CHAPTER 15

COMMUNICATION

 

I. TALKING

Some famous and successful groups, such as Slayer and the Ramones, didn’t speak to one another for years of their existence despite being onstage, in the studio, and on tour buses together for months at a time. Their music is typically presumed to have suffered terribly for it—and perhaps it did. But a lack of discourse didn’t hurt the groups existentially. The Ramones were a group for twenty-two years and Slayer has been one for thirty. The truth is that not communicating is what keeps a band together.

Communication within a group is a death knell. As soon as so-called problems or issues are confronted or discussed, they are inflated and nurtured until they obscure the group’s actual goals—i.e., conceptualizing, recording, performing, and creating publicity stunts to enhance notoriety.

The Beatles disintegrated soon after John met Yoko, who was scapegoated by fans as the cause of the breakup. The actual culprit, however, was communication. John and Paul’s simmering, frustrated love for each other was the engine that drove both their creative partnership and their astonishing fecundity. But the Beatles—ever trendy—had begun to talk to one another and attempt to “work it out” by committee, per the late-’60s hippy vogue for democracy, peace-ins, and communitarianism. The hippies, in turn, had been inspired by the model of the “soviets” or worker’s councils of revolutionary-era Russia, which they’d read about in Ten Days That Shook the World, John Reed’s account of October 1917 (the Edwardian era was all the rage at the time); by the analytical psychology of Carl Jung; and by the touchy-feely philosophies of Wilhelm Reich.

The Fab Four, always conscious of staying “with it,” talked and equivocated dutifully but, not being ideologically equipped or having the discipline or structure for parliamentarianism, autocriticism, individuation, or self-governance, abandoned their group rather than endure the tedium of “democracy.” The Beatles had functioned—nay, thrived—when, clustered in their wolf pack, they were swept up by the whirlwind, ordered about by a manager, or bullied by corporate paymasters. They collapsed under the weight of the egalitarian paradigm and the plebiscite.

In fact, so-called “honesty” or openness is the avowed enemy of the group and the pitiless assassin of creative expression. The Beatles’ fatal communicativeness reached its apex when John Lennon worked with the guru of “primal scream” therapy, psychiatrist Arthur Janov, immediately before the group’s official split. When Lennon expressed his innermost fears by exploring childhood “trauma,” an obsessive resentment of songwriting partner Paul McCartney was exhumed. John’s jealousy of Paul’s musicality, “cuteness,” conceitedness, and swinging lifestyle were the wellspring of his own vitriol, dynamism, and drive. The discovery of this fact snuffed out John’s desire to create. After he expressed his contempt for Paul in a Rolling Stone interview (reprised in Lennon Remembers, Straight Arrow, 1971) and through a few blues rants (“How Do You Sleep?”), songwriting was no longer a necessary pursuit.

Indeed, after 1970’s Plastic Ono Band and 1972’s Some Time in New York City (Apple/EMI), John Lennon did little but complete unfinished Beatles-era ideas (“Mind Games,” “Imagine,” “Gimme Some Truth,” and “Jealous Guy” were all leftover sketches from the White Album and Get Back sessions) or play cover versions of his favorite old rock ’n’ roll tunes (Pussy Cats, 1974, RCA Victor; Rock ’n’ Roll, 1975, Apple/EMI) before effectively retiring in 1975. Meanwhile, Paul McCartney eschewed therapeutic techniques in favor of retaining whatever awful fears, manias, and phobias tormented him, thereby maintaining productivity. Accordingly, his hit-making was consistent for decades.

The Rolling Stones, on the other hand, have not spoken much to each other for thirty-five years. As a result, they haven’t self-destructed, their activity has not diminished significantly, and they haven’t stalked trends too desperately. They have retained their particular Stones-y quality, even if the songwriting may have declined. When the Rolling Stones speak to one another, it is through books and media, just as big league ballplayers use journalists or newspapers to talk to their coach, and world leaders insinuate, threaten, or explain themselves through the public forum of the news or from the podium of the United Nations.

