John Lennon was murdered.\u00c2\u00a0 Tupac and Biggie too.\u00c2\u00a0 But their music lives on.\u00c2\u00a0 Played every day on the radio, spun in homes around the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Clive Davis still walks the planet, but we haven’t heard a peep out of him in months, the press has moved on.\u00c2\u00a0 David Cook is making his album without his supervision, Kelly Clarkson has no one to rail against, the old man seems to have vanished.\u00c2\u00a0 Along with his productions.\u00c2\u00a0 When was the last time you heard Milli Vanilli?\u00c2\u00a0 Even Whitney Houston?<\/p>\n
1964 heralded a revolution.\u00c2\u00a0 The Beatles broke every mold.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only did their music sound unique, they wrote and played it.\u00c2\u00a0 Seemingly every kid in America picked up a guitar.\u00c2\u00a0 The Beatles were bigger than Jesus.\u00c2\u00a0 But that was before the explosion of Evangelical Christianity.\u00c2\u00a0 Before MTV and CDs.\u00c2\u00a0 Before there was so much money in music that big corporations swallowed up the labels and demanded they deliver profits.\u00c2\u00a0 Incessantly.\u00c2\u00a0 Which they did.\u00c2\u00a0 Time Warner’s cable system was built by Warner Music.\u00c2\u00a0 But eight years ago, the music business hit a speed bump.<\/p>\n
Sales have declined.\u00c2\u00a0 No superstars have been born.\u00c2\u00a0 Executives have railed, but no solution has been proffered.\u00c2\u00a0 Shaking their fists at the consumer, the public has just shrugged, and moved on to video games, an art form containing passion.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, that’s what Clive Davis and his cohorts surgically removed.\u00c2\u00a0 The essence, the spark contained in all those British Invasion hits.\u00c2\u00a0 The personality.\u00c2\u00a0 The excitement.\u00c2\u00a0 And with a heavy hand, employing song doctors and hack producers, they constructed music they believed they could sell.\u00c2\u00a0 That was Clive Davis’ expertise.\u00c2\u00a0 He was not the man with the golden ears, but a diva with a Rolodex containing the name of every media man in existence.\u00c2\u00a0 But this was back when the country was ruled by newspapers and television. When radio could generate ten million album sales.\u00c2\u00a0 Now the target audience gets its news on the Web.\u00c2\u00a0 There are 500 television channels.\u00c2\u00a0 And radio is a joke with declining listenership.\u00c2\u00a0 The old pros’ success was based on control.\u00c2\u00a0 And control has been evaporating since the turn of the decade.\u00c2\u00a0 And if it’s ever coming back, it’s not going to look the same, it’s not going to be the same game.<\/p>\n
Clive Davis introduced his proteges at his Grammy party.\u00c2\u00a0 Featured them on the "Today Show".\u00c2\u00a0 Spent millions to barely make any profits.\u00c2\u00a0 And the core, the essence?\u00c2\u00a0 Nougat at best.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what Clive Davis was making, candy.\u00c2\u00a0 Something the Beatles never were, not from their very first hit.<\/p>\n
The success of the British Invasion, of the following San Francisco scene, resulted in the acts usurping power. They could record what they wanted in studios of their own choice.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only could they design their own album covers, their label could no longer sell competing product on the inner sleeve.\u00c2\u00a0 By the seventies, the act was king.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a sideshow over on AM, but all the money was in FM.\u00c2\u00a0 The career acts.\u00c2\u00a0 The ones making album-long opuses, frequently without singles, who could fill arenas, who can still fill arenas today.<\/p>\n
Clive Davis would have told Ian Anderson that "Thick As A Brick" was an aberration, not to be released, the public wouldn’t stand for it.\u00c2\u00a0 But Jethro Tull sold out arenas in its wake.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything new and different, everything creative, everything out there, that’s what Clive Davis stood against.\u00c2\u00a0 He wanted control, when he himself was not an artist.\u00c2\u00a0 He wanted to squeeze out inspiration.\u00c2\u00a0 And without inspiration, you’ve got no art.\u00c2\u00a0 And without art, all you’ve got is business.\u00c2\u00a0 And kids don’t care about business.\u00c2\u00a0 And people don’t care about you when you’re no longer atop the corporation, your phone stops ringing, the "Wall Street Journal" writes about someone else, it’s like a genie has rubbed his magic lamp and you’ve disappeared.<\/p>\n
Reminding us the future of this business is the acts.\u00c2\u00a0 And not commercial concoctions like the Pussycat Dolls. That’s commerce.\u00c2\u00a0 Commerce comes after art, not first.\u00c2\u00a0 Art is triumphant once again.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that the traditional media can’t see it, and the old label heads aren’t interested in it, because it’s not instantly salable.\u00c2\u00a0 The media wants a train-wreck.\u00c2\u00a0 The label wants something that can go double platinum on the first release.\u00c2\u00a0 But now superstars barely go double platinum.\u00c2\u00a0 The game has changed.<\/p>\n
