http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/27/AR2005042702186.html

Washingtonpost.com
Trapped in the Celebrity Web

By Tina Brown
Thursday, April 28, 2005; C01

(snip)

How some of the nervier artists feel in the land of opportunity is well illustrated in an interesting little documentary directed by Rosanna Arquette, "All We Are Saying," that's at the Tribeca Film Festival. It's about musicians, but it could just as well be about filmmakers or writers or painters, and it features exceptionally honest and heartfelt interviews with, among others, David Crosby, Sting, Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell and members of Radiohead and Aerosmith. Many of these aging rebels, it seems, feel lost and buffeted by the multimedia, synergistic, conglomeratized, marketing-driven business behemoths that have shut down the options of where they can work while amping up the demands for product and promotion. They all seem to long for a creative connection in a world where the energy is only on the selling side of the business.

"The whole thing is freakin' chaos," says Radiohead's Thom Yorke, who has started to resemble a hipper, more elfin version of Uncle Fester from "The Addams Family." "It's really a good time to go and stand in the shadows again."

"A couple of years ago," a grizzled Crosby tells Arquette, "you had one-quarter of the music business owned by a whiskey company, who then sold it to a French water company, neither of whom would know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue. They know they moved 40,000 pieces out of Dallas this month, but they have no idea pieces of what."

Joni Mitchell, now a wised-up, beat-up old hippie, likens herself to a horse who can't go over the jump anymore. Thirty-two years ago, in her great song "Free Man in Paris," she prophetically bemoaned "the work I've taken on / Stoking the star-maker machinery / Behind the popular song." Today the machinery is so overwhelming it's crippling her. She starts to write a song; then the thought of the gantlet of press -- "which got dumber and dumber and dumber and shallower and shallower and shallower and more and more hostile" -- chases away her muse.

These voices are especially striking because you so rarely hear big-time talent talking this way about their work. It doesn't fit the paradigms of celebrity journalism. Artistic angst -- which, after all, only the luckiest people on Earth are in a position to feel in the first place -- is not what readers of the fabloids want to hear about. They want to hear about the marital, romantic and weight-gain sufferings of the stars.

The emaciated frame and sad-clown makeup of Michael Jackson as he drifts into court each day in Santa Maria is like the picture of a music industry Dorian Gray. This is what it looks like when you are all burned up from renting out your soul to the beast of supply and demand, its quest for new looks, new sounds, new stunts, new reinvention -- all to become the Lord of Neverland. Perhaps it's not really Michael Jackson at all under that ubiquitous umbrella. It's just the person occupying the Michael Jackson "space."

Bubbleheads like J Lo et al are all they have in their arsenal these days. The old timers with talent know the way it really is.

Then why don't they force a change?

Isn't it so sad how corporate greed and lust for control over artists and their talents have caused such unnecessary misery for so many people?
I'm truly ashamed of this (decadent) aspect of capitalism gone awry here in our U.S. of A.

"Then why don't they force a change?"

Good question! They need to pool their common interests and go for it.

They sound like they're too old and too tired. Artists are just like most other people who let their rights slip away...and one day realize they have none left.

Still, its always heartening when someone with some credibility (celebrity) backs up what we're saying here all the time. Names get recognition and therefore can raise general awareness.

"They need to pool their common interests and go for it."

This was the basis for the formation of the Recording Artists Coalition five years ago. And one-fourth of the business is once again owned by the same whiskey company that sold off to a French water company the last time they owned a chunk.

Said whiskey company now owns the RAC's president, who is whining on behalf of the whiskey company's interests and calling you a thief.

It's the same issue that is present in most labor unions: if you own the most influential members, you own the interest of the group. Also, the main source of water in France is disgusting. Why would you want to buy water from a country whose most important river is filled with raw sewage and filth?

I guess for the same reason that people buy music from companies whose hallways are filled with raw sewage and filth.

This give us an argument that today's copyright laws are unconstitutional, yet again. Why? Because they are supposed to "promote the progress of science and useful arts," aren't they? Instead, creativity and promotion clearly is being drained from our artists, and these arts will not progress unless things change.

Our copyright terms must be reduced. Corporations CANNOT be given ownership of copyrights exclusively (if at all). Slavery-like record contracts must be deemed illegal. Or the arts will continue to suffer.

Here again you see the ugly side of these corporations. You constantly hear, "It's about protecting the artist." However, somehow when you talk to those artists that tell it like it is you find a different story. The story of "What have you done for us lately" and the "They stole it all" as the artists look around in the later part of their life and realise they are just like all that came before and there is nothing remaining to look to for old age. No money in the bank, no being taken care of as if they are the precious commody that the majors would have you believe. So where is the interest in the musicians welfare? It certainly isn't with the majors being concerned.

while I agree with the gist of this article, neither Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, Sting, David Crosby or Aerosmith have written any music in recent memory that was worth praising,(Radiohead is still awesome).

So, it may be easier for them to blame the corporate media for the fact that they're washed up, but that don't make it so.

If they really had good music left in them, they would do what Tom Waits and others have done, finish your contract, move to a small indie label who leaves you alone.

Or, do what Zappa and others have done, go DIY and start your own label.

Those options are better than blaming their lack of artistic inspiration on a system that has allowed all of those artists to live a king's lifestyle based entirely on royalties from art they produced decades ago.

