Hold on tight to your dreams.....
So you want a career in the music industry (or one of your offspring does). You want them to have the best advice and you want someone to mentor them. There are two ways to mentor such a person. There are two methods. I don't subscribe to the first, but you can make a mint doing this, if you are well connected and unprincipled.
You charge them a lot of money, draw up a plan with aims and goals and work with them to achieve them. If you are crafty, and they or their parents are wealthy, you get them to work with the best people, play the best places and record at the best studios (mine or Abbey Road, depending on your budget). If it works, you are a genius and you get a handsome cheque. Basically you take the cash to open a few doors that they don't have the key for. If it fails, you just get a fat cheque and you blame everyone else for not pulling their finger out. There is a lot of money advising the untalented offspring of the wealthy on how to get on in music.
Then there is the other way. The way I prefer. You do this if the person is talented, you like them and they don't want to pay you a fortune. What do you do with them? Sit them down and tell them the harsh truth. There are three questions I ask. 1. What do you want out of a career in the music industry? 2. What will you be doing in five years if your career takes off. 3. Do you like Pot noodles.
If you want to know the correct answer, then you'll have to pay me a lot of money, but if the answer is wrong, there is no conversation to be had. The fourth thing I tell them, if they get the answers to the first three right, is to come back when they have three tracks that are absolute killers. The reason? Unless you have an absolute killer track in you, then it doesn't matter how pretty, how versatile a musician you are or how rich Daddy is, you are wasting your time. If there is a killer track, then the next thing is to see it performed live. If you've got a killer track and you can deliver it live, then you are in business.
The most successful person ever to pass through our doors at Mill Hill Music Complex was Amy Winehouse, who started her career rehearsing in our studios. When I saw Amy work, I didn't need to ask the first two questions. It was obvious what she wanted and that she had no plan B. She was up for the rock and roll life of pot noodles at 3AM after a drive from Hull in the rain. We mentored Amy unofficially in her early career as we do many musicians. Not by sitting down and drawing up plans, but by providing an environment where she could do what she needed at that stage in her career. The difference with Amy and most other kids who walk through the door was that it was her asking the questions. She'd walk through reception and stop and say "Who is that your playing?" We'd reply "Joni Mitchell". She'd say "What's the track I'll check that out". Sometimes she'd pick up a guitar when she was waiting, strum a song and say "I don't think it sound right". We'd say something like "Try a passing note of B, when you change chord from C to Am". She do it and say "Yeah that sounds cool". She'd ask about which venues the more established bands were saying had the best buzz. She wanted to get the best musical influences, write the best songs and play the venues with the best vibe. I told her that if she wanted a local gig, it had to be The Torrington and if she was looking for a gig in town, it had to be The Dublin Castle in Camden to start. She listened. She played both. She wanted to be a step ahead of the game and she got that it isn't just about play songs and doing gigs, you play the best songs you can and you do the gigs at the venues that will be best for you. I wasn't unique, she asked anyone if she thought they may have an insight. She was also pretty humble with it and would chat about the why's and wherefores.
The truth about the music industry is that if you want to succeed, you need to know your own mind. You need to have a clear idea of where you want to play and why. You need to play songs that you think are amazing. You need to play gigs with an audience that you know will connect with them. You want the audience to go home and tell all there mates you were amazing and to bring them back next time. So many artists miss this all. They think that something will magically happen and all of a sudden you'll be the next Lady Gaga or Rolling Stones. I hear lots of musicians of my age sneer at both. The thing is that the likes of Gaga and The Stones do what Amy did before she'd even started gigging. They get the best out of their talents, they put the best shows on in the right venues and they play to an audience that will like them. It doesn't matter what level you are at, this is the secret.
Which brings me on to your dreams. We have two main groups of customers. The up and coming ones who are full of dreams and old crusty ones like me, trying to glue back together a few fragments of our dreams to have a bit of fun with, before the grim reaper carts us off to Hades. This Sunday, my band launch our debut album after 45 years. We will be launching it at The Dublin Castle, far and away my favourite grassroots venue in London. A loyal bunch of friends and fans will turn up for the show. For me, it is an important statement. Not just for me, but for every old geezer like me, who's ever looked up at the stars and had a dream. Back in 1990, I put my guitar down for a decade and vowed that "I was done with all of that". I'd had ten years of broken dreams and I just ran out of energy. We got the band back together in 2000, but it was just for fun. Having my own recording studio, inspired me to "record a few numbers, for my own enjoyment". A few gigs followed. In 2009, an amazing female vocalist turned up at the studio and we roped her in for a year or two. From playing The Three Hammers and The Mill Hill Sports club, we found ourselves back onstage in Camden and getting some serious interest (in her not the band). She got a gig as a backing singer with an international star and we went back to the Mill Hill Sports club!
But it gave me a real taste. We started working on an album, with a singer we worked with in 1985. Some of the songs were good, we were enjoying it, but we weren't setting the world alight and I wasn't 100% happy with the songs. Then lockdown hit. Our singer departed, our drummer had a massive crisis when his son took his own life and we had a new mission. The band became his support mechanism, to get him through lockdown. How? I set myself a task to write songs that made him smile and laugh. Niot cheesy joke/comedy songs, but Ian Duryesque observations on life. I took up singing duties that I'd put down 40 years before.
And then something odd happened. It all fell into place. To my amazement, the energy we'd had in 1983/4 had returned. An added bonus was that the songs were really hitting the spot. We made a video of The Burnt Oak Boogie and within a week, it had 3,000 views. We did a gig at The Adam and Eve and people loved it. Then we did a gig at The Dublin Castle, just for fun as I fancied it, and it was brilliant. A residency followed and Sunday will be our tenth gig in two years at London's best venue. The final piece in the jigsaw was when trumpet player Tom Hammond joined. Tom was born the year Graham our drummer joined, but it feels like he's been here for ever now.
We recorded most of the album at my mate Boz Boorer's studio in Portugal. It was a good excuse for a few days in the Sun with the boys. And now, to my amazement my dream is materialising. Each of the songs is a story.
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