Not everybody is a star
My friend Rick Beato wanted to talk some more about the rock radio crisis at the turn-of-the-century. So I went back to YouTube.
Here’s a brief interlude between my usual epic posts. To be fair, I think every post is going to be this short when I start writing but all of them seem to require more detail than I’d planned when I first thought of the topic.
After I told the story of how guitarist Ed King got cheated out of his share of the publishing for the #1 hit song “Incense and Peppermints,” I realized that I had assumed far more knowledge of songs and music publishing than most of my readers actually have. Even though that one seemed liked it went on forever as I was writing, I think I could have done a better job of talking about publishers and songwriters.
So I’m wrestling with a post that gives some context and asks some questions about how we should think about what is and isn’t a “song.” It’s getting close, but I’ve got to take another pass at it before it’s ready to share.
In the meantime, my friend Rick Beato released another video based on one of our conversations about the state of rock music at the end of the last century. I’m embedding it here for any readers of don’t follow Rick’s Everything Music channel on YouTube.
Yep, we’re still talking about the anonymous rock music that dominated radio during the era. Some YouTube commenters are already calling us old and out of touch, but both of us had producer managers during the era in questions and we’re painfully aware of the kind of young bands who were getting signed back then. We actually met a lot of them. Plus I was still blonde.
Once again, Rick and I are talking about a system that preferred its artists to be pliable and not so famous as to be able to cause much trouble. Once MTV stopped playing videos and gossip sites starting promoting the non-careers of young Hollywood party kids, aspiring rock stars found it hard to compete.
Of course, labels didn’t really have much use for those charismatic artists, usually deciding they were difficult. I had a long conversation last week with an artist who enjoyed massive chart and sales success back in the ’90s, and we talked about issues they’ve faced since the early 2000s with labels who didn’t share a commitment to making records, videos, and artwork that were the best they could possibly be.
Once we reached a point where rock music wasn’t selling as much as it did in the 20th century, many execs decided that challenging artists weren’t ever going to justify they amount of money and work required for rock music to succeed. There were less taxing options.
I know plenty of record company executives who tried to keep those artist development values alive and hung on well into the 2000s. As rock budgets kept shrinking, some of them pivoted to pop or hip hop, while others finally moved on and went independent or left the business altogether.
Another commenter on the above video claims that there were also plenty of anonymous bands back in the ’70s and brings up Boston, Kansas, Foreigner, Styx and REO Speedwagon as examples. Hey, my little punk rock self didn’t even like most of those bands, and I could whip anyone in a rock trivia showdown if required to name members and draw a diagram of where they stood on stage. Those bands were famous.
Rewind
The first video I made with Rick Beato just hit 1 million views over the weekend. That’s a crazy number, and the followers that Rick sent over here from YouTube have pushed Stars After Stars After Stars to a level where the Substack algorithm recognizes that something’s going on here, so now I’m getting a ton of subscribers from within the app. I couldn’t be more grateful to Rick and his viewers for the push.
If all goes well as I’m trying to finish my music publishing post, I’ll be back with that story in a just a few days.
That would be great if Rick could interview some younger musicians on his show. YouTube channels are the place to get current interviews with bands. I don't have cable anymore. How many shows exist that interview new artists?
I’m forever ambivalent about the days of superstar band members. That was how Mick Taylor got a six figure record contract. There’s a 1973 solo album by Elton’s guitarist Davey Johnstone believe it or not, five of course by John Entwistle, one by Moon, several by Mick Fleetwood, plenty by Ringo (who had a lot of help) and infamously one by every member of both Kiss AND Yes. And all of them well-funded by majors. All while Columbia is burying Big Star’s “Radio City”, a record about a million times better than any of the aforementioned. These days if Mickey Madden (Maroon 5’s bass player of course!) wants to make a solo album it’s gonna have to be hot shit, which is only fair. But then I have friends who really like Bill Wyman’s “Monkey Grip”.