Interesting post by Robin James at It's Her Factory about how we've moved into "Pop's Franchise Era".
Noting the Bob Dylan biopic and the horrific thought that each individual Beatle is getting their own biopic, she argues that what already unfolded in Hollywood - franchization, cinematic universes, stars replaced by characters - is taking hold in pop music. Not just with Legacy Artists, but with relatively young, musically active stars who are prematurely Legacy-izing.
Hence Taylor Swift's Eras tour: only 34, she's already consolidating the exploitation of her archive in the way that Bowie did with his Sound + Vision tour of 1990 and the Rolling Stones have done since the late '80s.
Robin writes:
"... When Swift repackaged all her individual albums into a catalog of “eras” for a tour of that same name, she created a universe; each album set the vibe for world-building sets, costumes, and the like. The same is true of Beyonce’s various acts: there’s the house music act, the country act, and purportedly a forthcoming rock act....
"Taylor and Beyonce are franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They are not stars, per se, but tested and proven brand IP that the industry leverages into blockbuster content like the Eras and Renaissance tours and concert films. And they franchise not just in the music industry, but across media – that’s what the Taylor and Beyonce beats at Gannett are, new locations of existing franchises. I will be the last person to be surprised if and when they build a Taylor Swift theme park....
"With their “portfolio careers” spanning various industries like apparel, beauty, instruments, and food... , pop stars treat their own brands as a franchise.... Pop artists are less like stars and more like characters whose vibes grace everything from athleisure to sweet potato pies.
"The problem, of course, is that this concentrates all the wealth in the hands of the richest artists and corporations...
"In August 2023 Billboard published a piece asking “Why Aren’t More Pop Stars Being Born?”
" Your Fave Band Is Reuniting – But Not For the Reasons You Think" - an attempted marshalling of rationales for the legacy act festival / reunion boom, by Danny Wright at Vice.
I must say I don't disapprove of this kind of thing nearly as much as I did when I wrote Retromania. "Disapproval" isn't quite the right term, anyway - "distaste" is more like it. I could empathize with the reasons bands did this kind of thing. What else are they supposed to do with themselves?). Money - you can't blame 'em really, mortgage payments to keep up. Plus there's that resolution of interband conflicts/ friends reconciled / writing a happier end to the story than the probably messy and bitter split-up. The distaste was more about the idea of me being at one of these events, what it would feel like, and also the sense of being a target demographic.
But, having gone to a couple of these elder-laden festervals in the last few years, I acquired a teensy bit of taste for this kind of thing (a certain queasiness lingers, though). The events are an intriguing mixture of amusement and bemusement. Simply as a sociological phenomenon, there's stuff to observe and to consider. What happens when a youth culture ages out? How weird does it get when subcultural types valiantly persist with the look, despite the attrition of the years. A mass elegy for one's bygone identifications and intensities.
There's something salutary about being shoved amidst your own (approximate) kind. Seeing how everybody's grappling with decrepitude.
Also, occasionally, there'll be some actually entertaining performances. Bands you never quite managed to see in their (and your) prime, but they can still pull it off. They might even be better on some level - musicianship, having the experience and/or the budget to put on a great show.
Hey, as I'm about to click post on this, the missus alerts to me an upcoming festerval that is trying to out-Cruel World Cruel World - Darker Waves. Although the lineup isn't that Gothy in fact.
I suppose what I wonder about is not the top three ranks of the line-up, but below that.... sub-legends (Clan of Xymox, Chameleons etc). It can't be that rewarding, financially or in terms of ego, reconnecting with the compact following, having to play in the mid-afternoon.
Also wonder about the musicians who join legends that have suffered personnel erosion... whose function is prosthetic. (Like, are they any other original band members in "Psychedelic Furs" now, apart from Butler Rep?). I suppose it's a gig. You get to ply your trade. Maybe you were a fan of the leg in question.
One of the things that spurred me to start thinking about the book that became Retromania was coming across a bunch of ads for concerts and tours in the back of Uncut and being struck by the jumble they made of rock history - each page a checkerboard of adverts for reformed bands, legacy acts still staggering on, cults who wouldn't quit, tribute groups.... there were also strange line-ups that united unlikely bedfellows from across rock's history. All this being a byproduct of rock's longevity, the fact that the culling isn't coming (at least not quick enough), the elderly seeing no reason (or simply can't afford) to shuffle off stage in to a life of dignified reclusion, but persist in treading the boards beyond retirement age.
