
belatedly coming out this month (on Nonesuch, which is turning into a
home for wayward ex-Warners acts [Randy Newman, Laurie Anderson...]).
Too bad "YHF" didn't come out on its original planned release date,
Sept. 11; it would've made a fascinating companion piece to the other
big record to come out that day, Bob Dylan's "Love & Theft."
  

    
What happens now is that someone (perhaps the artists?) post the great records 
as mp3s. The Wilco album's been drifting around the 'net since well before 
9/11, and other unreleased stuff pops up here and there.
  

    
Nonesuch?  Which of the giant corporations owns Nonesuch now?
  

    
>What happens now is that someone (perhaps the artists?) post the reat
records as mp3s. The Wilco album's been drifting around he 'net since
well before 9/11.>

True, Wilco themselves streamed "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" on their
website; which makes it a thoroughly post-modern album -- rejected by
the label, then embraced by the public in underground/grassroots form.
I find "YHF" to be an amazing record that will only enhance the
reputation of the band, as well as the label putting it out. All the
silly/grandiose claims people were making for Radiohead's "Kid A" five
years ago actually apply to "YHF."

Back in the day, when Mo Ostin & Lenny Waronker were running Warners,
they would have kissed Jeff Tweedy's feet for this record, and bought
full-page ads for it in all the trade papers. Which only goes to show
just how much things have changed, and not for the better.

For more on What The Heck Happened To Warner Brothers, here's some
further reading: "Exploding: The Highs, Hits, Hype, Heroes & Hustlers
of the Warner Music Group." It's penned by Stan Cornyn, who wrote the
ad copy on all those very funny/smart-alecky advertisements Warners
used to run during the '70s. It traces Warner's origins, rise and fall,
and is also full of fascinating nuggets. One example, I never knew the
origin of the term "swag" before this; according to Cornyn, it's an
acronym for "Stuff We All Get."
  

    
>Nonesuch?  Which of the giant corporations owns Nonesuch now?>
>

Well, here's where irony sets in: Nonesuch is also part of the Warner
Music Group. So it's under the same corporate umbrella as Reprise, the
label that rejected "YHF." Adding a further level of irony, Reprise
actually tried to get Wilco back last year after cutting them loose. It
was reported that 30 labels made bids for the band and, yes, Reprise
was one of them. When I asked Wilco's lawyer about that, he said, "We
rejected their attempts at post-coital romance."

Honestly, though, Nonesuch is probably a better place for Wilco to be.
They'll get more attention there, and commercial expectations are
lower. Plus Nonesuch can sell some records, too (see: "Buena Vista
Social Club," platinum-plus). But Wilco can sell 200,000 records on
Nonesuch and be a big fish, rather than a small guppy on Reprise. Plus
they get the same distribution they would have at Reprise; and as Jeff
Tweedy pointed out recently, Time/Warner basically paid for this record
twice. Double plus good!

It's nice to see something like this actually work to a band's
advantage. Most bands are not nearly so lucky.
  

    
Warners is really fucked these days. There's been a putsch inside the
company by youngsters, and a number of their more talented older
executives have been forced out: Bob Merlis and Howie Klein, to name
two I knew. 

Nonesuch, though, has a vibe as a musician's label, probably because
of its genesis as a budget non-standard-repertoire classical label.
They had a great jazz series for a while, and have put out some fine
unclassifiable stuff over the years. Plus, with Kronos and Steve Reich,
they've shown they can mass-market contemporary classical music. 

So, David, what's your fix (hey, we all have 'em) for situations like
Wilco found themselves in? 
  

    
>So, David, what's your fix (hey, we all have 'em) for situations like
Wilco found themselves in?>
>

Well, as far as label situations go, they seem to be in about the best
one you could ask for these days. But if it was me, I believe I'd be
inclined to go the Ani DiFranco route and just put the thing out
myself. It's true that putting out your record independently has its
limitations, in terms of how far you can go with it; and it involves a
lot of logistical issues that a lot of musicians would rather avoid.

But as we've already covered, signing to a label can have limitations,
too -- in terms of getting records out to begin with, and getting paid
down the road. Wilco is another band that says they've never made
back-end royalties, and I'm told they actually considered just giving
"Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" away on the web and making their money on the
road; acknowledging it as the loss-leader item their records have
always been, and concentrating on making their money elsewhere.

Nowadays, going DIY doesn't even have to be that much of a limitation
in terms of the number of people you can reach. The aforementioned
DiFranco moves about 300,000 copies of everything she puts out; maybe
Time/Warner could do better than that, but not better enough to be
worth her while.

