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A rocker’s guide to management - Bands are known for drink, drugs and dust-ups. But beyond the debauchery lie four models for how to run a business.


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2019 Jan 25, 12:04pm   767 views  5 comments

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In his languidly titled autobiography, “Life”, Keith Richards tells a story that captures something about the workplace culture of the Rolling Stones and his decades as the band’s guitarist. It’s 1984 and the Stones are in Amsterdam for a meeting (yes, even Keith Richards attends meetings). That night, Richards and Mick Jagger go out for a drink and return to their hotel in the early hours, by which time Jagger is somewhat the worse for wear. “Give Mick a couple of glasses, he’s gone,” Richards writes, scornfully.

Jagger decides that he wants to see Charlie Watts, who has already gone to bed. He picks up the phone, calls Watts’s room and says, “Where’s my drummer?” There is no response from the other end of the line. Jagger and Richards have a few more drinks. Twenty minutes later, there’s a knock at the door. It is Watts, dressed in one of his Savile Row suits, freshly shaved and cologned. He seizes Jagger and shouts “Never call me your drummer again,” and delivers a sharp right hook to the singer’s chin.

Rock stars sometimes seem to exist in a completely different world to our own. It is easy to forget that they, too, are subject to office politics. Watts was the drummer, and Jagger was the leader, or co-leader, of the band. It was Jagger who commanded stages around the world and took responsibility for the band’s major business decisions. But by calling Watts my drummer, Jagger had upset the delicate balance of deference and respect that sustains the relationships between co-workers in any workplace. Of course, there aren’t many offices in which the principals take industrial quantities of artificial stimulants and launch themselves into fistfights. (Imagine being the HR director for the Stones – the paperwork!) But the dynamics of an incident like this are familiar to anyone who has ever felt compelled to request that their boss get over themselves.

The notion that bands should make music for the love of it was always romantic and now seems positively quaint. Rock groups are mini-corporations (some of them not so mini). Bands such as Coldplay or Kings of Leon operate sophisticated corporate machines that are responsible for multiple revenue streams; at a recent conference, Metallica’s drummer spoke about the importance of using the right customer-engagement software. Yet the music machine ultimately depends on a small group of talented individuals working closely together to create something magical. Once members of a group decide that they can’t stand to be in the same room as each other, the magic stops and the money dries up.

If rock groups are businesses, businesses are getting more like rock bands. Workplaces are far more informal than they used to be, with less emphasis on protocol, rank and authority. Many firms try to cultivate the creativity that can come from close collaboration. Employers attempt to engineer personal chemistry, hiring coaches to fine-tune team dynamics and sending staff on team-building exercises. Employees are encouraged to share lunch, play table tennis and generally hang out. As the founder of Hubble, a London office-space company, put it, “We hope that our team will become friends first, and colleagues second.”

Businesses have also acquired a patina of rock-star glamour, particularly those in Silicon Valley. Friends who once gathered in garages to thrash out songs on guitars and drums are now as likely to get together to brainstorm ideas for apps and dream of having their success lauded in the press as they receive billion-dollar exits. Garry Tan, a former founder who now manages a San Francisco venture-capital fund, told me, “A startup is like a jam band. You need a drummer, and someone says, ‘Oh I went to school with a drummer’.” Next thing you know, your future is bound together with the people you got drunk with in university bars or played Fortnite with after school.

Successful startups have to make a difficult transition from being a gang of friends working on a cool idea to being managers of a complex enterprise with multiple stakeholders. It’s a problem familiar to rock groups, which can go quickly from being local heroes to global brands, and from being responsible only for themselves to having hundreds of people rely on them for income. In both cases, people who made choices by instinct and on their own terms acquire new, often onerous responsibilities with barely any preparation. Staff who were hired because they were friends or family have their limitations exposed under pressure, and the original gang can have its solidarity tested to destruction. A study from Harvard Business School found that 65% of startups fail because of “co-founder conflict”. For every Coldplay, there are thousands of talented bands now forgotten because they never survived contact with success.

The history of rock groups can be viewed as a vast experimental laboratory for studying the core problems of any business: how to make a group of talented people add up to more than the sum of its parts. And, once you’ve done that, how to keep the band together. Here are four different models.

More: https://www.1843magazine.com/features/a-rockers-guide-to-management

#ManagementStyles #RockAndRoll #Music


Comments 1 - 5 of 5        Search these comments

1   anonymous   2019 Jan 25, 12:19pm  

HEYYOU says
Wonder if Trump could have applied a successful model to a casino?


Should have hired Jagger - the fucking things would still be open and making money
2   🎂 Tenpoundbass   2019 Jan 25, 12:47pm  

If that's so then The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead were true business Titans at it.

Mick Jagger and his band mates are all still best buds today. Mick has served as their financial advisers and invests for them and manages their portfolio beyond the Music business.
Mick is a business whiz at investments.

The Grateful Dead was another great enterprise. But their wealth came more from music and not the business acumen of a member or manager diversifying their investments.
In the late 80's through the early 90's until Jerry Garcia's death. The Grateful Dead was the top grossing Entertainment entity in the United States just bellow Disney.

With 230 - 300 sold out shows a year, and Merchandising not seen until Hip Hop stars in the 2000's started merchandising high end clothes.
3   anonymous   2019 Jan 25, 3:49pm  

Tenpoundbass says
If that's so


Tis so. Jagger was economics major at the university, good grades too.
4   Rin   2019 Jan 25, 4:41pm  

Kakistocracy says
Tis so. Jagger was economics major at the university, good grades too.


Jagger studied at the London School of Economics (LSE) prior to becoming a rocker.

And like Mick, our first star trader was also an LSE scholar so I guess it's kinda like a Wharton thing but for Europe instead of the America.
5   Ceffer   2019 Jan 25, 7:06pm  

Who cares about business. If you wake up buried in sopping wet groupie panties and empty bottles, life is good.

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