Childish Ways

Where Have All the Heroes Gone?

By RAR

As everybody knows, it is hard to miss someone if they won't go away. Or, even more to the point, it is hard to recall them fondly if they keep hanging around and muddying up our memories of them.

Speaking as one who grew up in that first generation of rock'n roll, I have always struggled with recording artists who find fame early, which in the rock era meant successfully selling product to the young people (kids) that were the principal marketing target, and who then over time slid back down the music industry ladder while continuing to hang around. You see them playing casinos and county fairs, or showing up on package tours with other retrograde acts, former stars.

When I was one of those young record buyers, who idolized some of those youthful artists and entertainers of my day (which is a weird euphemism we have invented to describe "lost youth"), it never really occurred to me that these people were going to have to make livelihoods for themselves after their period of fame had passed and the royalty earnings subsided. Nor did I get that it is pretty hard for a person who scores a hit record or two to make enough money from those efforts to support themselves from royalties for the rest of their lives. This is particularly true given the accounting techniques of the recording industry, which have a way of channeling profits to people other than the artists who make the music. It never occurred to me, for instance, that songwriters may pay $250 an hour to the lawyer who figures out their publishing arrangements, or $120K a year to the accountant who manages their expenses, or pay more than a majority of the proceeds of their record sales to the machinery that records, produces, manufactures, distributes, and markets their product.

Most importantly, it never occurred to me as a kid that musicians have very little personal earning power. Many of our hard-working fathers would go on to make more money in their humble lives than would our recording heroes in theirs. Even today, in our bubble-oriented economy, which has vastly skewed the value of the dollar, a club band will often split a $50 pot, if they are getting paid at all. In L.A., bands often pay-to-play on a bill, and then often do one short, rushed set before the next pay-to-play band comes on.

That, however, is the reality of the life of a club musician, which is about all there is for an aspiring star to be in terms of working towards getting their careers not just started, but established.  The fact is that many of these people are working to gain footholds in a low-return job that they will have no choice but to do for the rest of their lives. There are the exceptions: the highly-educated musicians who make good salaries through their main jobs and play the clubs because they love the music. Most musicians hold down low-paying, unskilled labor jobs to pay the rent, and play in clubs because, like their educated peers, they love the music. This is at the heart of why people love that Dire Straits song "Sultans of Swing", which tells the story of just such devotees.

That is laudable in many ways, not the least being that we humans tend to admire sincerity and passion in ourselves and others and we can relate to the dedication and commitment of artist types.

So why do I find it so depressing to see yesterday's stars playing at some local casino or resort?

I think it is because of what was mentioned earlier, that the music young people score hits with (and only young people score hits in the rock age) are all songs written for and about young people. They explore themes that resonate with young people, and because of changes in the music industry, that began way back in the 1950s with the birth of rock'n roll, have eradicated any pop music other than that produced for the youngest markets, the music they produce has a shelf life as brief as youth itself.

A person such as myself, long past the age of youth, may take in the musical esthetic of the day and come to the conclusion that music itself has died. It hasn't died, of course, except for you, the old person, whose tastes are no longer relevant to the young world.

The problem, of course, is that all of those kids who created those born-terminal songs get old like everybody else, and they are still performing them long after they have lost their authenticity. In those cases, a song born as a confection can slowly degrade into a decomposing and fetid slice of recollected youth, otherwise called a "nostalgia". It sounds like an intestinal virus, doesn't it? As in, you look like you may be suffering from nostalgia.

It often feels to me like The Beatles were the only band that ever got it right, departing the scene once their youth had passed. Of course, the individuals in that band also made fortunes in their youths (and still continued to work) and were not faced with supporting themselves and their families by performing facsimiles of their famous works for older-and-older audiences. There are the odd exceptions, like Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan who have stayed on the boards, touring big stages continuously and recording new material, and because both are among the true genius songwriters of the 20th Century, a lot of what they have continued to produce is very good, even if generally compared unfavorably to the songs of their youth.

Even while I get that adults have pressures to pay bills, to make a living, I really just want all those faded acts of yesterday to go away. The vast majority got lucky with fluke hits that happened to capture the gestalt of some previous moment in the past, and their fond recall does not add much value to the substance of our days. "Time is a river, flowing into nowhere..." as Stevie Winwood wrote in his very adult song "The Finer Things". There we have proof that fully-formed adults can produce music that resonates with listeners outside of the 14-25 year old demographic. Kids don't really get that time flows on and on, and that the debris floating under the bridges of their youth will disappear from site to be replaced by still other detritus of life lived long.

Personally, I wish (not very optimistically) that something about this digital age that we live in would restore music for all seasons of life, to be formed by composers and artists with deeper understandings of life as it is lived in each of its stages. It feels like we, as an international culture, lost something profound when the corporate accountants took control of the music business, jettisoning the majority of people who want music in their lives and tossing the industry's keys of ownership to kids who are in no position to make lasting contributions to the culture. It not only sent a horrible message to the majority of the population (fully-formed adults), it degraded our shared sense of quality and value. We asked a generation of kids to identify and express that which is important in life, and they, in turn, asked their juvenile peers for an answer, and that became our culture. It begat Facebook and Twitter and every other paper-thin means of expression that we have today, and it killed depth, perception, and even our ability to remain focused on any one thing at a time. It demanded that we think like children. It demanded that we behave in childish ways.

Squeezing Stone?

Or, you decide...

Chicago

Earth Wind & Fire

Loverboy

Def Leppard