You don’t do it through publicity, you do it through the work.

In the old days, print publicity was the introduction, now there’s so much in the pipeline that even if it’s seen, it’s not acted upon, and that is the ultimate goal, consumption of the music, that’s where a career begins.

You’re best getting publicity after you get traction. Then you have a story to tell. 

I know this sounds counterintuitive to many, who will ask how you get started, but it’s literally just like building a fire, you start with kindling, and then you blow on said kindling to make it white hot and do your best to ignite larger and larger wood. And the hardest part is getting the fire started. Once you’ve got it started, maintaining it is a different issue. If you get big enough, it’s impossible to blow the fire out all at once. We no longer live in the days of Billy Squier and MTV, nothing you do can destroy your career overnight, people are still listening to R. Kelly tunes. Collective consciousness is passé.

But getting started…

People think it’s with social media. But unless social media posts include the music, it’s nearly worthless. Once you’ve gained the aforementioned traction you employ social media to keep your career aflame, but when it comes to starting, it all comes down to the music.

And the best way to start is by doing it completely different from everybody else. If you’re just following in the footsteps of hitmakers, chances are the flame won’t ignite. Your music has to be different, innovative. One of the best ways to make it is with innovative lyrics. Hell, isn’t that why Noah Kahan blew up, with lyrics about his emotions, his inner life in a world where everybody is playing to the last row?

And think about your audience. Your audience is not everybody, no one’s is. Who is prone to listening to your music. Go where they are.

And don’t dun people into submission. If you keep e-mailing them, hounding them to listen, they’re not only not going to listen, they’re going to talk sh*t about you.

Although you need no CV, music is one of the hardest verticals to have success in. Just because you can play and sing and your parents and friends like you…that’s meaningless, unless they start spreading the word because they truly believe in the music.

How do you get people talking about you?

You wander in the wilderness. Which is anathema to today’s young players who want instant success. Sure, you may have the tools of promotion at your fingertips, but so does everybody else.

Quick, did you listen to the new Taylor Swift album yet?

Either you did or you didn’t, you’re either a fan or you’re not, and chances are if you’re not a fan you’re never going to check it out, and she’s the biggest act in the world! We no longer live in the days of controlled radio and MTV, in a monoculture, you’re appealing to a very small cadre of people, who hopefully will spread the word.

And when your Spotify numbers are anemic… Well, at least somebody is listening. Don’t think about getting paid, but the ability to make that direct connection with listeners without a heavy lift. In the old days radio had to play your record or people had to buy it to hear it, it’s much easier today, it’s just that you’re competing with everybody else.

I know this all sounds incredibly negative, like I’m raining on your parade, but everybody else is taking your money and giving you false hope. Now, more than ever in the past two decades, it comes down to the music. You start your career with the music. Which means if you’ve got a mediocre voice, you’d better be the best lyricist. You have to excel. And your music must contain something that hooks people and makes them want to hear it again. What is special about your track? An incredible chorus, guitar lick, vocal machinations? You’ve got to deliver a ten on at least one criterion or you’re dead in the water.

This is no different from the old days. Don’t forget, the Beatles woodshedded for years before they got a recording contract, never mind broke through.

And garage bands in the sixties and seventies… You put them together via the best elements. You found the best singer and the best guitar player, and if someone wasn’t good enough, didn’t excel, you looked for a replacement. Rush didn’t really succeed until it got rid of the old drummer and replaced him with Neil Peart, who wrote lyrics to boot.

It’s about fundamentals. Believe me, if you continue to do it you’ll be stunned at how bad your early work is. Better to focus on lessons than promotion. Life is long. Just because you can put it up on YouTube doesn’t mean anyone is going to watch it, never mind talk about it.

We don’t need everybody, we just need a few good men and women. The public is hungry for music, but it doesn’t need your music. And you must be dedicated and NEED IT! If you don’t need success, if it’s not the most important thing in the world, if you’re not willing to sacrifice everything to get it, you’re never going to make it.

As for the vaunted record deal… Even the major labels can’t break new artists. Then again, they’re repeating the formula. Innovation always comes from independents, outside.

But you must be unique and special. People need to see or hear you once and not be able to stop talking about you. If you have to convince someone you’re great, you’re not. Your greatness should emanate from you and your music.

Don’t listen to the scuttlebutt, mainly it’s wankers angry they’re not successful who don’t deserve to be successful.

You’ve got to be special. One listen, one look special.

That’s what sells you today, no amount of publicity can compensate for substandard work, for average work, for great work. Look at it this way, the majors get tons of publicity for their acts and still most of them don’t make it.

