When Rod Stewart’s record label looked at its bottom line, it decided there was no need to keep him hanging on. JOHN WILLIAMSON looks at the torrid run-up to Rod’s SECC gigs
Rod Stewart will perform to comfortably in excess of 120,000 people on his current arena tour of the UK. Add in those who will catch him at Glastonbury, and you would imagine Rod to be in rude artistic health. Yet, last November, Stewart became one of the many big-name casualties of the five major labels current round of cost-cutting, ending a relationship with Warner Brothers that had lasted since Atlantic Crossing in 1975.
Warners got a poor artistic return out of their relationship with Stewart, though it had its odd commercial peak. Few would argue that his greatest work came from the trilogy of early seventies albums, Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells a Story, and Never A Dull Moment. By the late seventies, Rolling Stone journalist Arion Berger had declared that rarely had anyone betrayed his talent quite so completely, while two years later Lester Bangs declared that Rod Stewart now made music for housewives.
It was also around the time that Stewart became more famous for his extra-curricular activities. Britt Ekland became the first of a string of trophy blondes attached to the arm of Stewart, occupying the pages of the tabloids rather than the music press. In short, Stewart had become a celebrity rather than a rock star.
A look at his chart returns would surely have given most label executives cause for concern. In the UK he managed only four top-10 singles during the eighties, while his nineties successes were a ragbag of collaborations (with the likes of Bryan Adams, Tina Turner, and the Scotland World Cup squad 1996), cover versions, and reissues. The albums of the later Warner years displayed a similar reliance on revisiting the past, the most successful being Unplugged and Seated, a live set recorded for MTV with Ronnie Wood in tow.
Still, Warners seemed happy to spend most of the past two decades indulging, or perhaps enduring, Stewart’s output. It is a pattern that is consistent with many artists of similar vintage. Think for a minute and ask when you last seriously considered buying an album of new material by Stewart, Bryan Ferry, Paul McCartney, Rolling Stones, Elton John, or Cliff Richard, all of whom can still attract similar arena-sized audiences. Only the success of David Bowie’s recent Heathen album appears to have bucked a trend. The pay-off in most instances has been a string of compilations, reliving former glories, all of which rake in the pounds to fund the next vanity project.
This has changed in the past few years as increasingly the record labels have had to look closely at their balance sheets, and begin wondering whether making them a profit in the past provides an excuse for their underperforming in the present. Earlier this year EMI dropped around 400 acts as part of a cost-cutting exercise, and both Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger were believed to be on the brink after the dismal performances of their recent output. Jagger’s Goddess In The Doorway sold less than 5000 copies in the UK and less than 300,000 in America, while McCartney’s Driving Home and the compilation, Wingspan, made equally little impact.
Others were not so lucky. Simple Minds have been dropped by both their long-term home, Virgin, and subsequently Chrysalis as their sales plummeted. Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones, fixtures on Island and Geffen respectively, have released their recent albums on independent labels. Tori Amos, Anita Baker, and Sinead O’Connor joined Stewart on Atlantic’s free transfer list. Financially, it has not been a good time for established acts, especially those who cannot rely on a lucrative “greatest hits” package tour.
Equally revealing is a quick glance at a set list from a recent Rod Stewart show (Munich, June 15, 2002), where not one of the 25 songs performed was written in the past 13 years, the most contemporary being a rendition of Van Morrison’s Have I Told You Lately from 1989. Yet, in many ways, Stewart has been luckier than most. He has had the backing of some of the most powerful record industry players throughout his career.
His last two studio albums, Human and When We Were The New Boys, were overseen by Rob Dickins, the then head of Warners, with seemingly unlimited budgets for session musicians and contemporary producers. Between them they included one Stewart composition and versions of songs by the likes of Macy Gray, Primal Scream, and Oasis. Even so, Human only scraped into the Billboard top 50, prompting the decision to drop him.
“We think after 100 years, most of them terrific, with the WEA [Warner-Elektra-Atlantic] family, it might be fun to go to a new foster home, and there are some great mommies and daddies out there,” said Stewart’s long-time manager, Arnold Stiefel, at the time.
He was clearly in the fortunate position of having a sugar daddy on hand in the form of another music industry giant. Clive Davis, who nurtured the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Whitney Houston, and Santana during spells as head of Columbia and Arista, signed Stewart to his new company, J Records, in February. Both parties expressed their delight to the media.
“J is where I wanted to be and, for me, it is a dream come true, working with Clive Davis,” said Stewart before slipping into the kind of cliché beloved of his footballing heroes. “I’m over the moon about the whole thing.”
If Bowie has shown that it can be done, and Stewart has been fortunate, then others have had to accept a scaling-down in their operations. Independent labels such as Eagle (home to Yes, Status Quo, and Simple Minds) and Sanctuary, home to one-time big-sellers like Brian Wilson and Alison Moyet, has carved a niche for acts with a residual, but sometimes significant, fan-base. Increasingly, so-called big-name artists have to think smaller, as Alison Wenham of the Association of Independent Music told the BBC. “The indie sector has never had to respond to the global business in the same way as the majors, but if you’re flexible you can pick up artists, so it may be time to review the ideal of the big deal with a big cheque.”
Ajax Scott, editor of trade paper Music Week, goes a step further, saying of EMI: “what it has done is to start focusing on its core competence: finding artists and marketing them. It is a vision that will strike fear into ageing, past-their-sell-by-date rock stars. The corporations have gotten wise to the bottom line, and the sums do not add up. In Rod Stewart’s case, he has a last chance, courtesy of Davis. He may reclaim his talent, start writing his own songs again, and keep out of the tabloids for long enough to gain a modicum of musical credibility. Just don’t bank on it.”
Rod Stewart cancelled last night’s Dublin show because of illness. Today’s SECC show has been postponed until Monday (existing tickets valid, or refunds from original outlet), and tomorrow’s SECC show remains as planned.
Cortesy of THE HERALD