The life cycle of LONG running bands (or why Metallica fans should relax)

Jack-Flash-Jr · 2011-10-26T08:38:36+00:00

I thought this might deserve its own topic because I'd like more examples of what I'd like to call the Stones Syndrome. I'm sure that Stones fans in the mid-...

The life cycle of LONG running bands (or why Metallica fans should relax)

domhatch

the first album i purchased with money out of my own pocket was 'the works' by queen. then i started going through their back catalogue. and then their front catalogue, so to speak. up to 'innuendo', i could not be swayed from my point of view that this was the best band in the world, despite a hectically eclectic collection, ranging all the way from a-ha (duck and cover) to floyd and back again. from then on, i still loved queen, and still do, although obviously some albums more than others.

i believe you're gonna get the syndrome you describe with any long-may-you-run band. (except queen, where it was unavoidable due to freddie's untimely passing.)
dh

Hammeron

Jack, what you say makes sense, however, at the end of the day, NOTHING excuses a CRAP album by BRILLIANT band.
There may be some fans out there that disagree that LuLu is a crap album but we have yet to hear from them...

Squonk

domhatch wrote: the first album i purchased with money out of my own pocket was 'the works' by queen. then i started going through their back catalogue. and then their front catalogue, so to speak. up to 'innuendo', i could not be swayed from my point of view that this was the best band in the world, despite a hectically eclectic collection, ranging all the way from a-ha (duck and cover) to floyd and back again. from then on, i still loved queen, and still do, although obviously some albums more than others.

i believe you're gonna get the syndrome you describe with any long-may-you-run band. (except queen, where it was unavoidable due to freddie's untimely passing.)
dh

I was the same DH, I was a huge fan, and started buying in the early 70's, I had an older next door neighbour who gave me a copy of Queen II, this got me on the road and carried on buying their albums until "News of The World", But I didn't like what the 80's did to them...I suppose it also depends when you started following the band?

Bob-Dubery

I think that bands like the Stones and U2 rise above simple issues like how good their last X albums have been (I'm not saying they don't try). They're institutions, spectacles, monuments, phenomena. People go to see the Stones because they're the Rolling Stones, not because their last album was the most happening thing of the year. Not even because the Stones have been a hot live proposition the last few years.

Artists get to a certain size, a certain stature, become legends and the matter of whether they are still relevant and/or still delivering falls away.

And your audience can change. Squonk gives the example of Genesis. They probably lost a lot of the fans who had loved them for "Supper's Ready" or "The Battle Of Epping Forest", but they probably made a whole lot more, especially in territories where they traditionally had not been big and where their history was not as well known.

I wish people would go gracefully, knowing that they're time is up and that they've said all they have to say, played all their great gigs, written all their great songs and the tank is now empty. But that kind of self-awareness is rare, and if lots of people are going to pay money to see you maybe you shouldn't care anyway.

But greatness remains great. The Stones can put out another dozen albums of drek, but that doesn't diminish their considerable achievements.

domhatch

Squonk wrote: I was the same DH, I was a huge fan, and started buying in the early 70's, I had an older next door neighbour who gave me a copy of Queen II, this got me on the road and carried on buying their albums until "News of The World", But I didn't like what the 80's did to them...I suppose it also depends when you started following the band?

from 'the works' (84), which i bought on tape and then backwards first, and then forwards. i think my dad enjoyed them, so he had a whack of lps, probably my fave album backwards was 'a day at the races'. and i still love 'the works', for 'radio gaga', 'hammer to fall' and 'is this the world we created?'. i don't have all the albums, as i came home from school one day and me much-beloved mother had donated all our lps to boys' town. without asking which ones we wanted to hang on to.

(she even got rid of my prized pop shop vol 13!)
dh

Bob-Dubery

Tamla Kahn 'Hammeron' McMahon wrote: Jack, what you say makes sense, however, at the end of the day, NOTHING excuses a CRAP album by BRILLIANT band.
There may be some fans out there that disagree that LuLu is a crap album but we have yet to hear from them...

In this case I don't trust the fans.

"Fans" can be blinkered about an artists desire to advance or at least change. They're entitled to their pound of nostalgic flesh, but they don't own the artist. Sometimes they are blinkered and can't accept a change.

The whole concept of being a "fan" is quite weird and complex really, and there's no one universal motive.

It seems to me that a lot of the people (and they're not a majority, they're just opinionated people running blogs) who are slating the new Metallica album are doing so on fairly insubstantial grounds. They don't, for example, seem to really understand who Lou Reed is and what he's done and his place in rock history. They don't seem to consider the fact that maybe Metallica, or some of the members, might have a genuine respect and admiration of Reed and consider it a great privilege and opportunity to work with him. They certainly don't seem to be able to grasp abstract, poetic lyrics. If they do understand that this is a potentially brave move from Metallica they don't dare say so, because that's admitting that the band has moved on whilst they have stood still.

Bob-Dubery

I just want to say that having a long life cycle doesn't mean that you must run out of steam. Some artists seem to have long range tanks. As an example I give you Robert Plant.

