I am currently, right now, enjoying a rare moment of tranquility. I am working at home, there are no small children around so I am taking the chance to listen to the new recording of Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrows featuring Beth Gibbons of Portishead.
First impressions are “a thing of rare beauty, Beth Gibbons seemingly has never recorded a bum note in her life, what a talent she is.”
But how on earth does she live? She doesn’t tour, her recordings are few and far between, presumably they don’t sell like they used to. It’s hard to imagine her stacking shelves or working in PR to pay the morgage. I have no idea if she is married or not, part of me assumes she has a rich husband, but she may not.
I mean from the point of view of a music fan, I always prefer less great stuff than a mountain of over exposed mediocre stuff from a performer. But if you choose the latter, how do you eat?
See also Burial.
I’ve often thought the same thing of various other artists – like the late Scott Walker (wildly uncommercial album every few years, broadsheet reviews, disappears for a few years), or Elizabeth Fraser. Any number of people these days, really – I’d be surprised if royalties for recorded music was enough to keep the wolf from the door for many ‘critically acclaimed’ acts who don’t perform live very often these days.
I am serious here when I wonder if they are landlords? Basically if you suddenly earn a lot of money and you are an artist, it’s probably sensible to buy a house outright? Then if the income starts to fall, you have security to get an actual morgage, then boom, you are a buy to let landlord, money comes in, freedom to “create”?
A folk singer I once knew in Glasgow did that. Basically bought a hovel for hardly any money and rented to students.
God, the boring things that spring to my mind whilst listening to music of transcendental beauty…
Good point. I know one well-known guitar player/producer in London who rents out a second house, and I know a local pro troubadour who took bad advice and committed to buying a new-build flat to rent out around the time of the property crash – can’t recall how it panned out (if it ever did) but it involved a protracted legal process.
I know one or two other pro touring/performing musicians who teach their instrument, when home, as part of their living – some giving lessons via Skype.
I was listening to the Midge Ure Word In Your Ear podcast. He said when he started to have hits his manager told him to buy a house. He didn’t say if he stopped at one.
I know of a minor early 90s act who were on 4AD – all of them (5) managed to buy houses from their bit of the advance. Astounding.
Matt Johnson on the recent The The documentary (a must watch, btw) revealed (somewhat sheepishly I felt) that his job was, essentially, property management. Unsurprising as he was quite vocal about sustainable town planning in East London a few years back.
Was it here or somewhere on Pitchfork or somewhere where it flared up about ‘day-job shaming’?
Wouldn’t be surprised. Pitchfork guys tend to be trustfund kids who’ve never done a day’s work in their lives.
I got flamed by some Dave Spart in the Grauniad comments section recently, (“All landlords are scum!”). It was under a feature on Jimbob from Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine who is also living off his properties. I pointed out that they weren’t.
Perhaps he was thinking of pubs, in which case he had a point, non?
Well, yes of COURSE Mr Moose.
Intellectually I can understand the “all landlords are scumbags” argument.
But as a lazy freelance person who would love an income from a “stream” that doesn’t require too much effort, I’d become one in a heartbeat. I just need a very large windfall…
Intellectually, I don’t understand the “all landlords are scumbags” argument at all. In fact, I didn’t even know there was one. Sounds like something Rik from The Young Ones might say.
To be fair, Jerzy Balowski was a bit of a rum cove.
Scott Walker was a painter/decorator for a while, but presumably he got some royalties from massive selling 60s songs. If Beth Gibbons has songs used in commercials or films she will get some dosh and at least the first few Portishead albums will have sold very well.
Maybe they dabble in production, or some other from of paid work within the arts? I know that’s what Bill Ryder-Jones does.
Normal jobs aren’t out of the question, however. I know Vudi from American Music Club used to be a bus driver, and would use his annual leave to tour.
I’d love to know of any other active musicians juggling their pop career with ‘normal’ jobs!
There’s some crossover here with the Midlake thread: https://theafterword.co.uk/midlake-and-the-economics-of-rock-n-roll/
I’ve just remembered this interview with Hookworms from last year – before the singer was accused of abusive behaviour and they split – where they talk about the band all still having day jobs:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/feb/05/hookworms-are-they-the-most-cursed-band-in-pop-leeds-microshift
(Nice to see you back, Jim!)
Thank you. It’s nice to be back!
Bloody hell! It’s JC’s second coming!
