In 1964, the young guitarist of a new English band, formerly called the Detours, was finishing the last song of the band's set. He intended to flourish his guitar over his head before setting it down on its stand and taking his leave from the stage. Instead, he accidentally rammed the neck of the guitar into the unusually low ceiling. The guitar howled with feedback, the crowd went wild, and the guitarist - in a flash of embarrassment, anger, quick-thinking and chutzpah - grabbed the guitar from the ceiling and smashed it to bits. For the next few years, the band was arguably best known, for better or worse, as the guys who smashed their instruments after every show (the drummer and singer quickly learned to follow suit; the bassist would always keep on playing through the mayhem). The guitarist's name was Peter Townshend, and the Detours had recently changed their name to the Who.
The Who's managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, sought the Who as clients purely because of the band's attitude and standing with the fashionable Mod crowd. Lambert later explained his rationale to a young Malcolm McLaren, who would go on to take the same approach to the extreme with a new punk band called the Sex Pistols: “I just found a bunch of guys with lots of attitude who couldn't play, and promoted the hell out of them”.
The problem was, Townshend considered himself a dedicated and gifted musician, and went to great lengths to prove it with grandiose rock opera such as Tommy and Quadrophenia. Audiences would still call for him to destroy his instrument at the end of performance. Eventually he ended the practice (around the time he started playing the very weighty Les Paul Deluxe guitars....coincidence? Probably not), and the Who transitioned from trailblazers to elder statesmen (well...half the band died over the next twenty years, too. Curiously, the remaining instrumentation would fit the Beatles survivors now quite nicely, 'though Ringo would probably have a coronary event trying to play like the late Keith Moon. Oh, well...).
There are a number of bands who have taken up the practice of instrument destruction on stage since then (although Yngwie Malmsteen and Paul Stanley always switch to cheap copies just before the wood starts to fly), but it's not the highlight of anyone's show anymore. It was the Who's trademark. It put them on the map, and it eventually became a millstone holding them back from more legitimate recognition.
Townshend had been well-aware that the Who needed to distinguish itself somehow in order to rise above the run-of-the-mill plethora of young bands in early '60's London. They already had the Beatles, the Stones, Pink Floyd and the Yardbirds as contemporary, local competition (no pressure, mind you). Instrument-smashing was accidental for the first few seconds, but a calculated expenditure from then on. There are a number of bands since who have amplified some element of their character in order to burn their image onto the public retina. Just as the Who caricatured its own anger, abandon and nihilism to make it crystal-clear to even the most thick-headed audience member, AC/DC caricatured their tiny, frantic, cheeky lead guitarist; Meat Loaf drew attention to his own girth; Madonna updated her self-caricature every year or two in her heyday, from club-dancing queen to sexhibitionist; David Bowie conveniently morphed in and out of the Ziggy Stardust image; and a band like Kiss was and is almost a caricature of a caricature. More current bands like OK Go got themselves on the map with incredibly inventive videos (you've probably seen their treadmill-syncronized-dance routine on video...can't say I remember anything about the song).
A rather weird by-product of this image over-amplification is that quite often, a goodly number of bands see the success of another band's image, and assume...the same image. The pop-metal bands of the '80's (teased hair, guy-liner, pvc pants, pointy guitars, etc), and grunge bands of the '90's (garage-band instruments, baggy clothes, unwashed long hair), all writing music from the same idea-book, cashed in on existing images. A very small handful of bands survived such origins. The resulting output of music tended to be a mile wide and an inch deep.
Of course, the one rule in artist “attraction devices” is that there are no other rules. There have been more than a few notable cases of artists rising above the sea of their contemporaries purely on the strength of (gasp!) their music. I've always marvelled at the cajones of the A&R guy who signed Dire Straits to the Polygram label in '77. Understated, almost mumbly singing, clean and tasty guitar lines, slice-of-life poetry for lyrics, and not especially catchy songs – all brought to market at the height of disco and punk. Somebody at Polygram had figured out that a few baby-boomers had actually grown up and wanted some adult music...and Generation X was there already in strong numbers.
Then as now, all bands – consciously or unconsciously – choose one of the three approaches described above. You can craft and amplify an original image, perhaps fast-tracking you to public recognition; but pay a price for your image upstaging your music. You can 'borrow' a trendy image, cashing in on what's currently hot (remember all those Nickelback sound-alikes from a decade ago?) and probably suffer both artistic restraint and utter anonymity within a few short years; or you can take the big gamble and let your music speak for itself, leaving the 'image' to hazard. If you're a band of especially photogenic people, a la the Police, the image will probably take care of itself, provided you don't come to blows over the hair-dryer too often. For the rest of us, who'd just like to make a comfortable living making music, having good musicians play the best music you can write – and have fun doing it – is the best platform to start with. Despite being a longtime fan of a number of 'caricature' bands myself, I've never felt compelled to take either of the first two options, and getting older does nothing but reinforce that view. I may keep myself trim, but at my age, I don't think wearing a meat-dress would help my career.