Interestingly Plant's solo career is now substantially longer than the career of the band that he used to front.

flatfourfan

Tamla Kahn 'Hammeron' McMahon wrote: NOTHING excuses a CRAP album by BRILLIANT band.

I have to agree.........

Metallica had a winning formula and I have no idea why they felt that they have to f**k around with it. They have millions of fans worldwide and it's not for the tripe that they're churning out now.

R10 said that the driving force behind this decision came from Lars...........

Just for the record, Diabolus in Musica and God hates us all from Slayer (their last 2 albums) are regarded as many as being the worst yet and are heavily influenced by Nu Metal, so who knows, maybe they're next?????

Seventhson

I loved metallicas load and reload(which many many fans did not like bec it was not their usual stuff). I would not mind if they did something like that again. But the lulu album was just sad. :'(

And @flat Dude lars is the weak link in that band. I never liked the oke. He is such an idiot.

Bob-Dubery

flatfourfan wrote:
Tamla Kahn 'Hammeron' McMahon wrote: NOTHING excuses a CRAP album by BRILLIANT band.
I have to agree.........

I think this is going too far. A crap album is a crap album, fair enough, but it's no hanging offence, it's not something that needs to be "excused" or for which there is no excuse.

Band's have obligations as well. They can't just sit on top of mountains or go fishing or whatever else it is they do whilst they're waiting for the muse to visit inspiration upon them. They have fans that want new albums, they often have contracts that mandate that they have to deliver a certain number of albums, perhaps in a certain time span. Sometimes they HAVE to release something, even if they have nothing to say.

Metallica had a winning formula and I have no idea why they felt that they have to f**k around with it. They have millions of fans worldwide and it's not for the tripe that they're churning out now.

As a general principle I side with artists who won't be confined by a formula (which doesn't mean that I am itching to run out and buy Pavarotti's album of country duets - I'm talking about a broad principle here, not specific examples). And if nothing else it must get boring for them to keep on delivering according to the formula (which they probably conceived in the first place) and they're entitled to some fun and some personal satisfaction and to going off on a couple of tangents.

If successful artists stuck to the winning formula the Beatles would never have made "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (they'd never have made "Rubber Soul" for that matter), David Bowie would never have cut "Let's Dance" or the Berlin trilogy, The Beach Boys would never have made "Pet Sounds", Dylan would have got the fright of his life at Newport in 1965 and never gone on to Highway 61 Revisited or Nashville Skyline etc etc etc.

flatfourfan

X I do see where you're coming from, but there is experimenting and then there's suicide.

This quote from their website sums it up for me.

"Metallica isn't Nine Inch Nails, with full control over their doings.
Remember the NIN / Tom Morello project? Trent and Tom didn't like the way it turned out, so they didn't release it. Simple. Metallica is in a different boat. And the Captains are Q Prime and Warner Bros."

The only reason that lulu is even getting the time of day is because of the two names associated with it, take that away and it's only an old man talking while metal is played in the background..........

Bob-Dubery

flatfourfan wrote: X I do see where you're coming from, but there is experimenting and then there's suicide.

Well maybe.... but it's much easier to claim that it's suicide AFTER the experiment. Sometimes things don't work out as planned. "Revolver" could have been the end for The Beatles, but we know now that it wasn't. Dylan certainly took major artistic risks and took a considerable backlash from the fans in those pre-internet days. As it turned out, Dylan's instincts were good ones, but he could have had a brilliant career behind him (and was willing to take the risk). Bowie killed off Ziggy Stardust, then re-invented himself as The Thin White Duke and then moved on a couple more times. Was each move going to work? No way to know in advance.

OTOH The Incredible String Band decided to "update" their sound and their sales and their following dropped off.

Jack-Flash-Jr

Some people are upset because they can't have more of this:
Kill 'Em All (1983)
Ride the Lightning (1984)
Master of Puppets (1986)
...And Justice for All (1988)

No one took those away, it's not like they've been deleted from the catalogue and it's not like people can't preview Lulu before laying out cash for it. I think fans should be queing up to defend Metallica's right to experiment (especially since this *might* rejuvenate their own material). Just because a band is/was brilliant doesn't mean they can throw out masterpieces left right and centre... that said, I think an old man talking while metal is playing in the background is the most interesting thing released that I've heard in a while ?
They made history again, even if it was a misstep in terms of fans or a musical misstep (which I'm not convinced of).

Squonk

Opeth's new album is also a change in direction for the band.

Fans are wondering what's going on, some are embracing and some rejecting

This is what happened to me with Queen , after Queen, Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack, I wondered what "A Night at the Opera" was all about, took me ages to realize that it was good stuff. But I did draw the Line at 'The Game' which did so well and brought them millions of album sales.

Jack-Flash-Jr

Squonk wrote: Opeth's new album is also a change in direction for the band.

Fans are wondering what's going on, some are embracing and some rejecting

Good example... different styles of music are also more appropriate for different age groups - and band members preferences develop too... did I just pour petrol on the flames?
I think in Opeth's case though a lot more people would embrace it as a "good" or "decent" album than Lulu.