(hur)
When Mick Abrahams reconvened Blodwyn Pig for a Peel session in 1974 (having left in 1971 and made a couple of solo albums, he debuted ‘Blues of a Dunstable Truck-Driver’, which seemed to indicate how his solo career had gone. Here’s a version from a later Blodwyn incarnation in the late 90s ( after a period in the 80s as a financial advisor (!) in Milton Keynes.
Similarly, legendary folk-blues troubadour has often made a living as a lorry driver. The title of this best-off may be a nod to that – but he’s got some songs out of it, like ‘Night Ferry’.
Incidentally, there’s a Wizz 80th birthday concert in London on April 24th.
Bob Fox also did truck driving when folk times were hard. Like Wizz, he suffers for being primarily a performer not a writer, so the income stops once he comes off the stage. There is justice in him getting the gig as Songman in Warhorse, which must have made recent years more rewarding, what with folk singers tending not to have final salary pension schemes.
In contrast, Chris Smither – the US folk/blues troubadour (albeit, he *does* write songs) – told me a while back that a number of years back (the 90s I think, can’t recall) the US Musicians Union was offering a remarkably good pension scheme, way above the market. Chris poured as much money as he could into it and advised every other troubadour he knew to do the same. Ironically, Chris (74) seems to be an eternal road warrior and packs gigs wherever he goes. He wanted to cut down a little on the number of gigs per year 3 or 4 years back, so his wife/manager Carol simply put his fee up – but the same level of demand was still there. So Chris is in a solid position, financially – and I’m delighted that’s the case.
I know Julianne Regan covered gaps in All About Eve cash flow working as a temp typist.
“I sit by the photocopier
The printer calls to meeeee”
Etc
Is The Afterword enough to sustain Richard Thompson?
If it costs at least a hundred quid to see him play, I shouldn’t imagine he’ll starve.
The dull answer:
The majority of a song’s income goes to the songwriter, not the performer. Most writers sign a publishing deal which gives them a hefty lump sum upfront to assist “development” (i.e. ability to give up working for a living, at least for a few years).
The majority of Portishead tunes were written by Beth Gibbons, Geff Barrows and Adrian Utley. They sold pretty well, so they’d have got performer’s and mechanical royalties in addition to publishing.
Even a cult act like Eileen Rose (paging @carl) was able to stay in the UK and record a couple of albums for Rough Trade, with members of Del Amitri, thanks to a decent publishing deal. She didn’t buy a house or own a car, but did alright for a few years.
I was wondering if the royalties from three Portishead albums (and writing credits) might have been enough to leave someone “comfortable” for quite a long time? These albums sold in big quantities at a time when there was effectively no other way to “own” them other than actually paying good money.
Dummy sold 3.6 million by 2008, Portishead about 2 million, Third similar (it also went Silver worldwide).
Say the songwriters get £1 from each sale, that’s not a bad start – even when split three ways.
Sour Times and Glory Box were also used endlessly – and tiresomely – on soundtracks, documentaries and adverts for about ten years. The opening of STs in particular was always wheeled out in the late 90s to signify portentous pre-millenial angst and a doomy nighttime urban atmos.
I used to get CDs out of the library every week. That’s money fert artists innit? Titchy pennies, but probably still more than Spotify.
PS. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Beth Gibbons isn’t seen much in these days when you can’t smoke anywhere outside of your own house. On the Portishead records she should have been credited with “Fags and vocals”.
Also, they did do a few festival tours earlier in the decade, despite having no new music. Must get paid a fair bit for headlining Pukkel Pop or Exit festivals, no?
Talking of Del Amitri I have heard Justin Currie say that the success of “Roll To Me” in the US ensured he would never need to write another song. Thankfully for sone of us he did… Ironically it is also the song he us least proud of. Not sure what the message is there. …
Jah Wobble was a train driver with London Underground for a while in the late ’80s.
Howard Devoto worked for the Hulton picture library as a researcher after Magazine and Shelley/Devoto folded.
Jazz saxophonist Art Themen was an orthopedic surgeon pretty much throughout his career. He has only fairly recently retired from his day job.
The thing about Art, though, was that he chose to be a surgeon right from the start – it wasn’t because gigs were drying up. The opposite. Indeed, he could certainly have sustained a viable professional career from the early 60s onwards – similar to Dick Heckstall-Smith, Henry Lowther, Tony Roberts, etc. – as a pro British ‘new generation’ jazzman playing in big band sections, in various small groups, on pop sessions, leading his own band on records/live shows, in pit orchestras, etc.
Even though he did have a demanding university course and then day job in medicine, he seems to have been as active as possible in music during the 60s (and presumably thereafter), as time would have allowed.
