Steve Van Zandt on the mediocrity of many young bands

[Jens Wildman]

His advice for young bands: “I spent half my life convincing young bands to not skip that club phase, because they’re all skipping it now. The Beatles were a bar band for, what, four or five years? I tell bands, are you better than them? How do you learn how to play songs? If you can’t play someone else’s songs you can’t learn how to write songs. You can’t learn from listening to the f**king radio these days. You can learn how to be mediocre. That’s what we need! More mediocrity. Not only were the Beatles a bar band, they did covers for five albums after that! Stones too. People need to get a grip on how to do that. It’s a craft. It has to be learned. You aren’t born with it. Nobody is born great. Nobody. All of a sudden you have an entire two generations that don’t do it. They suffer for it. Once you don’t learn, you don’t learn. You may get better at your thing, but you’ll never be great.”

He has a point.

[laid back in the sun]

jesus wept

[Mardy]

Nonsense.

For me, with loads of bands it's the debut album that's the best. When they were fresh, young and not jaded and cynical from 5 years of playing covers to uninterested drinkers. Paying your dues, my arse. You think dubnobasswithmyheadman would have been the album it was if they'd spent 5 years playing standards? You think Psychocandy would have been better if they'd had a residency in a pub somewhere, you think.

It's not a craft, and the likening of music, which is wonderful, unpredictable, beautiful, awkward, tearjerking, life affirming and absolutely f****** amazing to a bit of model building is just wrong. It leads to all these ideas about musicianship being more important than anything else, you end up with 10 minutes saxophone solos and a reverence towards the blues. F*** that, Rip up the rulebook, learn 3 chords and form a band. Make your own music, don't copy the music of the past.

[Mardy]

in fact, the more I think about this, the more it pisses me off. Didn't he take the Sopranos job with no acting experience? maybe he should have spent 5 years in some tiny little touring theatre company learning his craft before taking that job? Oh no, that's different is it? fool.

[sifi]

I think there is some truth in what he says. Do people not think that bands who have "earned" it by playing gigs up and down the country for years have earned it more than say an X-Factor winner? And are likely to have a longer career? Rather some of the newer bands who are manufactured, taught the basics and then marketed to high heaven? Some of the more recent pop guitar bands sound like that - I'm thinking about bands like the Kooks here.

And the debut album isn't always the best album either Mardy. I can think of loads of bands whose best album was three, four or five in. Which in itself isn't an accurate measure anyhow - consider Jimi Hendrix, he was playing in all sorts of bands for years before he got "discovered" and recorded under his own name.

Edited March 4, 2009 by sifimaster

[eFestivals]

I saw Steven Van Zandt in his Little Steven guise at Reading festival in the early eighties and he was mediocrity itself.

[Mardy]

I think there is some truth in what he says. Do people not think that bands who have "earned" it by playing gigs up and down the country for years have earned it more than say an X-Factor winner? And are likely to have a longer career? Rather some of the newer bands who are manufactured, taught the basics and then marketed to high heaven? Some of the more recent pop guitar bands sound like that - I'm thinking about bands like the Kooks here.

And the debut album isn't always the best album either Mardy. I can think of loads of bands whose best album was three, four or five in. Which in itself isn't an accurate measure anyhow - consider Jimi Hendrix, he was playing in all sorts of bands for years before he got "discovered" and recorded under his own name.

Edited March 4, 2009 by Mardy

[Tugger2k]

And this idea that it's only now we have manufactured bands and talentless one offs? Nah, it's been around for 40 years at least. As long as the music industry has been doing its thing, there's been manufactured pop. ain't nothing knew. This generation's X-Factor is the same as the 70s prime time talent shows which shoved exactly the same kind of shitpop out to the public. And the 60s were full of manufactured, talentless bands.

[hoils]

Has Steve Van Zandt not heard of punk rock? Or acid house for that matter.

What a dullard.

[sifi]

And this idea that it's only now we have manufactured bands and talentless one offs? Nah, it's been around for 40 years at least. As long as the music industry has been doing its thing, there's been manufactured pop. ain't nothing knew. This generation's X-Factor is the same as the 70s prime time talent shows which shoved exactly the same kind of shitpop out to the public. And the 60s were full of manufactured, talentless bands.

Edited March 4, 2009 by sifimaster

[sifi]

Has Steve Van Zandt not heard of punk rock?

[Mardy]

How long were the Clash playing before they cracked it?

[Mardy]

anyway, peace, not going to argue today, got better things to do, and it's not like steve van zandt's opinion is going to change one little thing about the music I love and listen to. stay safe.

[sifi]

I look at my favourite songs (including as it goes, the monkees ),

Edited March 4, 2009 by sifimaster

[Jens Wildman]

2 x postes

Edited March 4, 2009 by Jens Wildman

[Jens Wildman]

I saw Steven Van Zandt in his Little Steven guise at Reading festival in the early eighties and he was mediocrity itself.

[Jens Wildman]

..and shows him to be totally out of touch, in my eyes.

Edited March 4, 2009 by Jens Wildman

[sifi]

I always preferred Ronnie Van Zandt.

[hoils]

As for the comment about whether he's heard of punk, he has a radio show (Little Steven's Underground Garage which is smothered in punk and garage music from the sixties and current stuff too.

[Jens Wildman]

But that isn't reflected in what he says, is it? The whole point of punk was that anybody could get up on stage or in a recording studio. Didn't matter that you couldn't play your instrument or you couldn't sing. You certainly didn't have to pay your dues around the toilet circuit to be somehow valid.

Same applies for acid house. Anyone could make a record.

Steve Van Zandt's opinion stinks of the real music brigade. Urgh.

[Jens Wildman]

I stood with an amazed sense of indifference watching the Arctic Monkeys be completely dwarfed by their own appearance on the Pyramid stage.

[sifi]

you see, I don't understand how you can be so vocal in saying Springsteen is mediocre, and love Lynyrd Skynyrd, (to me) the epitome of bland-rock, so much...

still.... horses for courses an' all that

[laid back in the sun]

after reading jens wildmans posts on efestivals little stevie found slipping into a coma to be a welcome relief