The Rolling Stones are on course to have, at the end of their career, a very Catholic marriage. They have found a system that works; their union is an institution, and when considering the alternatives, they are loathe to leave it. This requires a lot of “getting on with it.” In concert and in the studio they “close their eyes and think of England.” Their records for three decades now have been snapshots from the golden years of the relationship (Exile on Main Street, Tattoo You, et al., are a case of “money for old rope”—studio rejects from earlier recordings which were dusted off and presented as new inventions).

Most notable groups, though, are like sparks which burn very brightly for a brief time, and these are the ones which typically either do choose to speak to one another or just can’t find a way to cope. Most so-called girl groups fall into this category, as they are said to be prone to discussion and a certain amount of openness—two fatal factors for longevity as regards groupism. In fact, it has been said that because female bands discuss things, female bands don’t last. It has also been suggested by certain factions that the socialization of men encourages emotional stoicism and goal orientation, while women are encouraged to give credence to “feelings” à la Lennon, which has its catastrophic repercussions on the group model. Whether or not such possibly outrageous generalizations are true, it can be demonstrated empirically that a relatively low percentage of all-female bands survive for more than a few records, with some notable exceptions (the Motown groups in particular).

“Surviving,” however, isn’t necessarily a positive thing for a group. The short-lived group is usually more conceptually concise, pure, and therefore powerful with regard to its legacy. Many of these short-lived groups or performing identities, such as the Slits, the Velvelettes, the Crystals, Vaselines, Dixie Cups, Raindrops, the Whyte Boots, Edie and the Eggs, the Modern Lovers, Delta 5, Treacherous Three, the Avengers, the Heartbreakers, Minor Threat, Rocket from the Tombs, the Sex Pistols, Young Marble Giants, and Rites of Spring loom larger in legend than venerable, aged combos.

Indeed, upon purview of these exalted names, it might seem attractive to construct a group simply in order to explode it in a blaze of glory and immortality. However, doing so merely results in thousands of copy groups exploiting your group’s presentation in clueless ways, which could ultimately lead you to an existence of bitterness, could-have-been mutterings, and resentment of oneself, one’s community, and especially one’s own admirers and imitators.

 

II. ALSO-RANS, WASH-UPS, COULD-HAVE-BEENS

Of course, bitterness at what could have been has its own allure. To be the eternally wounded, washed-up, passed-over, or also-ran is a staple of Hollywood and heroic legend (Oscar Wilde sitting in the rain at an outdoor café after his humiliation, Norman Maine from A Star Is Born, Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven) and can be a satisfying career path in and of itself. It can make you a star—particularly on a local level—without raising the ire of your old gang in the manner that success would have.

The Small Faces were beloved in the UK specifically for the fact that they couldn’t conquer America. Paradoxically, there is no way to jeopardize friendships and one’s personal comfort faster than to be perceived as successful.

But in being a “local loser” or could-have-been, like Brando’s Terry Malloy character in On the Waterfront, one endears oneself to one’s pals. The legend of unfairly stymied success will inevitably snowball to extraordinary proportions with time.

Like the band that fakes its death, the should-have-been is often more well-known and more spectacular seeming than those groups which do have some quantifiable success. After all, the successful ones are known quantities—frail, flawed, and fatally exposed—while the one that should-have-been/could-have-been is a promise and a fantasy, always superior to the goofball onstage, whom he or she can gaze upon with bemused contempt.

An also-ran is like Bobby Kennedy, Trotsky’s USSR, Patrice Lumumba, or the post-Hajj Malcolm X—an irresistible riddle, a choose-your-own-adventure paperback. Conversely, the group that enjoys success is boring, predictable, and conceives even more boring predictability. The flush of success, after all, breeds conservatism born of fear. Everyone famous sees their inevitable future obscurity haunting them like a wraith and they fight to stave it off, with the main tactic being trench warfare, digging in deep, as opposed to the freewheeling outflanking maneuvers favored by the young and hungry upstart.

 

III. GROUP TALK

Since some amount of communication is unavoidable, it’s best to be prepared. Here are some examples of intragroup communications that were filmed. Though we know all of these interactions are probably hastening the end, by giving them a cursory overview we can see what went wrong and what went right.

