Who do you go to for guidance? Who understands how the game is really played? Who can help you navigate the waters, help you get to your destination?

It’s usually not your best friend. He or she will tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to know.

And your parents… You don’t tell them the truth, why should they be able to give you appropriate advice? Furthermore, you’re their child, embodying all their hopes and dreams. They can’t get over their image of you to truly rescue you from the pickle you’ve gotten yourself into.

No, you need a business colleague. One who might not even truly be a friend. Who’s a bit more than an acquaintance. Who knows the parameters. Who will help you out.

Some will want payback. That’s the game they play. They want to help you so you’ll help them, when they need it.

Others do it out of the goodness of their heart.

But you need their advice, or you’re lost.

Oftentimes they’re the most reviled people in the business. Because those sans wisdom are jealous. That these people know how to play the game and they don’t. They figured out how to get ahead, when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. Everybody thinks it’s about connections, who you know, where you went to college, what you got on your SATs, but you can’t quantify wisdom, it’s not something you put on the wall, it’s something you gain, through insight.

Those with wisdom have experience. Young people are bullheaded, they believe they can power their way through anything. The older you get, the more you realize this isn’t true. Life is about losing as opposed to winning. And if you don’t know this, you just haven’t lost yet, or you’re living in denial.

That’s what you want, one phone number, one e-mail address, one person you can go to in a moment of crisis who can shoot it to you straight. Who can tell you whether to take that job, marry that person, invest that money. Because they’ve been there before. They’ve analyzed the situation from all angles. They’re your last best hope at figuring it out.

On “Newsroom” this week, Sloan Sabbith is in a pickle. She needs wisdom, she needs someone to guide her through.

Mackenzie MacHale, another woman, rises to the occasion.

But although Mackenzie is a friend, and means well, her advice leads to explosions. Instead of calming situations down, she adds gasoline to the fire.

So Sloan turns to Will. The anchorman. The asshole.

Because Will has survived. He’s been there. He’s made it to the top. And that’s no easy feat. You may be jealous of the President, of the CEO, but respect the fact that they got there. They’ve seen the game. They know how to play it.

Ultimately, it comes down to Sloan lying on the air. When she was right. She just committed an ethical faux pas.

But by lying, she’ll save her job and the job of the spokesman she interrogated on TV. She’ll save face for the corporation.

This is where it gets ugly. Most of the people who play by the rules, who believe everything is either black or white, don’t win.

Sometimes you’ve got to do what’s expedient.

Especially in the music business.

I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end. And sometime, late at night, I will. You can’t write them down. They can’t be attributed. But they’re the lore you’re privy to when you get in the game.

You’ve got to have your go-to guy. Or gal. You’ve got to know who to depend on for honest, expedient, forthright advice.

I’ve got mine.

Find yours.

I blew ninety minutes on this last night and my only regret is it ended.

I famously say I live in California because of the Beach Boys. And if you don’t believe me, you’ve never heard “California Girls”.

But by time I’d graduated from college and was footloose and fancy free, the music had changed. Instead of Brian Wilson, it was the Eagles. Who dropped “Hotel California” the year I entered law school. Can you imagine hearing that for the very first time? I went up to Music Odyssey on the day it was released, came home and broke the shrinkwrap and was absolutely stunned when the sound emanated from the mega-stereo I got as a reward for giving up the itinerant life of a ski bum. It’d been eighteen months since “One Of These Nights”. The “Greatest Hits” album had only increased the legend. We knew Joe Walsh had joined the band, but who expected this turn into rock? Suddenly, the Eagles were the biggest band in the land.

And it was all because of that song.

Today music is mindless. Something that bounces off your ass as you’re boogieing in the club. But no one could listen to “Hotel California” and smile beatifically. It was dark, it was introspective, it made you question, and it was the biggest song in the land.

But that’s not where this 2007 documentary from the BBC starts.

Really, it begins with the Byrds. With David Crosby. Pontificating.

But he’s not the only one.

You get Graham Nash. Hell, you even get Ned Doheny!

But first and foremost, you get David Geffen. Looking younger than everybody else in the show. Telling the truth.

You see he was a motherfucker. That’s why Crosby, Stills & Nash hired him. Only Geffen could extract the members from their former deals and put them together in this new band. “The man” can kill your music, via contracts.

And when Geffen sells Asylum to Warner and the Eagles hire Irving Azoff as their manager, what’s the first thing he does? Sue Geffen’s ass, for the publishing. Which Geffen never returned. Even though he gave Jackson Browne his publishing back.

And you’ve got to know something. It’s just business.