The whole lot of them could just sit on their ass until they die, boo-fuggin-hoo.

Maybe a true dose of poverty and suffering would help them re-discover their muse.

Crosby, Stills & Nash are independent, according to their webmaster.

According to RIAA Radar, he's lying.

"a system that has allowed all of those artists to live a king's lifestyle based entirely on royalties from art they produced decades ago."

Bullshit. Any of these old guys that is living a "king's lifestyle" isn't doing it from royalties. Roger McGuinn says he has yet to make a dime from "Eight Miles High" or "Turn, Turn, Turn."

The old rockers are still working all the time, on the road, playing shows. That's where the money is.

As the press noted a few months ago, Springsteen makes more money from a 10-day stint at the Meadowlands than he has made from royalties in his entire career, whether he has a new album out or not. Maybe royalties would keep them alive and they could sit on their ass until they die, but it's not going to bring you a king's lifestyle.

This year's most successful, highest grossing tour is not going to be anyone who has a song in the top 40 this year, at least not so far. It's going to be from someone so out of date that he has participated in satires of himself. He's not hot and trendy. He's aging, dated and PG-rated. Don't even know if there's going to be a new album, but this guy is going to outdraw anyone and everyone.

Depends on what you define as a king's lifestyle I guess.

I don't know who Roger McGuinn is, but he is not Joni Mitchell, Stevie Nicks, Sting or any of the others mentioned in my earlier posts.

My point remains, any of the artists previously cited could stop playing tomorrow and stil keep their nice house in Palm Springs or wherever else they live, thanks to the vast amounts of money they have made in the past and the royalties they currently receive.
Especially if the monies earned during the peak of their careers were properly invested and didn't end up their nose.

None of them HAVE to work, in the way that I have to work in order to pay my rent.

If any of them choose to work and go on tour, they will be able to fing suckers willing to pay eighty dollar ticket prices to see them sleepwalk through their OLD stuff, tough life.

I suspect that the comfort level provided by their personal wealth is partly to blame for their lack of creative inspiration, as art tends to thrive on conflict, whether personal, political or otherwise.

I'm not here to defend the current record industry business model, but for Joni Mitchell to blame it for the fact that she's out of creative juice is a load of BS.

"None of them HAVE to work, in the way that I have to work in order to pay my rent."

You really need to do some more research because you've got a lot of misconceptions. A lot of them do, indeed, HAVE to work to pay their rent.

Remember, the writer of the song is the only one making any money from broadcast royalties, not the performers, although those mentioned above are also writers.

" I suspect that the comfort level provided by their personal wealth is partly to blame for their lack of creative inspiration, as art tends to thrive on conflict, whether personal, political or otherwise."

I'm with you on this part, but if you're not old enough to know who Roger McGuinn is (one of the members of The Byrds), you might not be able to really get this.

A couple or four decades ago, we, the people, held the illusion that all music was created with an equal chance of getting heard. Musicians were rebels. The government hated rock music. Tried to ban it as pornography. The conservatives had record-burnings. The Senate held hearings. Nixon considered barring John Lennon from re-entry into the US on grounds that he was a potential threat. Record labels were owned by people who loved music.

Even if it was not actually so, it felt as if the music was the driving force of change. Breaking down the barriers, refusing to accept "the way things are", challenging authority, protesting against war and for civil rights. These are those personal and political conflicts you mentioned.

Now the driving force of music is to sell more units than the same quarter last year and the industry, warning of pornography, and with the support of the conservatives, has gone to the government to ask them to ban the ability to listen to music without paying for it. Protesting war will bring industry sanctions. Political conflict is off limits. The music lovers at the record labels have been replaced by accountants.

These guys used to rebel against the establishment. Now they are the establishment and they have to follow all the rules, including dealing with the press, "which got dumber and dumber and dumber and shallower and shallower and shallower and more and more hostile". This is also an apt description of how the entire business has turned.

I really don't think Joni or any of the rest of them are complaining about the lack of ability to write songs. They're simply questioning the wisdom of continuing to toss their work into the fire.

"It's really a good time to go and stand in the shadows again."

What it sounds like to me is that the artists are ready to step away from the system and let it fall. After all, if everyone gets "writer's block" for two years and hides in the shadows (or rehab), the machine doesn't get fed.

Sounds a lot like a boycott of the major labels to me. Maybe they're beginning to force a change after all.

My opinions on this issue were exclusive to the artists mentioned in the article,(Joni, Sting, Aerosmith, etc).

I still maintain that they are very rich people who could sit in front of a pool for the rest of their lives and not have to worry about money, if they do worry about money, than I wonder where all the millions went that passed through their hands.(*SNORT*...)

I'm fully aware that some folks were utterly screwed by their record companies, and did not benefit from the royalty system, that's been happening since there were record companies, in fact, it used to be a lot worse.

Black artists in particular have been royally shafted over the years, many of them, in spite of being highly talented, had no business sense to speak of and were easily lured into shitty deals.

Back in those days however, a record company was still necessary for an artist to promote himself, these days it ain't so, which is why i hope they all go out of business or at very least, undergo massive philisophical restructuring.

Remember when Prince got the sweet deal from WB, wasn't it, like, 40 million bucks?

And then he spent the next ten years bitching about the raw deal he got?

Instestingly, when Prince went indie his music actually got worse, hmmm...