Similarly, Sandy Brown was a major figure and very individual’voice’ in British jazz – never quite in any camp, but respected by everyone, from trad to fusion – from the mid 50s to his death in 1975 (from quite consciously opting not to give up drinking). He was a regular poll-winning clarinettist, band-leader, recording artist and (a bit like George Melly or Dave Gelly) also a gifted writer on jazz in various publications. But all through this, he kept his job as the founder of an architectural practice specialising in acoustics – studio building. He built, for instance, Trident Studios in London and EMI studios in Lagos (yes, the Band on the Run place). An eccentric polymath.
I don’t want somebody called Wobble driving a train. Come to think of it, the Jah bit suggests that chappie out of the Half Man Half Biscuit song. MegaBus for me…
A bloke in the class after me was known as Dangerous Brian. Even the Standards Department knew of that nickname, from which point his days in the cab were numbered.
Fortunately, my nickname of ‘Scary’ relates to my .. er .. physical presence, rather than the passenger experience.
What, you have hair like Mel B?
That must be a lot of work – Respect!
Like so many train drivers, I have a minimalist approach to hair.
( and thank you for saying ‘Respect’ and not the more traditional ‘hurrr’, which could have been unsettling)
I wanna hurr. I wanna hurr. I wanna rilly rilly rilly wanna zigazig hurrrrr.
… but I won’t.
I used to work with a guy known as Scary. Huge with long red hair and a big beard. He used to suck his thumb and was terrified of his mum.
I’ve often thought the same about Martin Degville of Sigue Sigue Sputnik. If recent photographs are to be believed he still (to his eternal credit) looks like he’s just stepped out of the Blitz club circa 1980 and he’s 58. I mean, what does he do day to day? I can’t imagine him working in Aldi or Greggs. Yet you never see him performing on one of these 80’s rewind weekender type things. Same with Marilyn truth be told.
I don’t know how he sustains himself financially, but I can exclusively reveal that he went the full “hard Brexit” on Facebook last night. Far be it from me to suggest that the belligerent tone and general incoherence of his posts suggested that drink had been taken by the frightwigged Love Missile F11 hitmaker.
There goes my love rockin’ red white ‘n’ blue…
And they only had one hit. He must do something else, a lot of ex pop stars work behind the scenes in A & R or write jingles etc
She sold a lot of CDs in the ’90s. Cha-CHING!
That was my first thought. Performers who had big-selling albums in the 90s, who also wrote or co-wrote the tunes, have quite a nest egg. New CD albums were £12.99 at the time, plus those CD singles at up to £3.99 (get them in both formats, super-fans!) That’s a lot of change. For folks in our nearly post-CD age (The xx, for example), their pensions are not looking so rosy. Thanks, Spotify!
It’s most likely going to get worse for them.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/apr/03/brexit-effects-on-british-pop-classical-music?CMP=share_btn_fb&fbclid=IwAR3aFWY07cDnuIr9AtTLYVrSGYXcDVfipumnnu-7Mn148atUUTIwi0jqeMQ
I seem to recall Scott Walker was reported to be a taxi driver for a while.
Punter: “Awful weather today, cabbie!”
Scott: “Yes, the sun ain’t gonna…you get the picture with that.”
Scott Walker must’ve turned down a small fortune to play live. A similar niche market to Leonard Cohen: he could’ve charged £100 a ticket and sold out small-to-mid size venues.
Haven’t heard that (see above), he was a painter and decorator for a while allegedly. He also said he spent many years watching people play darts in the pub. When he showed up at The Guardian for his last interview(?), he was a bit late because his bus (not limo) got stuck in traffic. I used to say that (after doint it for Kate Bush) he was the only remaining act I would cross the Atlantic to see if he announced a run of shows at the Royal Festival Hall or something (sighs).
Still. What about Burial? I’ve never even seen an EP of his in the wild… Untrue was a while back but there he goes, once a year, releasing an EP which is presumably labour intensive, gets chucked onto Spotify and then no tour.
DUDE? HOW DO YOU LIVE? I WORRY.
He’s living it large on his Banksy cash..
A couple of times in Birmingham I’ve seen a guy called Andy Wickett play in tiny venues. He was in an early line up of Duran Duran and basically wrote Girls on Film but left around the time the band got signed and was paid £600 to not claim future royalties. That must have been worth a couple of houses at least.
Yes, didn’t he actually write a few of their biggest – and best known – hits? I think he wrote Rio as well. Just think of the lost royalties…
You’ve got to have sympathy for someone who that happens to. £600 is a lot of money in your hand, and how could anyone have predicted how big those songs would be?
