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British Indie Music in the 1990S: Public Spheres, Media and Exclusion

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British Indie Music in the 1990S: Public Spheres, Media and Exclusion British Indie Music In The 1990s: Public Spheres, Media and Exclusion Rachel White . Goldsmiths College Submitted for the degree of PhD Abstract Developing existing theories of public and counterpublic spheres, this thesis moves beyond theoretical ideals to formulate a working model of the cultural counterpublic sphere in which British indie music is understood, legitimated and ascribed value. This 'indie public' is then interrogated with the central aim of understanding the continued discrepancy in levels of male and female participation in British indie music at every level during the 1990s. Given the centrality of the media to contemporary, geographically dispersed publics it is through a discursive analysis of the British music press, particularly the NME and the Melody Maker, that the masculine constitution of the indie public is revealed. The music press is viewed as not just representing or reflecting the indie scene, but as central to its construction as a genre and the discursive production of privileged subject positions therein. The empirical research analyses how discourses of gender, and to a lesser extent race, class and sexuality, inform the key themes and concepts through which the music press both constructs and evaluates artists and audiences in the indie public. The bulk of the analysis focuses the extended coverage of four prominent 90s' indie bands; Suede, Elastica, Oasis, and Echobelly. The findings are presented thematically in four main areas; the construction of authenticity and 'the artist', the construction of stars and the bases of their appeal, the importance of British national identity during the 'Britpop' era of the mid-1990s and the production of fans and audiences in the indie public. The research proposes that these themes are interlinked, intrinsically gendered and productive of a profoundly male homosocial sphere from which women are largely excluded. 2 Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to thank my supervisors Celia Lury and Kate Nash for their theoretical guidance, insight, enthusiasm, reassurance and patience during the researching and writing this thesis. I am just sorry you had to learn so much about Liam Gallagher in the process. Thanks too to the students and staff in the Sociology department at Goldsmiths for their continual support. I am indebted to the ESRC for awarding me a studentship, without which life would have been immeasurably harder, and also to my family who have supported me financially and emotionally over the past years. Particular gratitude to my parents for not throwing out my collection of music papers. I knew they would come in handy one day. I could also not have completed this thesis without the constant love and encouragement of my friends. Special thanks go to Tamsin, Ruth, Jessica, Joanna, Caroline, Frank and Stephen and also to my fellow Ladyfest London 2002 organisers and all the inspiring people I've got to know as a result of that experience; you've changed my life. Above all I dedicate this work to Donna, the girl wonder. 3 Contents Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 Introduction 5 1. The Public Sphere 24 2. The Indie Public 45 3. Methodology 61 4. Introducing the Band 78 'New band' articles and the basics of the indie public 5. You need to be yourself 99 Constructing authentic artists in the indie public 6. If I can't be a star I won't get out of bed 122 Stars and appeal in the indie public 7. Will I belong dear? 142 National identity in the indie public 8. Here they come, the beautiful ones 162 Audiences and fans in the indie public Make a cup of tea and put a record on 181 Conclusions Appendix 1. New band articles sample details 190 Appendix 2. Case-study bands sample details 193 Appendix 3. Chapter heading references 207 Bibliography 208 4 British indie music in the 1990s: Public spheres, media and exclusion Introduction 'Writing about music is like dancing about architecture' Elvis Costello [attributed].1 Writing about music is important. It can be fun and inspiring. It can introduce you to great new bands you'd never heard of. It can educate you about great old bands you never knew existed. It can make you go out and buy a concert ticket, or a record, or a guitar. It can help you learn about who you are or who you might be. It could even prompt you to write a thesis. It is not like dancing about architecture. On the other hand, writing about music is never just about music (can you imagine how tedious that would be?). Certainly, it's impossible to codify the sounds of music in writing, but to suggest that writing about music is pointless because music can 'speak for itself', in fact does a great disservice to writing about music. It's about giving music meaning, exploring its