The Mechanism of a Band
The heavy
The era of the high‐profile band is not over, by any means. But band‐music has become, since perhaps the Nineteen‐Nineties, more of a part with other kinds of music production.
One thing that has always niggled me about conventional narrative about band music is repeated statements by journalists, book writers (who are usually journalists) about how bands are managed. These get hardened, and then passed round by fans. And I’d like to ask, how much truth is there in these stories?
Managing a band
Joe Carducci talks about this as wide discussion. He’s got an aim, and if you know of his background and book, the aim would come as no surprise. He talks about how a small band gets on the road to put their music out. Still, there’s more of a story there than you will usually hear. He tells how a small band may play local gigs. If they seem to get anyplace, then they try to tour. Someone needs to get this organised, get transport. The band grind out some dates. They travel a long way in cheap rented transport. Maybe enough to put some music down on disc. So then they need studio time. Given that JC bands are not the kind that sign to major labels with elaborate launches, maybe they get together enough cash and goodwill to cut an EP. Then they hope for some airtime. It’s not glamorous, its graft, and the band’s long hope is that some point they’ll have enough dates and sales to keep them out of jobs as hotel cleaners and security guards.
There is a line that this story crosses, and JC, with his breaking‐band story, stops there. But let’s say the band gets viable enough to reliably record and tour. Over which line the band have new or wider issues. The tours may need to be in different countries, so passports and visas are needed. Someone is gonna need to check the promotion is going out. Someone needs to at least hire an accountant, perhaps sign off on deals, make sure the returns come back in. At which place it may be necessary to have a manager. The manager will in many ways, even if not creative, be part of the group. And what happens if, during tour or recording, a band member is lost? That could be due to injury or, and this has happened a few times, a drugs bust; or a fallout between band members as they stew in the pressure cookers of vans and hotel rooms; or something less dramatic like problems back home. What can a band do about that? Hire in new members to cover the planned recording (doesn’t usually happen) or honour the dates of a tour (happens all the time). And how will that be handled financially? This is the injured employee situation, and most law would suggest the band unit should pay a reasonable amount of sick‐pay. But few bands would be in that kind of position, given that their income would likely depend on immediate payback of recordings and gigs.
There is also the problem of where the money goes. Due to old industry setups, a disproportionate amount of money goes to songwriters, who get credit for every play of a record, every cover version. This has caused, wrong or right, legendary stresses within bands. Maybe a band could never have functioned without that bass player, yet all the musician ever got for those records was a one‐off session payment. It gets so you wonder if anyone anyplace ever got fair dues.
Like I said, this isn’t glamorous, it’s graft and truth. And there are many ways a band might grapple with the issues. And that’s what journalists will not want to get to the bottom of.
The journalist ideal
It’s a statement latent in most writing, especially that which styles itself as rock criticism. Rock is dangerous, rock is about medieval knights rampaging across the countryside on crusades. Rock is about fools parading their emotions for our attention. This ain’t exactly politically correct. So when it comes to the dosh and the management, writers like to double back. Their ideal is of a band as democracy. Crossing the world as band of brothers, to drag themselves, and their fans into a hippie dreamworld of all‐is‐possible‐nothing‐forbidden. You wanna see this played out as fantasy? Cameron Crowe was a ‘rock’ critic who worked for Rolling Stone magazine. He made a film called Almost Famous and that there is the exact journalist pitch.
You know, I guess there may be moments that come close to that, but if you think a band can endure and be managed like that, you know nothing of life and it’s ways.
For real, from guesswork
So I’m gonna cover some bands. And the hardened truths about them. And how that matches some possibilities about how they functioned. I say possibilities because it would take five years of reading biographies and arcane interviews to root out truths. But possibilities is enough, because you’ll find the hardened truths are nothing of the sort. And if this makes you rethink even a few positions, I’d say, all for the better. This stuff needs the hammer to fall.
Management
No Means No managed themselves. Though I’ve never seen it mentioned. And signed to independent labels to stay that way. And when the music business changed around 1992, so ‘rock’ bands became temporarily popular, they turned that down too. And when the music business diversified around 1990, so nobody would promote them, they promoted themselves. It takes graft and smarts. But proves it can be done.
