Do I need a manager

Artist management, it’s a question to need to ask yourself at the very start of your career. The thought of having a manager can be exciting because you feel that you’re moving in the right direction, finally someone working alongside you to get things done. You might be right but you might be horribly wrong. The days are gone of the drummer’s brother managing a band, the nice guy who didn’t play anything but had always longed  ‘to be in the music business.’ Before you appoint a manager ask yourself the question, ‘Do I really need a manager?’ What you may find is that while you’d like a manager you don’t actually NEED one.

Ask yourself, ‘What do I want to achieve from this?’ Are you after a deal or do you need someone to do all the things that you don’t want to do? The manager has their job but you still have yours. You are your own artist development manager within your own infrastructure. It’s your job to define what role you want the manager to play alongside what it is you do for yourself.

If you’re at the stage where you can do it all then leave well alone, you don’t need a manager. If however, you’re generating a buzz and at the stage where there could be interest from the record industry then maybe you do need a manager. If you don’t have one you’ll at least need a lawyer. Record companies need someone to deal with and it’s unlikely to be you. It can be some of the best money you’ll ever spend. Protect yourself from the horror of having your career taken away from you before you’ve begun. If you have and they see you’re vulnerable, you’ll get eaten alive.

Then comes the finding of the manager. Good managers are like a jewel in the crown. You’ll rarely find a great artist without a great manager. It can be the basis for where all future relationships are born, the ultimate collaboration. We’ll look at the role of the manager later but for now you have to make the same decision as you hope you’d hope you make with your life partner. Is this the one? The chances are you might get divorced from manager and you’ll be left holding the baby, your band. Do everything in your power to make the right choice. While you’ll be driven by instinct and intuition strive for more. Do some research and convince yourself they are the right person for the job. You’ll need to get on with them because you’ll rarely be apart from them, take time to get to know them. You will need to identify they have those basic human ingredients such as honesty and trust. Being a nice guy is never enough. Ask yourself, ‘Can they do the job?’

I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t a good manager, there were the things that I did brilliantly but I didn’t enjoy the taking care of business. And today there’s much more of that you need to do. I wanted to be creative but the business stuff got in the way. Organizational skills are of the essence and being business savvy so that even if you don’t handle that side of things you make the right decisions when it comes to accountants and lawyers. The power to delegate is what makes the difference, knowing if something can be done better and quicker by someone else. So many of the people around you might be looking for personal gain, what’s in it for them? It’ll destroy you, chose your manager wisely.

Filed under: Business Lessons, management, Managing Creativity, artist development, artist management, good management

Sid and Malc

Management and the style of management can vary so much. Good managers always act in the best interests of the artist and that requires a huge understanding of what it is you want to get out of them. That doesn’t mean always agreeing with them, on the contrary sometimes that means vehemently disagreeing with them and getting them to shape up. At the top level you’re protecting them from the record company and if you’re lower down the pecking order you’re often having to protect them from themselves.

The classic example here would be Malcolm McLaren and a quarter of his act, Sid Vicious. Just the other day I was, together with many others praising McLaren and what he had achieved in his years and I still stand by that. He played a large part in a small part of musical history, the revolutionary part which is always the exciting bit. McLaren’s relentless pursuit was always about the end product, The Sex Pistols and in doing that he was almost encouraging Sid to spiral out of control. It worked in the general scheme of things, he wanted the Pistols to be a train wreck and whatever carnage had to happen then so be it. It all added to the end product and the media frenzy.

Sid was that rollercoaster of a train wreck, his whole tragic world in turmoil and too brain dead to ever be bothered. And while it all fell apart underneath him he paid the ultimate price, he’s not here anymore. The whole Sid and Nancy tragic opera was played out to it’s inevitable conclusion and alongside  John Lydon we remember Sid more than the others and for just that. the messed up smack head that he was. We love tragedy in rock, Jim Morrison, Hendrix, Janis and Brian Jones, not to mention Kurt Cobain and Elvis Presley. It’s hard being a legend while you’re alive.

