Amongst all the musicians and drummer(s) the assorted friends, scouse legends, wonderful memories, hours in the recording studio, “half-past-two mate” rehearsals and married 7 times, but now dead apart from when they’re riding a bicycle on the lawn, film-stars, Hightown Pirates had also picked up a manager.
Because that particular role often varies due to certain circumstances, a quick google search provided me, and you, if you’re still awake, with the following definition.
An artist manager, also known as a "band manager," is in charge of the business side of being in a band. Often, band members are great at the creative side of things but aren't so great at promoting themselves, booking their own gigs, or negotiating deals. In a very general sense, the task of a manager is to take care of the day to day running of the band's career so that the band can focus on the creative side of things.
Which is both a broad but also reasonable description of task at hand, unless of course, the band, is not really a band and the gatekeepers of the music industry, who to a certain extent have a big say in the ‘career’ side of things, have no interest in anyone much older than 25, because as we all know, after that you might as well be dead anyway.
They want to get to you while you’re still young and foolish, while you’re still impressionable enough to let them more or less take your ‘art’ and abuse it as much as is necessary to get it to the point where they can make enough cash from it to afford to send their own children to the best schools in the world to hopefully get the kind of education that means they won’t be interested in getting fucked-over in the music business unless of course they too, follow into management, in which case the cycle of nepotistic feasting and exploitation will continue.
Maybe these people all actually hope that their artists join the ’27-club’ which means they’ll not have to spend any more on expensive tours anymore but will be coining it in from the upsurge in sales when their latest cash cow, pops its clogs.
Or maybe, I’m a cynical middle-aged man, who may well have made *the greatest debut album by a middle-aged man, ever* but found himself rather cross that almost nobody was into it because Seasick Steve had already taken the one and only slot available for ‘new’ artists that were over 20 years past the date at which the music industry would prefer you to die especially if they own the publishing to all your songs etc.
Look, I know how this is supposed to work, I’ve eulogised enough in this book about falling in love with a band When You’re Young (See what I did there Jam fans?) It’s a young man’s/woman’s/non-binary’s game, as essential to growing up as getting headbutted by the racist skinhead from the local estate ‘cos you went back for another grope with his ‘bit of a slag’ girlfriend in the piss-soaked carpark.
It’s no secret that it’s hard, to make a career from the music ‘biz, even with youth on your side. (Not the bassist from 80’s post-punk monsters Killing Joke, although he does appear in this story soon.) Obviously, it’s much harder than stacking shelves in supermarkets** which is where most of us end up. And even with the support of the industry behind you, it’s fair to say that for every Madonna or Metallica, there are plenty of Menswear’s too.
*Point of interest. *
Take your pick as far as comparisons go, I just liked the alliteration of the three M’s and also because I once supported Menswear on tour when I was roughly the same age as when you’re supposed to die in the music business. And I’d also like to point out that some of the members of Menswear have had brilliant careers in other areas of the industry that does not involve writing Britpop ‘classics.
Shoutout to Messer’s, White, Gentry and Everitt. The singer blocked me on Twitter ages ago, so he can fuck off.
* *There’s nothing wrong with stacking shelves in supermarkets and not everyone who sets out on the path of rocknroll excess ends up doing that as the two guitarists from the ‘Swe@r have proven. Plenty of people happily concede defeat early enough to retrain or indeed get a ‘real’ job they despise, using the degree they got as ‘insurance’, just in case their musical endeavours didn’t work out, which it didn’t and was never going to because that’s how it fucking goes sunshine and now that job you hate, is actually just karma (police) for being sensible and not being 100% convinced that you’d make it and therefore wouldn’t need a degree which is the only attitude to have when you enter into all this madness, if you want to have any chance of success, unless you’re just in the right place at the right time like Ed Sheeran and you become really successful and end up making music for people stacking shelves in the supermarket who weren’t
(or who are now freezing/sweating their nuts off in a mate’s clothing warehouse for peanuts until they get a hernia because they’re too old for that shit.)
Etc.
Or something like that.
Point being, is that the odds are stacked against you at any age because that’s just the way it is and sadly, they will remain heavily stacked against you, almost irrespective of your talent, because you might be surprised to learn, that ‘talent’ has very little to do with success sometimes, in fact it can often be a hindrance in an industry that prefers product and professionalism over poetry and perseverance.
