Grumpy Old Music

[Gob]

Grumpy old men? Ferry, Stewart, Heaton and Harket

By Liam Allen Entertainment reporter, BBC News


The thoughts of Bryan Ferry, Rod Stewart, former Housemartins and Beautiful South singer Paul Heaton, and A-Ha's Morten Harket on today's music business:

Dwindling record sales

Paul Heaton: The Housemartins could have succeeded if they were starting out today but their success would have been even shorter [the band released two studio albums].


I think songs like Happy Hour, and even Think For A Minute and Caravan Of Love, are strong songs but I don't know if we would have been paid for it really. They might have been used in a car advert.

I think I was lucky to get professional when I did.

Rod Stewart: In this business, it's hard out there, there's not the money there was.

Albums don't sell - that's the ridiculous thing. You've got to sell about 160,000 and you get top of the Billboard chart.

There's just too much music about, it's been diluted somewhat from what it was when I started. Mercury Records normally released seven albums a month when I brought out Every Picture Tells A Story, now it's 200 a month.

The music business

Bryan Ferry: It's a bit of a puzzle really isn't it? I still can't quite get used to the fact that there aren't any record stores any more. It's quite hard.

Maybe if you go to Antwerp or somewhere like that, you'll suddenly find a little record shop and you think, "oh great", and you can go and browse and then find something and buy something that you hadn't got before. It's a shame.

Morten Harket: It can become too much about cheekbones or what you wear.

We got deflated because there was so much energy pouring all over us about things that were about nothing - it really was about nothing, it was just about being famous.

There's the sex drive or the response to looks, which is one thing - and I don't denounce that, it's a central part of defining us as human beings.

But we also need something to feed the soul, the spirit, the mind and that's what we were there for.


The road to success

Rod Stewart: It's a shame that the acts can't do the sort of apprenticeship that I did, and people of my generation did, where they had to play night clubs for four or five years in front of 10 people.

It just makes you a better performer, to zero in on your craft, and when you make it you really appreciate it whereas, with instant gratification, it's not the same.

There's not a pub/rock scene anymore - it's disappeared.

Paul Heaton: With most bands of the 70s or 80s, you formed a band, you wrote some songs, you then got a gig and then you maybe made a record if you could afford it.

The very, very last thing which could have happened would be for you to maybe make a video or go on telly.

Now people want to go on telly first, then they want to make a record, then they suddenly want to write songs, then they want to form a band and then they want to be photographed with a guitar to make them look real.

That's exactly the opposite way to how we approached it in The Housemartins and how it was done in my era.


Positive change

Bryan Ferry: You have to kind of embrace the positive, perhaps, and we're now doing things with my new record that we couldn't have done before.

Instead of just having the one vinyl version of the album, we've got three different versions of it.

In the old days, that was too sophisticated for the record industry and now they're kind of embracing new things like that so it's good in a way.


The X Factor

Rod Stewart: I was very disappointed to read they used auto-tune technology on X Factor, I've always been a bit of a champion of that show because I've seen so much talent that's gone unnoticed.

Look at the thousands of people that try to get on that show, some of them are really good and they never get a look in so I was a little disappointed with that but it all seems to have blown over.

Thank goodness the public saw through it, they're not as dumb as people think, the public.

Paul Heaton: It would bother me more if I watched the programmes but I don't watch the programmes, I just crack on with what I do, really.

It bothers me about other bands, it bothers me that bands that I like don't do well and are ignored.

The charts are made up by such a percentage of X Factor contestants or ex-X Factor contestants that there are so little opportunities for good new bands.

I'm not so bothered about me, I've had my fun.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11866932

[Long Run]

The music business seems to have returned much closer to how it was before mass marketing of vinyl records. Singers made their money doing concerts. Then they made records to promote their touring. It was so easy to make money on the records and so much less work than full-on touring. So then it reversed, and they did tours to promote their record sales. Now they create recorded music to promote attendance at their live music shows. They can still figure out ways to make some money on their recorded music, but for most part, they have to go out and earn it day by day with live performances. I guess when Ferry hears the sound of band playing on the radio, it's drowning the sound of his tears from lost record income.

[darkblack]

'...and we're now doing things with my new record that we couldn't have done before.'

Like making it interesting to the listener?



I kid, but seriously - two of these musos (Ferry & Stewart) had a mighty long run at the top, so if they fall off their wallets tomorrow and break a hip the business will just have to soldier along gamely, I suppose. The other two - a 'cult band' and some one-hit fluff merchants - might have a legit beef with the diminishing returns, but that's the nature of the game...Top of the pops one day, yesterday's papers the next. Should've wrote more than one timeless pop ditty, lads!

Aaaaaand - all of 'em had their noses in the trough with the rest back in the bad old days of record companies controlling market access and concomitant public tastes. Today's music scene is more artist-controlled and artist-friendly than ever before. Shame that many of the young bands haven't a clue how to capitalize on it.

(cough)wankers(cough)

[Gob]

Can't disagree with any of that.

However I disagree with your stance on Heaton. I think his output with The Housemartins" and "The Beautiful South," although heavily influenced by his Christainity and Marxism, stands as good music in anyone's book.

And the Housemartins gave us...which....famous collage artist? (No googling)

[Sean]

Fat Boy Slim?

Well he does make 'music' collages...

I'm going to guess the one with the big nose. Hughie Wossname.

[Gob]

Yeop, the music collages of Fatboy Slim...

Fine pieces of musicianship that they are.

[Sean]

Let's not go there Taff boy!

You've already had your arse handed to you once on that subject!

[Gob]

I agree... i'll just let you continue believeing that too..

Call it an early Xmas present...

[darkblack]

...although heavily influenced by his Christainity and Marxism

Shouldn't have read Das Capital whilst on a pinch of Owsley's finest, I suppose - bad trip, comrade! And 'Marxist Christian' - why, that practically invokes all the sullen gravitas of the British labour movement, dunnit?

[Gob]

Bitch!

[oldr_n_wsr]

Bitch!

I saw a bumper sticker today that said:
"Yes I'm a BITCH, but not yours"

[darkblack]

Well, in Heaton's defence he's not as subjectively excruciating as U2, REM, or any of those other long-in-the-tooth twaddle-peddlars trumpeting their own overstuffed relevance. Sweet holy f**k, didn't music take a giant shite and fall off the loo to the tiles with spittle a-dribbling in the last couple of decades? Must've been the cocaine.

[Gob]

I agree.

U2's latest bloatfest his Aus recently. All coming to worship at the church of St Bongo of the the hat.

By fuck what an empty spectacle that was. Anodyne rock hidden behind a wall of mediocre bombast, and sugar coated platitudes.