How
to Become a Professional Guitarist & Musician ~ Facts and
Myths – Part 2


By Tom Hess

To
get the most out of this article, it is critical that you read
Part 1 to this series before reading on…

…There
are few things more tragic than a person who has invested all
of himself/herself into a life-long dream (such as pursuing
a big professional music career) only to fail because of a single
bad choice or a single important, but overlooked or underestimated,
fact. Sadly it happens all the time.

Imagine
investing tens of thousands of hours over many years, studying
hard, learning as much as you can, to hone in on all the various
musical skills you’ve developed, striving for excellence
in everything that you do, strengthening your creativity, investing
piles of money on everything from music gear to your music education
(lessons, classes, etc.). Then doing all the necessary non-musical
things to position oneself in the music industry such as, making
key contacts, developing a fan base, promotion, etc. Now imagine
that a single, overlooked or underestimated, element was missing.
Or maybe a fatal mistake was made inadvertently on your part.
Something that seemed so insignificant actually caused you to
be seen as “undesirable” or “high risk”
in the eyes of record companies, managers, producers or publishers.

From
our (us musicians) frame of reference, what appears to be common
sense or sound logic to us, may not be congruent with the common
sense or sound logic from the music industry’s (record
companies, managers, publishers, producers, etc.) frame of reference.
I’m referring to the risks that companies have in investing
in people as described in Part 1 of this article.

As
an example, I have a friend (who shall remain anonymous in order
to not embarrass him or his band), who is extremely talented
and one of the best musicians I know. His band, singer and music
are all truly world class. The songs are built upon wonderful
musical and lyrical depth and integrity. Yet their sound is
accessible enough to the common person to be on rock radio stations
around the world. The band is highly motivated, has an amazing
work ethic, and possesses almost everything to be a mega huge
band.

On
several occasions I’ve offered words of advice on how
the band could be seen as significantly more valuable to the
record companies and managers they were in negotiations with
over the last couple of years. I offered to help not only because
the leader of the band is my friend, but because I know the
band has enormous potential and a real chance of fulfilling
their stated goals.

There
was no need for this band to try to “be in the right place,
at the right time” because they have been in the right
place, at the right time, many times. They’ve been in
close contact with high level record companies and management
firms. In general, these key industry people liked the band
on both a musical level and a personal one. However, time after
time no significant deals were offered by any of the people
or companies they had been talking directly to. What is frustrating
for my friend and his band is that these industry people aren’t
going to spend any of their time telling the band the truth
about why they are not interested in taking the next step with
the band. If the perceived problem cannot be fixed easily and
quickly, the industry people won’t waste their time even
discussing the problem. Instead they’ll stop returning
phone calls and emails or give the band some superficial bogus
reasons why no deal will be offered. Some of these so-called
reasons range from, “our company is not looking to sign
any new bands this year”, to “we’re having
some legal issues on our end and can’t sign you now”.
Of course these statements were obviously untrue and only served
to get the band to give up and go away by showing that there
is no chance to move forward. It’s just an excuse because
if any of that were true, they would never have invested weeks
or months into talking to the band before offering a deal.

So
what was really happening? Why did the industry people even
bother to talk to the band in the first place if they had no
real interest in offering them a real opportunity and contracts???

…well…
the answer to the second question is that they DID have serious
intentions on signing the band. The answer to the first question
is the company was doing research on the band. They were testing
the people (especially the leaders) of the band. No I’m
not talking about doing research on what the band’s songs
sound like, the style or their image. Those things were already
clearly known from the press kit (the package the band sent
to the companies which contained, their CD, photos of the band
members, DVD of video footage of the band, website info, their
biography, etc.). And it was that press kit (as well as some
persistence and lots of emails and phone calls, etc.) that got
the company’s attention – all of that happened before
the company ever returned the band’s calls and emails
to begin talks about working together…

As
you can see, getting in front of some key people wasn’t
the problem, the band had done this several times on their own.
Their consistent problem was that the band could never seem
to close the deal. Every time industry people probed deeper
and researched more about the band, there was something that
kept coming up in each case that killed the deal. To the band,
it was not only extremely frustrating to go through this over
and over again, but the worst part was they weren’t ever
given the whole story from the record companies and managers
about what the problem was.

The
record company people were also frustrated because they had
found yet another great band with great potential but here was
another band that didn’t have the “complete package”
together. And what is worse is that during such times, the record
companies were losing thousands of dollars and human resources
by investing the initial series of talks, meetings (flying people
around the country to make the meetings happen) and on some
preproduction work.

What
was frustrating to me was to see this great band suffer like
this. We had several conversations about what I believed was
holding the band’s opportunities back. Yet he (my friend)
didn’t seem to believe in what I was advising him to do
and change. Instead he went back home wrote new songs that he
thought might be a bit more radio friendly, then rewrote them
again to make them heavier, then rewrote them again to make
them less progressive. Focusing on the band’s sound (which
was never the problem). In the end, none of that mattered since
the songs (in all their various versions) were truly great marketable
songs.

What
the record companies and managers were really looking for when
talking to the band is a long list of things that make up a
complete package. The fundamentals of that longer list was:

The
level of Overall Potential Value related to both the band as
a whole, AND in all of its individual members.
The amount of Manageable Risk associated in investing in the
band’s short and long-term career, AND in each of its
individual members.
The Quantity and Quality of Existing Physical Proof regarding
the above 2 items.
As already stated, the complete list is much longer, but the
essence of those items lies in the main three points above.
What I’ve written here is a broad generalization (and
somewhat of an oversimplification) of the situations regarding
this band and in how the music industry works in dealing with
brand new artists in the present day. What is important to notice
here is the industry’s focus on what values, risks and
proof are related to the musicians “as people”.
After so many years of doing all the right things, in terms
of musical elements and self promotion, where the band continued
to fall short was in areas that its leaders overlooked in the
beginning, and then underestimated later, after repeated conversations
about these issues.