McLaren, cruel as it sounds almost encouraged Sid and left him too it. Whatever Sid got up to was front page news and that was what  always worked in the bigger picture. It was front page news from the start of his heroin addiction and his behavior right through to Nancy’s death. And the ultimate swanson, his own death where he was Romeo to his Juliete.

You wonder if Malcolm felt any remorse deep down inside because he never showed it. Did he think it was worth sacrificing a human life, maybe two in the quest for publicity? Is a life that important, somehow I doubt it. And yet if it wasn’t for the end who would remember Sid? He was a punk star because of all that, no more significant than the other three yet there he lies in rock’s tragic corner. Famous for careering out of control.

Filed under: management, mistakes, View from the room, John Lydon, Malcolm McLaren, Sid Vicious, The Sex Pistols

McLaren’s final pit stop

Few people leave their mark in pop music the way Malcolm McLaren did.  That’s the problem with the music industry today it’s too safe, too squeeky clean and  too uninspiring. It lacks characters like McLaren, Tony Wilson and other mavericks, the rebels who believed in getting their artists known because, stupid as it sounds they believed in them.  Malcolm left his mark in a way few will ever emulate and few will ever forget. Successful as Simon Cowell is the whole  American Idol funfare is safer than safe. Uninspiring artists covering tried and tested songs, one of them wins and they give them a song to release, make all the money and then they’re done. Nothing remotely exciting, you expect nothing and you’re content  to get nothing. But then again Simon Cowell believes in pop music as a disposable commodity, there is no longevity in it so who am I to judge? Memories are not always made by hits.

People like McLaren made the music industry great, he made people sit up and take notice. He was driven and he was noisy, he was a man on  a mission. A relentless bulldog and once he had the bit between his teeth he was off and running.   To quote his own words’ “I have been called many things: a charlatan, a con man, or, most flatteringly, the culprit responsible for turning British popular culture into nothing more than a cheap marketing gimmick”  And most of the people who see that as criticism probably inspired him to do more of the same. Great publicists like to get noticed and McLaren did more than enough of that. When you hear the words ‘cheap marketing gimmick’ applied to the likes of The Sex Pistols, New York Dolls or Bow Wow Wow it makes you wonder what we’ve replaced the word ‘cheap’ with today, worthless? It’s definitely cheaper than cheap.

The Sex Pistols got on more front covers of national newspapers in six months than a high profile act would get in their entire career. You couldn’t avoid finding out what they were up to and McLaren couldn’t give a toss about what people were saying about the band as long as they were saying it. He got noticed and they got noticed, he hit a nerve and he generated a reaction. And again like Tony Wilson, if you met him you knew you’d met him. He was never, whatshisname? If he didn’t think it would create a fuss then he couldn’t be bothered and his ability to manipulate the media to get what he wanted was unique.

I met him once when I interviewed him the mid 90’s and no matter what the question might be he would swerve the conversation into exactly what he wanted to say. He lapped up any media opportunity and of course being articulate and interesting in the way he explained stuff always helped.  He was a brilliant marketing guy who also knew a lot about other people’s jobs and if you were below par he had no problem telling you. Record labels had a hard time with him!

There is no doubt The Sex Pistols had the best manager they could ever have dreamed for. They’d never admit it and it’s well documented that they, particularly John Lydon/Rotten had their problems with him but it was only to be expected that when it was over he would be the target of criticism. How else could they maintain their image unless they still had a reason to be angry and controversial. If it’s not around you anymore then all of a sudden you have to recreate it. But if you look at everything that got them noticed, the  publicity it was all his doing. The anarchy, the boat trip down the River Thames on the Queen’s Jubilee, the whole God Save the Queen outrage in fact. When it came to shock he near as damn invented it.  He knew how to get his band on the front cover and he would stop at nothing. It was almost too easy for him, why employ a publicist when he could do it all himself?

Malcolm McLaren, Malcom in the middle. Of everything.

Filed under: management, Managing Creativity, Opportunity, Malcolm McLaren, Sex Pistols, Simon Cowell, tony wilson