 

GROUP COMMUNICATION EXAMPLE 1

(from the film Let It Be)

 

Paul: We’ve just gone around, like, for like an hour, with nothing in our heads, just the riffs . . .

George: The riffs . . . there’s no riffs . . . [unintelligible]

Paul: No, but see, “You and I” . . . [sings] “You and I have memories . . . “

George: [singing] “You and I have memories . . . ”

Paul: But it’s not together, so it’s not sounding together.

George: So we keep on playing till we . . .

Paul: Or we could stop and say, “It’s not together.”

George: If we had a tape recorder now, just tape it and play it back, we’d throw that out straight away.

Paul: It’s complicated now, so . . . see if we can get it simpler and then complicate it where it needs complications. But it’s complicated in the bit . . .

George: What’s so complicated?

Paul: I mean, you know . . .

George: All I’m playing is the chords . . .

Paul: C’mon, you always get annoyed by me . . . I’m trying to help you, but I always feel that I’m annoying you.

George: No, you’re not annoying me.

Paul: But you know what I mean.

George: ’Cos it can take even longer, you know . . .

Paul: Look, I’m not trying to get you. You’re looking at it again as if I’m trying to get you, but I’m not trying to get you. I really am just trying to just say, “Look, lads, should we try it like this?”

George: I don’t mind. I’ll play whatever you want me to play or I won’t play at all if you don’t want me to play . . . Whatever it is that would please you, I’ll do it.

John: I wish we could start hearing the tapes now; like, do it and hear what it is . . . Is it just because we don’t feel like it or does the guitar sound all right, really?

 

ANALYSIS: If this interaction was difficult to read because of some supposed tediousness, then you are unfortunately not qualified to be in a group.

In this historic interaction, filmed during the recording of Let It Be for the cinéma vérité film of the same name, Paul and George are attempting a song arrangement. As Paul is the composer, the onus is on him to explain his desires to George. George shows annoyance, mostly through tone of voice, and John steps in to mediate, invoking a neutral machine—“the tapes”—as a judicial tool to settle the problem.

John actually shows remarkable prescience about the role of machines as mediators in modern society. Whether they are automated “breathalyzers,” “carnivore” computers that monitor billions of e-mail messages for clues of sedition, roadside mechanical speed traps, or android assassin missiles built by Washington that roam the third world, robot judges are an inescapable feature of the landscape today.

Videotaped entrapment is also the method du jour for political assassination, whereby lawmakers (and celebrities, of course) are regularly clobbered for arbitrary sex crimes by whichever top-secret shadowy clique they might have transgressed against.

Metallica, being a group from a later era, has a different approach to mediation. In this discussion, also regarding arranging a song in the studio, Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich argue conceptually and semantically while Bob Rock, the producer, plays mediator.

 

GROUP COMMUNICATION EXAMPLE 2

(from the film Some Kind of Monster)

 

Lars: You start talking about the idea of the guitar solo, as we have known it, being something that was a little outdated and maybe reintroducing some . . .

Kirk: Can I say something that I think is bullshit? This whole fucking “solo dates the whole thing” . . . That’s so bullshit. If you don’t play a guitar solo in one of these songs, that dates it to this period, and that cements it to a trend that’s happening in music right now. I think that’s stupid and I think it’s totally trendy.

Lars: That’s not what I said. It’s always been about, like, where it can go that’s kind of new and interesting instead of just repeating something of the past.

Kirk: I’m not interested in playing traditional guitar solos anymore . . . I just think . . .

Lars: You told me that.

Kirk: For me it’s just boring, you know.

Bob: To me, if you can add a color to the song, that satisfies you and works for the song, that’s what we should do. But I don’t wanna get in the position where it’s like we put something down on the tape to satisfy your ego, my ego, James’s ego, or Lars’s ego. I think it should serve what’s goin’ down. Like, in other words, I think there shouldn’t be a rule about no solos, there shouldn’t be a rule of solos.

