The war on Drugs as far as i know is a band and not just Adam Granduciel even though I admit he is most influential on their albums.
Listening to the new one it struck me that only he appears on the cover and on the inside cover – there is a small concession on then lyric sheet where a photo of thew whole band appears.
Have the other members of the band allowed him to assume this leader position and are the okay wirth it? Is it an ego trip on his part?
Not a bad album by the way.
Band Hierarchy – Who calls thew shots
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Charlie Watts (rightly) lumped Mick Jagger when Mick asked “where’s my drummer?”, letting Mick know that he was Charlie’s singer.
But with my professional head on, I do reckon band dynamics are difficult. We have this idea they are all like The Monkees or The Beatles in “Help!”, living together and being best friends, sharing the one cigarette, sitting next to each other on the plane when you travel, etc., when from what I understand, bands are not actually like this, it’s more like work colleagues who you may or may not get on with, but you have a project to do which you may all do well as a team. So when the front man gets all the attention, or the cute one gets all the girls, or the sensible one is the person who keeps the show on the road when another is driving the Rolls into a swimming pool, it must get difficult. Yes, i have seen “Some Kind of Monster”. I found it fascinating.
I think being in a band where you’re just colleagues would be horrible. It’s such an intimate, personal thing, writing and performing music together. You want to be seen, properly, and it’s hard to let yourself be seen by people you don’t have a close personal bond with (hard enough – at least for me – with someone you DO have that with!)
Think it largely depends on who writes the stuff and what kind of personalities you’re dealing with. Kind of how long is a piece of string type deal. If there’s a main songwriter, though, you can bet s/he’s got a loud voice in the decision making.
Not sure if a band is the right place for democracy. Guess whoever is the main writer(s) tend(s) to call the shots.
Yup, the singer of the writer tend to be seen as “the leader”.
Rarely is it the drummer of the maraca-ist
The first piece of what we would now call “trivia” I recall retaining in my playground days was that it was not shiny-hatted, shit-grinning, sideburn modelling wailer Noddy Holder, nor the eye catching long haired axeman Dave Hill, nor girls’ favourite Jim Lea, but stern looking rear-of-picture drum thumper Don Powell that was the “leader” of Slade.
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull or avatar of same appears as the focus of most of the band’s album covers. He admits to traveling separately from the band in its heyday and avoiding the rock star lifestyle. I guess if you compose all the songs then the ‘lifestyle’ would be a massive distraction.
Good example in today’s Observer, sort of trying to answer this and these questions from the viewpoint of the National, who, as well as a band, are 2 brothers and 2 twin brothers.Plus one.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/aug/27/the-national-sleep-well-beast-interview
U2 seems to manage the democracy thing very well and correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t ‘Queen’ also have a similar arrangement when Freddy was alive?
Queen went “democratic” relatively late – “The Works” album is IIRC unique in rock in having 4 top 10 hit singles each written by a different member of the band, and they went to joint credits a few albums later, I believe to stop arguments over whose songs to include on albums, which to release as singles etc. I think Blur have been on a 4-way split since day 1, despite Damon doing all the heavy lifting…
Bruce Springsteen is credited with the quote, “Democracy in a band is a ticking time bomb”, whereas Tom Petty was even blunter (“It’s my name above the title, what I say goes.”)
1. ” “The Works” album is IIRC unique in rock in having 4 top 10 hit singles each written by a different member of the band,”
Now that is an interesting fact right there, Mickey.
2. I think that REM, U2 and the Stranglers have all had democratic splits as regards songwriting royalties, too.
Re: Blur/Allbran
My recollection (without getting off my pipe to check) is that on The Great Escape album the credit is something like “All Songs By Albarn, All Music By Blur”, which caught the eye as it was a notable deviation from the democratic policy before and since..
In terms of the group tug-of-war, I think it’s true that The Clash’s nifty twelve track 46 minute Combat Rock album would likely have been another double or treble with substantially longer cuts of familiar songs if Mick Jones’ voice carried more weight than Joe Strummer’s at that time and the already sumptuous expanse of sides 3 and 4 of Suede’s Dog Man Star would have sprawled to dimensions of epic self-indulgence if Bernard Butler had been able to get his way…
I never knew DMS was a double vinly, having only experienced its sumptuousnessness on CD. The things you learn on here.
I’ve come to the conclusion that a benevolent dictatorship works best. My band doesn’t play a lot these days but back in the day we were doing school concerts 5 days a week. There were occasional problems especially with one musician, who was a brilliant player but could be really selfish and demanding. I “had a word” with him once only, the rest of the time I actually left it up to the others to let him know, either directly or indirectly, that he was being a dickhead. Plus he was getting paid! I kind of liked Duke Ellington’s approach, he kept most of his band together for decades. “There is nothing to keeping a band together. You simply have to have a gimmick, and the gimmick I use is to pay them money!”
If your inclination is to be the leader then that’s how it will work best for you. As long as you can find others who will take a more subservient role.
There are charismatic bandleaders who can hold a band together, for a while at any rate, even if success (and financial reward) eludes them. Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band and Frank Zappa’s original Mothers Of Invention are prime examples. It only works for a limited amount of time.
Some musicians will remain happy in subservience to somebody else’s vision as long as the the paydays keep coming.
For some, even getting paid on a regular basis is still not enough. The best (and luckiest) of them forge careers of their own. The others learn to toe someone else’s line from expediency or make a living doing something else entirely.
The Beatles are an interesting case, and I’ve always thought it was absolutely fundamental to their success. Lennon was the leader and it was his band, but he recognised he needed the talents of the others, which allowed the others into the band, and was prepared to be ruthless in the early days with those that didn’t add to the collective. They always talked about how tight they were together, and crucially any of them had the power of veto, so there was a democratic element to the quality control.
I’m no Beatles expert, but didn’t McCartney basically lead them from the mid-period onwards? I don’t say this to be contrary – happy to hear from more well-informed people!
This is always a problem for bands. When there is a power vacuum (in this case, Brian Epstein dies) one member will feel duty bound to step up to keep things going. Cue accusations of Macca being ‘schoolmasterly’ etc. He probably was being a bit bossy, but ‘leader’ Lennon’s heroin habit was making him, shall we say, more standoffish, and George appeared to be happiest carping from the sidelines rather than getting his hands dirty. And Ringo was happy to go along with most things.
I’m amazed they lasted as long as they did.
I remember an NME article on Roxy Music describing Bryan Ferry as ‘the effete dictator’. They were still very much in their Byron Ferrari piss-taking phase, and this article continued the trend of gratuitous denigration of BF, the thrust being that he had the nerve to make most of the decisions. But I concurred with his response at the time, that he formed the band and as such it’s always been ‘his band’ and his vision, which is not a reflection on the talents or vital contributions of the others.