Bluff your way in the Rock Business
By David Knopfler

Ravette Publishing

Latest guide from the excellent million selling Bluffer's Guides series available in all good UK book stores and now online here in the US.

Getting started, Getting in.
The Recording Artist
The Manager.
Avoiding The Usual Lies and Traps.

Chapter One - Getting Started, Getting In.

The first decision a budding bluffer seeking a career in the music business will need to make, is whether to:
a) become a Recording Artist or
b) forge a career in one of the many other areas of the music business - Record Production, Management, Marketing, Advertising, Broadcasting, Music Publishing and so forth.

It's a mysterious fact to the outside observer that those with a real talent for making music so rarely wind up as Recording Artists, whereas those with no apparent talent for it, can frequently be found at the top of the charts.

The Recording Artist

You do not need special talent to become a Recording Artist. You only need one thing and that one thing is a recording contract. Unfortunately a real recording contract (One that genuinely means you'll get to make records that will be commercially released world-wide) are very hard to come by. Once however you have done the Deal (See The Deal and how to survive it) you will be over the first major hurdle and well on your way to becoming completely disillusioned with the one thing that probably brought you into this industry - the one thing that nobody really knows too much about - Music.
Like Alice in Wonderland, nothing in the music business is what it seems. Record companies vary from one solitary bass player in the suburbs, who spends the price of a second-hand, bass guitar to buy a limited trading company and fancies himself as a record mogul, to the global giants like Time Warner, the like of which are able to confidently command debt burdens greater than most Western Nations and that, some might argue, make the US government appear the sole of probity.
Assuming that you are not intimately connected to the president of a real record label (i.e. one with more than two personnel and large sums of money to spend) and can not buy him lunch or lose at golf to him, your next best approach is, unfortunately, through A&R.
The kind of music you propose to make is not really too much of a consideration, providing you understand the time honoured method of obtaining a record deal - that you are able to bluff and that your demo does not sound anything like music (as it is usually understood) - you are already well on your way to finding yourself being played with positive enthusiasm in the halloed portals (Or broom cupboard - according to status) of the A&R person. A&R personnel are more usually, but not always, men, and rock-n-roll being the last bastion of sexism, means male A&R almost always have young, attractive female secretaries. Don't let looks deceive you - their power and efficiency is fearsome and once she pins up the photograph, of an aspiring rock god on her wall - you can confidently start announcing that a deal is imminent.
Remember that PROFILE is always more important than music. If you currently enjoy a successful career as a soap star, or have a role in a TV drama series, your chances of getting a deal rise considerably. Alternatively, try finding a way to be at the centre of a controversy likely to be covered by the tabloid press, provided the consequence is not likely to involve long periods in jail, or threaten green card status further down the road. To be a recovering alcoholic is usually good for a few hack column inches. Please try, if at all possible, to be under twenty years of age; Photogenic qualities are certainly an advantage, but stylistically should not, at this stage, be too evident. That your looks will lend themselves to extensive professional remoulding is enough.
Young politicians were once advised by Winston Churchill to either go with the flow or to run against it - but never to try and do both. The same applies to the up-and-coming rock star. If you start out on the rock circuit with a BAD attitude then comprehensively cultivate it. Keith Richards has always, for example, been a role model for NME (Enemy) readers, whereas Cliff Richard . . . You get the idea.

When a record company executive at the hotel bar confides the sordid, intimate secrets and defamations about their Artists, or indeed a rival label's Artist, as sooner or later they will if you spend any time in such places, then they will invariably fall into one of three categories:

1. Great Guys
2. Degenerates, junkies, killers, perverts, and paedophiles.
3. Difficult Artists.

If, as a Recording Artist you have sunk all the way down to category three, you are in big trouble. If you started your career there that's a tougher break. A career in politics or social work would be a step up. It should not be an aspiration, but it may be of some consolation to know, that many songwriters of more than respectable pedigree before you, have resided either there, or in therapy, usually both.
Great guysdon't move around, one leg in front of the other, like normal folk, they breeze everywhere, making witty and positive remarks to everyone. It's always a party around a great guy, which is why they have to sod off to recover as fast as their elevator shoes allow, the minute their minders can find them a diplomatic exit. Autographs for them, are an opportunity to 'meet their fans', and this could include Heads of Corporations, Radio Bosses, TV Producers, as well as the usual sprinkling of fame spotters (not dissimilar to their train spotting cousins) generally to be found hanging around outside most TV studios - particularly prevalent in Germany. When a fame vulture in Munich says "You will sign my cards" they are actually saying "You will sign my cards?" Unfortunately the question mark often gets lost in the translation and degeneratives are quite likely to be tempted to say in riposte, "Are you related to Mark Chapman? Piss off you sad creep." especially if it's patently obvious that incipient 'stalkers' have no idea who the Artist is, and only want the autographs to flog to their lonely friends.
Nevertheless the rising rock star should sign anything, anywhere anytime, including body parts. Get that profile moving. Soon you'll have progressed to carrying autographed photographs for just such occasions. By the time you are successful enough to be mobbed, there will be a fleet of people who's job it is to ensure that you are mobbed, and a second fleet of people employed to protect you if you are. Enjoy it for the three months it lasts

The veteran bluffers are difficult but great guys who have overcome a major hurdle like a death, cancer, drug dependency and so on. They will inspire contempt.pity and admiration in equal measure and have learnt to live easily in all three categories simultaneously.

[Message from the Author: The other twenty seven sections and authorised version of the above can only be obtained by purchasing the book otherwise my publisher will have my scalp]

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This excerpt may not be reproduced without the written consent of the copyright holder Ravette Publishing.
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copyright The Bluffer's Guides 1996
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The Bluffer's Guides series is based on an original idea by Peter Wolfe.
An Oval Projectfor Ravette Publishing.
Series editor Anne TautŽ

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