Posted on 05/22/2005 9:43:39 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
ATLANTA - He entered the rock 'n' roll pantheon as a joker, a smoker and a midnight toker.
But sitting in a gray business suit in front of 400 corporate executives, Steve Miller's message had more to do with knowing how to take the money and run.
"I love playing, but you can't get to the good stuff unless you keep an eye on the business," Miller said after speaking at a conference put on by a corporate research and advisory firm.
Miller's speech underlies a truth that's been around for decades, but become more obvious recently - rock 'n' roll is big business and, hard-living stereotypes aside, the rockers who succeed over the long run are the ones paying attention to their finances.
With competition increasing and traditional revenue sources such as album and ticket sales continuing to slide, music industry experts say the rock world's long-blurry line between art and commerce is threatening to fade entirely.
Selling out, once the ultimate insult in rock circles, has come to mean much less, they say.
"It's a whole different kind of world we live in now," said Doug Brod, executive editor of Spin magazine. "Artists want control over how they're getting paid; a lot of them just want to take it into their own hands."
Experts say changes in the industry are requiring artists to be even more mindful of ways to market themselves, and their music, to the public.
With the advent of Internet downloads, album sales have been dropping steadily for the past five years. Concert attendance has seen a similar dip. And with cheaper recording equipment thanks to computer technology, more bands are competing for fans' attention and dollars.
"With less (record company) money to promote them, the onus really falls on the artists to promote their own careers," said Matt Hatau, vice president of Signatures Network, a music marketing and licensing company that has worked with KISS, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and U2.
"They're not just looking to the labels and saying, 'Hey, run my business and hand me a royalty check,'" Hatau said.
If any band has carried rock's hippie image into the 21st Century, it's Athens Ga.-based Widespread Panic - whose shows pack in legions of tie-dye wearing "Spreadheads" reminiscent of the scene at the Grateful Dead's traveling carnivals.
Behind the scenes, though, the group is a $14 million-a-year corporation with profit-sharing, a pension plan and health care benefits for its employees.
"We have a board of directors and board meetings; we have conference calls," said Buck Williams, the group's Nashville-based manager and agent. "We discuss what we're going to do, why we're going to do it, how much it's going to cost and what we're going to get out of it."
The band's six members play an active role in the business, Williams said.
"There are some that are more involved, more vocal than others," he said. "But I promise you at the end of the day there's not a single one of them that doesn't want to know where the money's going and why."
Increasingly, though, high-profile rock-business mergers have become more visible than Widespread's number crunching.
Brit-rocker David Bowie startled the rock world in 1997 when the man who once took the stage as a space alien Ziggy Stardust announced he would issue bonds backed by royalties from the future sale of his music.
The $55 million issue of 10-year notes was bought entirely by Prudential Insurance Co. at an interest rate of 7.9 percent.
And in October, U2 announced an unprecedented partnership with Apple computers, joining CEO Steve Jobs to endorse the company's iPod audio players - including one specially designed to play every song the band has ever recorded.
During his recent speech, Miller traced his business impulses back to Dallas where, as a 12-year-old, he mimeographed letters to fraternities announcing his rock band was available for bookings - but only for a limited time.
It's those instincts that led the business conference's Atlanta-based sponsor, The Hackett Group, to add Miller to a roster of presentations that included Benchmarking for Competitive Advantage and Generating a Return on Compliance Efforts.
Miller makes no apologies for always being mindful of the business end of his music career, including licensing his songs "Fly Like an Eagle" to the U.S. Postal Service for an ad campaign and "Rockin' Me" for a Wrangler jeans commercial.
The same marketing skills he showcased as a preteen would lead Miller to become one of the first rock artists to earn a sizable cash advance on an album from his record company and among the first to negotiate for complete artistic control from the label.
"I never found anybody who could manage my career any better than I could," Miller said.
Spin's Brod said he doesn't fault new acts for doing whatever it takes to get noticed - even if it means selling the rights to their music for commercial uses, sometimes even before the songs are released on an album.
Warren Hudson, a music store owner in Decatur, Ga., defends artists who lend their music to commercial uses, saying sometimes it's the only way to get noticed or stay ahead in the crowded industry.
"I don't necessarily consider it a sell-out," Hudson said as he slapped price stickers on a new batch of CDs at his shop. "It all depends on how you approach it."
The results, though, can be unsettling to some.
"It's kind of funny that the music that was our rebellious music is now being bought and sold wholesale by corporations," said Frederick Noble, who edits Degenerate Press, an online music and pop culture magazine out of Atlanta.
In the end, says Williams, bands like Widespread Panic have a responsibility to play the money game - not just for themselves, but for their fans.
"It's not just about us and what we can do," he said. "We have to make all the numbers work so we can grow and keep enhancing the value for those fans."