I blogged about it under the headline "A Past Gone Mad" (the first in a short series of 2006 posts)
Since then the past has only gotten madder
Here are some tour adverts I saw on a recent trip to the motherland, taken variously from Viz magazine (snapped in the WH Smith at the airport) and from the colour culture supplement to one of the Sunday papers (the Times I think).
Now is that some grotesque version of The Sweet that doesn't include any original members - like a man who's had so many organs transplanted there's barely anything left of him?
Battle of the Pink Floyds - the fake one versus the real remnant
All yesterday's party-hard rockers
I imagine a battle royale over who got top billing
Did something unusual - and retromaniacal - a few weekends ago: went to Cruel World, a gigantic out-doors convocation of aging Goths and alt-rockers, just up the road (in LA terms) in Pasadena. We - me + the missus + our 16-year-old + his friends + their parents - went on the first of the two days, the Saturday, baking and squinting in the 90-degree-plus heat and glare as a succession of all-star, largely British legacy acts performed.
For me, the prime attraction was the first-time-ever sighting of Public Image Ltd and Devo in the flesh (albeit rather far off and mediated by the giant videoscreens, in practice). And also the first-time-in-over-30-years sighting of Morrissey. He and Lydon (another Irish Blood, English Heart icon-gone-to-rust) have been towering figures in my mental landscape since I was more or less the age of our son. But they have subsequently clouded their eminence through drifting to the wrong (right) side of the political spectrum. I was curious as much about the mixed emotions they would trigger as the extent to which they could still deliver live.
I was also excited to hear The Beat (billed of course as The English Beat, gah!), another much-loved group I never saw back in the day; rather intrigued to witness Bauhaus; and mildly curious about Blondie. (There had been rumours that Johnny Marr, who had been playing in this legacy incarnation of Blondie, might conceivably later stride onstage with Morrissey, creating a semi-Smiths reunion. But in the event it seems that it was Glen Matlock who guitared with Debbie Harry et al). Had been psyched to resee Echo & the Bunnymen, but they had to pull out.
Although there were quite a few young people - Morrissey and some of the others on the bill being the kind of cult figures that pick up new fans with each generation of maladjusted and mope-minded - it was a largely middle aged and even old aged audience. Indeed I saw quite a few people who were infirm, getting around in those little electric buggies that the morbidly obese or otherwise mobility-impaired use. And although most people were hydrating themselves at a sensible rate and sheltering under parasols, I did see one septuagenarian-looking geezer carted off prostrate on a motorized stretcher, seemingly having succumbed to heatstroke, or worse. (When I got home myself I had all these strange aches in my arms and discovered that this is a symptom of dehydration).
The artists themselves looked like Time had taken its toll. Dave Wakeling was a bit ragged vocally and as for Ranking Roger - well, of course, he sadly wasn't there, subbed for by a younger, fitter and aliver surrogate who did a solid job as chatter and compere.
Talking of missing persons, Missing Personskicked ass like the all-American rockers turned New Wavers they were and remain. Although I think Dale Bozzio may be the only original member left. Her profuse thanks and love to the audience felt sincere and heartwarming.
In between the acts, it was fun spotting the alt-tribes - Goths of several generations who determinedly turned up clad in layers of black garments, defying the sun to do its worst; Latin lovers of Moz; portly punks and Anglophile Angelenos. Some, less aligned with the alternative than with New Wave, wore T-shirts declaring their allegiance to MTV (or more precisely, the Brit Invasion enabling MTV of the '80s, rather than whatever it is nowadays).
My favorite T-Shirt that I spotted - and it may well be a self-printed original, as I can find no trace of it on the internet - was stretched tautly across a male belly and read: "No, I Don't Want To Hear the New Stuff".
I chortled inside at the sight of that: retro-consumerist bad faith proclaimed with pride. No future for you, beloved band of my youth: just keeping playing the old songs, forever!
But of course, when it came to it, I had scant interest in hearing the newer material either.
Indeed, I wasn't much interested in the older stuff that wasn't the favorite or best-known stuff.
The Church, for instance - absolutely wonderful for the duration of their two top tunes and emteevee regulars, "Reptile" and "Under the Milky Way" - but the rest was a bit of a ragged snooze.
And then there was PiL, who I never saw back in the day. Lydon, or Rotten - not sure what he goes by these days - was in surprisingly operatic voice, hamming it up inimitably. I had minimal expectations, anticipating a set that drew heavily from the later undistinguished PiL records. But "Public Image" was a thrill and "Death Disco", amazingly, absolutely seared, the stand-ins doing a very decent job in lieu of Wobble and Levene. "Rise" also was a treat.
Only a brief valedictory barb about being very much "awake, thank you very much" hinted at the Brexit-and-Trump supporting Johnny of recent times.
