And then there was the eagerness to get it out and get it heard. We, the pluggers would have our say and would maybe play some key people at radio a couple of songs , get their input. Everyone would run around like kids comparing new toys at Christmas. You’d create a buzz without even trying, a real buzz. Regularly we’d talk about other people’s records, I always thought it was the best form of promotion if you had someone else talking about the records you were promoting. If you gave a record plugger from another company a record you were promoting you knew the next time you saw them they’d have heard it and they’d then tell you what they thought. We all shared the same common interest, we loved music.

And the fans did too, they loved talking about it as well as listening to it and if you heard something you liked then you would want to share that with others and pass it on. It was viral marketing in it’s infancy and before the web. Chances are that if your friends liked it they would be out at the first available opportunity buying it for themselves. A tape? Bollocks to that we all wanted our own copy!

Maybe the artist wanted it so much more then, they saw creating great new music as the ultimate challenge because they knew there was an audience out there begging for it. The music industry has always been a place where you wash your dirty laundry in public. If you release an inferior product somewhere else, in fashion, a new range of kitchen appliances, new trainers etc all that happens is it  doesn’t sell. People don’t go around critiquing it and talking about it but when your next album isn’t as good as your last everyone knows. There’s an outcry. If you’re disappointed then again it only shows you care enough.

So where are we now? If the public aren’t buying and the record companies aren’t signing then have the artists given up trying? Is everyone to blame for what has happened to the music industry? Has it gone the way of shipbuilding and cotton, was it a once a great place to be and now merely a shadow of it’s former self? Have the good old days gone and do we need to accept that however it evolves in whatever way it just won’t ever recapture the excitement and give us that adrenalin rush we all got from being a spectator or an insider?

Is all we have left, memories?

I started to think deeper though, dangerous in itself and about the future of American Idol in general which will not stand or fall by Ellen DeGenerative, successful or otherwise. Soon the Ellen novelty will have worn off and we’ll be back to all the speculation around who will replace Simon Cowell because you have to remember that Ellen is only Paula’s replacement. Fortunately Ellen has a very lucrative career independent of Idol and won’t ever be known as ‘Paula’s replacement.’ Perish the thought,  sounds like the person thrust in to the Big Brother house when a previous contestant was exposed as being an albino dwarf who ran an illicit opium den for transvestite oil sheiks.

Interestingly enough there’s been talk of Howard Stern, and while I love Howard I don’t think so. American Idol?  He’d rather judge a porn pagent, it’s more interesting for him and anyway the after show parties would be a lot more fun. He would probably be totally scathing on Idol when he saw what they had parading in front of him and how much talent there was. That would terrify possible future contestants though also, living in fear of the wrath of Howard Stern. Oh my God, he’d tear then apart limb to limb. Howard Stern’s career is built entirely on doing what the fuck he wants and he would cater to no one. Where Simon is now motivated by sustaining his vast wealth and even adding to it, Stern is still a maverick and further and further away from the establishment. Fox doing a deal with Howard Stern, I don’t think so or if he did he’d want everything Rupert Murdoch owned. You’ll never have any Grannies thinking Howard’s sweet  or funny or cute and that alone eliminates any thoughts of mass appeal. American Idol is not about taking risks, there is too much at stake now. It’s all about the ratings because the ratings give them infinite power, the power to make even more money and that is all it’s about. Don’t tell me they’re building careers because they’re not with the exception of maybe two or three out of hundreds of thousands.I think that’s called the law of averages and a mean one in the worse sense of the word! And let us not forget there is no hiding the fact that their king is abdicating.

Elton John has been mentioned too, I think he’d be good but again it’s probably everything he despises and he certainly doesn’t need it. Elton broke because he had more than every ‘idol’ put together and then some. He didn’t need a Simon manufactured makeover that’s for sure, he mastered his own class and he has survived because he’s as far away from being manipulated by this industry as anyone. Elton knows what makes Elton become known, and remembered. He considered himself a writer but not a lyricist and got a very good one in Bernie Taupin. It’s a collaboration that has lasted to this day. Will that be Simon Cowell and Westlife in forty years?  Mmm somehow I think not. That’s the thing we don’t have nowadays, artists having the creative flair for knowing who to work with rather than being told who you ARE working with. Artists even knowing who they are and ultimately what they want. American Idol contestants are there because they want someone to do it all for them and then when they don’t get selected their world subsides.

