The age-old advice given to musicians of “don’t quit your day job” has never seemed so prescient. But if your day job is in the business end of the music industry you’re fucked. Where does an A.R. person go to get a $200,000 a year gig nowadays? How the mighty have fallen. The chart above looks like an electrocardiograph of a patient who is on the verge of flatlining. For most executives at major labels, life is an 8-track tape.
When my band was signed to RCA records I could sense that the foundations of the corporate music world were shaky even back in the 80s. People who had little expertise in anything, particularly music, were running a multi-billion dollar industry fueled by their own arrogance, greed and a false sense of invincibility. I remember how appalled and dismayed I was to discover that the people in charge of getting my music to the public had little or no passion for the product they were selling. With rare exceptions, the executives, A.R., publicity and sales people at RCA knew very little about rock and roll. The record label that signed Elvis Presley was clueless when it came to dealing with new music and how to promote it. The handful of people who knew what they were doing got out and started their own projects. The rest went down with the ship and were forced to join the ranks of people who actually had to work for a living. The sad thing is a bunch of naive musicians were caught up in the whole charade and many had their careers destroyed before they even really began. I got off clean. I never planned to have a career in music.
I formed a rock band out of love and outrage. Love for the music, outrage at what it had become. I never had a game plan. I never dreamed of making money from my music. Rock and roll wasn’t there to provide for me, I was there to provide for it. I had no strategy for getting a record deal. In fact, I did almost everything a person should NOT do if they’re interested in making a career out of music. I pissed a lot of people off by refusing to kowtow to the established power structures and formalities of the music scene. When I got signed to a major label my behavior didn’t change. But now I was pissing off people who thought they had power over me. I didn’t give a shit and that just pissed them off more. I wasn’t impressed by their power. Without the music they had nothing and I had the music. They weren’t artists. They were barely even business people. They stunk of fear and insecurity. I knew they were part of a dying system and I wasn’t interested in being part of their death dance. I had started a band as a form of guerrilla theater. My intentions were to shake the system up and here I was a part of it. I was an infiltrator. And the suits at RCA knew it. They had been tricked and they hated me for it.
In an interview with Musician magazine in 1985, I accused RCA, along with the CIA and FBI, of being part of a government plot to destroy rock roll. Of course I was joking but the interviewer was shocked that I would, as he put it, “bite the hand that feeds me.” I had to remind him that without musicians the record companies would have nothing to sell. We were “feeding’ the record companies, not the other way around. Sadly, too many musicians forgot that and ended up becoming dependent on an industry that was essentially parasitic. I know many of those musicians and they’re bitter. But it was their own fault. They bought into the hype.
It is the nature of pop music that success should be immediate and profitable. Rock musicians in the past generally approached their trade with the notion that fame and money were intrinsic to what they did and the payoff should be swift and lucrative. Unlike painters, writers, sculptors and poets, rock and roll wasn’t something you were expected to continue to do if you weren’t financially successful at it. Record sales were the barometer by which you measured the value of what you did. Start a band, make a couple of records, if they didn’t sell go back to working at your dad’s hardware store. But many of us approached rock for reasons other than fame and money. Because rock and roll had profoundly transformed our lives we believed by practicing the art we too could change the world around us. Just as Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Doors, Patti Smith, The Clash and so many more, had thrown open doors that were liberating, cathartic and soul deepening, we committed ourselves to an energy and lifestyle that was more than just music, it was a movement - spiritual, political and cultural. In so doing, we joined the ranks of the poets and painters who created for the sake of making the world a better place, more alive, more sexy, more conscious. In the wake of the music industries financial collapse, I think rock and roll is again becoming something vital and deep, less concerned with cultural trends, fashion and fame. Stripped of the allure of money and stardom, rock is regaining some of its soul.
The big record companies are dead, but musicians are still alive and creating greater quantities of music than ever before. Fewer will get rich and famous, but they’ll be making music for the right reasons. Money is a byproduct of art not its purpose. If you go into music thinking you’ll make a living at it, you’re not only going into it for the wrong reason, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment, heartbreak and poverty. While there are a handful of people making money writing commercial jingles and movie/TV soundtracks, the era of a big fat monetary advance from a record label for a newly signed rock band is over. The music business has always been a gamble, but the odds against the musician are now stratospheric. I see a day when the phrase “pop star” has become antiquated and Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber are just dim memories of a time when the machinery of stardom still had fuel firing its engines.
The above graph of declining music sales doesn’t take into account the struggling music tour business. What will be left when that collapses? There will still be middle-class rockers on Econoline/Econolodge tours playing the few college towns that still have indie record stores and music venues. They will roam the earth like prehistoric animals going from one rock and roll watering hole to another. I visited with a friend of mine recently who is currently on such a tour. He’s in his early 50s. He’s got an infant daughter and a wife. He’s making rent money. He loves his music but he’s clearly worried about his livelihood. His art is overshadowed by the struggle of making ends meet. He seems resigned to a lifestyle that emphasizes the grind over the grandeur. He’s devoted most of his life to his art and has learned the tough lesson that art is sacrifice. He’s willing to make that sacrifice but I detect a sadness in him where there should be the ecstatic. On the other hand, there is something almost heroic about my friend. He’s a true believer in the power and glory of rock and roll. Music is his redemption. Art justifies itself.
If all of the above isn’t reason enough to convince any musician that the only reason to make music is out of love, then consider this: given the nature of downloading from the Internet, musicians should reconcile themselves to the fact that their music will be given away.
So, don’t quit your day job.
I’ll be releasing a new album this summer. The music industry may be dead but I’m not.
P.S. My experience at RCA would have been far worse had it not been for the comradeship of two people who did love rock and roll: Bruce Harris (R.I.P.) and Gregg Geller. They signed me to RCA and they had the foresight to leave before it all went to hell. Bruce quit his high paying job in A.R. to start a rock band. Geller moved on to become a music historian and compiler of some terrific rock anthologies. They were the last of a dying breed, they believed in the music. They walked the walk.
Shit, it’s worse than I thought. Update via DM reader Dollar Van Demos: The real death of the music industry here.
Thanks to Exile On Moan Street