And back to listening to the record that prompted the OP, I was fascinated to hear what this would be like. Judging from just one listen so far she makes a pretty good fist of it. She doesn’t have the crystalline pure classical soprano that is so powerful in Dawn Upshaw’s recording that sold gazillions in the 90s, and I’m not sure I would ever take it over a more traditional version – but it has a power of its own. And kudos to Krzysztof Penderecki who has conducted this. There is a strong argument for his being the greatest living classical composer on the planet, he’s achieved pretty much everything, he’s well into his 80s, and yet he’s still out there working with the likes of Beth Gibbons and Johnny Greenwood. If you ever fancy listening to something genuinely edgy have a listen to his Threnody for the victims of Hiroshima. Easy listening it ain’t.
The RPO recording of the Gorecki from about 1996 is brilliant, just as good as the famous one.
I was curious about how this sounds as well. (Ironically enough, given the discussion here, I may actually buy the CD! I’m on a bit of a self-imposed exile from Spotify at the moment).
I haven’t listened to the official, traditional recording for a while, but I couldn’t actually remember there being much singing on it. But yeah there is, isn’t there? A lot of high pitched female vocals. (I concede the technical term for this is “classical soprano” as you have said!)
So, I am assuming Beth Gibbons doesn’t have the projection of a classical singer? Does she “portishead” the tunes then and make them more individual? Structurally, is it still the same – do the musicians all follow the written page and the three movements as written? Or is this a total re-working?
Musically it’s similar if not about the same to the more famous recording. The singing is clearly Beth Gibbons from Portishead, and follows the original score as well, I’d suggest. The second piece is the one with the most singing on it (Lento e Largo Tranquillisimo), I first came across it when Jason Pierce including it in his DJ slot on Mary Anne Hobbs’ radio show back in 2003. It’s a bloody powerful piece of music, for sure.
It sure is. That first movement – the central vocal section is so powerful and moving I feel like you kind of need the 10 minutes or so of tension on either side. That sounds like an insult but it’s not. There’s a bit in that vocal section where it goes into a major key and it sounds like the universe smiling at you!
I confess I don’t even know the background to the piece or anything about Gorecki! Or even what the lyrics are. The music just works on an emotional level. Am I right in recalling that I heard it was about the holocaust?
Anyway… I just bought the CD (plus DVD) on a whim at lunchtime there (keep Fopp alive!) so I feel like I’ll write a full review to post here once I listen to it this weekend! It’s a nice looking little package.
I believe that David Longdon, the singer from Big Big Train works three days a week in a supermarket.
It’s a reality in the modern world. You have to pay the rent and put food on the table anyway you can. No harm in keeping our artists grounded!
Especially Earth Wind and Fire.
…I’ll get me sparkly jacket.
If you’ve sufficient hits and heritage value up your sleeve, there’s possibly good money to be made doing corporate gigs.*
*I could be entirely wrong.
Or even one hit. This was enough to make me look up Chesney Hawkes, who can apparently command £5-6K.
https://www.henderson-management.co.uk/acts/chesney-hawkes
Commanded by Chesney. Dreams are made of such things.
Scunthorpe’s very own Edith Piaf, Carmel McCourt, works as a bra fitter in the Altrincham branch of M&S.
I call that promotion.
But then…. me.
I call it surreal. How can my 80s dream woman be available to gawp at and show a professional interest in your upper torso?! It’s a good thing I don’t need a bra. Yet…
“An interest” is pushing it. That’s like saying that the woman who served me in Dundee Fisheries yesterday showed an interest in my mushy peas. She didn’t particularly.
Yes but did she enquire how the mushy peas felt as she cupped them in her soft artistic, hit-making hands?
No, but she put gloves on before handling my battered sausage.
Very wise. The last thing you need when you’re monging fish is stale runny batter all over your hands when you’re servicing customers. She probably tossed them off later.
I went up to the Fish Counter in Sainsbury’s the other day.
‘Well, how many have you got?’ , I said.
They didn’t get it either
Royalties drying up, and so he finds himself selling fruits de mer at the local supermarket.
What a load of old pollocks
The paying-the-rent conundrum must be multifold in the folk world. I often idle the time away before gigs doing the basic arithmetic of counting the seats and the entry price, deducting the number of freeloaders, which sometimes includes me, and then wondering how they’ve paid the diesel for the van up from Norwich or wherever.
Just to help things along, so many of them are double acts in love as in art, which only compounds the problem : While and Matthews, Phillip Henry & Hannah Martin, Ninebarrow, O’Hooley & Tidow, headed by the mighty Waterson & Carthy.
