Steve Potash is President and CEO of OverDrive, which provides books for libraries via its Libby app and video content via Kanopy and…

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/steve-potash/id1316200737?i=1000732123706

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/episodes/7fe00277-a2a2-47a6-990b-6d0de0c76fe3/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast-steve-potash

Shirley Manson: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1814846209174938

Jack Antonoff: https://apple.news/AEBDDG5UqRASf8PpV38uQ2w

This is the deal you make. You enter the arena, you try and become rich and famous, and if you succeed…you can trade on your name forever.

Whereas, if you work in the industry…you’re time-stamped. Most people can’t stay in it, only a thin layer survive, the rest are squeezed out, but when you’re done you’re done… I expected more fanfare when Mo Ostin died, he was the greatest executive in the history of the modern music business. He ended up rich, as a result of stock grants if nothing else, but look at Ace Frehley, whose obituary is all over the internet today. He probably died without the wealth of Mo, but even when he went to the grocery store, people recognized him. Which is one of the reasons you become an artist, right? Never mind being able to make money as a result of his success until his death.

I sympathize with the artist. But I don’t want to be a Mamdani who tells the people what they want to hear, disconnected from reality. A free bus system would be great, but can society afford it, do the economics work?

As for developing artists… The entire structure of the world has changed. There just aren’t as many places to develop, to hone your act live. And this is a societal change, not a music business change. Used to be people had to go out to bars to meet others…now they can do that at home, via the internet…never mind a plethora of great choices on their TV screen. Used to be if you wanted to see the act, you had to go to the show…now YouTube can give you more than a glimpse, never mind the rest of the information available online.

As for going on the road… Costs have gone into the stratosphere. Transportation/fuel…the list goes on and on. Before you even sell a ticket your fixed costs are through the roof.

As for demand… With the greatest at everybody’s fingertips, that’s where they gravitate. Used to be you knew what your local radio station played and a certain number of acts toured your market. Now the business is international, you may be a fan of an act from another country that has never stepped foot in America. When looking at the end problem, which is struggling musicians…you cannot divorce yourself from reality.

Does anybody need a me-too artist when the original is right at their fingertips? If you’re not different, unique, and you don’t have great talent…vocally, being able to play your instrument in a skilled fashion…people are going to gravitate to those who fill this desire. You’re competing against the greatest acts of all time, which are at people’s fingertips, and now the barrier to entry is nonexistent. So more people are auguring for pieces of the pie and the pie is only so big… So, people gravitate to greatness.

As for being ripped-off by the industry…

I wish venues did not take a percentage of merch.

As for ticket fees… If a venue takes an advance, there have to be fees. There are ticketing outlets that charge less and venues that use them, but they tend to be small operations, because…ticketing is a profit center.

As for small rooms… The economics were NEVER good. But the difference was that the labels provided tour support, you could go out on the road and lose money in pursuit of success. This does not happen anymore. You’ve got to make the numbers work yourself, sans support. I’d say that the labels no longer believe in artist development, and this is true, but it is also true that the labels are completely lost and you can do it all yourself. It’s not like the majors can break an act, and they’ve got all the money and connections. No, that’s up to you. And if you do break, you can take the bucks the label offers or continue to go it alone and take essentially all the money.

And if you have success, and can sell a lot of tickets… The acts are in control. There is always someone who will pay them. You don’t have to work with Live Nation, you can play the casino.

Then again, how many acts are at this level?

There’s this yearning for the days of yore, but the days of yore are not returning in a world where you have a computer in your hand and cars can drive themselves and…

Everything is subscription, even television, and you think you can return to a sales model? That’s like wanting the days of the horse and buggy to return.

As for Spotify/streaming payments… Should acts that don’t get streamed much make a living wage? Then who gets to decide who these acts are? In other countries, the government supports developing acts. We can debate whether this would be a good thing, but it was never the case in America…where you had to pay dues for years before you made it. And when you did…you still might not make any money, the business ripped you off much worse in the old days. You could be a household name, yet broke. The accounting you get from Spotify is more accurate and more transparent than the labels ever delivered, never mind the company paying out more frequently.

