Backstage Passes: The Music Industry.
New Order, Bowie, Cornershop, and a conversation with Siouxsie Sioux.
The backstage pass.
Nobody enters the holy inner sanctums of rock ‘n roll debauchery without the right laminated pass, wristband or group of wristbands and passes in the right colour combination. After show parties are where excess flows! Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. Past security. Down dimly lit corridors, as signs of carnage line the way to the circus ahead. This is where the famous and beautiful people hold perpetual smiles and await to greet you with a large flute of champagne, as someone at your side fans you with a giant peacock feather. You have arrived. There’s Kate Moss. Over there McCartney.
As often in life, reality differs from the myth.
At a New Order after-show party, Bernard Sumner is with drummer Stephen Morris in a low-lit room with a sticky beer-stained floor. Stephen is wearing a hooded anorak zipped to his chin clenching a thin plastic Co-Op bag with a Ginster’s Cornish pasty inside.
It’s not even midnight yet.
‘Best be off early for a snack and a good kip’.
And why not? In all fairness, Stephen and Bernard had likely done more than their fair share of heavy partying decades prior.
For the first fifty years of the rock ‘n roll business, tours drove album sales. Selling records was the key income for music artists. 21st century technology reversed this model (read how). Tour and merchandise income would become critical for artists in the face of declining sales and poor streaming income, as digital media usage soared. The music industry lost control of the medium of distribution and format consumption for the first time in its entire history. Previously it was Philips (who owned PolyGram, absorbed into Universal Music in 1998) and Sony that had developed the CD format, Phillips had trademarked the cassette, previously Columbia Records brought the world the 33 rpm LP record, RCA the 7 inch single. Music output and its formatting design was derived in synchronicity with music at its heart. But the industry would lose control of the means of mass production; format, distribution, and consumption. By the 2000’s, the tech bros had taken over, and with very different motivations. Art was not their business. Their motivation was a ruthless pursuit of conquest for audience growth and product adoption, to drive multi-billion dollar tech platform advertising revenue and subscriptions to drive company valuation. They did not have artists, artistic process, its development and investment at the centre of their business model. Neither did they seemed to care.
The recorded music industry’s golden age was over. An age of heavy investment in artists development, tour support, teams of professional expertise being used by a far broader number and array of artists and bands, and with far more artists signed to funded labels. Prior to mass market digital consumption, a number one record often sold healthy six figure amounts of copies a week in the UK, rather than low five digits today. Streaming has not replaced record sale revenue of yesteryear.
The successes of yesteryear created sustainable careers and livelihoods, so to legend and status. Excess too, as it does for the tech bro’s of today, especially for those at the top in an industry, often lavish in its booms years. The recorded music industry would party hard when it wanted to. In the boom years freshly signed artists, not just superstars, would record in luxurious surroundings like Nassau in the Bahamas at certain major labels. Stories of label executives holidaying in Monserrat at five-star hotels on company expenses would be revealed. Often this behaviour was completely nuts and made little business sense, and especially so when the industry met the digital age and these trends continued at labels like Virgin Records. The cash squandered by certain executives was frankly disgusting, and an insult to the rest of company staff who would later feel the effect in preceding years.
Back in the throes of touring a new record, whatever the album budget, whatever the level of stardom, from toilet venues to stadiums and mega-domes, after show parties were always a place to meet, catch up, commune, celebrate, and indulge when touring acts hit a big city or the end of a tour.
When the lights go up, the crowds leaves and the brooms come out, down long corridors, behind closed doors, activity occurs backstage.
The backstage scene evolves over the course of time, over a career on the road. Gone are the drugs. Gone are the whiskey bottles and cases of Red Stripe piled up high in the fridges. Past the yet untouched buffet, the artists recover. Covered in sweat, towels around necks, two litre Evian bottles of water quench thirsts, while the kettle is on for peppermint tea. A singer with his face in a bucket of medicinal steam. A bass player, laptop on his knees, ordering a climbing frame for his kids. The drummer chatting to his tech. The guitarist is meditating in the corner. Om. The tour manager pacing the room talking into a phone on speaker. Load out is completed. The crew are planning to move on. Most artists exit to over-night tour buses and coffin like curtained bunk beds toward the next city. As dawn breaks, fewer hedonists continue as they once did, behind thick velvet curtains, breakfasting on stimulants in hotel suites. More than ever, touring is vital business for artists. Life on the road is demanding. It’s a livelihood. There is no longer a patience for dumb fuckery or inappropriate behaviour of yesteryear. New behaviours are often required to survive. Well-being and self-care over drug and alcohol fuelled room trashing. TV out of a window? Far too old school. A remanence of distant times. Of silly spoilt boys far from home.
In the late 90’s, the live music industry was a different beast. I began being invited backstage and to after-show parties. I acquired an inside view of what occurred. A witness to an age evolving.
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