You’ve got the tools at your fingertips. But what you put through the pipeline is the most important thing.

Loverboy lead guitarist, key songwriter and co-producer.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/paul-dean/id1316200737?i=1000652847981

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/ca144f9f-a062-4469-8dcb-5d456940dfc7/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-paul-dean

Yes, quite the contrast to Coachella, then again back in the day the audience was not the show. Did you hear they referred to the desert confab as the “Influencer Olympics”? That’s how much the game has changed. The acts are secondary to the experience. The penumbra trumps the music…i.e. the food and lifestyle events off the concert grounds. But back in the day…

Peter Frampton was just another struggling artist trying to make it until he surprisingly blew up with “Frampton Comes Alive” and then destroyed his career with “I’m In You” and the “Sgt. Pepper” movie and has been slowly clawing his way back to credibility ever since. The screen showed footage of Frampton walking with his school chum Bowie while he and his son belted out “Rebel Rebel” and not only did the song sound better decades removed, Bowie oozed a charisma we rarely see in our artists today. Bowie was the whole package: music, image and myth. Furthermore, Bowie kept on growing while so many of his contemporaries became calcified. But that was back before not only politics became tribal, but music too. I LISTEN TO MY FAVORITE AND YOU SUCK BECAUSE YOU DO NOT SUPPORT THEM! David Bowie would have laughed at blind belief. Then again, the intellectual component of music has left the building, while those outside the building keep complaining about their streaming royalties, or to be explicit, their lack thereof.

So it was raining. Before the show the sound system played Albert Hammond’s classic hit, and the audience sang along, “It never rains in Southern California”…

Now it used to be summer venues were just that, they started around Memorial Day and faded out not long after Labor Day. But money abhors a vacuum, and now in SoCal these open air venues…go from March to November. Meaning…the weather might just be bad.

To tell you the truth, I wasn’t going to go. But Rena convinced me the show would play and it wouldn’t be so bad. So I drove over.

And was stunned how many other people made it. Really, in a city where people stay off the roads when it rains, I figured they’d swallow the ticket price. But no, it seemed like most of the people who bought tickets showed up. And let’s be clear, this was not the young ‘uns, these were people who might get pneumonia and die, but they suited up and went to the gig, the way they have for decades. That’s how much the music means to them.

And sure, “Baby, I Love Your Way” and “Show Me the Way” got big ovations, but they were not the only ones. The standing O for the extended “(I’ll Give You) Money” was the longest.

Now this is the “Never Ever Say Never Tour.” As in Frampton played his final shows, yet here he is again.

But not like his classic rock contemporaries… My favorite is the legendary act that was on its final tour with a new album only a few months away. Needless to say, they’re still on the road, and that was a decade ago!

But if you want to see Peter Frampton, go now, because it won’t be long before you won’t be able to.

At the end of the show Peter spoke to the audience. Saying to be kind, you never know what is going on in people’s lives, but also that he was going to fight his disease. As someone with a disease… Your body doesn’t know you’re fighting it, it’s been proven attitude is an almost irrelevant factor. The story with these serious health problems is you surrender. And you make peace with it. It’s those that surround you that can’t get over it.

So, Peter is helped on to the stage, using a cane to boot. You get it right from the very start, Frampton is not lying, he’s hurting. Well, physically, but not in attitude. One of the great things about a Frampton show is his sense of humor, evidenced throughout the gig. There’s a casualness that was the antithesis of rock shows back in the seventies, then again, many of those acts haven’t survived, or can’t go on the road because no one wants to see them.

So, Frampton sits. As does his entire band. Which shifts the experience. Normally, an act performs. Jumps around the stage, tries to get you in the mood to feel the music and have a good time. There was none of this Saturday night. It was just the music, and that added gravitas.

Yes, just the music. No ringers off stage, no backing tracks, it was the same as it ever was, and that was refreshing. Peter and a band. Another guitarist, a bass player, a keyboard player and a drummer. I’d say it wasn’t that far removed from the garage, but in truth garage bands are never as tight.

So Frampton played a bunch of numbers in rapid succession right off the bat without speaking to the audience, which made you feel like he still had it. It wasn’t an assault, and it wasn’t exactly a freight train, it was just a band firing on all cylinders, not needing acknowledgement to do so.