You gain and lose in every advance forward. Like I always say, vent windows in cars were great, but when there was a/c in all automobiles it seemed redundant, and they were excised in the name of cost control.

Airline travel is a cramped hassle. But in the pre-deregulation days, tickets were much more expensive, and no one flew on a whim, never mind going to see a concert.

This is an independent contractor business. The acts could organize, but the nature of being an act is to be independent, you think for yourself. All acts could refuse to work until merch fees are gone, but good luck finding a plethora of acts who’d sign up for this…they can’t afford not to work and they don’t want to sit on the sidelines and they don’t want to be a member of your organization to boot.

This is a business of leverage, always has been, always will be. The goal is to gain it. Don’t expect a good record deal if you’ve got few listeners and don’t expect a huge guarantee if you’ve got no record of selling tickets.

Do I sympathize with Shirley Manson that it’s hard for developing acts… Absolutely! But the key is to find new ways to develop…in a world where you can create and distribute your music for FREE! If only the acts of yore had the advantage of the internet.

But let’s not forget what is at the heart of the matter, income inequality, and it not only touches music, but every walk of life. Should executives, whether in the music industry or not, be paid these wages? And if so, should the taxes be higher?

As for raw demand… I just don’t get how both the acts and the government can’t understand this. People will pay extreme amounts to see their favorite acts. Even those without much money are willing to spend four figures for a concert by their favorite. Either the acts have to charge what the tickets are worth, or the uplift goes to scalpers. But the acts are afraid of charging high prices and they don’t want all-in ticket pricing because they want to blame the fees on the promoter…without whom there is no show!

The acts want it both ways…they want the money, but they don’t want to reveal how their fees are paid. And the margin for concert promotion is incredibly thin, INCREDIBLY thin. There is only so much money in a show.

So Live Nation buys venues to lower costs and builds an advertising business and that’s how their revenue goes up.

Live concerts are a mature business. And when a business matures, there is consolidation and a lowering of costs. That’s the way it is.

However, artist development/growth/exploitation is still not mature. What is the driver…TikTok or Spotify, et al? And the avenues of compensation keep increasing. And if you figure out ways to get your message across/grow your audience, then people come out of the woodwork to give you money.

Not everybody can be an artist.

Not everybody can be a doctor!

But somehow, with the barrier to entry so low, delusional people believe they’re entitled to make a living making music.

Let me be very clear… If you’re truly that great, and you’ve got the perseverance, you’ll make it. The path to success is slower than ever, but the hunger for greatness has never subsided…people are dying for something new and different of quality that they can enjoy and tell others about. Is that what you are delivering?

I sympathize with the developing musician, who is having a hard time making it. Then again, in the old days almost no one succeeded/could get a record deal and so many people gave up. And even great people gave up and still do!

It’s a business of stars. Period. Are you a star? It’s a weird amalgamation of talent and personality, charisma…and a willingness to starve to make it. Very few people are willing to do this.

Don’t blame me for telling the truth. I could be like Shirley Manson and Jack Antonoff and rage against the machine, but that’s a worthless effort…because those who run the machine know the score, and the machine is subject to disruption, i.e. Napster, but economics rule… And the economics of music have always been hard.

I’ll stop here, I’ve already made you angry enough.

She was not a femme fatale.

The first time I saw Diane Keaton was on Broadway, in “Play It Again, Sam.” My mother was a culture vulture, if there was a play worth seeing, she’d go, and for certain productions she insisted we go too, like with “Play It Again, Sam.”

