It was sad that the singer Meat Loaf, 68, collapsed during a live show in Canada (get well soon, “Meat”!). It got me thinking about older artists and the live circuit and then, by extension, all musicians and the live circuit. In recent times, the business model for artists has changed beyond all recognition – put very simplistically, in most cases, the actual music is effectively “free”, barely remunerated by a chaotic jumble of streaming/licensing/corporate “opportunities”. Playing live has become one of the few things that acts (certainly beneath megastar level) can still get paid for.
What amazes me is that this is just accepted by people, who blithely opine: “Musicians make their money from playing live these days.” This is usually followed by an eerie silence where questions should be. Not all acts are global stadium level, so how much money? Is it enough to sustain them; can they survive, never mind prosper? Does this leave them time to write and rehearse material? Could it be (whisper it) that some of them don’t enjoy being forced to gig so much, that they find it tiring, creatively stunting and sometimes logistically impossible, especially if, as increasingly happens, they also have “day jobs”?
No one seems to acknowledge that incessant gigging of the type that’s now forced on modern musicians isn’t always an undiluted artistic joy, but potentially exhausting and disastrous. During my time at the NME, I joined many a tour and, in most cases, I was ready to hurl myself off the top floor of whatever Holiday Inn I was staying in after just a few days. However maddening I came to find certain musician breeds, I always admired their stoicism in the face of horrible, boring, tiring touring. And these were “proper” tours, back when artists could dream of receiving advances, selling product and having time off.
Conversely, where artists on Meat Loaf’s level are concerned, the heritage live circuit, as popularised by the Rolling Stones, has long been a given and it’s probably as civilised as touring gets, as it should be for older artists who have paid their dues. The change is that now all artists, not only living legends or megastars, but the skint ones, the mid-level ones, the new ones, are expected to constantly play gigs, with all the other financial rewards, buffers and safety nets ripped away.
Add the fact that musicians no longer get to claim benefits for very long and it becomes another example of an important branch of the arts becoming annexed by those wealthy enough not to need it to pay them properly, not at first, anyway. Yet another case of an art form demoted to the status of unpaid hobby.
Of course, the old-style music industry was far from perfect and arguably it’s too late to be moaning about the changes now – if ever a genie was out of the bottle! Back when industry-wide debates could have been had, and a modicum of clarity and fairness achieved, I distinctly remember bigger established artists storming around in huffs, concentrating on looking after their own interests, leaving smaller acts to fend for themselves. Nice.
As things stand, could people at least stop pretending that it’s tickety-boo that artists have been forced on to a gigging treadmill just to make money? Part of me wonders whether this Marie Antoinette-ish “they can make money playing live” public insouciance is because people don’t want to deal with the fact that they’ve colluded in this disaster, by either not paying for their music, or paying peanuts. These people need to realise that, for myriad reasons, musicians scrabbling together a living mainly from constant gigging can’t remain a viable long-term option. Also that if they’re not careful, before too long, they’re going to end up with the music scene they deserve.
TV sexploitation of naive drunk kids is shameful
Miss Great Britain, Zara Holland, has been stripped of her title after having sex on ITV2’s show, Love Island. Presenter Caroline Flack expressed sympathy for Holland and condemned the pageant organisers. Flack is right – Holland shouldn’t be slut-shamed. However, don’t programme-makers need to take responsibility?
On certain shows (such as Geordie Shore and Ex on the Beach), the participants (usually young, working-class, and drunk) are regularly depicted having (partially pixelated) sex.
Clearly, they’ve signed contracts permitting footage to be used, but that doesn’t make it right. Unlike, say, Kim Kardashian, they don’t have the insulation of huge wealth and fame.
I’m not judging those who do it – I feel sorry for them. When Vicky Pattinson appeared on and won I’m A Celebrity…, she spoke about how ashamed she was of her past on-screen sex; it was heart-breaking.
People might say, they’re just down-market shows, who cares? I do. It has become routine for ordinary drunk naïve kids to be exploited quasi-pornographically on screen, potentially ruining their reputations and their lives. Ms Holland is just the latest casualty.
No wonder women get worked up
A study from Ohio State University has shown that women who work for long hours for long periods greatly increase their chances of developing life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, with those working 60 hours a week tripling their risk.
By contrast, men became healthier the longer they worked, with those working 41-50 hours having a lower risk of heart and lung disease than those who worked less.
These findings came from the analysis of interviews with 7,500 people over a 32-year period. The researchers put the differences down to women facing additional pressures at home, taking on the bulk of family responsibility, having myriad roles to juggle and enjoying their actual jobs less because of all their extra obligations.
All of which appears to go against the normal image of workaholic men keeling over from heart attacks. It also runs counter to the standard idea of the home being the sanctuary from the workplace. It seems that for too many working women the home is not a haven of peace and rest, it’s just another workplace, and there is no “downtime”, just more to do, and different kinds of stress.
Meanwhile, for many men, the workplace appears to serve as an “escape” of sorts. A more enjoyable, satisfying and indeed linear environment than home – where things too often manage to become an unholy cocktail of the mundane, domestic, fraught and complicated because, hey, that’s just how real life is sometimes. If this study ends up asking an interesting sociological question (do men “escape” from home to work, from work to home, or a combination of both?), then it’s clear that it’s mainly women who are bearing the brunt, and seeing none of the health benefits.