As ‘someone’ once said to ‘someone’ else,
“A billion Spotify streams is not necessarily recognition of talent, it is however, similar to the ‘success’ of McDonalds insomuch as they have also convinced billions of people that convenience is king and worth sacrificing ‘taste’ and quality for.
Excuse me for a second, I just need to ask someone something.
“Would you like some fries with that sir?”
Now, here’s where things can get a bit confusing, they certainly did for me. As obvious as everything I’ve just written here clearly might be, unfortunately for me as we began to look at ways of ticking off some of those managerial responsibilities, boxes, I hadn’t written this book and had therefore not done my ‘research’ when it came down to setting out my personal expectations as far as Hightown Pirates was concerned. Our manager, who was longer in the tooth as far as all this stuff goes, than I, was far more circumspect as to possible outcomes. This was probably a particularly good reason to have him as our manager, coupled with the fact he’d previously managed other bands who’d had really good (enough for me, good enough for you) careers.
But like I keep reminding you, I’m stupid and don’t listen, I think all that “Half past two mate” is probably to blame for my lack of hearing, well that’s my excuse anyway. There is a difference between listening and hearing of course, people like me are often good at confusing the two while pretending to do both.
Andy Winters, our manager, who had previously been helping me with the play, was now, perhaps more by accident than design, also assisting with the ‘what happened next bit’ and was/is a true fountain of wisdom in the desert of bullshit otherwise known as the music industry.
Our conversations usually went something like this.
Me.
“Andy mate, imagine how brilliant this will be when we’ve sold out a couple of nights at Brixton Academy, it’ll be fucking mega eh?”
Andy Winters.
*Rolls eyes*
Because that whole addict ‘thing’ of more, more, more, had not gone away, maybe because of everything life had assailed me with, coupled with my utter delirium when I sat down with a mastered album and listened to it from start to finish, I was convinced that there was an audience out there, large enough to support the requirements of my assembled cast and crew. By which I mean, I could at the very least cover everyone’s expenses for rehearsals and gigs, but if possible, also pay them for their considerable talents.
There were nine people in the band by now. Some lived in Liverpool, some in Somerset, one in Cambridge and if all that wasn’t problematic enough, I also recruited another sax player, who lived in Moscow. Yes! That Moscow, in Russia.
Which is perhaps, yet another reminder that I must have been whacked over the head, repeatedly, with the stupid stick, as I fell out of the highest branch of the stupid tree, rolled down the stupid hill and into the stupid gutter from where I stupidly kept on trying to stare at the stars.
When you’re all young and living together in squalor and very much of the ‘we’re all in this together’ variety, much of that stuff is easy. Which is another reason why the business is much easier when you’re a nipper.
When none of you fit that description and you live all over the bloody country and have wives and kids and jobs and perhaps not so much feeling the ‘we’re all in this together vibe in quite the same way? Then it’s a problem, another problem on top of all the other problems in an era where another problem is that most people seem to have forgotten that you can’t support a band, just by clicking ‘like’ on Facebook. Or streaming their songs on Spotify, or not turning up at gigs because you’re busy stalking people on social media and anyway the band are probably shocking because old people shouldn’t make music.
*Point of interest*
When I say the others weren’t ‘feeling’ it in quite the same way, I mean that I had taken on the responsibility of finding the money to continue. It’s probably part of my control issues and therefore allowed me to become a sort of benevolent dictator. When it came to rehearsals and gigs, they were all fully committed, ridiculously so. You can’t expect session musicians who have no other source of income to work for free, nor demand people give up their time and pay their own way in a band where there is not true democracy in all areas. Not when you’re the wrong side of 27 anyway.
*Note to self. *
There is a reason why, even at nearly 15 years clean, you have never gotten out of your overdraft with the bank and can fit practically everything you own into a couple of boxes, this is probably it.
It might surprise a few of you, but I’m actually not stupid enough to think we were going to be troubling the main stage at Glastonbury anytime soon and I was fully aware that there was a fairly tight niche market that we should be setting our sails in search of. We live in an age where, for the most part, the purveyors of ‘lived-in’ rocknroll will only penetrate the consciousness of other people who are at a similar stage of proceedings in life in much the same way as the target audience for artists born this side of the millennium, is other kids.