Or consider Jimmy Buffett, who started his own label (Mailboat) 3
years ago. His last album with UniGram sold 700,000 and his first on
Mailboat did 500,000 -- and according to a recent Billboard story I
just read, he makes $4-$5 per unit this way as opposed to $1-$2 with
UniGram. So what would I rather have, $700,000 and somebody else owns
the record? Or $2 million, and I own it lock, stock and barrel? Not a
hard decision.
  

    

It is gratifying to see Ani do well, and Buffett, too.  But there is a lot of
great music that can't get off the ground because of the huge investment in
marketing and publicity that is required -- and a lot of luck has to come
into play as well.

I saw Nils Lofgren at Slim's in SF a few weeks ago.  He doesn't have a label,
and it seems pretty clear that he's struggling to keep his solo trip on a
profitable level.  That sucks.  As you mentioned above, the record companies
used to INVEST in good music, and keep worthy artists on their rosters long
enough to develop their audiences.  No more.  Same blockbuster mentality that
infects the TV and movie industries.  And the book biz, too, seems to me.
  

    
>It is gratifying to see Ani do well, and Buffett, too. But there is a
lot of great music that can't get off the ground because of the huge
investment in marketing and publicity that is required -- and a lot of
luck has to come into play as well.>
>

In Buffett's case, he also benefited from spending a couple of decades
on major-label rosters before he went independent. MCA/Universal did
profit handsomely from the arrangement, of course. But over the years,
they also spent a great deal of money on Buffett's behalf to help build
him up to his current level. Now, in the autumn of his career, he can
build on/profit from that and keep it going without having to spend too
much of his own money. Whatever you think of Buffett's music (and I
can't say I'm a fan), you do have to give the man props for longevity
and career smarts. He's the only artist I can think of who spent time
in the top-10 with both "Saturday Night Fever" and "O Brother, Where
Art Thou?"

That is amazing and unfortunate about Nils Lofgren (you'd think the
Springsteen connection would be good for a record deal somewhere); and
you're right about the blockbuster mentality leaking into the book
business, too. Whatever the medium, there's less and less room for
niche things -- on the majors, anyway. The silver lining is that it
doesn't seem to be stopping anybody. There are more records, films and
books than ever before, they're just harder to find. So the onus is on
the creators and the audience to find each other. And still, good stuff
is out there. It's a mistake to equate the health of the music
business with the health of music.
  

    
So, elsewhere here, there was a debate raging over whether bands today
really do want to get signed to majors. I held that sure, a certain
percentage of them do, mostly because they either have the confidence
that they're exactly what the mass public is buying, or because they're
naive and unaware of how the business operates. But I also thought
that the majority of the bands I was seeing and talking to at SXSW this
year *weren't* interested in a deal with a major because there were
too many pitfalls. Like Jimmy Buffett and Ani Di Franco, they would be
more interested in a deal that'd allow them more creative control and a
bigger piece of the pie, even if that meant selling fewer records. 

So what do you think: are most young bands still aiming towards the
majors or not? 
  

    

> It's a mistake to equate the health of the music business with the health
> of music.

Amen!
  

    

From an article about Emmitt Rhodes that someone posted in the music con-
ference:


> "But as the record crept up the charts, Rhodes's career came tumbling down.
>  His contract with ABC-Dunhill required an album every six months.  When
> his debut took nine months to complete, the company took legal action.  'I
> was being sued for more money than I'd ever seen,' Rhodes explains.  'I was
> horribly confused.'

> "In his rush to record a second LP, Rhodes could barely tour to support the
> first one, let alone enjoy its success.

> "'I learned a lot about life from the movie 'Caligula,' he says. ' Who are
> the richest men in Rome?  The pimps, of course.'

> "After two years of legal battles, and two respectable but unsuccessful
> follow-up albums, Rhodes called it quits.  'I was a failure.  I couldn't
> fulfill my contract,' he says.  A burned-out 10-year veteran of the music
> industry, Rhodes was 24 years old.
  

    
>So what do you think: are most young bands still aiming towards the
majors or not?>
>

I think you've got this correctly sussed out. The people with any
sense aren't chasing record deals anymore, they're just getting out and
doing it. Then, if you're successful enough on your own, they'll come
to you -- at which point the artist has to decide if there's anything
to be gained from signing to a label.

Most bands who do take the jump seem to make less money, even if they
sell more records. Southern Culture on the Skids did great with their
first Geffen album, sold about 250,000 copies. But that wasn't enough
to recoup, and actually wound up costing them money. At Geffen's
behest, they kept passing up paying gigs to play these free radio
festivals (which you've got to do if you want airplay here on Planet
Clear Channel). When they finally said, "Enough," they were accused to
having a bad attitude. One record later, they were off Geffen, and glad
to be there.