There
are several reasons why I have chosen not to go into the specific
details about what (I think) the band was doing wrong. Here
are the main reasons:

Out
of personal respect for the band, I want to keep the people’s
names anonymous. Two major things the band was doing “wrong”
could easily reveal the identity of the band. It wasn’t
anything illegal or immoral, but they are aspects of things
they continue to do to this day. My intentions are neither to
promote nor hurt the band’s image in the article.
Some of what they do is centered around the individuals in the
band and those things can only be unique to these people, other
bands would not have the same type of issues as this band does,
so some aspects I didn’t write about are not relevant
to the vast majority of other unsigned bands… if it won’t
be relevant then there seemed no point to discuss these specifics
in the article.
Ok, now onto some things I can discuss… (these are common
within bands). This band had some problems that many good bands
also have.

Although
there was a founding member of the band who was the primary
composer and labeled “the leader”, there were significant
power struggles within the band’s members. Band politics
are very common (especially when a band sees big opportunities),
people sometimes become greedy and do things to “position
themselves” within the band to gain more power in the
band and also in negotiating with record companies. As an example,
some people in the band wanted more royalty rights and felt
the leader of the band was not being fair. The leader’s
position was, “hey I wrote most of the songs, therefore
I deserve most of the publishing rights, I’m not going
to give that up! That’s potential money that I earned!”
Then you have a singer who says, “yeah well if it wasn’t
for my voice, we wouldn’t even be here in this meeting!”

It’s
one thing to have differences in a band (its going to happen
as the band grows), but it doesn’t help when the industry
people see that. When a power struggle blows out of control,
that says “THIS BAND, AS A BAND, IS A BIG RISK, if they
are having these types of major fights amongst themselves now,
we definitely are not going to put them on tour and stick these
5 people on a tour bus for 3 months!” and without a tour,
records don’t sell as well.

This
wasn’t the bands biggest problem, but it was an issue
that HAD to be resolved before their “potential”
big shot manager was going to invest in their careers. At least
one record company (and probably all of the others they talked
to) and the manager was prepared to offer deals to the “individuals”
but not the band as a whole. They could see who was of most
value in the band and who represented the most risk. But due
to the unique nature of this band, that wasn’t really
possible (this falls under both items 1 and 2 above). The singer
and the writer (my friend) were the most valuable people in
this case, but strangely, their value “apart from each
other” was much less than it was as a team and the industry
people clearly knew that. The other members could have been
replaced if needed, but primary issues were centered around
the main two people.

In
my opinion, the band’s biggest downfall was in not understanding
(or willing to change their mind’s about) how the industry
works – about risks, about investments, about business, about
perceptions, about power, (about their image off the stage!),
about how the game is played and why things in the industry
are as they are. The people in this band wouldn’t listen
to sincere and good advice or change their ideas. This is because
all of them (the entire band) were idealists when it came to
business. This means, they were focused only on how they thought
the music industry should be and not on how it actually is.
Musicians typically think that the industry’s role should
fulfill some sort of “lets support the musicians and the
music” idea. But that is not the primary role of the industry.
Like it or not, this is a business. People who run music businesses
are no different than the people who run Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola,
or General Motors. This is music BUSINESS. People in the industry
are here to make money. The VAST majority of industry companies
are not here to support your, my, or anyone else’s musical
vision (unless they are going to make tons of money on it).
This is neither good or bad, it is simply reality.

Being
an idealist, as a musician, is a great thing in my opinion.
And when we are discussing music I’m a total idealist
(as many of you probably are). If you want to remain TRULY idealist,
then you might seriously consider investing your own money and
making, recording, releasing and promoting your own records
on your own. (this is the path I choose with the HESS band.
We sell records around the world, but I did it on my own, by
myself, with all of my own resources).

But
if you don’t want to do that (which is ok), then you are
seeking music business companies to do it for you and pay for
it all with their own money and resources. (This is how it is
done with my other band, HolyHell). But unless you can command
MASSIVE power (that means you have already sold a million records
or more) then you usually cannot have your cake and eat it too.
My friend, and the rest of his band, wanted to have their cake
and eat it too. And now they are simply without cake… Hungry…

The
main points of my original article wasn’t to speak of
individual examples of things that went wrong with this band,
it was to illustrate a much broader and more important idea
which I began in part 1 of this article series. Sure, seeing
the examples I just wrote about here, may be helpful, but its
value is limited (I only choose to invest my time in this response
because so many people had the same problem with the article
and it seemed reasonable that I should address your concerns).
Someone reading this might say, “ok good, now I know to
beware of power struggles and resolve them BEFORE we sit down
to talk to industry people. – I’m good to go now.”

Focusing
on the “examples” would be a mistake. Focusing on
the general principals of the much bigger picture offered in
my articles is where all the real potential value lies.

People
in general, and musicians in particular, have a habit of focusing
on what to do to “make it”. People often neglect
to focus equally on what not to do to “make it”…
And that was the source (in my opinion) of the band’s
problems. They did all the “right things”. But neglected
to address the “other things” that were making them
a higher risk to the industry. Focusing on both sides of the
equation (what to do and what ”not” to do) is so
important, and that is reason why we spend so much time and
effort to correct this in the Music Careers Mentoring Program.

Copyright
2006 by Tom Hess. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

See
Tom Hess on the HolyHell world tour in 2006. Tour dates posted
here: http://tomhess.net/tour.php