Even if my own take on heroin addiction was a Million (Reasons) times better than that fella from the 1975, which it is obviously, if I were honest with myself, I knew that expecting his audience to have any interest in my take on all that, would be stupid.
But as I’ve said already, the whole notion of getting involved with this sort of thing is inherently stupid on so many levels and the emotional intoxication that results from genuinely thinking you might just have actually made a classic album, regardless of the fact it’s taken you until an age where most people have started thinking about how they might best manage their pensions, does little to keep a serious bout of the ‘stupid’s’ at bay.
Throw in a more than promising couple of debut gigs in front of a clearly appreciative audience who’d turned out to see the headline band. (Shout out to Dodgy and Ultrasound) and were of exactly the right ‘demographic’ for you own band, well I was starting to display the first signs of stupid-itus for sure.
Add to that an album cover supplied by my friend Pete Doherty and the following review from *The world’s greatest music magazine* and a few other notable publications, you could forgive me for thinking that maybe, just maybe, Seasick Steve might have to budge over from whatever metaphorical boxcar he’d just ridden and make some room for the new, old, kids on the block.
“Boldness has genius, go f**kin’ listen.”
Louder Than War. 9/10
“A brilliant debut album”
GQ.
You’d think, there was a chance that we just might find our audience and perhaps kick on from there, if only to the point that there were enough people in said audience to go home suitably impressed and bring a few of their like-minded friends with them next time, because that’s how it works, it’s how it’s always worked and unless there’s some sort of unseen global pandemic that stops the entire world from going out for ages, it’s how it will always work.
You make,
“A joyous, anthem-laden affair that evokes Arcade Fire’s sweep; Blood, Sweat & Tears’ horns, and the finer moments of Primal Scream’s Screamadelica” ****Q Magazine.
Then you get out and play the fucking thing live and as often as possible, and those people DO tell their friends about you and they DO come along to the next gig and they then tell all their mates and so on. And their mates are also of an age where they actually pay for music, on Vinyl and Cd, which you sell at the gigs along with T-shirts and they also share your music on social media and Facebook, but Facebook hates music so it doesn’t let anyone on their friends list see the posts but nonetheless they do it anyway and then Facebook sends you a message saying it could ‘boost’ your post if you give Mark Iceberg some cash so you do but still nobody sees it ‘cos he’s a lying bastard etc. But you try and try and try so hard, to make this happen because guess what? It’s fun! Who’d of thought it, being onstage with your mates, some of whom you’ve known since you were the ‘right’ age to be getting started on all this nonsense, but here you are, older, wiser, stone cold fucking sober, arms in the air as the horns kick-in to the outro of Just for Today and EVERYBODY in the room is smiling because THAT’S HOW IT WORKS.
At this point, I’d like to suggest you go and listen to Just for Today by Hightown Pirates. Start at the beginning of the song obviously, but when it gets to the dropdown bit at 4.20mins, close your eyes, turn the song up as loud as possible and listen, really listen. I’ll get back to you in a few minutes.
*6.09 mins later*
Right, the bit where Shona’s voice comes in, just after the dropdown, Lilly’s flute is there first, then a bit of my acoustic guitar and then, like a (soul) train loaded with everything about music that I adore, the horns kick-in with everything else. Now THAT dear reader, is the sound of redemption, right there.
So as far as I was concerned, the actual music worked too.
It works because despite all the rest of that shit, all the heartache and bollocks that surrounds this thing, you’ve somehow managed to get onto a stage at The Water Rats, where you saw the ‘frisbee team for the first time all those years ago and it makes literally no sense at all but it’s only fucking music right? It’s not as If it’s a matter of life and death is it? It’s madness but it’s a beautiful madness that you have no problem being afflicted by because in all that insanity, amongst the darkest corners of your self-doubt and loathing, somewhere between the need to make sense of the world and the undeniable truth that none of it actually makes any sense. There is indeed a light and it never goes out.
