Organising Pop

ORGANISING POP: Why so few pop acts make pop music. Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy by Michael Lewis Jones. August, 1997. Table of Contents. Page. Introduction 1-6. Preface. 7-8. Chapter 1 Making Music in the Hope of Making 9-51. Popular Music. Chapter 2 Making Records and Making Commodities: 52 - 85. A Range of Views. Chapter 3 Simon Frith and The Sociology of Rock.. 86 - 118. Chapter 4 Keith Negus and Producing Pop. 119-152. Chapter 5 Further Questions of Method. 153- 187. Chapter 6 Case Histories: Respect and Roadhouse. 188 - 208. Chapter 7 The Formation of Latin Quarter. 209 - 241. Chapter 8 The Making of Mick and Caroline: The 242 - 266. Unmaking of Latin Quarter. Chapter 9 Analysis and Conclusions. 267 - 317. Bibliography 318 - 324. ABSTRACT. Organising Pop : why so few pop acts make pop music. Michael Lewis Jones. At any one time thousands of pop acts aspire to making hit records - the only guarantee that the music they make is indeed popular music. Of these aspirant acts, only a tiny percentage actually make pop records that have a chance of reaching a mass market for popular musical products. What is more surprising is that only one- in-eight of pop acts signed by major record companies goes on to attain popular success . This study is concerned to discover lvhat it is about the nature of record- making that so regularly ends in the failure of the vast majority of pop acts signed to major record companies. As a search for the answer to a question, this research study begins by attempting to define and qualify the terms of its analysis. Within this, the position of the researcher and the methods of data collection allowed by that position are explored in some detail. This exploration is necessitated by the singularities of my position as researcher - not only do I discuss record making from the perspectives gained through my own experience of that activity; I also explore a record I helped to make. The method applied in this case, Ìntellectual Autobiography', is novel, but not unprecedented. Additional data is generated through an adaptation of an allied methodology - that of Ìnterpretive Interactionism' - in the construction of the `case histories' of two further pop acts who also failed to make hit records for major companies. The `singularity' of this research project is further expressed in the nature of its theorisation - where theory is the goal rather than the medium of the study. This does not render it an exercise in empiricism, however. The nature of the subject matter should indicate how problematic is the making of music that becomes popular music only through the agency of mass sales. In exploring the coincidence, interaction and mutual dependency of music-making and musical commodity-making, this study analyses the production processes of popular music. It does this, firstly, by considering what representations exist of popular music production in the literature on popular music. It then suggests that concepts developed in the field of Organisation Theory can assist in the further development of the understanding of the industrial processes of popular music production. The analysis of the data generated in the construction of the three case histories through the application of Organisation Theory concepts leads to the proposition that a `supra organisation' is called into existence by the process of record-making. The study then draws the conclusion that this notion of the `supra organisation' can be utilised as an heuristic device for the analysis of record-making as a dynamic whole. Suggestions are then made for further research into popular music-making which proceeds from an appreciation of the need to treat record-making holistically and to access it through a modified version of the practice of ethnomethodological ethnography. Introduction. This study seeks an answer to a single question: why do so many popular music acts signed to major record companies fail to make music that becomes popular? Quite clearly, when dealing with a term as fluid as `popularity' and with the equally broad, and connected, notions of the `success' or `failure' of pop acts and the records they make, a considerable degree of qualification is required. Before examining these terms more closely, we need to identify the origin of the question, itself. This study was motivated by a combination of two statistics: firstly, of all pop acts extant at any one time, only a tiny percentage will win a record deal with a major company; and, secondly, only one-in-eight of these signed pop acts will go on to make a profit - where `profit-making' is the immediate evidence that the act's work sold in the kind of quantities that verified its popularity. In turn, profit-making from mass sales is the only real guarantee that the act will continue to record its music and, therefore, continue to exist as a pop act beyond the most local of levels - at least until the next round of record releases takes place. The provenance of the statistics referred to above will be discussed in Chapter One but, already, it should be apparent that much more than the terms so far identified will require qualification in the early stages of this inquiry (in fact the inquiry can only proceed through such a process of qualification). For example, we will need to clarify the choice and nature of the term `pop act'; we will need to probe the implied connection between making popular music and `making a profit'; and we will need to confront the further implication that music-making and record-making are discrete but connected activities where the `success' or `failure' of pop acts is 2 concerned. All of this will be the work of the introductory chapter, here I wish to draw attention to a more fundamental and foundational issue - that of the singularity of this work as a Ph.D thesis in Popular Music Studies. My reason for mounting the attempt to address the phenomenon of the extremely high failure rate amongst aspirant pop acts is a complex one but is linked inextricably with my own experience of making records over a thirteen-year period. It is linked, also, with the fact that I had been a pop fan for a very long time before I began to write, and to collaborate on, songs that might attract the attention of record companies. As an avid consumer of pop I took certain pre-conceptions of how pop success is created with me into the music industry. The usefulness of these pre- conceptions was quickly exploded. Equally quickly, what had begun as a thrilling exercise in making pop music turned into a demanding and dismaying encounter with the protocols of survival as a pop act. Without over-dramatising the experience, it can certainly be described as a learning-curve of considerable upward-steepnesss. As a consequence of the decline in the fortunes of Latin Quarter, the pop act of which I was a member, I needed to find new ways of generating an income. In the earliest phases of that transition away from a complete reliance on song-writing and record-making as the sole source of my income, I became involved in a variety of pop-related projects - from developing courses in song-writing and in music industry practices in a variety of academic arenas, to the earliest stages of pop management with a large number of acts. The more diverse, and, in some ways, concentrated, became my attention on the various processes involved in creating music and in creating pop groups, the more I became concerned with the general question of why pop happens in the ways that it does. 3 Inevitably, when I committed to researching pop, I needed to clarify precisely what it was that I intended to research. Initially, I determined to research not only the `processes' of becoming a pop act, but also how these processes might be argued to inflect the making of pop music, itself. Further, because I had begun to read the academic literature on pop, I wanted to examine why it was that accounts of popular music-making tended not to consider that such inflections are the very core of the pop experience. On narrowing my concerns to these (enormously broad!) parameters I was then forced to recognise that it was my own experience that had driven me to argue the connections between `pop processes' and the practices of pop composers as the `core of the pop experience'. Even so, my èxperience' was no longer limited just to that of the act I had been involved with, it now stretched, in a disordered and unstructured way, to the concerns and practices of the many aspirant pop acts I had begun to come into contact with. As a consequence of making these cumulative recognitions I then determined that, in order for me to mount a popular music research project of any kind, I needed to explore how my experience of making pop connected with my position as researcher - for, whatever aspect of popular musical experience I researched, it would remain the case that my judgements would be informed by a hidden `reservoir' of `prejudices' or `prejudgements'. In this way, while I remained committed to exploring why pop `worked' in the ways that I believed that it did, I needed to systematise my research in such a way that my `prejudices' could be explored. Further, I needed to explore why it was that I could not find my experience (this `broader' experience that included interactions with aspirant pop acts) reflected in the academic literature on popular music.

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