Then again, you play at this level and you’ve got no friends. You sleep with one eye open. Geffen says he had no paper with his acts, they could leave whenever they wanted to, but no one never did. You may tire of screwing the most beautiful person on earth, but you never tire of having a cunning Rottweiler in your corner.

And the arc of the show is a bit too simplistic. Kind of like Jonah Lehrer, making the facts, in his case the facts he made up, fit the story. You see life is messy. California is messy. For every surfer there’s a drug addict. For every sophisticate there’s an Okie. But in the late sixties that’s where you went, to feel free, to realize your dreams.

L.A.

What I love about it is most people don’t get it. They see the smog and the traffic and the lack of a downtown and mutter that New York is the greatest city in the land. That’s right. But if you’re not about the hustle and bustle, if you’re about feeling more than thinking, if you want to actually live your life while it’s going by, L.A.’s the place.

L.A. is where it doesn’t matter where you went to school, if you even did at all, who your parents are is irrelevant. You make it up in L.A. as you go. Your wits are your greatest asset. Your CV is almost meaningless. Can you hang, can you inspire, can you deliver?

A whole host of musicians did.

Sure, a lot of them lived in Laurel Canyon. But not all. Because the specific location was irrelevant, Los Angeles, California was a state of mind. It’s where it all began. It drove the culture. And as you watch these images go by, you’ll get that.

Oh, you can beat up the Eagles for being mercenary. Then again, he who succeeds is always subject to naysayers and abuse.

But this is how it worked back then. We followed the music. Business was one step behind. Listen to Geffen go on about it. And you can tell, he’s not lying.

Music just does not have that power today. The California sound put so much money in the system, everybody wanted in. Hell, that company known as Time Warner? Its main asset is its cable system. You know what paid for that? The profits from the record companies!

Hell, in the seventies there was more money in music than movies.

Because of the honesty.

See Carole King at the piano and you’ll marvel that she was ever that age, with so many hits under her belt already, starting over.

James Taylor… The junkie poet. Waddy Wachtel says if he was in a rock band, he’d be dead, he couldn’t get away with that lifestyle.

And be sure to stay in to hear the story of “Tonight’s The Night”, told so eloquently by Ron Stone. People forget that at the peak of his career, Neil Young intentionally destroyed it. No one else has done that since. They don’t have the balls.

If you lived through the era, your eyes will mist over and your heart will break at the same time you self-satisfiedly pat yourself on the back for being there.

If you weren’t alive back then, even if you favor hip-hop, country or electronic music, watch the entire thing. You’ll learn a few lessons. How a bunch of people who didn’t come from rich families, who in most cases had never graduated from college, invented an art form so powerful that it truly moved people. Yes, there was no more powerful person in the late sixties and early seventies than a musician.

Imagine that.

Start here:

From The Byrds To The Eagles Part 1 of 7

And at the end of the clip, click on the right to see the ensuing segment, there are seven in all.

This will make your day.

He should never put out an album.

I’ve seen him twice. Once at a private party put on by his record label, the other time at Coachella. I didn’t get it in the private club, I didn’t think his original material was that good, but I did love his cover of “Third Stone From The Sun”. But at Coachella, Clark killed. It was all about energy and sound and a connection with the audience, without pandering to it. Like a rock star of yore, Clark wasn’t raising his fists, imploring attendees to cheer, building fake energy, it was the sound itself that levitated the audience. And this is the essence of a great show.

And everywhere Clark plays he gets great reviews. He just lit up the stage at the Newport Folk Festival, even the “New York Times” featured him in their review, the paper said “and the young blues phenom Gary Clark Jr., whose laid-back virtuosity as a guitarist was one of the festival’s forthright astonishments.”

Youth and Age, Both Served at Newport

And I bring up the “Times” because every week they review records and every week I skim the words and scratch my head…who are these written for? Overanalyses of complete albums that appeal to very few. You see, not only have record sales declined, it’s become about the live show, and when you tell me someone is astonishing, my curiosity is piqued. I don’t want your analysis, but your emotion.

And now Clark is bringing this astonishment across the continent. And you’ve got to be there to get it. Sure, there are YouTube clips, but there’s not a soul alive who believes these videos substitute for the real thing. They’re shot from afar, the sound sucks, they’re souvenirs at best. You’ve got to go.

In other words, everything that once was is back, with a twist.

Mystery. It’s very easy to achieve. Just never put out a record! Everybody’s trying to short-cut the process, all the while bitching that nobody is purchasing their opus. But if you’re truly good, someone has to see you live. The buzz passes and we all want to go. You become an underground hero, and that’s everything today, being owned by your fans as opposed to the media. Those playing to the media are evanescent, fame-whores who get a meager paycheck and soon disappear. Those who earn their stripes on the boards, building audience via word of mouth, last. Hell, look at Phish, have they ever had a hit single?

