A few weeks ago, John Taylor, the bassist for Duran Duran, gave a speech at UCLA about the innovative nature of popular music. The reason he was invited to speak was to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first message transmitted over the internet. His speech is all over the place and not terribly consistent (why, again, is not having to bicycle to a town you don’t live in to buy an album a bad thing? The exercise you’re missing out on?) but the comment that he made that is getting the most attention is this: “When artists today are asked to Twitter their every thought, their every action, or to record on video their every breath, their every performance, I believe they are diluting their creative powers, their creative potency, and the durability of their work. And in the long run, I believe they are also diluting the magical power and the magnetic attraction that they can or will ever have over their audience.”
In other words, the barrier between the rock star and the audience is eroding. Is it? And if so, is that a necessarily undesirable?
I should point out that I found out about Taylor’s speech through Twitter. A Seattle writer who I don’t personally know but do follow on Twitter named Kitty Ambsry wrote on her excellent blog dedicated to Duran Duran “Gimme a Wristband” of the speech and she tweeted about it.
Yes, there are more media outlets than there once were - just as there were more magazines, radio stations and TV stations (do you remember when MTV played music videos, John?) for Duran Duran’s music than there were for Little Richards’ and The Beatles’. That isn’t stifling anyone’s creativity, it’s how technology advances. Taylor acknowledges at the beginning of his speech, “It has been suggested to me, that I tell you all, before we get started, in an effort at full disclosure, that I do not go on Facebook, nor do I have a Myspace page. And I do not Twitter.”
Duran Duran is very lucky to be in the situation they are in. They had a string of hit singles in the 1980s and that has carried them throughout their career even though people haven’t really cared as much about their new music after the mid 1980s. The band hasn’t had a single hit the Billboard Hot 100 since 1985 (“A View to a Kill”) or the top 40 since 1984 (“The Reflex” peaked at number thirty-five). Duran Duran hasn’t had an album certified as gold since 1995. They happened to have broken at a time when MTV was in its early stage and was able to use their good looks and catchy songs to shoot to pop superstardom and that’s propelled their career. Good for them but the results shouldn’t be considered typical.
I don’t think the gap between the audience and the superstar is narrowing because stars have control over how much access they give their fans. Madonna gave an interview to Rolling Stone recently and she refused to answer questions about her divorce from filmmaker Guy Ritchie. When I saw Pink give an electrifying performance on her Funhouse tour at Key Arena in September, the crowd went home thinking she was a goddess because of the commanding performance she gave, not because she is or isn’t on Twitter (she is).
One area where income inequality is shrinking (somewhat) is between superstar artists and lower-tiered musicians because superstars are no longer selling records at such high volumes. Less money for everyone is a bad thing, of course, but it does (in theory, at least) force people to be more innovative because the field is that much more competitive. Sometimes that is even true. Moreover, a little more than 200,000 units moved in one week may be enough for an album to debut at number one; five years ago, that number was a lot higher. Bands like Spoon or The Shins seen their most recent albums debut in the top 10 even though they are on quasi-“independent” labels. That would have been unheard of ten years ago.
A case could be made that if musicians are spending time twittering or responding to their fans’ e-mails, they are missing out on time that could be spent writing new songs or recording them, but that doesn’t seem to be what Taylor is getting at. He writes of “the magnetic attraction they will have over the audience”.
I think we could all consider the words of Christopher Walken when he played Bruce Dickinson on “Saturday Night Live” as prophetic: “I put my pants on like the rest of you: one leg at a time - except once my pants are on, I make gold records.”
