Hmm…
So, I’m reading about Ahmet Ertegun in this article in The New Yorker magazine written by George W.S. Trow. I had never heard of Mr. Trow before; he is now deceased. I am reading about Ahmet Ertegun because he was referred to several times in the David Crosby autobiography I read a few moths ago. I was referring back to Long Time Gone: The Autobiography of David Crosby, because Crosby had been mentioned several times in the book I am currently reading, Revolver: How the Beatles Reimagined Rock’N’Roll. Revolver: How the Beatles Reimagined Rock’N’Roll is one of many books I’ve read about the Beatles, whose history and development and influence continues to fascinate me. I was particularly interested in Revolver: How the Beatles Reimagined Rock’N’Roll’s mention of the Byrd’s, of whom David Crosby was a founding member, and their influence on the sound of the Beatles.
I have been reading biographies and memoirs of rock groups and individuals for quite some time. I remember reading books about Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Supremes several decades ago back in the 70’s. I read Dave Marsh’s Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story, back in the 90’s. In the early 2000’s I read Steely Dan and the Eagles’ biographies. I even read Bob Spitz’s The Beatles-The Biography, all 983 pages. I read Positively Fourth Street by David Hajdu. Since I retired, I avidly resumed my quest to learn about the inner workings and lives of the musical artists I admire. Having pursued music for a portion of my life, even full-time at one period, I am curious about those who made it to the level I was never able to and books about the music business, such as…
Warren Zevon, Chicago, Van Halen (2), Berry Gordy, Led Zeppelin,
Credence Clearwater Revival, Pete Townsend, Levon Helm (2),
Curtis Mayfield, Jim Morrison (3), Allman Brothers, Greg Allman,
America, The Police (2) - Andy Summers, Stewart Copeland,
Jac Holzman, Glyn Johns, David Crosby, Aretha Franklin,
Don Felder, Joni Mitchell, several books, Heart, Maurice White,
Philip Bailey, Love, Fleetwood Mac, Lou Gramm, Elvis Costello,
Paul Simon/Simon and Garfunkel, Patti Smith’s, Just Kids. David Bowie,
Cyndi Lauper (yep), Billy Joel, Tommy James, Freddie Mercury, Stevie Wonder, Billy Vera, John Coltrane, Clive Davis, Ahmet Ertegun,
Appetite for Destruction -The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the
Digital Age, Steven Tyler (couldn’t finish it), Robbie Robertson, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run, Chris Cornell, Elton John, Roger Daltry, Felix Cavaliere, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Yes, MTV (2), Doobie Bros, Jimi Hendrix, Rikki Lee Jones, Motown, The Eagles, Janis Joplin, Talking Heads, Bay City Rollers, The Wrecking Crew, Todd Rundgren…
*****************************
I rationalized my pursuit of reading books about the rock music world in the following narrative…
I’m a failed musician. Yes, a failed musician. I admit it. I confess. I fully recognize it. However, I don’t mean this as negatively as it might sound. Admitting I failed as a musician does not denote any shame or self-denigration on my part. It is merely an acknowledgment of the reality I did not attain or accomplish the goals I set out to achieve during the time of my life as a musician. It is important for me to make this acknowledgement at this time of my life so that I do not take too seriously the persistent energy I still have for playing and writing and performing music.
“We are all failed athletes, most men are,” a radio talk show host intoned one day as I tuned in. He did not explain what he meant any further and transitioned on to another subject. Evidently, I had tuned in just as he was concluding the subject, but I understood completely his statement. He meant the ideal masculine image for most men is the athlete. Given the opportunity, most men would pursue an athletic career over any other profession. As an accomplishment for only the few, the professional athlete is a symbol of failure for most men, our having failed to attain our most desired wish fulfillment.
