I’ve never been in a rock band but I’ve stood and watched enough up-and-coming bands perform to have realized a few things the people in those bands still don’t appear to have realized. The other night I saw another lot of up-and-comers and found myself thinking the same things I’ve thought for years.
1. The most precious resource is not your music, it’s the audience’s attention, and therefore you shouldn’t allow the latter to drop for so much as a second.
2. Please introduce yourself or be introduced. Nobody gets points for being modest. Bob Dylan has a man whose job it is to list his achievements and remind the audience who he is before he comes on. And he’s Bob Bloody Dylan.
3. Get on stage and start at least two minutes before your agreed time. And for God’s sake, don’t faff. In their early days Elvis Costello and the Attractions would run on clutching the tools of their trade, which was a signal. Any band who didn’t want to waste their own time were unlikely to waste yours either.
4. Audiences only really like two parts of a show – the beginning and the end. You should prolong the former by rolling directly through your first three numbers without pausing. Then make sure you end suddenly and unexpectedly. Audiences reward bands who stop early and punish those who stay late.
5. Between songs, never approach the microphone and say the first thing that comes into your head. The chat is as important as the music. The audience wants to feel that somebody is in charge. If it isn’t you they will take charge, and you won’t like that one little bit.
6. In his excellent book The Ten Rules of Rock and Roll, Robert Forster says, ‘No band does anything new on stage after the first twenty minutes.’ Try to prove him wrong by doing one thing the audience is not expecting you to do. That’s what the people will talk about on the way home.
7. Finally, there’s nothing an audience enjoys more than hearing something familiar. If you think your songwriting and all-round musical excellence are enough to entertain a bunch of strangers for an hour with songs they have never heard before, bully for you. The Beatles didn’t, but what the hell did they know?