Now when Peter played “Shine On”…

It’s on the live album, but this was closer to the original Humble Pie version, with the explosive guitar, with a strut underneath. This wasn’t light, but it was catchy, and I guess that’s Frampton’s secret sauce. There are a ton of hot guitar players out there, but very few can write, and that’s what Frampton can do, write songs. Will his compositions be remembered a century from now? Probably not. Then again, other than the Beatles I don’t think anything will be popular by then. This was our music, for our time, and it turns out it was only for us. Then again, that was enough.

But that is what Frampton is selling, his guitar prowess. It’s actually pretty amazing. Since he’s sitting down, that’s what you focus on. And he can nail all that picking from the records. And he can eke out notes and tones… That’s what you’re thinking sitting there, that this is one hot guitarist, who has his own unique style, who might have been sold as a pretty boy but nothing could be further from the truth. Watching Frampton play you could see why he made it, he’s just that good. Better than most people think. Which is why George Harrison used him, which is why his fellow musicians respect him.

Now in truth it was a great night because Peter played my two favorite songs, “All I Wanna Be (is by your side)” and “I Wanna Go to the Sun.”

Now “All I Wanna Be” is on the live album, but in a truncated, acoustic version. But on Saturday night, this was the album track, from the very first album, “Wind of Change,” and it was astounding, because Peter can make all those sounds, he remembers these songs!

As for “I Wanna Go to the Sun”… The way it starts out quiet and slow and builds… Dynamics, those are the mark of talent. Frampton doesn’t need to blast you into submission. It’s a concert, you’re listening.

But the encores…

Well, it was funny, because Peter didn’t leave the stage, it was too much effort, he joked about it, and then played the concluding numbers after a short break.

“Four Day Creep”? Man, when Frampton played that lick it was hard to keep your body from moving. There’s a boogie, hard rock element which has evaporated from today’s scene, but it was so satisfying back then, direct to your body and heart.

And, of course, “I Don’t Need No Doctor.”

The finale was “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” at this point a Frampton standard, like “Black Hole Sun,” which of course he played too.

No Frampton show is complete without “Do You Feel Like We Do,” that was the number before the encore, and no matter how many times I’ve heard it, both on record and live, after the long journey, when Peter and the band kick it full force once again, it’s still so SATISFYING!

So if you didn’t go…

Well, I was surprised that these were Frampton fans, they clapped for the album tracks, they weren’t just there for the hits.

This was not a picnic, a summer trifle, this was about music. From back when music was everything. Frampton and we in the audience were on the same page, we remembered. And like I said, Frampton can still hit all the notes, but this was a live show of yore, where the music itself had so much energy, referenced the recording yet added more, that we were transported in our own capsule into the stratosphere. Nobody else mattered, there was a direct connection between what was on stage and us, and we were liberated, we cast off our troubles and transcended this world which just seems to bring us down.

That’s the power of music.

But not everybody can do it.

This was not a party. This was not a video. It’s kind of like Max Yasgur said, we all got together for the fun and the music and it was nothing but the fun and the music and that was enough.

Now I advise you to go to these rainy shows with a plastic garbage bag. I dried my seat with some paper towels I got from the bathroom, but I realized if I had a giant garbage bag, I could have cut holes for my arms and been good. Or just laid the thing on the seat.

Now it stopped raining after about fifteen minutes of the show. But it was cold, in the forties.

I was actually prepared for the temperature, I even had gloves with me, but I was not prepared for the elation of the experience, especially after the downer of the rain.

I’d tell you to go to the show, but that’s the thing about us baby boomers, we still do! We may look worse for wear, but we still go, we need to connect with the sound, to who we once were, and there’s a direct thread from back then to now, and these musicians provide it.

Frampton connected on Saturday night. I think he’s finally getting the respect he deserves as a guitar player. But even if you were a casual fan, or were burned out on hearing the hits over and over, I guarantee you if you were there you would have been drawn in.

That’s the power of music, when done right.

And Peter Frampton did it right Saturday night.

It’s a professional business.

Why does everybody think music is run by know-nothings and they can do a better job. Even KKR couldn’t make its publishing foray work.

Then again, once you get the banks involved it’s all about money. And contrary to what Merck says, it’s not about the guaranteed returns on publishing, but getting lucky…usage of tunes, new platforms and long term value growth. This is not a business for Wall Street flippers. There’s nothing you can do to juice copyrights in the short term. If you’re buying to gussy up and sell, you’re delusional.

Then again, interest rates were so low, close to zero, that money was looking for a place to go, and therefore some of it went into songs and when interest rates rose everybody got pissed that songs didn’t grow concomitantly.