Albums are kind of like Facebook. Facebook was all cool with amazing buzz until it went public. I’m not sure the social networking company will ever recover. Its cred was shredded instantly, the stock is now trading at half the price of its introduction, everybody’s abandoning ship, there’s bad news every day, when do people wake up and give up, because no one wants to be where it’s not cool.

We don’t want to be at the show of the fake artist, the sell out, the one doing it the way everybody else does. We want to be at the show where life is created every single night. Kind of like Skrillex. Read the portrait of EDM in “Forbes”:

DJs Are The New Rock Stars

But focus on this:

“One thing he hasn’t done yet: a product endorsement. It’s not for lack of opportunity. (One top DJ, Diplo, is now a ubiquitous television presence shilling BlackBerry.) ‘We turn s–t down every day,’ says Tim Smith, Skrillex’s manager since his screamo days.

Indeed, keeping those $15 million takes coming ultimately means protecting the brand. ‘I don’t care if someone offers me half a million dollars,” says Skrillex. “I’m not going to do a cellphone thing.'”

In other words, everything you’re being told is wrong. Not only by the labels, agents and managers, but the acts themselves. Agents and managers are on a percentage, they only get paid when you do. Which is why they implore you to make the deal, so they can get paid! They’ve been around long enough to know that you’re probably not gonna last, they’re more interested in their wallet than your longevity.

And other artists are whiners. They complain about being ripped off by everybody, instead of working hard to gain success and be in control. Yup, with success comes control. Can you use it?

As for labels… They only get paid when you sell a record. Or else they’ve got a 360 deal, and you’re giving them a piece of everything.

If suddenly it’s about live performance, if you want no record, no endorsements, no synchs, no placements, do you really need a label? Then again, if this is so it all comes down to you. Not only on a business level, but a musical level. Are you such a good performer that you can sell yourself?

Gary Clark, Jr. is.

Then again, it was the record company that truly got me interested. Ha!

P.S. If you go back in history, Clark did put out some independent albums, with limited distribution and traction. But Warner Brothers has so far only released an EP. It’s the live show that’s driving this, not recorded music.

Re: Income Inequality Killed The Music Business

Bob:

This is Bonnie Hayes, a songwriter and musician from the SF Bay. You and I have exchanged email before. Always enjoy your posts!

I’ve been teaching at the Berklee College of Music all summer, in their regular 12 week college program, including several advanced classes of students who are about to graduate. Many of these kids come to see me in my office and ask, “How can I make some money?”

But they’re not asking because they’re greedy and want to be rock stars. They’re asking because they can’t figure out how to live at all. There’s no way to live in the cracks like musicians, and all artists, once could. In Boston, in SF, in NYC even the crap apartments are insanely expensive. Owning a car in the city is impossible; and how are you going to get to those famous $25 gigs in podunk without wheels to move your gear? There is nowhere to rehearse,and no time to sit around concocting dreams with your pals when you’re holding down two jobs. Just staying alive is a full time job, even when your job pays well.

Yeah, yeah—I lived in a 6th floor walkup in NYC and trundled my fender rhodes and gynormous amp up and down the stairs, then watched the cabbie ditch when he saw me with my stuff waiting in the snow. But when I wanted to start a band, make a record and play my own songs in nightclubs, I went back home where you could still rent an apartment for peanuts, and where it was still possible to drive a car to a gig without getting towed and impounded. Now, a 2 bedroom apartment in SF costs twice my house payment. I was lucky, and I’m still lucky. How much luck is left for them?

I don’t see many kids who want to be rock stars. They want to be songwriters, guitarists, producers (in the sense that daniel lanois or t. bone burnett are producer—creating gorgeous, original worlds of sound for the listener to get lost in).  Some of them are more pragmatic and proactive than others, but they all love music, like mad. They just see very little chance of ever making even a living wage from it. I advise them to develop multiple income streams and to try to build a teaching practice to fall back on, to get their music out there, use licensing opportunities,  network and create community. Life is a schlepp whether you run a corporation or work at starbucks—you might as well work hard for a dream. But a dream with no chance of coming true? That’s beyond a schlepp, and for many talented people, it comes to seem like a waste of time.

There’s no separation between what’s going on in the political/economic world and what’s going on with music or art, popular or not. We’ve created a culture that turns creatives into pampered lap dogs or ants working shit jobs to do their life calling their spare time. Why are we surprised when kids want to know about making money? It’s the dream we bought for them when we started prioritizing money over people; and the only dream they can afford.

Bonnie Hayes