Woody Allen was still a cult item. He had one movie, “Take the Money and Run,” which I saw at the Fine Arts in Westport, and the most memorable scene was when he used a gun carved out of soap to escape from jail and then it rained and the gun turned into suds and…

You can see it here:

Woody was a known quantity, assuming you were into comedy. He was a youngster with a standup routine who migrated into films, back when films were the highest visual art form, before they descended into mass market tripe with blockbusters made for all, oftentimes featuring superheroes, and then Tony Soprano single-handedly stole the mantel from the multiplex.

Now eventually they made a movie out of “Play It Again, Sam,” but when I saw it on stage it was fresh. As for Bogie… Do kids even know who Bogie is/was? Can they quote “Casablanca”? I remember seeing “The African Queen” in college, and “The Treasure of Sierra Madre”… “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!”

We were the first generation whose lives were completely documented via moving pictures. These movies were touchstones, you could go back and relive your youth, still can. But now with a plethora of visual entertainment the past is truly history, unless you’re’ a film student you’re not watching the flicks of yore, when they were less about flash and more about life.

In “Play It Again, Sam,” Woody falls in love with his best friend’s wife, Keaton and… WHO WOULDN’T?

That was the thing about Keaton, she was relatable. You didn’t put her on a pedestal, you felt you could talk to her, she’d understand you, if you could just get close, she was everything you wanted.

Sure, Diane was attractive, but she was neither dull nor removed. She was alive and animated, she was a dream. Not the dream of the magazines, but of those boys like Woody Allen who had not been the life of their high school, but wanted something…more.

Of course you can talk about Keaton’s role in the “Godfather” movies. She was good, but never the focus.

Arguably, her personal tour-de-force was “Baby Boom,” wherein she triumphed as an entrepreneur, after giving up the fast lane live, moving to Vermont and starting over selling gourmet baby food. You rooted for her, in a way quite different from how you rooted for Goldie Hawn in “Private Benjamin.” Keaton was not a ditz, she was aware. But learned she did not know everything and she grew personally and…

Really, it all comes down to “Annie Hall.”

Funny how Woody Allen is a pariah today. Then again, he always marched to the beat of his own drummer, he refused to attend the Oscars when he won, deservedly.

But… It was not like today, you did not know that much about a film before you saw it. I went on my birthday and can still tell you where I sat in the theatre, I was riveted, I was wowed, kind of like seeing “Hamilton”…can this continue to be this good? And it was!

So Diane as Annie Hall is unique in identity, both inside and outside, a pure original. She had no desire to look like everybody else, and therefore she stood out. In this film and in life.

And there are lines from this movie I repeat all the time, even to my shrink last week, you remember when Allen as Alvy complains about not having enough sex and Diane says they’re doing it all the time?

And the scene with the cockroach… As formidable as a woman may seem, she still has weaknesses.

And then there was the moment of intimacy and laughs out on the island, with the escaped lobster.

Diane was what every regular boy wanted. Someone you could relate to, who understood you, who was not concerned about image.

Not that she ultimately lived her personal life that way, after all she got involved with Warren Beatty and… She lived more in your mind than in your real life.

So…

Diane Keaton was a movie star, an anti-movie star, and we loved her for it. She was on the last cusp of movie stardom, not only playing on the big screen but one step removed from regular life, she did not show up online warts and all.

So you can point to the roles, but even more when you hear the name Diane Keaton it immediately engenders a feeling inside. Of warmth, humanity and understanding. She was one of us…albeit one step removed, one BIG step removed.

So, when Diane Keaton dies…part of you dies too. Your hopes. Your desires. We were all looking for our own Diane Keaton, and if the original is gone and we’re as old as we are…

Where does that leave us?

Wasn’t he just on the road?

Is that how this works? You’re alive and fresh, kicking as Simple Minds would say, and then one day you’re just gone? I mean 82 years old. You can’t say that he was ripped-off. But he was vital, and now he’s not here anymore. And another slice of my musical history falls off the cliff.

We all knew “Go Now,” a great moody ballad from before John Lodge, never mind Justin Hayward, was even in the Moody Blues.