The Minutemen took a different approach, ”jamming econo”. They toured extensively, but only for a few weeks at a time. They played where they knew they were wanted. They kept day‐jobs. They earned cash enough to be viable. Edit preferred to selection.
“Econo” had application at the time of the Coronavirus pandemic. Witness this article in the Guardian newspaper when Australian musicians stated they had income problems. It had become uneconomic to tour, which is a big deal in a country like Australia. Maybe “Econo” or similar strategy was needed? Or quitting for another job?
…and the deep sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager
Emphasis mine. Not rock’n roll romanticism, but good accounting.
You want dictatorial? Agreeing that showbands have different needs, but James Brown was reported as fining people for not polishing their shoes. And ‘Rock’ critics approve? Or/and are amused?
Management, one to another
Pere Ubu started as a collective. Drummer Tony Maimone said,
We were a collective
But there was another twenty years of Ubu associated with singer David Thomas. The split was not without a fight,
I said I knew how we could do this, we were going to do it my way
Ubu publish their rules. There are creative rules, and rules about band organisation. I seem to remember management works using a Japanese system; collective agreement, a vote, then David Thomas says. Anyway, here is an Ubu rule,
No partner in Ubu Projex shall be paid or receive payment above and beyond what is his / her share of any recording, songwriting or touring.
Some people would find this awkward. But, after thirty years of touring and recording, and twenty or more members, this situation will rise. Awkward or not, what would you do? Now you know.
Split bands
A friend offered the case of bands that split. It’s something that journalists will note, but fans are more engaged and commited.
Splits can occur in many ways. Fans will tell you that bassist Chris Squire’s Fish out of Water album, recorded during a lull in the activity of the band Yes, is a unmarked album by the main band (given musical evidence and subsequent events they are right). Then there was guitarist/sonwriter John Lennon and his partner’s Plastic Ono Band, which mostly existed at the same time as the main band, The Beatles. Sometimes these bands exist at the same time. For some years, Pere Ubu have run a second unit with shared musicians called Pere Ubu Moon Unit
It’s a subset of Pere Ubu dedicated to generating new songs.
They are mostly live proposition. More distinct, raised by my friend, is The Wedding Present and Cinerama, which exist to support different styles of musical arrangement. After that, there are numerous examples of bands existing at similar or different times swapping members, material, or moving on to other material. Peter Frame’s Rock Family Trees may have had musical limitations, but they were ground‐zero fandom, long before ’zines.
Band broken
Coverage of broken bands is somewhat different, fueled by common sense and fashion. Many people are less than fans, so bail. Journalists will, and continue to be, dilligent, but in thier value judgements work under the same limitations. It was clear that Moby Grape had plenty in their tank, but broken‐beyond‐repair logistics and Indifference (little did they know!) meant their recordings were either of bad quality, or unavailable to this day. As for bands that went to their maker, the legends are many. Relatively recent example being the row almighty over Kyuss and Kyuss Lives!. Peace, guys.
Musical purpose
One part of the appeal of Yes is that that they were/are a ‘nice’ band. They sang about spiritual development in lambent meadows, thoughts by the river and the like. Except they barely held a lineup through two consecutive albums. This is usually noted in passing, with amusement. And in case you wondered if this was an endless drift and join of universal harmony, they sacked their early guitarist, Peter Banks, without group decision; then sacked keyboardist Tony Kaye, on some sort of group whim (he didn’t want to play Moogs or Mellotrons). By the time of the 1990 album and tour Union, the group was two separate bands sharing the stage. See that, all you good people? One of the keyboardists in disgust chucked his copy of the album out of the window.
Speaking of which, the most stressed out band ever, Radiohead sometimes take forever to compose a single track. They’ve changed style a lot, though less than some like to claim. That said, whatever it is happens between them, happens between them. Effectively, the lineup has never changed. Maybe the stress is enough. Hell is other people. I suspect this is a long way from the Cameron Crowe ideal.
And so to The Pretenders, who can do no wrong. This is when singer Chrissie Hynde sacked the entire band for being “too funky”. Musically speaking, she was right. But how come she can, and Mark E. Smith (below) can’t?
