I’m fascinated by Usher firing Benny Medina and returning to his mother for management.\u00c2\u00a0 The question arises…should you stay with who got you there, or switch allegiance to the big swinging dick?<\/p>\n
My friend Jake Gold built the Tragically Hip.\u00c2\u00a0 The first time I heard from him was back in ’89, when the band’s MCA debut hit the streets.\u00c2\u00a0 It was hard to get him off the phone, his excitement was palpable.<\/p>\n
Jake built the Hip into the biggest band in Canada.\u00c2\u00a0 He got them to open for the Stones in Europe.\u00c2\u00a0 But, despite signing them to multiple labels in the U.S., the Hip never broke through in the Lower 48.\u00c2\u00a0 And the band abandoned him.<\/p>\n
Jake talked about the Hip 24\/7.\u00c2\u00a0 He was always dreaming up new ideas.\u00c2\u00a0 A fan club.\u00c2\u00a0 Net exploitation when major labels didn’t even know what the Internet was.\u00c2\u00a0 "Newsweek" did a story.\u00c2\u00a0 He got them on national TV at the turn of the millennium.\u00c2\u00a0 But Jake was not the biggest manager around, and the Hip was his biggest act.\u00c2\u00a0 So the Hip moved on to greener pastures.\u00c2\u00a0 To a manager with platinum acts in his stable.\u00c2\u00a0 A new record was released, and did worse.\u00c2\u00a0 The Hip still have marquee value, but they’re not as big as when Jake managed them.\u00c2\u00a0 They can’t be, because no one will ever care about the Hip as much as Jake Gold did.<\/p>\n
There are two sides to every story.\u00c2\u00a0 And a band built of five members has to go with the majority.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not about the Tragically Hip so much as, should you leave your manager?\u00c2\u00a0 The one who you started out with, the one who built you?<\/p>\n
Usually your first manager is your friend.\u00c2\u00a0 Who often gives way when you get some success.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s only doing you a favor, because of his passion.\u00c2\u00a0 But frequently this original "garage manager" stays with the band as it rises.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, when it hits the big leagues, the act starts getting whispered in its ear.\u00c2\u00a0 It sees what other acts get paid, how they tour.\u00c2\u00a0 Lawyers tell them about their options.\u00c2\u00a0 Major managers swoop down and offer a better deal.\u00c2\u00a0 So what do you do?<\/p>\n
First, are you getting ripped off?\u00c2\u00a0 If your manager is stealing from you, move on.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s too frustrating to work and not get paid.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, if your manager is inept, leaving too much money on the table, fucking up everything from delivery dates to routing, he should go too.<\/p>\n
But what if your manager’s major failing is you’re his only big act?<\/p>\n
Should U2 fire Paul McGuinness?<\/p>\n
Even though Irving Azoff has got a stable that dwarfs that of Principle, Irving’s never going to take a bullet for Bono.\u00c2\u00a0 He’ll take a bullet for Don Henley, that’s how he became Irving Azoff to begin with.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, Irving would make phenomenal road deals.\u00c2\u00a0 But in the middle of the night could he talk about what happened in Dublin back in ’82?\u00c2\u00a0 Could he discuss your parents, your first wife?<\/p>\n
Maybe that doesn’t matter.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe your career is essentially on autopilot, maybe you just want the check.\u00c2\u00a0 Like Aerosmith, like Def Leppard.\u00c2\u00a0 They switched to Front Line and they’re making incredible money.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the kind of leverage Howard Kaufman has.\u00c2\u00a0 And both acts know it’s no longer about hit records, building their cred, but cleaning up on the road.<\/p>\n
So, if what you need is a booker, if you’re not confronted with questions beyond whether to go on the road and what your t-shirts should look like, it doesn’t matter whether your manager is your best friend.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s truly a business relationship.<\/p>\n
But if you’ve got more questions than answers, if you’re still building, you need someone who will kill for you.\u00c2\u00a0 Their passion, thinking about you 24\/7, is more important than what their status is.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t buy passion, you can’t contract for it, people have to believe!<\/p>\n
Like Jon Topper with moe.\u00c2\u00a0 The band had a major deal for a time.\u00c2\u00a0 If they were managed by a hack, or someone with bigger commission paydays in their stable, the members of moe. would be working day jobs today.\u00c2\u00a0 But Topper lives and breathes moe.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s got them making first class records, doing their own festival.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s not worried about the major league business, he’s in the moe. business, which is quite profitable.<\/p>\n
Or Coran Capshaw…\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe being outside the system, being based in Charlottesville, allowed him to come up with new paradigms for Dave Matthews.\u00c2\u00a0 Coran could think outside the box, unencumbered by how it used to be done.<\/p>\n
However, in today’s changing times, your manager could make a deal with Front Line and you’d get the best of both worlds.\u00c2\u00a0 Assuming your manager’s loyalty continued to be to you, and not the Front Line behemoth.<\/p>\n
But there are advantages to being with Irving.\u00c2\u00a0 First and foremost, leverage.\u00c2\u00a0 Irving is owed more favors than a union boss.\u00c2\u00a0 And he uses these, to get Christina Aguilera on seemingly endless awards shows.\u00c2\u00a0 To get Jewel on TV…<\/p>\n
So what do you do?<\/p>\n
Benny Medina didn’t need Usher to succeed.\u00c2\u00a0 He already has Mariah Carey.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas Usher’s mother is only concerned with her son.<\/p>\n
You’ve got to gauge the passion.\u00c2\u00a0 Passion covers up a lot of inexperience.\u00c2\u00a0 Passion has your manager scheming 24\/7.\u00c2\u00a0 If you succeed his image is polished and he makes money.\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t, he’s a broke nobody.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to succeed.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s his only way out of the hellhole!<\/p>\n
So, if you’ve got traction and you’re not getting ripped off, you should probably stay with the manager you’ve got.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s kind of like marriage, those who get divorced once are at higher odds to get divorced again.\u00c2\u00a0 Divorced people are skeptical rather than trusting.\u00c2\u00a0 They look over their shoulders.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas those married only once are dreamers, who believe they can conquer the world.\u00c2\u00a0 They trust that their team will stay together forever!<\/p>\n
Would Usher have sold more records if his mother had been his manager when his new album was released?<\/p>\n
Maybe not.\u00c2\u00a0 Certainly not many more.<\/p>\n
But if he called at midnight, he’d get her complete attention.<\/p>\n
You want personal management.\u00c2\u00a0 You want someone in the trenches with you, bonded with you.\u00c2\u00a0 Find a good one and stick with him (or her!)<\/p>\n
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I’m fascinated by Usher firing Benny Medina and returning to his mother for management.\u00c2\u00a0 The question arises…should you stay with who got you there, or switch allegiance to the big swinging dick? My friend Jake Gold built the Tragically Hip.\u00c2\u00a0 The first time I heard from him was back in ’89, when the band’s MCA […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-ll","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}