I am a failed musician in the same context. Since the 60’s the rock star musician’s status has risen to the status of the athlete. The rock star represents the creative life: of unrestrained freedom, of affluence, of public adoration. I aspired to those values in my youth and gave it a shot. Multiple shots, actually. In Vermont, in Boston (where I sojourned from Jamaica Plains, to Cambridge to Arlington), back to Vermont, to Los Angeles, where I finally ended my quest and embarked on a career in a “straight job” (Yes, that’s what we called working as a non-musician). My musical aspirations brought me to the city and state I am proud to call my home. I remember walking the streets of Los Angeles in the winter of 1979. I related so much to the environment I was mentally kicking myself for not having made it out here earlier. It felt like where I wanted to be musician or not. The band I was with, Zzebra, was my biggest shot at making it. We had credentials and contacts, but we were ultimately so far off the track we went the way of most bands and groups and aspiring artists — nowhere. We did do some recording of demos and an album, which was so bad it proclaimed our death knell.
After Zzebra I attempted to forge a career by myself, but I never clicked with any west coast musicians the way I had with east coast musicians. And even the click I had with east coast musicians never evolved to that magical level of creative output my heroes and even non-heroes attained.
And frankly, characterizing myself as a musician, as far as I’m concerned, is a stretch. I never studied music. I took one singing lesson my entire life, although it was a full semester’s class in voice.
It was during my second semester of grad school at the University of Vermont. I had one elective class included in the curriculum of courses for my student personnel administration degree requirement. It was a non-specific elective; it did not have to be related to my degree program. I figured if I was going to continue to do this music thing I might as well get some training and take advantage of this opportunity. As I made out my schedule for the semester I combed through the campus catalogue, looked up the music department and there is it was — Voice: instruction for non-majors and non-minors. That’s what I was looking for.
The UVM Music department was in a blue-gray Victorian-styled building on the Northwest section of the campus — an area I had never been to. I walked over to the department on a break from the Counseling Office, where I worked, and inquired whether I met the minimum qualifications to enroll in the class. I wanted to know if I needed any prior knowledge of music, whether I had to read music to be able to take the class. I spoke to the voice teacher, a professor, whose name I can no longer remember, and I enrolled. I told him my predicament: I was lead singer in a local band; I had never had singing lessons; the strain on my voice was demanding; I wanted to learn how to sing to reduce the stress on my voice. Professor X was in his late forties — early fifties. The hair on his head was graying and sparsely covered a seemingly progressing balding pate. I looked him in the eyes expecting to observe some reaction to my circumstance. There was none. He did not ask about my musical background nor about the band I was in or anything. He explained the kinds of classes offered that would be most helpful to my situation, we agreed upon a schedule that would not conflict with my office hours and I departed. The professor taught me how to sing from the diaphragm and take the strain off my throat while singing, which did help to reduce the vocal strain when I consciously implemented them.
During my musical tenure, I got to interact closely with other musicians who did make it: namely, Ric Ocasek, Ben Orr and Greg Hawkes of the Cars; singer-songwriter Andy Pratt, and Howie Epstein of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. When I compare myself to other more successful musicians, it seems as if my foray into music was a dalliance. Still, there was a portion of my life I lived and worked as a full-time musician. As a full-time avocation, I gave my make-it-in-the-rock-and-roll-world ambitions 6 years or so. As a part-time avocation, still wanting and expecting to “make it,” I spent 15 years at it, in various bands and near-bands. I devoted my time and energies, my heart and soul to playing in bands: rehearsing, performing, playing gigs, and recording demos. I remember having 10 straight nights of gigs at 3 different clubs during one period as lead singer of Trolley. I did this while I was in grad school at the UVM, enrolled in classes full-time and maintaining an internship. Somehow, I pulled it off seamlessly, at least in my mind, with no sense of overwhelm or over extension.
Moreover, when I say musician, I mean the pop-rock subculture of music: essentially rock ’n’ roll, R&B, blues, country, folk. The kind of music that does not require a studied and intellectual background of expertise. My friends Jennifer and Steven Thiroux have university-schooled musical backgrounds and play respectively, French horn and bassoon in the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra. They read music. I do not. Their understanding of musical composition and structure is so far removed from my understanding and comprehension it leaves me aghast we can coexist on the same planet. In the context of those two, it is difficult for me to claim any kind of status as a “musician.” I have often wondered how these learned and studied classical musicians grapple with the idea of their expertise and background in contrast to the popular world of music where someone who doesn’t read a note can make a major impact on the planet with their kind of musical expression. Bob Dylan, for example.