Kirk: And I agree. It really is to me all about serving the song, and you know I feel much better about that ’cos I just don’t wanna follow certain trends that I see other bands following. We don’t necessarily have to stick to our traditional way, but we also don’t have to follow that trend.

 

ANALYSIS: This is a typical aesthetic discussion that any group might have, with Kirk being the traditionalist and Lars attempting to move Metallica from its formalist foundations. As Californians, emotional deliberation and a “pop psych” vocabulary are, for them, culturally normative.

The earlier conversation is fine because it is an example of the group defining itself against a perceived status quo of bands and the trends they represent. This is really the only type of discussion a group should ever have—one of paranoid simplification of the outside world and vociferous definition of the group in opposition to it.

Bob, the producer, serves his role masterfully as mediator/therapist: stroking egos, spouting truisms, and dispensing nonadvice in a melodious tone.

 

GROUP COMMUNICATION EXAMPLE 3

 

Kirk: It’s just real confusing sounding.

James: It’s just gacking the vocals all up. I mean, it’s clever and everything, but . . . I don’t see what it does to it.

Lars: I think that’s how you hear it and that’s fine. I’m just trying to do something different.

James: You know, I’m used to the drummer doing the “beat” part . . . you know what I mean? Holding it together.

Lars: Um . . . what I’m hearing is . . . choose my words carefully here . . . Um . . . it’s pretty straightforward; the guitar shit . . . it’s a little stock, so I started trying to introduce some kind of edge to it from the drums.

James: Those things that we throw out to each other are total bullshit. It sounds too stock. It sounds too normal to me . . . I mean . . . you know what I mean? You’re saying this shit so you can get your point across about doing a drumbeat. You know it doesn’t hold any water.

Lars: To you.

James: It doesn’t.

Lars: I think it’s fucking stock! Which part of that is unclear to you? I think it sounds stock to my ears. I mean, you want me to write it down?

James: Yeah, write it down. I can’t hear you.

 

ANALYSIS: So we see that while the tape player, a neutral robot, served as mediator for the Beatles, with Metallica it is a source of antagonism—the self-examination it affords creates a rift. But the problem in discussion #3 is actually semantic. Speaking about music can be a minefield since terminology is loose, emotionally laden, and not standardized. Before you start speaking with your group, therefore, you should agree on what terms mean. What do the words “stock,” “wet,” “dirgy,” “punchy,” “proggy/proggish,” “psychedelic,” “Sun Studios,” “tuneless,” “punk,” etc., mean to the individual members? Agree on the definitions of these terms before you let them fly, willy-nilly, around the room.

Since absolutes for these terms might be impossible to determine, it may be best to speak in “hard” terminology. Treat the band as a controlled scientific experiment and the songs and sounds as data in a lab.

 

GROUP COMMUNICATION EXAMPLE 4

(from the film One Plus One)

 

Keith: . . . If I could get a little more . . .

Mick: A little more of Keith in the cans . . . [louder] A little more of Keith in the cans, he says . . .

Keith: I can’t hear myself.

Mick: Okay, well, Keith, I thought we had the solo on the third, er, on the fourth one instead of the . . . that’s the way it sort of is, and then the last verse is different.

Keith: Okay.

Mick: So, like three verses straight through and then the solo or whatever it is. It should start out very “cool”; it should be very cool.

Producer: Just . . . [inaudible]  Just you on your own, Bill . . . Hold on a minute, everybody.

[Bass guitar plays]

Producer: [inaudible] that sound?

Keith: Can I . . . ?

Producer: What?

Keith: I wanna move amps . . . I moved to the small Vox. It’s a better sound.

Producer: You want the Vox? The little Vox?

Keith: I wanna go into there.

[Group plays random notes for interminable

time]

Producer: Keith? You won’t get nasty if I ask you to turn down, will you?

Keith: [jokingly] Yes, I will!

 

ANALYSIS: This is a group arguably at the height of its powers, and as such, the members barely speak to one another. As opposed to the groups in the earlier examples, who hastened dysfunction by talking things through, the Stones at this juncture operate like deer in a herd or fish in a school: intuitively, unconsciously, and therefore successfully.