But then Denny Laine exited, and the band’s bass player too, and there ensued a new act with the same moniker that was completely different. They recorded “Days of Future Passed” with the so-called London Festival Orchestra, that didn’t really exist, and…

You heard “Tuesday Afternoon” on FM radio. At least I did. I taped it on my Norelco from WDRC in Hartford. I’d gone to Radio Shack to buy a cable to connect it to my stereo and…

That was a thing we did back then, hunt for new FM stations. We got all the ones from New York, but there was one in New Haven and one on Long Island and even the University of Bridgeport had one. Seems quaint today, but it was cutting edge back then.

So when I just read in an obituary that “Tuesday Afternoon” had little impact upon release, that had me scratching my head, because I loved it…once again, not only the mood, but the sweet vocal. Back before music had to be in your face, back before it was just special sauce for a good time, it was something more…truly its own art form. The Beatles exploded the old singles paradigm and a bunch of groups followed them into albumsville. You wanted to make a statement. There didn’t have to be a concept or a story, but the music had to hang together, it had to be representative of who you were, and even though there were some legendary producers who worked on multiple albums, the records all sounded different, especially those of the Moody Blues. As a matter of fact, it was when they started to have hit singles that the magic disappeared. There were songs that hit the airwaves, but the albums didn’t hang together like they had previously.

I started with “Days of Future Passed.” I distinctly remember my parents driving me to my first semester in college and playing it on that same Norelco deck. This was the one and only rock record my father didn’t insist on immediately turning off, he even came to like it.

And after I bought “Days of Future Passed,” I bought “On the Threshold of a Dream,” which had a gatefold cover when that was not assured, when it was only for the biggest and most special of acts. And inside there was a multi-page booklet with lyrics and that first side… “Lovely to See You” to “Dear Diary” to “Send Me No Wine”… That was a murderer’s row of music. You didn’t cherry-pick cuts, you let them play through, and John Lodge wrote “Send Me No Wine.”

Now you’ve got to know, the Moody Blues (referred to in the press as the “Moodies,” but we never called them that) were a relatively faceless band. The act was not on the album cover and no one was the obvious lead singer…it was an ensemble. Meaning, just being a member of the group was enough. I could single out the songs Lodge wrote, the chart success of said, but that would be missing the point. When you talk about album acts, the Moody Blues represented the apotheosis. You were either in or you were out. And for a long time it was a cult. Like I referenced above, when they had a hit with “A Question of Balance” more people knew them, but the albums were a step down from what had come before.

And I didn’t know all that had come before. But when I was a freshman in college we all hung in Dave McCormick’s room on the second floor of Hepburn Hall during Winter Term and… It would be cold and snowy out, but inside…we’d light the zilch and listen to “Layla,” “Idlewild South” and…

“In Search of the Lost Chord” and “To Our Children’s Children’s Children.” They were new to me then, now I know them by heart.

“Timothy…Leary.”

I think “In Search of the Lost Chord” would blow the minds of the younger generation. Because it was sui generis, and it was out there. This was not music made for Top Forty radio, not by a long shot, this was an excursion into a realm that could not be conceived, they concocted a whole world based on mind expansion and you could be sitting at home listening and go on more of a trip than if you actually flew to Africa and looked for Dr. Livingstone.

As for “To Our Children’s Children’s Children”… Before I bought the LP I wasn’t sure how many “Children” were actually in the title.

Anyway, we used to start this album on the second side. With “Gypsy (Of a Strange and Distant Time)” and “Eternity Road,” and then the best song on the album, Lodge’s “Candle of Life.”

“Something you can’t hide

Says you’re lonely”

Absolutely!

The older you get, the happier you are. But when you’re a kid, you’re part of a family obeying rules you may not agree with and you’re looking for acceptance and understanding and I found it in records.