I remember playing in the Cotton Club in New York City in the late 70s with the group that brought me to Los Angeles, Zzebra, and talking to some of the house musicians there. They admitted they could only play music by reading it and marveled at our ability to be able to play and perform without reading. I was struck by the contrasts of our musical experiences and frames of reference.
Still, I can acknowledge there was a portion of my life of participating in this musical subculture that qualifies me even now as a musician, particularly as I am currently singing background in my cousin’s rock ’n’ roll rhythm and blues band, Per Se.
At a pivotal point in my life I gave up music for a traditional career and lifestyle. Having moved on, I never even acknowledged my musical background to colleagues or to my students. I didn’t even acknowledge my musical background to my wife until the end of our wedding reception when I sat in with the two musicians we had hired for our wedding reception. She was taken aback to see and hear me singing and doing so quite comfortably. Frankly, I am in my element when I am singing and performing.
My musical history represented a failed endeavor on my part and it was just something I thought I never needed to share with others. I didn’t feel good about my lack of success with music. Why would I want to share it?
Lately though, having retired and having more time for reflection, I can embrace more fully the experience I had as a musician. It feels less like a failure and more like, “I gave it a shot!” Now, I am feeling prouder I did give it a shot. Furthermore, success in music would never have satisfied my need to project the value of education over entertainment. More about that later.
As I mentioned, I had no musical training, formal or informal. I didn’t sing in the glee club. I didn’t sing in the choir. There was no musical activity I participated in as I was growing up. Still, hearing and listening to music had a profound effect on me, as I’m certain it does to most of us. It was the music of the early 60s that first grabbed my attention and realigned my DNA. The emerging rock ’n’ roll and pop music of that time: the Four Seasons, Bobby Vee, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Blue Bland, Lesley Gore, Nino and April Temple, James Brown, Otis Redding, Bruce Chanell — that whole period. It directed my senses to a world outside my everyday frame of reference — a world of feelings and emotions and people and places removed from my reality.
***********************
I have heard about Ahmet Ertegun probably for as long as I’ve been a music fan. I was not only taken with the music but as fascinated with the machinations behind the music. The producer, the engineer, the studio musicians, the studio, even grabbed my attention and focus. I loved, reading and re-reading voraciously the liner notes to albums I bought or perused in the record stores. Ahmet Ertegun’s name was mentioned on many of these liner notes. There is hardly a rock memoir or autobiography I have read where is name is not mentioned. Having never read much about him, when I read his name for the nth time in the Crosby book, I googled Ahmet Ertegun and went down that rabbit hole as I am inclined to do, as I thoroughly enjoy doing when I’m reading: pursuing a tangent, a reference, a name in the course of a reading project and seeing where it might take me. I am quite comfortable reading several books at the same time and it might take me months to get back to a book I started reading but left to pursue other tangents related to it or tangents of other books I have started. I still have yet to finish: a biography on Bill Gates, another on Bill Clinton (I have already read ten books about him), Hillary Clinton‘s, What Happened, Connie Rice’s book, Power Concedes Nothing, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus and, Peace Is Possible: The Life and Message of Prem Rawat. I did finish Revolver: How the Beatles Reimagined Rock’N’Roll.
It is easier for me to read from cover to cover a rock memoir or biography than other non-fiction books I read. I find them more absorbing and probably less complicated than reading the nonfiction books I am compelled to read. For the most part I don’t read fiction anymore. I stopped reading fiction almost 2 decades ago, having come to the realization that reading fiction is just escapist for me, when there is so much I do not know and need to know in this very, very, complicated world we live in. I haven’t abandoned reading fiction altogether. I recently read Dan Brown’s Origin, as a recommendation from my wife. It was a good escapist read, but I find myself critical of my willingness to thrust myself into someone else’s imagination when I’d much prefer a more factual landscape for my reading edification.
