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."
Gotta politely disagree with you on this one. The two most popular guitars, the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul have remained virtually unchanged for the last 1/2 century. If anything, the off-the-shelf instruments produced during the 1950s were made with greater emphasis on quality than ones produced today. And Marshall tube amplifiers (the first 100 watt stack commissioned specifically for Townsend) also retain their signature sound albeit the addition of a master volume (and the master volume was added in the 1970s). Furthermore, effects pedals (many of which were invented by Mr. Les Paul himself) were available.
Guitars have been made with surprisingly few changes over the last 50 years that would facilitate better playability.
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.
I am unpopular with this view but I'll state it anyways. Hendrix was not a great guitar player. He was an innovative guitar player. Was his contribution important to the evolution of rock guitar? Unquestionably. He was able to coax sounds from his Stratocaster that were never heard before by using overdrive, feedback and a tremelo arm.
It was a parlor trick.
Hendrix played the exact same guitar as Buddy Holly but in an entirely different fashion. His technical skills, however, were not that impressive. Once the tricks to Hendrix's signature sound are duplicated (Stratocaster w/.tremelo, loud tube amp overdriven past the point of feedback and wah pedal) Hendrix's songs can be played by most beginning-intermediate guitar players. I was playing a Hendrix-esque version of the Star Spangled Banner shortly after I learned Smoke on the Water. My friends thought I was awesome. It was quite easy to impress people.
I remember when one could purchase anything they needed to build their own guitar amp from Radio Shack. When I first started playing as a kid in the early 1980s my first amp was a Radio Shack preamp hooked up to two old stereo speakers. I pugged my guitar into a tape deck which had 1/4" input jacks. I turned the input levels of the tape deck all the way up to acheive distortion and ran that into the Radio Shack preamp.
As a kid, I thought it sounded pretty good. Loud as hell too! I was able to get a guitar sound similar to Townsend's "Live at Leeds" sound --at least that's what I thought as a 14 year-old kid!
Since I had to move all of my own gear, and it had to fit in my car, I had one of those monster heads, and a custom made TL cabinet loaded with an EVM-15L. The cabinet actually weighed less than the Fender head! But all in all, I did like the sound of the Ampegs over the Fender.
Mark
Well, both Springsteen and Meatloaf rhymed "growing up" with "throwing up" within a year of each other...
Now that I know what Steve Miller is doing, I wonder if Boz Scaggs is working the National Association of Manufacturers convention this year...
Meanwhile, Townsend's sound at Woodstock sounded like me playing a $25 Harmony through my Panasonic boom box.
LOL! Everybody at Woodstock sounded like a $25 Harmony through a Panasonic boom box!
Here's a bit of trivia. After Townsend tossed his guitar into the crowd following the Who's performance, his roadies went into the crowd and successfully retreived it.
Wimmins are like that too.
Pretty cool, though not as cool (or brave) as Marty Balin jumping into the audience at Altamont to take on a bunch of Hell's Angels.
Heh heh heh...
"Space Cowboy" was one of his first.
If you want a good sample of his early stuff get, uh...ahh...I forget. The first double release of his songs.I'm feeling stoned (I'm not) drunk (I am) and eating fetuccini pesto right now. Will come back tomorrow if I'm still here to go over the slick guitar shanannigans that Miller is so great at.
FMCDH(BITS)
The Kinks are my favorite band, and the rumor has gone around for years that Page really played the famous riff on "You Really Got Me" instead of Dave Davies. Ray Davies finally had enough of it and erupted in an interview once, saying that it was definitely Dave playing on those early tracks, not Page. He said it really angered him because at the time, Page made snide remarks to everyone about how crude and simplistic the "YRGM" riff was, and then after it became acknowledged as a rock classic, he started going along with the rumors that he really played it. Ray called him a liar and added, "I don't care if he puts a spell on me."
No, I understand........been slinging rock guitar since '68 :).
I'm very, very familiar with the histories of most of the old guard, including The Who and Led Zeppelin. For the record, the guys you mention never formed a band. Ever.
Zeppelin was originally to be called "The New Yardbirds". Jimmy Page (note the lack of the "i" in his name). This was following the days after the Yardbirds had broken up; Page wanted to continue on. He was discussing the idea of "The New Yardbirds" with John Entwhistle, who said the idea would go over like a "lead zeppelin".
The name stuck. Just that simple. Never did they form a band with that lineup.
...and yes, I've read "Hammer of the Gods".
I largely agree with your assessment of Hendrix.
However..........
What finally showed me his TRUE skills?? Band of Gypsies. Unbelievable live album. His playing is phenomenal on that record. Floored me; didn't know he had it in him.
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