I expect Emmitt Rhodes would be able to relate.
  

    
Heard a couple of interesting stories:

Jennifer Warnes was interviewed on Austin's KUT radio last night, talking to 
Larry Monroe about her career, which included a couple of top ten hits and 
some time singing backup for Leonard Cohen.  She said that she had a conflict 
with Arista, and they managed to prohibit her from appearing in public as a 
solo act for three years, which is one reason she did a second route of backup 
for Cohen. Monroe commented that this sort of thing happens to singers and 
musicians all the time.

Second story was about Sheryl Crow - I think I read it in Newsweek. She 
apparently suffered a "meltdown" - I guess they mean something like a nervous 
breakdown, over her latest album because her record company was trying to get 
her to do trendy-pop hip-hop stylings - I suppose the kind of stuff you get 
from Jennifer Lopez, Nelly Furtado, et al.  She ultimately scrapped the whole 
album and started over because she was so uncomfortable doing anything but the 
more traditional guitar rock she's into. Or would you call it traditional? 
Well, hell, you know what I mean. 

Just a couple of illustrations of the power of the record companies to screw 
with a performer's life. There's a bunch of super-talented performers in 
Austin who never went to major lables because they knew just what it meant.
  

    
>Sheryl Crow...apparently suffered a "meltdown"...over her latest
album because her record company was trying to get her to do trendy-pop
hip-hop stylings.>
>

God, this is crazy! Sheryl Crow gets airplay and sells records -- *a
lot* of records, as in *11 million* copies of her first three albums.
Why on earth would a label want to tinker with that? And how would a
"Sheryl Crow's Many Moods of Hip-Hop" album be anything but a
catastrophe? It not only wouldn't sell, it would deal a serious (maybe
even fatal) blow to her credibility. Ack...
  

    
You can't emphasize this enough: record companies are now run by
people who have no involvement whatever in using the product they're
creating and selling. Some jackass looked at a spreadsheet and said
"Hip-hop (whatever that is) sells well, and we've noticed that this
Crow thing was down 3.6% from its last release. Instruct the Crow to
add some hip-hop to its next piece of product." This was the rationale
behind the age-related firings at Warners: records sell overwhelmingly
to people younger than the people who were fired. This, of course,
doesn't mean that those people didn't know how to sell records or
otherwise do their job, but some idiot made the correlation. (Of
course, as one friend of mine who was fired said, now he picks up a
week's salary just by doing a two-day consulting gig with the kids
who've replaced him.) 

No wonder the smarter bands won't have anything to do with the majors.
  

    
>This was the rationale behind the age-related firings at Warners:
records sell overwhelmingly to people younger than the people who were
fired. This, of course, doesn't mean that those people didn't know how
to sell records or otherwise do their job, but some idiot made the
correlation.>
>

And remember the Clive Davis fiasco at Arista? They gave him the
heave-ho, in part citing his advancing years (although internal power
struggles at BMG had at least as much to do with it, too). But like him
or not -- and I put an awful lot of what Davis does in the category of
grade-A schlock -- the man knows how to pick 'em. After he left
Arista, BMG bankrolled him with a new label, J Records; thanks to
Alicia Keys, J appears to be doing just fine.

Meanwhile, the guy who gave Davis das boot from Arista was
subsequently deposed. He probably went into business with the guy who
cut Wilco loose from Reprise.
  

    
Or got hired by the 30-year-olds at Warners. 
  

    

Didn't Clive Davis' troubles also have a little to do with some expense 
account irregularities?
  

    
That was at Columbia.    It was an object lesson for me in just how
important it is to have a heavy at the record company getting things done
for you.    Clive signed Dr Hook to CBS and was canned while we were cutting
our third album.   Suddenly we went from being company darlings with two
gold singles to schmucks that couldn't get our calls answered.   And we went
bankrupt to break out of the contract.
  

    

Jeez, rik, how awful. Talk about collateral damage.
  

    
>Clive signed Dr Hook to CBS and was canned while we were cutting our
third album. Suddenly we went from being company darlings with two gold
singles to schmucks that couldn't get our calls answered.>
>

Generally, it's the kiss of death when the guy who signed you leaves
the company; and I'm sure it's even worse when they leave under a
cloud. It's almost a guarantee of failure, even for an act with a track
record. And let the record show that, following two albums that
charted more than respectably (#45 and #41), the aforementioned third
Dr. Hook LP (presciently titled "Belly Up!") topped out at #141.