FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| MUSIC Spiritualized with Radiohead Not to disillusion anyone, but you guys do know that music is a business, right? You know that in this industry, like any other, decisions aren't always made with the art's best interests in mind? You also know to really make it in the - here's that word again - business (ie. to survive, and be able to create music and get it heard by anyone), you have to be a smart business person, don't you? Madonna knows that. So does Celine Dion. Christ, ask anyone who's dealt with so-called indie bands on any level and they'll tell you the successful ones - granted, not necessarily the best ones - are those that have a firm grasp on all aspects of the industry and are willing to set your club on fire if they don't get their cut of the action. Still, with that in mind, I think it's safe to say the last person you'd expect to receive a sober and well-informed lecture from on this is Jason "Spaceman" Pierce. As the huge pulsating brain at the center of the cacophonous pop symphony known as Spiritualized, Pierce has always, and not without some validity, been portrayed as a medicated genius gleefully marooned on the music inside his own head and interested in little else. That couldn't be further from the truth. Not only does Pierce understand the business, you get the feeling that, for obvious reasons, he'd love to be a part of it. "We're outside of the commerce," a terminally disheveled Pierce explains, "not because we choose not to be involved, but because we couldn't be involved if we wanted to be. "It's not like we're turning down huge amounts of commercial success, it's just not being made available to us. The idea that a band like Bush captures the imagination of the youth of the world is so naive. It's massive investment, massive return; target the audience, find where they're not buying, find out why, promote it there - that's how it works, but we don't get that. It's not like we're martyring ourselves to a cause by turning that down." Pierce even expresses some regret at turning down whopping great gobs of cash from Hugo Boss to use one of Spiritualized's songs in a commercial. Instead, when he and the band desperately needed the money to tour, eat, pay rent, etc., he had to settle for considerably less from a chocolate bar company. Having been in the business for over a decade, first with the psychedelic wizards Spacemen 3, and now with Spiritualized, Pierce is in the odd predicament of knowing how to sell what very few people are willing to buy. That's why, despite promotional escapades like the chocolate ad, a limited edition version of their latest CD Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space that mimicked pharmaceutical packaging (which Pierce paid for out of his own pocket), and a concert late last year on top of the CN Tower which put them in the Guinness World Records Book for the "highest concert in musical history" (a bloodshot-eyed wink-wink), the band has had only moderate success. True, upon its release, Ladies and Gentlemen went to Number Four on the UK charts ("Number four means our record company was fourth most efficient at selling our record that week," Pierce says dryly), but Spiritualized have never even flirted with mainstream success. The reason is simple: Pierce has a Brian Wilsonian way of realizing and recording the sounds circulating in that melon of his that makes sense to him and those who are as comfortable with Strauss as they are with Sonic Youth. As you would expect, not only is that hard to find in an audience, it's also difficult to squeeze from other musicians. "It's getting easier in a way because before I had to tell everyone exactly how the parts should be played," Pierce says. "Now I surround myself with musicians who work more in a jazz way so they don't need to be told. It's a lot more free-form. "You're always slightly disappointed with the final result because everything's better in your imagination. So much more comes into play in your head than you could ever possibly get with stereo sound." When your head, as was alluded to earlier, has been chemically expanded to include the solar system as extra gray matter, those melodic thoughts become increasingly more whacked. And, admittedly, Pierce has seen the inside of his eyelids on many, many occasions and struggled with coming back down again. Maybe the fact he's still here and still lucid has something to do with the realist in him pointing out that while an expired headcase is ultimately good for record sales, it's not that practical when that headcase is you. Or maybe, it's because this man who can tell you everything it takes to get to Number One on the charts, but will likely never ever see that position, isn't as tainted by the industry as you would expect. In fact, seemingly contrary to his opening discourse on business savvy, Pierce still sees in music something more valuable than radio support, a hit single or an opening spot with a band that enjoys both. Through the haze of commerce and all the necessary bullshit, Pierce sees the ability of the art to rise higher than anything else and, best case scenario, deliver an epiphany. "I get that all the time with music," he says. "Way more with music than with drugs. Way more. It has more power to do that. With drugs it's almost like you know what you're going to get. You buy a certain drug to do something specific to a certain part of your brain. "In music, when you listen to 'A Change Is Gonna Come' by Sam Cooke, it's not just, 'Oh, not that old record again.' It's still as moving in a way that you're never going to get from drugs. "It's more powerful than that," Pierce insists. "And there's never any kind of hopelessness with music, of being addicted to it. It still moves you in such a powerful way every time." |