The next highlight was Devo. Again, a group I never saw before. Their debut album is something I play often - simply one of the best and most original rock albums of all time, purely on the level of riff and rhythm, with all the ideology and sick humor and grotesque imagery almost functioning as a bonus, to be attended to or ignored according to preference.
At first, my heart sank as the set-up was the Freedom of Choice-onwards synth-dominated sound - Gerald Casale (who seems to have shriveled up haha with age) on keyboards. The delivery was slick, potent, synced to video projections, but a bit sterile, and "Whip It" aside, not their best material by a long shot.
But then halfway through they went off and came back again in yellow clean-up squad suits as the guitar-powered Devo of Are We Not Men and Duty Now for the Future - Casale wielding a bass guitar. And this was every bit as exciting as you could hope for, if still a little regimented / professional-entertainer in vibe.
(I was a little surprised they played "Mongoloid", though).
A glimpse of Psychedelic Furs, who I only ever saw before at another New Wave retro lineup at the Hollywood Bowl, on a bill with Bow Wow Wow and The Go-Gos, about seven years ago.
Then it was Bauhaus at dusk - as seemed only right and proper, given the issues with vampires and daylight. Peter Murphy's bald dome + beard-with-twirled-mustache seemed like a gracious way for a Goth beauty to age out, and the walking cane makes for a good performance prop, even if it's actually physically needed for support with the advancing years and wear and tear of injury, which it may well be. Daniel Ash, whose hair and white-frame sunglasses made him look like a cross between a Buggle and a bandicoot caught in a wind-tunnel, churned up an impressive barrage of gnarly guitar. The expressionist lighting was excellently atmospheric. If much of the material seems as histrionic and affected as ever, when they played the killer singles - "She's In Parties", "Kick in the Eye", and especially "Bela Lugosi's Dead" - I happily conceded they are a great entertainment.
And then there was Morrissey.
The first surprise was what fine voice he was in. Perhaps amplification at large venues has improved, or there have been advances in sound mixing from when I saw the Smiths back in the day, or - the last previous time - at his first solo concert in Wolverhampton in the winter of '88. But judging by what I heard, Morrissey has never sounded better as a singer.
Such a pity that so many of the songs sung were shit songs, from the string of solo albums this millennium.
But it wasn't just the likes of "The First of the Gang to Die" (which, having heard some of its competition out of the last 20 years output, I can understand finally why fans rate it highly - it's the closest to an actual tune out of any of them) or brand-new nothingnutburger single "I Am Veronica". Some of the duds came from the '90s, like obscure B-sides (C-sides more like) "The Loop" and "Jack the Ripper", or "Alma Matters" (from Maladjusted). He even exhumed "Ouija Board, Ouija Board".
The response of the crowd was flatter than I'd expected, suggesting that they shared my preference for - not so much older material (since some of what was heard was 30 years old) as the old-and-great stuff.
When he did play fan favorites ("Suedehead") or sublime "deep cuts" (like "Little Man, What Now" off Viva Hate, or "Half A Person", a Smiths B-side that is a triple-A side compared to the last quarter-century's output), it was wonderful.
But it didn't manage to outweigh the effect of the disproportion towards mediocrity in the set.
It wasn't just the material chosen, though. It was Morrissey's between-song quips and barbs, so opaque and archly unreadable in tone. And then the images and video loops that punctuated the songs - largely unrecognizable to almost everyone in attendance, I should imagine (I would hazard the "Ouija" image was of Doris Stokes but who knows? Certainly few in this audience). Figures from Morrissey's private (too private) pantheon of obscure film, television and stage crushes.
The set ended abruptly, with no encore (seemingly a Cruel World policy with all the groups, but particularly anti-climactic for the headlining, night-closing act) and instead this bizarre, disturbing video loop of a Japanese man blowing his brains out (whether real or some kind of Aktionist art stunt, who knows?). For sure, the event was called Cruel World, a mope-rock joke sustained with the three stages dedicated respectively to Lost Boys, Sad Girls, and Outsiders, but even in that self-mocking context it felt grim and unpleasant to end with suicide. Triggering, even.
The crowd spilled out into the night, passing through the circle of hot-dog vendors who had set themselves up immediately outside the venue (a meat-free zone by edict of Moz).
In Retromania, borrowing Svetlana Boym's opposition between reflective nostalgia versus restorative nostalgia, I describe Morrissey as pop's "supreme poet of reflective nostalgia", an artist who finds perverse fulfilment in "the bittersweet pangs of poignancy", treasuring the feeling of being an exile in time, at home nowhere and nowhen. But I also acknowledge that Morrissey has sometimes trespassed into "the restorative nostalgia danger zone", harking back to outmoded notions of insular nationality, succumbing to the delusory belief that things actually were better back in the good old days.