Somebody get him a cheeseburger.
That's been true for 40 years. Jimmy Paige got his start as a session musician, partly because guys like Pete Townsend couldn't get the hang of that newfangled electric guitar. Recording time was very expensive in the mid-60's -- hence you brought in the hired-guns to lay down the guitar tracks quickly. Getting it right on the first cut was the goal. Incidentally, you won't find Paige's name on any of The Who's albums. He got paid a premium to play uncredited. This preserved Townsend's reputation as well.
Yep! I remember when the Stones played "Saturday Night Live" (I think it was the "Some Girls" album"). Couldn't believe the Stones would "stoop" to playing on TV. Of course the were attempting to jumpstart their careers against such acts as Blondie & The Talking Heads -- Punk/New Wave bands that had no such self-limiting rules.
I have never heard that story, but it explains why Paige was chosen by Moon and Entwistle when they founded Led Zeppelin.
I do the same thing! And after the "Shoe the children" line, I always think, "Shoo, children! Shoo!"
The electric guitar work on "Magic Bus" was Jimmy Paige. My source was the Led Zeppelin biography, "Hammer of the Gods."
He did. The whole thing was written with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.
Now I certainly know of Page's tenure as an in-demand session player, even at the tender age of 17. However, saying that he was responsible for many or even some of Townsend's recorded licks.............sorry; don't buy it. I'd have to see far more evidence to believe that. Townsend happens to be one hell of a guitarist (even if his lead chops are wanting).
ummmm................huh???
During one of the many band spats endured by The Who, John Entwistle and Keith Moon started a band with Jimmy Paige and Robert Plant. Moon said he thought this band would go over like a lead zeppelin. When The Who got back together, Paige and Plant got another bass and drummer, and kept Moon's idea.
Well, I'm just recounting what I read in a biography of Led Zeppelin. You might be drawing the wrong conclusions, too. Just because Pete Townsend couldn't get the hang of an electric guitar rift on a single cut in 1964, doesn't mean that he's a bad guitar player, or that he's some kind of a fraud. It just means that the electric guitars of the period were damn hard to master -- especially for a relatively young kid who could barely afford one a year prior.
Some of the stuff you regularly see done on a modern electric guitar would have been impossible on the ones constructed in the early '60's. The strings are lighter, the amps are more powerful and so on.
The big guns of that period were Eric Clapton (who was only around 15 when he burst onto the scene), Jeff Beck (another 'Yardbird'), Jimmy Paige (who was still unknown except to music insiders), and that's getting to be about it. You might throw George Harrison into that mix. The bench strength just wasn't there.
Why do you think all of these guys were so ga-ga over Jimi Hendrix when he arrived on the scene? Hendrix could do things then that are still hard to do now.
Me too. I saw him a few times in the sixties, and he played really creative, original music. He's underappreciated, in my opinion.
I'm a blues fan and not so interested in his seventies more pop oriented stuff, but I admire his ability to give his audience what it wants and hang in there over such a long time.
He's probably making good money all these years, and more power to him. And he can still really play that guitar.
I remember the days when they actually had a terrific selection of tubes, as well as a testing machine. Back then, many of the employees of Radio Shack actually knew something about electronics. While I was able to pick up some preamp tubes there, I don't recell them ever stocking the tubes I needed for my power section (6550s... I was a bass player!) although they could order them.
Radio Shack is a good example of what's happened over the years. To a place where you could get just about anything you might need to an electronics project, and people who could help you figure out what you might need to do, to today's "You've got questions, we've got blank stares" employees!
Mark
I remember when DEVO first played on SNL. The guys in my band and I were taking a break from practicing and watching TV, and we were sure that it was a "joke" band, not the real thing... I remember thinking, "Why did that bass player chop up that Gibson bass?"
It was only a few weeks later when I saw the album in a music store that I found out that DEVO was "serious!"
Mark
Did you have an Ampeg? The B-3 player's Leslie used the 6550 as the power tube too.
Mark
"...that I don't want to get caught up in all that - funky shit goin' down in the city"
I remember as well. Of course, SNL is still a great program to see some really good "live" rock and roll. Often the musical acts are the highlight of the show. Some of those old shows from the 70s-90s are great just to see some of the bands at the start of their careers. And SNL has always had a rule that bands must play live. This is why it was such an abomination when Ashlee Simpson was caught lip syncing on the show.
I believe it was Page who played on a number of early Kinks recordings (I can't think of any early Who track that has anything that sounds like what Page would have played.).
You just can't beat the sweet sound of an Ampeg SVT. My late best friend had an unusual rig: Furman parametric EQ and Furman X-over pushing a CS-800 which was hooked to a 8X10 for the highs, and a 2x18 scoop for the lows. It was huge. He called it Darth Vader's bass amp. The road crew hated him.
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