*********************
My google search led me to the New Yorker magazine article about Ahmet Ertegun. George Trow states,
“In the traditional hierarchy of the popular-entertainment business, record companies occupied a station below the theatre, motion pictures, radio, and vaudeville but above carnivals. Billboard, which is widely considered the most important music-business journal (though Record World, a newer publication, may be nearer the cutting edge), began its life as a magazine for the outdoor-advertising industry, while Cash Box, another music-business weekly, originally addressed itself to the jukebox and to the vending machine. The coverage of record news in Variety, the most respectable show-business journal, is skimpy and unreliable to this day. The forms within the popular-entertainment business which occupied the highest places in its old hierarchy dealt largely with adult archetypes. Adult experience and adult characters were simplified, often to the point of caricature, but it was not questioned that adult experience was the most powerful experience upon which one could draw. But just as the dismantling of the class system left the novel without much of its resonance, the diminishing of the ideal of dignity and the mode of adulthood recently has weakened the connections between the ambitious forms of popular entertainment and the mass audience. The theatre and ambitious films operate now in the twilight of the adult mode and have only intermittent access to the mass of people. Television has continuous access to the mass of people, but it deals in the detritus of adulthood and operates within a mode and according to an attention span that is essentially childish (and seems to have a thwarted child’s hostility to the ideal of dignity). To much of the public (especially that large and active part of the public born during the nineteen-forties and nineteen-fifties), the mode of authority in America, the mode that deals with real experience, the mode that is neither dead (as the adult mode seems to be) nor compromised (as the childish world of television seems to be), is the adolescent mode — the mode of exploration, becoming, growth, and pain. The adolescent mode is the mode of the music business.
In the new hierarchy, the movie business retains a vague authority, partly because it is seen as an art by those inhabitants of the adolescent mode who are interested in art, partly because the idea of stardom adheres to it (and stardom is the one adult state that inhabitants of the adolescent mode can imagine living in — because, of course, it is not really an adult state but is, rather, the ultimate adolescent fantasy of adulthood), and partly because there remains a wistful regard for the vanished world of adulthood. But the movie industry’s important energy has been surrendered to television. Television is pervasive, and has a subtle power over the society which no one, probably, is competent to measure, but it is dispersed so thoroughly throughout the society that is has ceased to be identified with choice, it is so fragmented that it cannot be identified with attention, and it has embraced a mode so childish that it cannot be identified with ambition.* So that it is the music business that has been, recently, at the top of the real entertainment hierarchy in America. To the extent that the American public makes a decision about its entertainment, it makes the decision to buy records. The record business has absorbed most of the non-catatonic energy that Americans devote to entertainment. It should be noted that the record business has subsumed not only radio but vaudeville. In a city of a hundred thousand people, almost every radio station plays recorded rock-and-roll music, and if there is ever any currently celebrated entertainer to be seen live on a stage it is likely to be a rock-and-roll singer.
Record-industry sales in America last year are estimated to have reached almost three and a half billion dollars. If revenues from concerts are included, the gross revenues of the music business approach four billion dollars, which is a figure nearly twice that achieved by the movie industry. The most successful companies are CBS (Columbia and Epic labels) and Warner Communications. For the last two years, the Warner labels, taken together — Elektra/Asylum/Nonesuch, Warner Bros./Reprise, and Atlantic — have been the most successful domestically. In 1977, their gross revenues were three hundred and sixty-four million.
The record business is not, in its essence, picturesque. The processes of the work are straightforward, and while it is true that behind the scenes there are several coherent styles in operation, these styles (the style of engineers of twenty-seven or thirty-four with long hair and a nose for drugs; the style of press agents of twenty-seven or thirty-four with one small item of Vuitton and a nose for drugs; the style implied by stenciled T-shirts and access to rented limousines) lack the air of ingenious contrivance that was formerly found in the movie industry, for instance. There was about the old movie industry a feeling that adolescents — adolescent actors and adolescent moguls — were dressing up to play-act as adults. The superior candor of the record business has resulted in a formal recognition of adolescent styles. Styles that must be a little jittery, however, since they are juxtaposed with the real work of a cutthroat business.”
From: Eclectic, Reminiscent, Amused, Fickle, Perverse — I
The New Yorker/May 29, 1978 Issue
By George W. S. Trow
*******************
Mr. Trow’s analysis of the music business as focused on adolescent versus adult culture rang true to me. Decidedly so. Life alteringly so. It confirms, for me, what I have always known about my life but was never able to embrace — this focus on adolescent angst in our culture has been and is: immature and irresponsible. It undermines our best potential, which is to behave as responsible adults to ourselves and to society. It has insidiously and hideously been such a pattern of our upbringing and programming that we are probably permanently damaged.
