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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.

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. 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 the music for the right reasons. Money is a byproduct of art…if you’re lucky. So, don’t quit your day job.

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 Greg 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 becoming one of rock’s finest compilers of rock anthologies. They were the last of a dying breed, they believed in the music. They walked the walk.

Thanks to Exile On Moan Street for the chart.