uses, deifying its impossibly cool producers. It is not like dancing about architecture. In this thesis I will not be writing about music but rather writing about writing about music, specifically that which was written about indie music between 1993 and 1998. This thesis is about why more of that writing is not about women, or written by women, or read by women. It will attempt to explain why writing about music is not like dancing about arch itectu re ... What is indie? The British indie music scene in 1993 was the product of certain developments in guitar­ based rock/pop over the previous fifteen to twenty years. As a genre indie is a far from unified concept, however its roots are most often traced back to the punk era of the late- 1970s and the birth of independent record labels. Whilst the earliest independent singles might have been issued as promotional tools designed to catch the eye of the major labels (Harris, 2003:5), by the early 1980s independent labels had taken on a more explicit ideological mantle. Labels such as Rough Trade, Factory and Creation rejected 1 Cited in DeCurtis, 1999:vii. 5 the profit-driven music industry with its multinational major labels, and embraced business practices such as splitting any profits 50/50 with artists, allowing bands to retain ownership of their material, refusing to mail journalists and DJs promotional copies of records and abolishing industry guest lists at their artists' gigs. Above all, the indie ethic became characterised by what John Harris (2003) describes as, 'a belief that love of music should always take precedence over the balance sheet' (p8). In its politics of production indie embodied one of the key 'political' facets of popular culture identified by Street (1997). While the politics of an indie record's production cannot, 'be read directly off the text or the uses to which it is put or the intentions of the artist' (1997:40), they are evident in the alternative criteria used to make decisions about which artists' music is recorded and distributed. Thus, where the decisions and processes of the major labels WOUld, as Street argues, 'result in a culture which replicates what has gone before, reworking familiar formulae' (1997:41), indie, in its early days at least, attempted to represent a new, oppositional approach to cultural production, and was defined not by musical criteria, but through its political economy. However, the purity of this arrangement did not last long, if it ever existed at all. The separation between indie and major labels was soon blurred as independents worked with major distributors, or allowed major labels to assist them financially. Former indie bands signed to major labels, while they established 'faux-indie' off-shoots to attract indie talent. However, the 1980s saw indie culture coalesce in other ways. As Bennett (2001) notes, 'the question thus becomes not one of the "commercial versus non-commercial", a debate that in any case quickly founders, but rather how things are accepted or rejected as components of indie-guitar culture' (p51). The culture that grew around independent records offered those participating in it an insular world where one's taste in music dictated and directed not only one's identity, but one's entire outlook on life. John Harris dubs it a, 'warm kind of sanctuary' (2003:9) and describes the mid to late 80s' indie culture as one where, Fans of independent music could forget about the mainstream and simply focus their attention on the fortunes of a select coterie of groups ... the pronouncements of its figureheads - Morrissey was joined by the likes of James' Tim Booth and The Wedding Present's David Gedge - ensured that the indie world oriented itself around much more than music. In addition, one could detect a mixture of political dissent, "right-on" attitudes, and a spurning of the traditional totems of rock 'n' roll: long hair, leather trousers, drugs and the hoary musical rudiments that were rooted in the blues (p9). Indie could literally become a way of life for the artists, journalists, DJs, promoters, record companies, specialist record shop owners, and of course, fans who embraced it. Not only did indie reject the mainstream, but for the most part the mainstream ignored it. Aside from a handful of popular indie acts, notably The Smiths and later the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses, pop institutions such as the Top 40 and Top Of The Pops were largely undisturbed by the miserablist janglings of indie bands. 6 Indie culture is defined by its alternative sensibilities (Bennett, 2001 :49), and its 'otherness'. In his discussion of the role of the guitar in indie Bennett identifies several features that distinguish indie. To start with its live music scene is based around low-key, small-scale gigs taking place in the back rooms of pubs such as the Bull & Gate in Kentish Town and the Falcon in Camden and hundreds of others throughout the land.
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