Do the lottery it’s a safer bet.

Wal-Mart = Record store killer

You admired those artists and what they had and if you had a bit of that talent you thought you stood a chance. It was worth giving it a go and at least if it didn’t happen it wasn’t the end of the world, you’d given it your best shot. You never needed to look back and think, ‘what if’? What if I hadn’t tried, I might have never known if I could have made it. Hope came from inspiration and even if you were down on your luck something might trigger that dream and you’d go and spend your last thirty  pounds or dollars on a guitar. It was worth it. Do people do that anymore, do they  believe enough or have they been so brainwashed by  an industry that doesn’t believe enough in itself?  The industry is accepting of the fact that music doesn’t sell anymore and they’re looking for new revenue streams to claw on to anything they can. And yet they chose their own burial grave, they even bought up all the lots as year after year they didn’t seem concerned that independent records stores were closing. The first port of call for their new artists was disappearing around them and instead of reaching out to help they increased their discounts to Walmart and anyone else who’d buy in bulk. Never mind that they only bought a few titles, it was quick cash. Talk about biting off the hand that fed them for decades, they didn’t given a toss about the independent retailers who’d done as much as anyone to break their biggest selling artists. Where did they think they came from, Walmart?

Today's Music... Digital... what about the rest of it?

So what does drive the people making the music nowadays? Are they too accepting that there is a depressing reality in how many records they can sell? I suppose so, records and selling don’t go hand in hand anymore. Physical product doesn’t sell whoever you are with the odd one off exceptions to the rule like Susan Boyle and we all know where she came from. And furthermore will she be selling records in five years? Somehow I think not  and quite probably the novelty will have worn thin. There have been opera singers since before Elvis, they have always been there. So X Factor found a woman who sang opera OK, so what? They found an ordinary person singing opera, does that makes her extraordinary? She didn’t invent it, where’s the X for factors sake?  And all the Italians in flowing robes learned to sing mighty fine,  they didn’t need a talent show. And in the UK Russell Watson became big a decade ago so still nothing remotely novel or Xy about Susie girl. Funny how we used to do OK for talent before we had talent shows. We had a way to discover music but it started with an interest in it in the first place. Artists were interested in being heard and the public was keen to listen. Today they just don’t care and interest doesn’t even compare to passion. When did we last hear people being passionate about music. They have more passion for a pair of shoes!

Digressed a little there so more to come but that’ll do for today’s episode.

Simons?!

watch television. The show that every network turned down is now the only show that makes a difference. If you’re a pop act and you have a record out and you get asked to appear, then you do it. That is of course if you have a record out and Whitney Houston doesn’t or if she’s round at Clive’s having tea or massaging his ego. My God could you imagine dinner with those two……pass the hurl bucket.  I digress.

It must be heartening for any artist to hear the stuff people turn down. What happened with American Idol happened with The Beatles, The Stone Roses, you name it…..  they had the knock back. Ponders the question, who are the people elected to pick what works and what doesn’t work? TV and the music business has become dull because of the people making the decisions. They clearly have no idea what people want. Hence we have the most popular  ’music show’ ever where the public actually has to tell them what they want.  And then one success spawns a thousand unimaginative carbon copies. Where once we had an act that attracted an audience now we have an audience that can attract any act because they all have to do it, appear on that show! Simple really, if you want to get seen or heard you line up at Simon Cowell’s door. It’s a monopoly and it’s dangerouse. Further more they’re not budging,  not at least any time soon.

Record companies have no clue whatsoever. (It might have something to do with the fact that most of the people who work there have no idea about music)They constantly turn down what ultimately pays their own wages. Record companies can no longer sign bands because they do not know how to develop bands. They have no fucking idea and what’s worse is they don’t care. They don’t care that what made generations integrate, love one another, even give us a healthy foreign export all revolved around music. Call me idealistic I don’t care, but the people who sit in their halcyon towers crunching the numbers have no feet to put on the ground. They want to see a return straight away when  no relevant band in history paid the rent from day one. What they did do was build a base for an industry to thrive for a very long time until the pendulum swung and the lunatics took over the asylum. Not only did they run it, they enrolled the inmates. We are now fed a staple diet of stuff that doesn’t require us to ponder over whether or not it’s good or not, it’s just there. Who cares if it’s good, as long as it can sell instantly and we can get a return. The law of averages says a proportion of the cattle will chew the cud. Or is it sheep, lemmings even? It’s just fodder when all is said and done.