Definition of adult
1 : fully developed and mature : grown-up · an adult lion
2 : of, relating to, intended for, or befitting adults · an adult approach to a problem
Adult, to me, means, above all else, being responsible — to one’s self, to family, to society and the planet. Being responsible means taking responsibility for one’s actions and being accountable. Being an adult means embracing and engaging in choices, actions and behavior becoming an adult as differentiated from a teen, adolescent or child. Being an adult means exercising discipline and restraint.
I don’t mean repression, let me make that clear and concise. Adult connotes a hierarchy of choices, actions, behaviors, knowledge and comprehension different from a teen, adolescent or child.
An adult, you don’t take drugs. You don’t over drink and get drunk. You treat this body as a temple. You eat well. You don’t eat junk food. The whole idea of “junk food” amazes me. I remember hearing the term for the first time. Junk. Food. This is food, you consume for your health and nutrition, which is admittedly not good for you. And yet, you buy it and eat it. Not only is it appalling such food is manufactured and prepared, but that people purchase and eat it. This is not adult behavior. This is behavior befitting an irresponsible child or adolescent.
As well, you don’t smoke; you don’t do anything willfully that harms this precious temple of a body with which we have been graced.
When I became an adult, I found myself put off by movies about teens and young adults. I still am. These adolescent-focused movies strike me as trite and angst-driven, capturing a time when we are least capable of rational decisions and are too influenced by our emotions and lack of life experience. As teens we might think we know more than what we know but as adults we come to realize how insignificant were those times, which were/are so fraught with confusion and potential.
As a teen, I always knew I would have a greater clarity as an adult and looked forward to adulthood. I did not place a great deal of emphasis on my feelings and thoughts at that time. I was aware, yes, but I simply didn’t take myself too seriously, knowing and expecting I would grow into a perspective on life based upon experience and not just feelings. I knew I had to become more educated about myself and life before I could conclusively take myself seriously.
The music bios I have read have generally left me highly disappointed in these people. Almost to a person, the narratives are about grown-ups who never grew up! The rock and roll phenomenon, industry and lifestyle is essentially a response to the artist’s unresolved angst as an adolescent and teen. “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school.” “Teenage wasteland. It’s only teenage wasteland.” *
And not only music bios. I thought Steve Jobs an absolute jerk after reading and re-reading Walter Isaacson’s book. As one reviewer stated, “Adore the art, not the artist.” It is probably a reflection of my naivete more than anything to be disappointed at the foibles and humanness exhibited by these accomplished people. They are after all, just human. My regard, perhaps, our regard of the contribution of successful people, blinds us to the reality of their humanness, orienting us to want the human behind these accomplishments to be more than human. Their bios give us a clear picture, they give me a clear picture, that what promotes creativity and larger than life accomplishment is not larger than life people but highly driven people — people driven by advanced insecurity, grandiosity, narcissism, and yes, talent, whose need to produce and create and express themselves are so amplified by their drives, they manage to have this larger-than-life impact on us, the public.**
Trow’s essay brought clarity to the almost subconscious undercurrent of doubt and uncertainty I had about the musical life I led and the musical world to which I aspired. It brings clarity to my present and how to live as a responsible citizen in these very challenging times, when the very president of the United States was nothing more than an adult child, rich kid, an unethical businessman who had found esteem and glorification in the eyes of a population of angst-driven adults who are still living out their childhood frustrations in irresponsibility and unaccountability.
*In the New History, the preferences of a child carried as much weight as the preferences of an adult, so the refining of preferences was subtracted from what it was necessary for a man to learn to do. — George Trow, Within the Context of No Context
**Veteran coach Brooks Johnson, who’s worked with runners at every Olympics since 1968, says one thing almost all his charges have had in common is “extreme needs above the norm.” To compensate for perceived or real deficiencies, they must excel. “No well-adjusted person will ever become an Olympic champion!” he practically shouts. “It’s the same for art, politics, music. The things that motivate elite athletes are the same things that motivate people who reach the outer limits of any activity.” And sometimes get them in trouble: “Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Lance Armstrong, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan — I could go on and on. They go to extremes because they have extreme needs.” Crash of the Titan (elle.com)
mr