Ninebarrow are an example of how many in the folk world diversify. Some people ( like the people in the Willows) seem to get by through being in about 5 bands, duos or whatever simultaneously. Ninebarrow appear to be going down the Unthanks route with their new book of walks and indeed musical walking tours. Some of their smaller gigs in and around Dorset are also sponsored by a rural arts organization which doubtless helps in a small way. More generally, there are also commissions and , for example, the Arts Council funding that helped get the recent revival of the Transports on the road. Other people have parallel albeit related careers, e.g. Fay Hield is an academic.
Anyway, It’s all small scale, but seems to maintain at least a cottage industry. That said, I am sure Jay Labouchardiere from Ninebarrow would have made considerably more cash had he continued down the GP route.
When Captain Sensible had his number one with Happy Talk – he talked about the welcome injection of money that it brought in to the Sensible household. But he didn’t write Happy Talk and it was only a single and The Damned were a pretty successful band. So how did Happy Talk make him rich?
He got a silly money advance from A&M Records for a solo career (somehow – good management?).
The Damned were relatively successful, but never actually got more than a modest income until they signed to MCA in the mid 80s and hit paydirt with Eloise.
In the Captain’s case he became something of a media tart in the mid 80s (Kellogs breakfast cereal advert, appearing on an episode of Through The Keyhole, turning up on TV-AM …) to keep up the repayments on his A&M advance
Yes – the huge advances that acts received were often reported as windfalls but were totally up-front loans that they had to pay back with interest. Smash up a hotel room? Good for you – but you’re the one paying for it.
This is exactly the business model for all boybands. From day one all the limos, photoshoots and recording sessions etc, were paid for from their own earnings. Robbie Williams got out on the right floor – and, conversely, there was a good reason for Gary Baaaalow to take over the songwriting, the same one Jagger/Richards had 30 years before.
They tended to only recoup advances from earnings, though. Or if you moved to another label, where the advance from them would have to be big enough to not get completely swallowed by your previous label.
A lot of artists complaining of being held on contracts after falling out with their labels were being held because big advances were owed and other labels who were interested in signing them didn’t want them enough to settle their bills.
Loads of advances were just written off (eventually) as unrecoverable when artists’ popularity waned.
Also a reason why some heritage artists who would like to own their old recordings are never likely to do so. They still owe their old labels too much.
I know a bloke who creates “difficult” experimental jazz and played second guitar in Spiritualized yet lives in a lovely house near Columbia Road and seems perpetually solvent. The reason? He wrote and produced ‘Where Are You Baby’ by Betty Boo which set him up for life
And rightly so…
You wouldn’t have to pay me to work with Betty Boo. My word no.
Blimey. It’s a corker of a song and I like it very much but if a top 5 pop hit like that sets you up for life, it’s no wonder Gary Barlow is so minted.
I love Spiritualized. And yet “Where Are You Baby?” is a better individual song than anything Spiritualized managed.
I do hope Jason Spaceman has an Ed Sheeran credit or something then. I worry about him almost as much as I worry about Burial.
Funny, whenever I think of Betty Boo I feel like I am floating in space.
I know a couple of professional musicians in Toronto. One is relatively famous who has sold a few records, tours quite a bit and has had some of his songs covered by big artists. He doesn’t own his own home and if he needs to get his laundry done he wanders down tp the local laundromat.
The other is a gun for hire, occasionally plays guitar on fairly lucrative tours. However he can mainly be seen several times a week playing local bars, either his own music or helping friends out. He owns a very nice house in a good part of town and has his own recording studio in the basement.
That’s be Ron, then? (The first one)
Yep
Is the 2nd one Colin Cripps?
Folk performer Marry Waterson, aka Maria Gilhooley (daughter of Lal Waterson and George Knight), currently animates music videos, having produced stage video loops for Marc Almond and recently made several beautiful video clips for her own duo project with Emily Barker.
She has worked in graphic design (she designed and produced the beautiful book and CD “Teach Me To Be A Summers Morning” of her late mothers works) and previously had a successful practice as a sculptor, working mostly in sandstone.
Her brother, Oliver Knight, is a singer, musician, record producer and recording engineer with his own studio and has worked as a gardener.
Very informative comment, Mike.
Graphic design and folk music were not the most obvious combination back in the day but maybe now there are more and more artists who have this kind of skill set. And why not?
Her mother was a visual artist as well as a singer, so I suppose that’s where the impetus came from.