All the years of hurting yourself and others, all the heartache, false-starts, the hesitation to come out of those shadows and actually try and live in the light. Because of, or in spite of, or just because you really have no other plan sometimes, other than to try and tempt those you love the most to also join in as we all drag our older and wiser selves out of the antipathy of getting older and reignite the stupid youthful exuberance you first felt when all those years ago, someone said to you.
“Have you heard Another Girl Another Planet?”
Because you’ve seen all the old band documentaries, you’ve read the books, skinned-up on the album covers, cut lines out on the cd cases, danced like nobody is watching because nobody is but at least you’re still dancing right? At least you’re still having a go. It’s a piece of cake being all rocknroll when you’re a kid, you find out what you’ve really got when you get older and that’s a fact brothers and sisters.
Should have, would have could of that’s no way to live your life, please don’t throw away the dreams you had when young.
Seems like only yesterday, my friends and I went out to play, but you wake up one cold morning they’re all gone.
Oh yeah.
Do you care?
Don’t burn your bridges of desire nor throw your songbooks on the fire, hold close the ones who take your breath away.
Paint your pictures sing your songs, when all seems lost, we carry on, if we’re out of step it’s ‘cos we hear different drums.
Oh yeah.
Please care.
Don’t be consumed by hate and fear nor be too scared to shed your tears, teach your children well they should not be afraid.
Write the words they need to read, give hope to those who don’t believe, that a broken heart will one day get repaired.
Oh yeah.
Oh Yeah.
Should have, would have could of that’s no way to live your life, please don’t throw away the dreams you had when young.
Seems like only yesterday, my friends and I went out to play, but you wake up one cold morning they’re all gone.
Is all this important, that’s the question that you sometimes forget you already know the answer to, but like so much of what you think you know, sometimes you don’t know as much as you think you know and sometimes you discover you have more answers than you thought you did.
So, your band, the band, ‘project’ or whatever the fuck it is, gets itself together, everybody travels the miles required to rehearse and get ready for another gig that may or may not see people attend. Lots of people say they will come on social media, but we know that’s all a lie. It requires a bit of effort which is clearly too much effort and their name on the guest list that will add to the money you’re already going to lose tonight. You try and explain there is no free quest list, and they block you on social media and never speak to you again. You do know that a small group of friends will turn up, a mixture of the band’s girlfriends, their friends that love them, and those who by now, actually listened to what none of the fuss is all about. They’ll come, Becky and her friends, John, Marie, Nigel, and some of the tribe who ‘get’ this and want to show their support. Sadly, most of the recovery ‘tribe’ are not interested, it’s clearly not their thing, fair enough, no doubt when you DO play Brixton Academy, they’ll have a change of heart and blow your phone up looking for a guest list. You still haven’t decided whether you’ll tell them to fuck off or put their names down, it doesn’t matter, it’s not life or death is it? Other will come, people you don’t know who for whatever reason have stumbled upon this, thing. Some of these people have travelled a long distance too, Tony, Ian, Tosh, Steven, people who have spent an inordinate amount of time over the years listening to music and supporting bands and those involved in such things, who are still enthralled enough by all this to try and make that connection happen.
And you get to the venue, and the one of the support bands you invited to play that night walk in just as you’re about to do soundcheck. Everyone is onstage you just gotta crash through a couple of songs now, we think we can all hear ourselves the levels sound about right. And you see those kids in the support band, you’ve never met them before but you liked some of their songs and your manager kinda knows theirs but they’re half your age and clearly didn’t check out any of your videos so are surprised to see that you are (almost) the same age as their dads and as they put their guitars and pedalboards down in front of the stage you can see a couple of them rolling their eyes because they didn’t realise they were going to share the stage with old people, which is actually an attitude you fully understand because you were the same once and it’s cool really, and then the drummer clicks his sticks to count the band in and you rip the fucking place to pieces with a savage version of Last Chance Saloon and the kids looking at you from the empty dancefloor are now embarrassed because they also thought that old people shouldn’t make music, but YOU do and it’s beautiful and when the horn section slams them against the wall, they know their band isn’t fit to change the laces on your shoes but that doesn’t matter either because it’s only music right? It’s hardly a matter of life and death.
And that’s how it works, you might not think so, but I’m stupid and I certainly do.
Comments
No posts