The new executives, today’s entrepreneurs, realize without the acts you’ve got nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 They will respect the act. They will be in service of the act.\u00c2\u00a0 They will encourage the act to experiment, to go for greatness.\u00c2\u00a0 Because they know that what makes Google so valuable isn’t a marketing campaign, but its sheer usability and its uncanny ability to generate the right result.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what makes a great act.\u00c2\u00a0 The music.\u00c2\u00a0 Not its looks.\u00c2\u00a0 Jimmy Page is a soft-spoken man, who lived a dark life on the road and oftentimes wouldn’t speak to the press.\u00c2\u00a0 But Led Zeppelin’s manager protected him.\u00c2\u00a0 Peter Grant might have been a wrestler, but he knew that without the act he had nothing.\u00c2\u00a0 That he needed to remain in the background.\u00c2\u00a0 That he needed to let the act explore, even make mistakes, in order to achieve and maintain success.\u00c2\u00a0 Both artistic and commercial.\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike Clive Davis, Peter Grant was not currying personal favor with the press, he kept reporters at arm’s length.\u00c2\u00a0 And today, Led Zeppelin still burns up the airwaves and all those Arista wonders, with their Top Forty singles, have been forgotten.<\/p>\n
But whereas Peter Grant oftentimes employed a blunt instrument, today’s executive uses a computer, knows how to reach his target audience.\u00c2\u00a0 Is less interested with the media filter than his act’s mailing list.\u00c2\u00a0 He wants to go directly to fans.\u00c2\u00a0 For newspaper writers and radio deejays don’t buy music, they get it for free.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to stoke hearts and minds.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to get people hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 And the only way to do this in today’s permission marketing world is to deliver the goods, great music.<\/p>\n
All the trappings, the window dressing, if not completely superfluous already, soon will be.\u00c2\u00a0 All the tools employed by Tommy Mottola, Charles Koppelman and Clive Davis are becoming useless.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t deliver the hits, they don’t deliver the money, one can ask if they ever delivered quality music.\u00c2\u00a0 The old game is archaic. Akin to the blunt tools of the Stone Age.\u00c2\u00a0 Today it’s about precision.\u00c2\u00a0 And music that touches people.\u00c2\u00a0 Makes them feel alive.\u00c2\u00a0 Makes them ask, "How the hell did they come up with this?"<\/p>\n
Like "Strawberry Fields Forever".\u00c2\u00a0 On paper, a disaster.\u00c2\u00a0 In reality, a game-changing stretch the public warmed up to and embraced wholeheartedly.\u00c2\u00a0 It was not created on Clive Davis’ watch, and that’s why he and his music have been forgotten.\u00c2\u00a0 It lacks art.\u00c2\u00a0 And that is the essence of an artist.<\/p>\n
And sooner or later<\/span> Charles Goldstuck couldn’t save Clive Davis, he lost his job too.\u00c2\u00a0 As soon as you go to work for the company, the clock is ticking.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just a matter of when you lose your job.<\/p>\n No man’s a jester playing Shakespeare<\/span> "The King Must Die" The business has not evaporated.\u00c2\u00a0 More people than ever are making music.\u00c2\u00a0 More music than ever is being acquired.\u00c2\u00a0 People are listening to music on their iPods and going to see it live.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t care about the label, the old institutions, only the music.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re in a wrenching transition period.\u00c2\u00a0 Wherein power is wrested from old men who believe incorrectly that they’re the talent and is being redistributed to those who are truly responsible and those who protect and shepherd the careers of these titans.<\/p>\n Yes, the giants are the acts.\u00c2\u00a0 The performers.\u00c2\u00a0 The artists.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re the kings.\u00c2\u00a0 Never forget it.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" John Lennon was murdered.\u00c2\u00a0 Tupac and Biggie too.\u00c2\u00a0 But their music lives on.\u00c2\u00a0 Played every day on the radio, spun in homes around the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Clive Davis still walks the planet, but we haven’t heard a peep out of him in months, the press has moved on.\u00c2\u00a0 David Cook is making his album without his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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-1384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-mk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1384\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Everybody’s kingdom must end<\/span>
And I’m so afraid your courtiers<\/span>
Cannot be called best friends<\/span><\/p>\n
Round your throne room floor<\/span>
While the juggler’s act is danced upon<\/span>
The crown that you once wore<\/span>
The king is dead, the king is dead<\/span>
The king is dead, the king is dead<\/span>
Long live the king<\/span><\/p>\n
Elton John<\/p>\n