Let’s be clear, these acts were rich. And they were Gods. But they were very different from today’s stars. First, there was no access, and very little news. All we could do was speculate, maybe go to a show…but I actually never saw the Moody Blues…they never toured near me during their heyday. And, the question was, how were they going to reproduce those sounds on stage? They didn’t have the samples and hard drives of today, this was before the synthesizer, all there was was the legendarily unreliable Mellotron.

“Hidden deep inside

Of  you only”

We were singular. Not like the younger generations who needed to be members of the group. I only wish there was an internet back then so I could have connected with like-minded people.

So…

The band broke up, Lodge and Hayward, the seeming essence of the group, made a record together, and ultimately the band got back together, and by that time I was aware, paying attention, but I no longer bought the records. Times had changed. The free-for-all, the experimentation of the late sixties and early seventies, was history. Now it became about maintaining the lifestyle.

But there was a day…

I wanted to do a podcast with John Lodge, I did one with Justin Hayward, the timing was bad the last time he was in town and…

Now he’s gone.

Sure, the records remain, but something bigger has been lost.

First and foremost, only one Moody Blues member survives, Justin Hayward, the rest of them are dead. But we knew them when they were in their twenties, not that much older than us, but an entire lifetime apart.

And every single member of the Band is gone. EVERY SINGLE ONE!

How do we square this?

The classic rockers are too old to die young. You can’t say they were cut down before their time and sure, some people live to be a hundred, but not everybody.

When is it going to end?

And how do you live, how do you pass the time?

Do you marinate in the past or continue to push the envelope of the future, wasting so much time in the process.

Speaking of wasting time… We went to bars in the hope, in the HOPE, of meeting a member of the opposite sex. And how often did this happen? ALMOST NEVER! But we had to get out there, because you couldn’t meet anybody staying at home, but you did have your records…and they were better company, better friends, than what you usually found out and about.

Incels may be pissed they can’t get a date, but back in the day…you’d be stunned how many guys NEVER went on a date. It’s one thing to be rejected on Tinder, quite another for there to be no Tinder!

Never mind social media.

Our records were all we had. And the radio that played them. We got turned on to stuff and we played this music INCESSANTLY! Eventually with cassettes you could take it with you, but the Walkman really didn’t break through until the eighties. But at home, a record was always on, ALWAYS!

And the Moody Blues were one of the acts that I spun. Like Howard Stern, I thought they belonged in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame WAY before than they were inducted.

But the Moody Blues never filled a slot. The long-hair, motorcycle jacket rock critic type, the punk, they had no interest in the Moody Blues, the music was too smooth and intellectual for them. Thank god there are no gatekeepers today.

But there are no acts as good as the Moody Blues. And the Moody Blues weren’t the only ones!

82… Robert Redford lived until 89. Now if you live that long, we expect you to make it into your nineties, to essentially fall apart, not be cut down before.

Because if you’re vulnerable in your eighties…where does that leave Paul and Ringo?

And J.D. Souther had all his faculties, and BOOM!

An obituary does not do these people justice. They were part of the fabric, part of our everyday world, they influenced our thinking…you can’t see it in chart numbers, they weren’t worried about breaking records, no one needed an award, a Grammy was a joke, but…

The acts represented so much more back then.

And one of them was the Moody Blues.

And John Lodge was a member of the Moody Blues. I know it like I know my own name.

So I sit here and can’t say John Lodge got died before his time. And this makes me think of the nature of life. It’s a cycle. And when you’re young you think the world revolves around you and when you’re old you know it doesn’t and then you’re gone.

Then again, the Moody Blues left their mark, unlike the boys accumulating toys to impress…exactly who?

So I’m not devastated that John Lodge died. I was a bit shocked that it happened now. But they’re dropping like flies, it’s to be expected.

And I’d say that we’re next, but no one wants to admit it. Everybody thinks they’ve got years ahead. But one day you’re going to end up like Justin Hayward, the only member of your group still here.

And then you’ll be gone too.