Composition, dictatorial
Jethro Tull have always been associated with bandmenber Ian Anderson. When they started, they included another guy called Mick Abrahams, who split for a group called Blodwyn Pig. I recall Rolling Stone’s comment,
…didn’t have to suffer under an dictatorial Pharisee like Anderson
I suppose this comment may be aimed at Ian Anderson’s end‐of‐the‐pier philosophising, and a feeling Tull could have been more volatile with other creative input. But it ignores that Tull had a unique compact of rock materials, that guitarist Martin Barre is a key part of that compact, and that they lasted twenty years. I did find a laid‐back comment by one of the band members that Tull were “Ian’s band” and played his music. And playing Ian’s music was likely, if you leaned that way, a good use of a life. Needs evidence to prove having the songwriting credit makes you a ‘dictator’.
Incidentally, something similar can be said of Procul Harum, who were mostly composed by keyboardist Gary Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid. As the drummer said, when he turned down the offer to work with Jimmy Page in the emerging Led Zeppelin, “It was all I wanted, musically”.
Composition, non‐dictatorial
Hawkwind. I mean they’re a joke right? Hardly anyone reviews them. But they are worth reviewing for this because here is a band with a vortex. The vortex is guitarist Dave Brock. Not the only composer, but always there. Never heard a comment about them, despite the most tangled discography and lineup history ever. Perhaps that’s the near‐Anarchist leanings of the band at play? Never heard a bad word about them either, band members seem to amble in then amble away. Maybe it’s the drugs. Even Ginger Baker had good things to say about them.
King Crimson. Everyone knows they are the guitarist Robert Fripp, right? For sure, Fripp’s oddities of composition are a mark of this band. And, though each lineup seems to last a few albums, they’ve had changes of lineup. Except… Fripp is not the only composer. Often, they’ve created lineups where the music was group improvised. So it seems like everyone gets to contribute what they have. And, for pop music, Fripp is an unusual character—he’ll try to be decent, but he’ll be decisive. A friend of mine recalled that in the early Seventies Fripp suggested he might leave King Crimson so the band could continue. From Fripp, that was sincere, not brinksmanship. Not leadership, is it?
Credits
Motörhead are another band founded round a songwriter, Lemmy Kilmister. So Motörhead, everyone says, was Lemmy. Yes and no, because Lemmy wrote it all, and when he died (recent to this article), the band didn’t want to carry on. But for Lemmy, it was a band. I recall their drummer in the last band said,
We fought like mad about arrangements
You want to know how they played it? Go look at the song credits. Pushing forty years and every song credited to ‘Motörhead’.
Mind you, there were those before them. For all the picking apart, for all the analysis, for all the managerial problems—and the fractured end, captured forever on film—song credits for The Beatles main songwriting duo are to ‘John Lennon/Paul McCartney’. No by track division.
Multiple offences
The most notorious, of course, is singer Mark E. Smith, of the band, The Fall. He wasn’t out to please people. But if you split away, it makes sense. Managerially, The Fall used home‐grown management—they quit major labels sharpish. As for personnel, Smith made a comment endlessly replayed,
If it’s me and your granny on bongos, it’s The Fall
so worked through many lineup changes and thirty something albums. But they never put out a duff album. As for composition, Smith said he never learned anything about music. This was a calculated stance (he did mess with recordings, offer comment, and sequence tracks for albums). That said, one song is documented where he rewrote lyrics to suit the music. As for credits, most songs are to ‘The Fall/Mark E. Smith’ (as lyricist). And he split profits. In his autobiography, he claimed something like,
I was more Socialist than any of them [London hipsters and politicians R.C.]
Wind up
Joe Carducci talked of bands as an organic entity, that would grow, live, and die. Bands are a stark demonstration that in democracy, everyone is alone. They are not easy.
It is possible to make a case that a band will make better product, and that members solo don’t achieve squat. It is also possible to make a case that fractures and heals are because of difficult personalities. And so retell tales of mayhem. Or construct some case for difficult genius. But in many cases these tales are incomplete stories that serve to gloss difficult decisions within any band. And in some cases these tales are used to cover a writer’s aspirational or political motives. If you care about a band, a retelling will do no good.
Refs
John Wright, member of a long‐running three piece band,
https://web.archive.org/web/20151208040655/http://stlmusicpress.com/news/?p=2713
Robert Fripp, member of a long‐running band,