CHAPTER 6

PRACTICE and REHEARSAL

Practice is important. However, one must remember that practicing your instrument and songs is only one part of the struggle that you are commencing. The reason that the NVA and the Vietcong were able to prevail over the US Army during the Vietnam War was because of their ideological training. Political education lasted up to four hours every day for the VC guerilla. Target practice and drills were only a fraction of that. The VC guerilla prevailed over his American counterpart because his sense of what he was fighting for was lucid and clear, while his opponent—though he possessed better weaponry and could invoke massive firepower—was politically confused.

During the Napoleonic Wars, when military theorist Carl von Clausewitz was serving as an attaché for the Prussian Army, he determined that the strength of France’s revolutionary forces was indomitable precisely because they were fighting for a cause. The opposing forces were comprised of mercenaries and conscript dupes, and lacked the cohesion of an ideology. Therefore, if your group is fervently ideological, aware of the implications of its aesthetic presentation, and committed to its cause, it will be almost unbeatable. This kind of faith is hard to muster in our blasé, cynical, intellectually paralyzed, narcissistic, pornoholic, and postideological world, but can still be achieved through self-hypnosis or a sort of method acting.

Once you have—through rigorous ideological training—attained the heights of notoriety, infamy, and apparent indomitability, you must be sure not to take the fatal misstep toward hubris, unless your desire is to flame out quite spectacularly. Even the seemingly unstoppable Grand Armée of Napoleon, which had so impressed Herr Clausewitz, ended in retreat, with its soldiers harried by Cossacks and drowning by the thousands during their mad scramble home across the Russian steppe. After this failure, Napoleon’s final act, his “Hundred Days,” was a pale imitation of his actual career, sort of like Sly’s Heard Ya Missed Me record or the Beatles “Free As a Bird.” It finished, as we all know, in ignominy and butchery at the Battle of Waterloo.

Of course, for the English-speaking world, Waterloo is Napoleon’s “greatest hit.” It is certainly what he is most beloved for. It catapulted the career of the British Empire into its Imperial Century (1815–1914), when it ruled over a fifth of the world’s population and a quarter of its landmass in “Splendid Isolation.” So, defeat, as we shall explore later in the text (see “Also-Rans, Wash-Ups, Could-Have-Beens” from Chapter 15), can actually make one more beloved, like a neutered and supplicant household pet.

This was true after the Vietnam War, when the humiliated US Armed Forces became a pitiable organization, whining interminably about war protesters and being bullied by Jane Fonda. Even now, no harsh word can be uttered aloud about the US military lest their feelings be hurt. After the crash and burn of the French army at Waterloo, its legendary units of cuirassiers and Imperial Guards were known to every British schoolboy. When a foe is a threat, they are caricatured as heinous, cloddish, bloodthirsty demons. But once vanquished, they are allowed a certain glamour, cunning, competence, and even sometimes legendary status.

This isn’t particular to war. MLK wouldn’t be institutionalized or honored by the US government if he were still a living, breathing, anti-capitalist radical. Similarly, after one’s band breaks up, everyone will want to buy you a drink and fondly recall your back catalog or onstage heroism. One could also see a rival’s disintegration as a possible opportunity, just as they do yours. When such-and-such group crumbles into ruin, its demolished structure could be a staging ground for your own rise to power.

Practice happens in a specific “practice space.” The practice space will be a place that occasionally fills with water or car exhaust or is infested with termites or vermin. This is okay. The space shouldn’t be absolutely nice and comfortable, but instead a sort of dehumanizing dungeon to spur on your desire to transcend it.

 

I. THERE IS NO “FREE TIME”

Practice isn’t only something for the practice space. One could argue that what is now called “practice” is actually “rehearsal.” Practice is what happens when one is alone and getting one’s chops together. Chops could be practicing guitar or anything consistent with preparing for playing or performing. It could be meditation, reading a book, showering, or watching a film. For the group member, there is no “free time.” The band identity is constant. One is constantly “in” the group one is “in” unless they are “out,” as in kicked out or left out. Therefore, each waking and sleeping hour one must embody the ideals of the group. If tennis shoes aren’t consistent with the identity of the group, one mustn’t wear tennis shoes, even if one is at home alone or on vacation. The entirety of one’s existence must represent the group, until the group is no more.

Why this unremitting role-playing? To ensure that the group, when it makes a “performance,” feels like a cohesive entity and not just a contrived assortment of dressed-up goofs. Why can’t this role be just for stage? Because the rock ’n’ roll band is not Hamlet. Its performance doesn’t end when it alights from stage and it doesn’t begin when it steps up onto it. It is—always. Laurence Olivier was allowed to set his wig and makeup aside when he left the Old Vic at night. He slept in his bed as himself. Chaplin spoke, Brando shed his leathers, and Mae West could rest her burlesque zingers. If one looks at the tabloids in the supermarket, one is treated to views of glamorous screen stars walking their Labradors in khakis and ball caps, or standing beside their SUV. They make no attempt to convince their public that they aren’t the ordinary, lame squares they actually are. But the rock ’n’ roller hasn’t got this luxury. They must inhabit the myth until the myth is real. They live it eternally. Many, like Sid Vicious or Jim Morrison, die for it.

The director Joseph Losey, when filming a period piece such as The Go-Between starring Julie Christie or King & Country with Dirk Bogarde, insisted his actors wear their costumery off the set at all times, even when eating fast food or performing ordinary tasks. This was obviously risky—the clothes might tear or be stained—but it was necessary nonetheless, as it meant his players wouldn’t be so visibly delighted with their outfits while onscreen. In his view, it ensured that the clothes didn’t become the star of the story. Your approach must be similar.

Why all this fuss? Because the group is not really about music—it’s a model or an ideal. All life is practice when one is “in” a group. As much as one is practicing while offstage for being onstage, the inverse is also true—even more so. Since the stage is a controlled environment, with specific assignments for each group member, it’s quite simple to rehearse what happens up there. One can time the events with a fair amount of precision, as is evident with the stadium groups who have choreographed explosions or the simulated lynchings of dwarfs. Offstage is where the ad-libbing, banter, elocution, and improvisational “jamming” techniques are going to be put to the test.

One’s time onstage is a practice session for one’s time offstage. One must learn to be as directly indirect, unselfconsciously self-aware, poetic, loose, dynamic, and charming offstage as one is when one is “treading the boards.” One must delight, captivate, entrance, and seduce whether one is in the coffee shop, the sitting room, or the office cubicle.

What is a song? A song is a kind of joke or story one tells in a concise manner, with drama, wit, strategic reiteration of a theme (the chorus), and pathos. If one can converse with the same brevity and hypnotic mind control as one finds in a “hit” song, one will be all right. If one can move with the heroic gestures and strutting pomposity of stage performance, things are going to work out in all areas of life.

And what is one’s life lived for when one is in a group? It is for the group. Absolutely and unconditionally, like the samurai’s was for his feudal master. The practice time that one has onstage is short; typically a group which isn’t headlining won’t be allowed to “perform” for more than thirty or thirty-five minutes. One must learn to use one’s time efficiently.

The time onstage is “practice” for life and not “rehearsal.” The difference is that the latter is a literal run-through of events as they are proposed to occur, whereas “practice” is general education such as occurs in the dojo, the classic “university,” or charm school.