thought you might be curious to read this...
Copyright 1997 Guardian Newspapers Limited
The Guardian
April 7, 1997
SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. T10
HEADLINE: ARTS: THE DRUMMER FROM LUSH KILLED HIMSELF LAST YEAR. THE BAND
WAS SUCCESSFUL, YET HE WAS EARNING POUNDS 150 A WEEK. WHY?
Patrick Gilbert on how you can be a pop star and still be poor
Last October, Chris Acland, the drummer of indie veterans Lush,
hanged himself at his parents' Cumbria home. Nineteen ninety-six had
been his annus horribilis. He'd split up with his girlfriend, he was
living in a friend's back room and, despite relentless promotion,
Lush's third album had failed to break the group in America. At 30,
Acland was still on a basic wage of A150 a week - a figure that hadn't
changed in six years.
'Chris visited me in Dublin last summer,' recalls Steve Rippon,
the band's original bassist. 'He wasn't his chirpy self. He was
feeling down for lots of reasons, but the money situation certainly
didn't help. It wasn't anyone else's fault, it's just the way the
music business works. He'd been in Lush for eight years, it was his
job, but he couldn't even afford somewhere proper to live.' Acland's
death serves as a sobering reminder that musicians in seemingly
successful groups often survive on little more than subsistence wages.
True, they have access to plenty of free lager and a complimentary
cheese sandwich or two, but such perks are scant compensation for the
merciless grind of record promotion and touring. Unless your group is
in the Oasis league, a musician's slice of the money - usually around
four per cent of the group's total income, plus the odd bonus -
amounts to little more than a McChef's salary. A generation after
Ringo and George were raking in a fraction of a penny per record sale,
backing musicians are still granted 'drone' status.
Life can be dramatically different, though, if you're the band's
sole creative mainspring. The way groups are financed is complex, but
traditionally the honey-pot has always been set aside for songwriters
- a hangover from the Tin Pan Alley era of the forties and fifties,
when fly-by-night crooners simply interpreted the standards of the
day. Take Oasis: for every album they sell, Noel Gallagher earns
around 45p in songwriting royalties in addition to his slice of the
.60 that's shared between the group members and the management.
On top of this, he'll net around pounds 500,000 year from the
Performing Rights Society, the agency that collects songwriting
royalties for radio plays and live performances.
So far, Noel's estimated earnings from record sales (forget
merchandising and box-office receipts for the moment) are around the
pounds 2 million mark. Meanwhile, frontman Liam pockets around A4
million and Bonehead, bless him, a fraction less. No one in Oasis is
complaining, of course: but when these figures are shrunk down to the
level at which most indie bands operate - 150,000 or so album sales
worldwide - the differential in a band's individual incomes is
enormous. All of a sudden, the person who hums the tunes is driving
around in a Jag while the man who bangs the drums is still bunking the
night bus home.
Often, this disparity occurs early in a group's career, when the
chief songwriter signs what is known as a 'publishing deal', basically
just a way of securing hefty advances - anything between pounds 30,000
and pounds 2 million - against future PRS royalties. The advance is
frequently just large enough to drive a wedge between the songwriter
and his impoverished sidekicks.
Wiggy spent the eighties and early nineties working with Billy
Bragg, and now earns his living as a record producer. He argues that
'lesser' band members are denied a voice. 'In the studio, you can
provide the hook or a riff for a song, or add a certain atmosphere,
but never get a penny in royalties. The songwriter will take the
credit. Artists, publishers and record companies all have a system to
earn money from your work, but musicians are powerless.' So what do
musicians contribute to a song? And should they automatically be
rewarded with a cut of the songwriting cake? In the red corner,
Songwriters United will no doubt point out that before Noel Gallagher
commandeered Oasis, they were simply four blokes standing around in a
garage in Burnage, guzzling cans of Kestrel lager and arguing a
lot. What clearly transformed them into a supergroup was Noel's
facility to wed a memorable melody to a set of simple chords. In the
blue corner, there's a roll-call of disgruntled musicians who feel
that their frenetic drum pattern or guitar pyrotechnics breathed life
into a mediocre song.
The Smiths' drummer, Mike Joyce, went to the High Court to argue
that his musical contribution to the group had been vastly undervalued
by his paymasters, Morrissey and Johnny Marr. The judge agreed - and
Joyce recently won an astonishing pounds 1 million in compensation.
But not all songwriters are insensitive to the creative alchemy a
group situation inspires. 'What people like about our music is that
something doesn't quite make sense,' explains Brian Molko, the panda
-eyed frontman of Placebo, who split all their royalties. 'And that
element comes from what the others add musically. You can't think of
them as wholly 'my' songs, even though they're based on my words and
music.' Even the Spice Girls - none of whom threaten to be the new Bob
Dylan - are rewarded with a small cut of the publishing money. And
other artists take an even more egalitarian stance. It's widely known
that Pulp share their songwriting royalties equally between all five
members, even though Jarvis Cocker writes the majority of the group's
material. Every time Common People is played on the radio, drummer
Nick Banks receives the same cut as Cocker. Banks recently bought his
local pub in Sheffield.
To an outsider, this democratic rationale - shared by rock giants
U2 and REM, among others - may seem extraordinary. After all, you
wouldn't expect an architect to design a house and then divide the
profit from its sale equally with the bloke who ti led the
bathroom. But Pulp's manager Geoff Travis is adamant that it's in the
group's long-term interest. 'Bands are complex organic creatures,' he
says. 'If someone does 90 per cent of the work, it's quite legitimate
that that person should get more than an equal cut. But often you have
to watch closely what each member adds to the equation. If they're all
pulling their weight and holding the group together, I'd be inclined
to opt for a democratic split. It can ultimately lead to a better
atmosphere and, from the empirical evidence, longevity.' But what of
musicians who find themselves excluded from an equitable split? 'Rock
'n' roll isn't the Civil Service,' Travis counters. 'It's a brutal
business. It's like Mark E Smith said: 'What do you think this is, a
bloody career?' However, in any industry there's room for a greater
redistribution of wealth.' In Glasgow, the flag of publishing
democracy is flapping noisily in the breeze. Hypnotic lo-fi popsters
AC Acoustics have just signed a publishing deal with Island, and the
pounds 80,000 advance has been divided equally among the group. 'You
ask me what the others could be without me,' grunts frontman Paul
Campion, who creates the lion's share of the band's material. 'You
should be asking, what would I be without them?'
LOAD-DATE: April 7, 1997