Well, since writing the book, he's decisively gone over to the other side of the "Make ____ Great Again" divide.
Yet for all the obnoxiousness of his opinions, I'm not sure I could ever renounce the old songs - meaning, mostly Smiths, plus half of Viva Hate, "Seasick But Still Docked" and "I Am Hated For Loving". This music is too entwined in my fibres.
It's hard to believe that someone capable of creating something as beautiful, kind, and wise as "Accept Yourself" could endorse For Britain.
But probably we all have relatives, or old friends, who have drifted over to the loony right. Become cranky and conspiracy-minded with age. And you can't amputate from memory the times you had with them. They are part of you. That's why it's painful.
Andy Green and Kory Grow note that: "catalog sales, biopics, holograms, and other media are extending the lifespan — and sometimes enormously expanding the value — of rock's classic brands."
"Some well-heeled investors are shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars for lucrative publishing catalogs; others are making use of TikTok and developing technologies like holograms; others envision deepfake software that could create “new” songs by departed artists. Industry experts say that’s just the beginning."
The retro-goldmine has deep roots -
"Starting in the mid-Seventies, Hollywood realized the potential for rock biopics and produced films about Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. Subsequent decades introduced tell-all memoirs, docuseries, jukebox musicals, Vegas residencies, full-album playthroughs at concerts, traveling museums, and other endeavors to hold on to consumers’ interests."
But holograms is a new frontier of necrophilia:
“Eventually age does become a factor,” says Jeff Pezzuti, CEO and founder of Eyellusion, a company that stages classic-rock hologram tours. “How do you extend that? Does it just end? Do they just break up and they call it a day? Do they just release DVDs of the old shows? Or is there a way to actually continue that and make something cool and exciting that would cause buzz?”
"... Touring holograms of Buddy Holly, Frank Zappa, and Ronnie James Dio made respectable money before the pandemic.... ” Olivier Chastan, CEO of Iconic Artists Group — which now owns most of the Beach Boys’ intellectual property — hopes to bring the group’s California girls to the final frontier. “In five years, I could send you a text and say, ‘At 2 p.m., let’s put our Oculus Rift glasses on, and let’s go see the Beach Boys record ‘Good Vibrations’ at Western Recorders,’” he said after the acquisition. And a lawsuit Chris Cornell’s widow has filed against the late grunge superstar’s bandmates cites her interest in tours with a replacement singer, hologram concerts, and “deep-fake renditions of Chris’ vocals drawn from extant recordings by artificial intelligence that could mint brand new Soundgarden hits.”
Another one is the transplant of a new member to replace dead tissue, giving the band an extra lease of life:
"Queen are a rare example of a band that’s managed to find a new audience on the road decades after the death of their frontman. They’ve been gigging with Adam Lambert for nearly 10 years, but it was in 2019, after the release of the biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, that keyboardist Spike Edney started to notice something incredible. “People were lustily singing along to every song that was in the movie,” he told Rolling Stone in 2019, “and looking blankly during every song that wasn’t.” The movie grossed nearly a billion dollars worldwide and earned Rami Malek a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Freddie Mercury. It allowed Queen and Adam Lambert to launch their biggest tour since the Eighties, but the
"Nowadays, [Pezzuti]'s especially eager to work with living artists on creating holograms they could use now and after death. “With living artists we would actually set up a stage of some kind, and we would actually record one show with the intention of creating holographic performances,” he says. “So basically you’d be creating a show where the artist looks like they’re there. Obviously, they’ll sound like they’re there because there will be live sound. But basically it could be in five or 10 or 15 places at once. So the idea is, the older acts could actually be out there in front of people generating revenue and quote-unquote ‘touring.'” windfall it generated went far beyond ticket sales."..
... “We were offered an AC/DC hologram of Bon Scott,” says CAA agent Christopher Dalston, referring to the band’s singer who died in 1980 (he didn’t say which hologram company approached him). “We asked ourselves, ‘Do we want to represent something with Bon Scott?’ And it just wasn’t right for us at that point. It’s a very personal thing to the groups. … You have to be careful what you do there. AC/DC is still a very current band with Brian Johnson singing.”
Biopics are relevance-reinstaters and revenue drivers:
"There’s even talk of a new Doors movie. “The Oliver Stone one was 31 years ago,” Jampol says. “That means that everybody on planet Earth who’s 31 and under was not alive when that movie came out. That’s why we’re looking at making a new one.”