Bob-Dubery

Fans want to hear "the classics", and may prefer to hear everything in the style that was current when they first fell in love with the band/artist. But this is not necessarily great for the artist.

Singers and songwriters are in a strange position, because every night they revisit different periods of their life. If you’re a painter, you paint a picture and you sell it to a gallery in Tierra del Fuego and you never see it again. It’s gone, you don’t have to keep looking at it.

But if you’re a songwriter and a performer, you have to keep digging up stuff that you might have written when you were 18 years old, and you go, ‘This song is so immature,’ but if it’s a popular song and the audience wants to hear it, then you have to find something in it to hold on to and relate to. It’s a strange thing.

Richard Thompson in a recent interview.

Thompson tends to push his most recent material rather than his older, best loved songs. He acknowledges that the audience is entitled to expect golden oldies and favourites (I'm avoiding the word "hits" here, because he's never really had any), but feels that the artist is entitled to keep things interesting and current for themselves as well.

His most recent album was recorded on the road, live, in front of audiences who did know that they'd be getting an entire show of new material but didn't know much more than that (there was a 2nd, shorter set of "classics"). Take that! *

So, a little bit of input from the other side of the musician/audience divide.

* admittedly this is probably easier done for Thompson than Metallica. He's never had any hits so doesn't have to worry about revisiting those past glories (though I'm one of a not that large number of people who, in recent years, have been at an RT show where he didn't play "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" ?), and his audience, like Reed's I suspect, expect a bit of the unexpected. Though back in the 90s when he had Mitchell Froom producing there was some unhappiness from long time fans who thought he was becoming "Americanised" (and tended to overlook a substantial high point in terms of songwriting and performance). Big hits can become an albatross around the artist's neck.

Hammeron

Judas Priest did it with their last album, Nostradamus. It was un-Priestlike, it was different and the change would have upset many die hard fans, but it was still good.
Of all the bands mentioned above, the Stones, Genesis, Queen, Opeth, Thompson etc.etc., can you mention one different, experimental album that they put out that could be described as truely atrocious?

Squonk

Tamla Kahn 'Hammeron' McMahon wrote: Judas Priest did it with their last album, Nostradamus. It was un-Priestlike, it was different and the change would have upset many die hard fans, but it was still good.
Of all the bands mentioned above, the Stones, Genesis, Queen, Opeth, Thompson etc.etc., can you mention one different, experimental album that they put out that could be described as truely atrocious?

I think in the case of Queen and Genesis, it wasn't experimental, they crossed over to radio friendly pop, to some it was an awakening to the Bands but for a die hard prog rocker like me it was ATROCIOUS.

Listen to some early Genesis stuff with Gabriel and then listen to "Abacab" or "In too deep", OMG

The same goes for Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody to Radio Ga Ga(must be the worst pop song ever, or least title) , so not really experimental.

Bob-Dubery

Tamla Kahn 'Hammeron' McMahon wrote: Judas Priest did it with their last album, Nostradamus. It was un-Priestlike, it was different and the change would have upset many die hard fans, but it was still good.
Of all the bands mentioned above, the Stones, Genesis, Queen, Opeth, Thompson etc.etc., can you mention one different, experimental album that they put out that could be described as truely atrocious?

The Stones.... yes (subjectively, and certainly nobody would mount a convincing argument that Some Girls is anywhere near Sticky Fingers)

Thompson... I won't pretend to be objective, though a lot of people slammed his '94 album "Mirror Blue" (I say it's their loss ) and he cut a pair of stinkers in the late 70s (or so says me, some long-time fans will regard such criticism from Johnny-come-latelies like me as heresy). He's also gone off and done side projects that have baffled some fans, rather than be viewed as clunkers. I mean what was the King of English Folk Rock doing working with Henry freakin' Kaiser, one of the guys from Henry Cow and Captain Beefheart's drummer?

Genesis is a good example because if you were a fan early on when they made albums like Foxtrot and Selling England By The Pound you probably weren't going to be that happy with Duke. OTOH if you liked the albums cut by the Phil Collins dominated trio you might regard Nursery Cryme as some oddity that they made when that Gabriel guy with all the masks was hanging around and they were probably taking too many drugs. (BTW, I think it's unfair to blame Phil exclusively - Mike Rutherford had strong MOR tendencies too, as the Mike and the Mechanics albums showed)

This is a partly subjective argument. The album may not be "atrocious" but just significantly different, and sufficiently different that some fans won't get it and will write it off instead. It hasn't actually been released yet - has the whole thing been leaked?

But like I said, I don't have a stake in this particular fight, it's just that as a rule I support artists who want to develop and change, even if I personally don't care for the results. The alternative, as I've hinted already, is to have the Beatles rehash Help! ad infinitum. I've long applauded David Bowie (though he probably didn't notice) because he was so hard to pin down.

Hammeron

Squonk, ok I must agree that Radio GaGa was truely atrocious.
The latest Deep Purple stuff doesn't do it for me either.

So, often a major change in direction goes hand in hand with line up change { Deep Purple, Black sabbath } but not always
{ Queen, Metallica }.