The Who's managers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, sought the Who as clients purely because of the band's attitude and standing with the fashionable Mod crowd. Lambert later explained his rationale to a young Malcolm McLaren, who would go on to take the same approach to the extreme with a new punk band called the Sex Pistols: “I just found a bunch of guys with lots of attitude who couldn't play, and promoted the hell out of them”.
The problem was, Townshend considered himself a dedicated and gifted musician, and went to great lengths to prove it with grandiose rock opera such as Tommy and Quadrophenia. Audiences would still call for him to destroy his instrument at the end of performance. Eventually he ended the practice (around the time he started playing the very weighty Les Paul Deluxe guitars....coincidence? Probably not), and the Who transitioned from trailblazers to elder statesmen (well...half the band died over the next twenty years, too. Curiously, the remaining instrumentation would fit the Beatles survivors now quite nicely, 'though Ringo would probably have a coronary event trying to play like the late Keith Moon. Oh, well...).
There are a number of bands who have taken up the practice of instrument destruction on stage since then (although Yngwie Malmsteen and Paul Stanley always switch to cheap copies just before the wood starts to fly), but it's not the highlight of anyone's show anymore. It was the Who's trademark. It put them on the map, and it eventually became a millstone holding them back from more legitimate recognition.
Townshend had been well-aware that the Who needed to distinguish itself somehow in order to rise above the run-of-the-mill plethora of young bands in early '60's London. They already had the Beatles, the Stones, Pink Floyd and the Yardbirds as contemporary, local competition (no pressure, mind you). Instrument-smashing was accidental for the first few seconds, but a calculated expenditure from then on. There are a number of bands since who have amplified some element of their character in order to burn their image onto the public retina. Just as the Who caricatured its own anger, abandon and nihilism to make it crystal-clear to even the most thick-headed audience member, AC/DC caricatured their tiny, frantic, cheeky lead guitarist; Meat Loaf drew attention to his own girth; Madonna updated her self-caricature every year or two in her heyday, from club-dancing queen to sexhibitionist; David Bowie conveniently morphed in and out of the Ziggy Stardust image; and a band like Kiss was and is almost a caricature of a caricature. More current bands like OK Go got themselves on the map with incredibly inventive videos (you've probably seen their treadmill-syncronized-dance routine on video...can't say I remember anything about the song).
A rather weird by-product of this image over-amplification is that quite often, a goodly number of bands see the success of another band's image, and assume...the same image. The pop-metal bands of the '80's (teased hair, guy-liner, pvc pants, pointy guitars, etc), and grunge bands of the '90's (garage-band instruments, baggy clothes, unwashed long hair), all writing music from the same idea-book, cashed in on existing images. A very small handful of bands survived such origins. The resulting output of music tended to be a mile wide and an inch deep.
Of course, the one rule in artist “attraction devices” is that there are no other rules. There have been more than a few notable cases of artists rising above the sea of their contemporaries purely on the strength of (gasp!) their music. I've always marvelled at the cajones of the A&R guy who signed Dire Straits to the Polygram label in '77. Understated, almost mumbly singing, clean and tasty guitar lines, slice-of-life poetry for lyrics, and not especially catchy songs – all brought to market at the height of disco and punk. Somebody at Polygram had figured out that a few baby-boomers had actually grown up and wanted some adult music...and Generation X was there already in strong numbers.
Then as now, all bands – consciously or unconsciously – choose one of the three approaches described above. You can craft and amplify an original image, perhaps fast-tracking you to public recognition; but pay a price for your image upstaging your music. You can 'borrow' a trendy image, cashing in on what's currently hot (remember all those Nickelback sound-alikes from a decade ago?) and probably suffer both artistic restraint and utter anonymity within a few short years; or you can take the big gamble and let your music speak for itself, leaving the 'image' to hazard. If you're a band of especially photogenic people, a la the Police, the image will probably take care of itself, provided you don't come to blows over the hair-dryer too often. For the rest of us, who'd just like to make a comfortable living making music, having good musicians play the best music you can write – and have fun doing it – is the best platform to start with. Despite being a longtime fan of a number of 'caricature' bands myself, I've never felt compelled to take either of the first two options, and getting older does nothing but reinforce that view. I may keep myself trim, but at my age, I don't think wearing a meat-dress would help my career.