Where are we going, well as Bob Dylan so rightly said, ‘No Direction home’ There is no route. Over the coming weeks months, years , decades I may be granted time on this turntable we call earth I intend to bring forth and interrogate those that matter, those who gave me a purpose, a reason to get up in the morning and throw myself in to what was an unbelievable place to be. The artists and the record industry, the record stores, the bands, the media we all worked as one . And you know what, we were fucking good. Too good to sit back and see what this industry has become, a playground for the people who were once behind the scenes. We are creating immovable objects, Clive Davis was a music man, once.  There was a time when he wanted to create stars to see what they could become, to let them grow and flourish, to see them last and then to influence others. And now, it’s not because of what they are but because of what they can do for him. The ego is mightier than the music. When in all it’s years have the people behind the scenes become bigger than the artists? I don’t think it was meant to be that way was it? Who’s more successful than Simon Cowell or Clive Davis? Instead of making them (the artists)they made themselves! Simon Fuller is equally as powerful and with an astute mind, a marketing genius…….. but at least he doesn’t have a need to grab the limelight. Instead of pop stars we now have  industry stars.

As it’s all anyone is talking about here in the Tampa Bay area I thought I’d make a start on a series of U2 blogs. I just got a note from my old pal Neil who’s about to step on a plane so no doubt we will end discussing this even more over the coming weeks. (Neilstorey.blogspot.com.) In fact Neil goes back even further than I do with U2. And that’s nearly 30 years. He was responsible for persuading myself and my then lodger, Mark Radcliffe to drag ourselves out on a  filthy wet saturday night to see them supporting Wah Heat at what was then the Art College in Manchester( was it 1981?) It was soon to become the ‘Poly’ and  where they played several times when I was working with them and where I still hold the record guest list (106 people when I took most of Granada TV along to see them.)

Merely mention U2 to me and so many memories come flooding back. I dread to think of how many shows I did with them in the early 80’s and watched them blossom and flourish until they finally exploded. You can’t ever imagine the belief that band had in themselves from the very beginning. Even now they helped inspire me as much as anyone to write my book.

Last night was special. My friend Darrin who did pretty much everything other than write the damn book, Insights from the Engine Room really wanted to go, I was hot and had been all week so the thought of standing in a field for hours sounded like a lot of work. A 72,000 record breaking audience is pretty smelly in this humidity but I thought I should do the decent thing and see if I could get us some tickets. I sent a note to Paul McGuinness their manager and tickets, backstage passes and hospitality was provided the same as it has every year since they managed to make a living without me. I stood on the mixing desk and watched in amazement. I amazed myself, I should be used to it all by now. Somehow I doubt I ever will be.

I’m still tired as it was one hell of an exhausting but fulfilling night so I’ll get to bed and come back and write some more later. And don’t you dare wake me.

Nevertheless it’s popular. The adds run at $3 million for a 30 second commercial and sadly they were all booked pre recession.$100,000 per second! Rhianna played the other night, The Eagles last night, there’s Fleetwood Mac, Puff Daddy, whoops P.Diddy who turned up in St Pete early this morning for a party. Snoop is snooping around, it’s all going on. Meanwhile I’m checking out Fox Soccer Channel and I think Wigan on the box will do just fine, no problem. Leave ‘em all to paaaaaaaaarty.

Oh and then of course there’s The Boss, the man who knows about as much about the game as me, Bruce Springsteen. He’s turned it down a million times but Boss times are hard and like he boldly admits, he has a new album out. There’s no fee but they’ll cover expenses, nice, him and Patti get a hotel room but then again the audience for his 12 minute half time show is a billion! No need for a sweat drenched 3 hour show. Boss move by Boss man. Nice work if you can get it.

Bruce did a press conference on Thursday and no suprise, it was all over everywhere. It was the first he’d done since 1987 and the media lapped it up. Brucey boy seemed in good spirits and I did like his honesty about not being a football fan and wanting to shamlessly plug his new album. One thing both he and Miami Steve said got me thinking. They said they came out of an era when the music was brilliant and the artists set a very high standard and they felt it their job to maintain those standards, they wanted to be great. It’s a wonderful philosophy, admire you’re peers but at the same time try and emulate them.