Furthermore, despite his career in the music business, Merck really had no expertise in publishing, never mind finance. Ditto at Round Hill. So Concord gets bigger and Primary Wave, run by Larry Mestel, a man with long record company experience, continues to grow and we’re seeing contraction in the sphere instead of growth. Concentration is the game in major music assets. And it’s all about history in the music business, catalog, the old songs have value, because they’re better known than the new songs, they hit in an era when everybody was paying attention…to Top Forty radio, to AOR, to MTV. Which is why you can live on a hit of the past. Living on a hit of now, of the future? A very different game.

There’s still a ton of dough in new music publishing, but you have to pick winners, which is best done after the song gains traction and the writers want a payday/out. This is the game at Kilometre. Interesting that its majordomo, Michael McCarty, has decades of publishing experience.

But the old stuff has raw asset value. It’s the backbone of not only these publishing behemoths, but the three major record labels. Sans their catalogs, they’re not moribund, but they’re bad businesses. You spend all that money on new music with no guaranteed return, furthermore there’s no sure-fire way to make a hit, rather than controlled radio you have the open cesspool of social media, most especially TikTok, wherein the only advantage the major has is its checkbook.

This is why the majors invest in so few acts. They’re looking for insurance. They want to sign what is similar to what is already successful. They don’t want to take big risks. They’re in the music BUSINESS, don’t confuse it with art and changing the culture. That is done by independents, however indies don’t have the back catalog to float them, to keep them alive. This has been the story in Hollywood for decades. If the most successful independent movie studio, Carolco, goes out of business, what are the odds you can be successful?

Carolco depended on hits. They lived and died at the box office. Whereas established studios counted the dollars from licensing their libraries, which is what they’re still doing. Studios keep making fewer pictures, hoping for great success, meanwhile Netflix is all about niches.

That’s how you enter a business and win. By coming up with a new paradigm, from the outside. That is ignored by the usual suspects at first, before their lunch is eaten.

Just like Spotify ate Tower Records.

No one with deep pockets is going into record production, because the numbers look too bad. So you’ve got cottage industry, hustlers, rolling the dice, and most of them have street values, meaning their goal is to build it and sell, not build it and hold.

As for the live business… Did you see how much that Florida investor lost in music festivals like KAABOO? Looks easy. Just find a site, book name talent and… Lose money for a few years even if you’re one of the big boys. And if you gain any traction, you sell out, like Insomniac to Live Nation, like seemingly every standalone festival to Live Nation. The only indie festival still ready to be picked off is Outside Lands, and isn’t it interesting that its proprietor, Another Planet, is run by people who started with Bill Graham.

Music looks easy. You don’t need a degree. Actually, a degree usually works against you. Because it’s more about hustle and edge than what’s in a book.

And unlike Procter & Gamble, you can’t plot a record company’s returns in a constant upward line on a chart. You’re a victim of the vagaries of the system. Some great records never made it. And now not only does a great record not guarantee success, successes often take years to happen.

So it’s the end of an era.

Well, Blackstone’s still in business with Merck, but that’s just temporary, they have tons of college graduates running the numbers, they want to run on feel about as much as today’s baseball teams, which are all managed Moneyball style. Good lunch and b.s. is the basis of entertainment, but not of finance. In finance it’s all about the spreadsheet.

So, just like with Sanctuary, Merck fails again, getting rich in the process. Merck’s skill is sales, someone should hire him to do that, this guy can sell ice to Inuits, a necessary skill, but one quite different from vision and management.

So this publishing craze is at about its end. Big money has moved on.

And those who sold…

How does it feel to see your songs sold again? How does it feel to have no relationship with those who own and manage your songs? How does it feel to be on your own, like a complete unknown to those who own your assets.

There is a future in the music business, but it’s for lifers. And to stay in the music business is nearly impossible. If someone has survived and thrived respect their knowledge, it might not be quantifiable, but it’s necessary to run a successful business. The road is littered with wannabes.

And publishing is a great asset if you’re willing to count pennies and wait. Which is why I advise against selling. Sure, Merck paid top buck, might have overpaid in some cases, but in truth there keep being new avenues of compensation created. Isn’t that what Universal’s battle with TikTok is all about, money?

Porn runs the internet, but music comes second. Music is needed all over the web, new sites have to license. Music is all about creating tolls, and it’s doing a good job of it.

The more tolls, the more money. I have yet to meet an artist who feels good about having sold their catalog. Give it a few years and ask them. Hell, almost all of them are bad with money, unlike the bankers, they get a sum and blow it, not knowing how to manage it.

So my advice here is to stay in your own lane. And if something looks easy, ripe for picking… Remember, Guy Hands couldn’t make EMI work either!