Springsteen has worked relentlesly for several decades to be where he is. He shunned CBS’s (now Sony) hype campaign and the posters that claimed ‘I have seen the future of rock n roll and it is Bruce Springsteen’ He hated it, he demanded they take them all down. As was the case with his heroes and when he was growing up, he wanted to be judged on merit and not some overhyped record company campaign.

He was right, he was more than a commodity, he had a vision and he wasn’t prepared to compromise.The artists that have survived are the ones who had a say in their career, they too had a vision and weren’t prepared to stand back and let the record company turn them in to what they thought they should be, and create something that would make their job easier, make them marketable. They had belief and they had guts and if was going to take time then so be it. It worked then but they won’t let it work now, they all watched as everything came tumbling down. They pushed the self destruct button while blaming everyone apart from themselves.They knew it all.

There was a timeless quality in the writers of the sixties, maybe there was something in the water. It forever makes me appreciate what a remarkable time it was for music and how every time I would turn on the radio something new and exciting would be there just waiting to be heard.The disc jockeys too back then genuinely enthused about the stuff they were played, they sounded believable! Pirate radio was rebel radio, there has never been anything like it since.

Hearing all that great music makes me wish I still had my record collection, then I start to think sensibly, a rarity in itself, where on earth would they go? I used to be able to dedicate an entire room to vinyl, first it was a basement in my office in Cheshire where I’d be surrounded on all sides by rack upon rack of vintage gems! Then if I moved house I’d be looking at a room fit for my library before I ever checked out what the kitchen and bathrooms were like. Eventually though it ended up as a room I would visit, I’d call in to see how my records were doing. Pull them out from the shelves and look at them, touch them, smile at them. They became my extended family until one day that was it, get rid. And I did.

I’m not alone though, most of my friends felt ‘that was then and this is now’ They were a period in time and in my new minimalist phase I couldn’t be doing with living in a record store anymore. I remember once when I was moving a friend of mine saying ‘Well you won’t be having a house warming party then will you. There’s nowhere to stand’

Something I don’t miss about record collecting though is that nerdy element. I would buy any album that had certain people on, never expecting that sometimes they turned up on crap records!! I used to think I needed every piece of work they did. Like hell I did! Enough, I’m drifting back in to my collecting phase again. Been there have you?

U2 came on around 8-30pm and as Wah Heat had been creating a bit of a buzz there was a decent turn out. We’d already arrived by then and were downing a couple of pints at the bar. We turned round to see and there before us were a bunch of awkard looking kids doing what bands do, re tuning, a bit of a bass drum thumping away and the singer adjusting his mike stand. ‘We’re U2 and we’re from Dublin.’ Little did I know that this was the beginning of an amazing journey for all of us.

We moved down nearer to the front so we could get a good look, if we made the effort to come and see them then I don’t see the point in propping up the bar. There’s seeing a band and there’s being at the bar, hardly the same thing. They sounded like they should have done, raw but with a lot of energy and most of it coming from their singer. The guy, who even then went by the name of Bono had such a determined, almost demonic look about him you could see his sole ambition was to make sure everyone know who they were by the time they left the stage. And bad boots and haircut were helping, but not maybe in the way he had planned.

Boots aside, he did this by repeating who they were another couple more times, lauding up Wylie and his mob, telling us they had a record contract and also that their producer was Martin Hannett. This prompted a curious glance at each other from me and Mark and a certain’ tell us more?’ Hannett had produced Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures and Radcliffe had recently recorded a session with them for his show on Piccadilly Radio  but neither of us knew he’d made a record with this lot. Mark was a big Joy Division fan, he’d even called his show ‘Transmission’ after their epic. After announcing their association with Hannett they went on to play the track he’d done with them, what was to be their forthcoming single ‘11 o’clock tick tock’

Wow this was a bit special, an extraordinary sound and particularly from this slightly gauntish, again fairly awkward guitar player, The Edge. He played an unusual Gibson Explorer guitar and moved it around his torso like he was feeling every note. His sound even back then was quite unique and we both loved what he was doing. By now we were both starting to look a lot more at what was going on up there onstage. Fairly charismatic singer, original and very impressive guitar sound, and then the rhythm section. Larry was the James Dean of the band, a real beauty that had all the girls in the audience nudging each other and a very competent drummer who was just learning with every show. And then came Adam. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that Adam was the least talented back then and to see how he has blossomed in to his look and the feel he has for his bass now is quite amazing. I don’t think anyone saw that one coming!

It reminded me of my bass playing youth, the ability, not the haircut which I will have to come back to. I was hell bent on being a rock star, not just me but all my friends and especially my bandmates. Myself our drummer Kenny, and legendary singer Sudi always came up with the band names and mighty fine they were too!  I vividly remember ‘ Dwarf Cornell’ which I’m sure was mine! Oh I have to stop and keep this blog deserving of it’s own place, too fond a memory to absorb within Adam Clayton’s haircut methinks.

David Fricke had just written a review of the re issue of U2’s first album, ‘Boy’ for rollingstone.com and it prompted a response from the band’s singer. How cool.

Entering the blogosphere, a review of BOY from the singer who was one at the time of recording. ‘We the members of said post punk combo are very complimented by DAVID FRICKES 4.5 star review of our debut, an album we always believed in. I remember now a generous JON PARELES review from the VILLAGE VOICE in 1980, a line something along the lines of “this is peter pan, I hope they break up before they grow up.” Anyway, as my band mates and I attempt to finish our most complete and radical album yet, here’s my why and what i think is right and wrong about BOY having listened to it for the first time in over twenty years if you start from the pseudo british accent and the little reported fact that the singer sounds like a girl, things don’t look too promising …the annoying gene is present in self consciousness and self immolation… you do want to give the singer a slap for lots of reasons but let’s start with the pretentiousness….the singer has obviously been listening to SIOUXIE AND THE BANSHEES, JOY DIVISION and a few others whose combined archness and artfulness was just too much for the freckled face teenager from northside of DUBLIN. Neither fully protestant or catholic, IRELAND had left the boy with a face like a baked bean and in search of a nonregional identity. A theme that continues to the present.
You can have everything the songs, the production, the face, the attitude but still not have “IT”. U2 had nothing really, nothing but “IT”. For us music was a sacrament,an even more demanding and sometimes more demeaning thing than music as ART, we wanted to make a music to take you in and out of your body, out of your comfort zone, out of your self, as well as your bedroom, a music that finds you looking under your bed for God to protect your innocence…

I’m proud of this little Polaroid of a life I cant fully recall. As well as the ability to make embarrassing mistakes, the demands of a great debut might be fresh ideas, fresh paint and sometimes for its canvas, a fresh face.

I miss my boyhood.’

Bono, 3rd August 2008

You can read the full reply on rollingstone.com

It reminded me so much of when I heard ‘Boy ‘ and the feelings that it evoked. I thought it was amazing how it stirred a reaction in Bono so strong. It reminded me too of how much blogging makes you miss your childhood, but in the fondest of ways.

‘For I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now’ Bob Dylan 1964

I was up as usual at the crack of dawn, well actually it was a crack well before before dawn. I live in Tampa Bay on the breathtaking coastline that is the Gulf of Mexico so I clutch on to dawn for as long as possible. It’s those times when the sun is gloriously rising and that time at the end of the day when it is reluctant to fade that are positively magical and the time writing becomes more than a hobby, it’s a passion, something you HAVE to do. It’s true what they say, the best things in life are free. What price could you put on a sunrise or a sunset when no two are alike?

I wake up excited with this bizarre need to share things, maybe it’s the escape of living on your own and sharing a coffee with a complete stranger that makes blogging so wonderful.  It never feels like it’s an obligation and it’s obviously a great way for those that don’t know you to find out a little more and a must when you want to talk to people as well as write. I’m still really excited about going around and storytelling, what a great way to remember some amazing times and to share them with others. And with some who weren’t even born then. Scary.

The colors cascade in to morn and it all becomes a frantic stab at the keybpad to write as much as is going on in my head, made a thousand times harder by a laptop that just decides to stop when it’s had enough. Technology telling you to slow down. It’s so abrupt, it’ll just tap out the letters I typed when it feels like it! By which time you’ve had pause, and not for thought. It could lead to another tirade of expletives about the death of my laptop but I’ll refrain, it was behaving badly before but it’s sod’s law that I should inherit it’s brother, albeit temporarily.

How the little things excite you the most, I can’t wait to get a new one and maybe come up with my best work yet, or knowing me drop it in a puddle and end of back at square one! Back to my train of thought with what next to blog, which never ends where it begins.