Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing History of New Music early and ad free on Amazon Music included with Prime. Hey, before we start the show today, I want to tell you about something brand new we're launching with our friends at Apple Podcasts called the Ongoing History of New Music Unlimited. For $3.49 a month, $3.49, which is less than the price of your morning coffee, you can now get access to the full archive of our shows ad free. Plus you'll get brand new episodes two days early and special bonus episodes. It's Ongoing History Unlimited and it's available right now only on Apple Podcasts. Listen to me it is never too late to follow your dreams. Here are a few inspirational examples. Anna Mary Robertson was born in New York in 1860 and for years she worked as a housekeeper before moving to farm work with her husband, Thomas Moses. They had 10 children. When Thomas died, Anna needed something to occupy her time, so she took up painting. She was 78 years old when she started. Anna became known as Grandma Moses and is one of the most celebrated American painters of the 20th century. And she's also held up as an example of never being too old to follow your dreams. Then, in early 2022, I ran across the story of Ruth Slicinska. She was the last surviving pupil of of classical legend Sergei Rachmaninoff. Ruth first met him when she was declared a child prodigy many, many, many decades ago. This is back in the 1920s. She recorded some classical records for Decca in the 50s and early 60s, but that was it. The contract lapsed and wasn't renewed, that is, until early 2022 when she signed a brand new record deal with Decca for a solo album entitled My Life in Music. Ruth Slenchenska got this record deal at the age of 97. This got me thinking. Rock is supposed to be for the young. New artists are almost always in their teens or early twenties, but not always. Sometimes it takes a little longer and a lot more work. Before certain artists were able to get their big break, some had to wait until their 30s. Ancient by any measure when it comes to the music business, and given the ageism that persists throughout contemporary music, these accomplishments are all that much more impressive. Let's take a look at some of the late bloomers of rock and roll. This is the ongoing History of New Music Podcast with Alan Cross. Hello again, I'm Alan Cross and this program is for the hopeful oldsters in the crowd, the people who Believe that they've still got what it takes with their music to break through. Now I'm not going to lie, that gets exponentially harder the older you get. But it can be done. Things usually begin with some kids in a basement or a garage or a bedroom. They're in their teens and they're full of youthful exuberance and energy emotionally, and this is really important. They are still very raw and don't carry the same kind of psychic baggage we all end up accumulating. If the music is good, they start attracting attention from their peers. People who appreciate that this young group articulates the way they feel. The ambitions, the dreams, the fears, the anger, that sort of thing. For the first five or seven years, things build and build. All their energy goes into the music. They live on potato chips and beer, ride between gigs in a broken down van and end up sleeping on strangers floors. But it's you and the band against the world. You're a gang and you're in it together. Eventually they have a breakthrough and their conditions improve a bit. And maybe they get a bit of the brass ring. Or they don't have a breakthrough and they slog it out until everyone's had enough and the group disintegrates. In either case, by the time everyone is in their late 20s, their lives have changed. They're older and hopefully wiser. Everyone starts having ideas about different creative directions. It's no longer all for one and one for all. Individual priorities emerge. Maybe one or two of them are in a relationship and want a family. Maybe they've got an offer for a secure day job. Creative differences start to interfere with what was once a unified approach. And maybe they're just tired of the grind. Maybe it's time to stop. So many bands call it quits by the time everyone reaches their late 20s. They reconcile themselves to the fact that it was a good run, but now it's time to grow up and go to some kind of real life. But there are those who refuse to quit. Even though rock is a young person's job. They won't be brushed off just because they're pushing 30 or 40 or even 50. And sometimes something wonderful happens. These oldsters become hot newcomers on a scene that worships youth. I would like to look at some of the people who came to their rock and roll successes later in life. And the first person I want to mention is Deborah Harry of Blondie. Blondie was part of the punkin art rock scene at CBGB starting in about 1975. Deborah Harry had been Working at other gigs for years. She graduated college 1965. She worked in New York, and for a while she was a secretary at the American office of the BBC. After that she was a waitress. She was a go Go dancer and for a while a Playboy bunny slinging cocktails in the New York location of the Playboy Club. Her singing career started in 1968 when she was a backing singer for a folk band called the Wind in the Willows, who released one album. By 1974, she was in the stilettos. That led to a group called angel and the Snake. And after that, it was Blondie. By the time she started playing for the nascent punks at CBGB, she was an ancient 31 years old. And after a couple of years of very hard work, Blondie became one of the biggest bands in the world. When this record came out in 1978, Deborah Harry was 33. One way or another I'm gonna find ya I'm gonna get you, get you, get you, get you One way or another I'm gonna win ya I'll get you, I'll get you one way it took until she was in her early 30s for Deborah Harry to become a big rock star. It's a long time in that world. At first, John Andrazik thought he was gonna be a musician. He took piano lessons, learned to sing opera and dabbled in songwriting. But he was also practical about things. He needed a career to fall back on, so he went to ucla, where he got a degree in applied science and math. And then something weird happened. In 1988, he fell in with some hair metal guys, including Rudy Sarzo, the bass player for Whitesnake. A couple of glammy hair metal Y bands followed and so did a management deal. Things look pretty good. But then grunge came along. And just like that, at age 25, John's hopes of being a hair metal superstar were dead. Not wanting to spend time doing math all day, John went back to the piano and started playing small gigs around Los Angeles. Spare cash went to tickets to see the Los Angeles Kings play. And this is when he adopted the name Five for Fighting. Get the hockey reference. And he picked that name because no record company person could pronounce his last name. There's your hockey connection. There was an album, but it disappeared after his record company folded. More recordings followed with little effect. But then in the fall of 2000, he released an album entitled America Town. The second single got some initial traction, and after the attacks of 9 11, it became something of an anthem. The result was that America Town went platinum and this single became a multi format radio success. It was John's breakthrough at age 34, John Andrazak performing as five for Fighting with Superman. It's not easy. Like I said, took him until age 34 to have that first hit. Another guy who had to slog for a long time before he got any widespread recognition was James Murphy, the guy behind LCD Sound System. Had it not been for a decision he made when he was 22, we might not be talking about him right now. Even though he was an English major dropout, he somehow landed an offer to write for a brand new TV show called Wait for It, Seinfeld. But then he thought, eh, this show is never going to work about nothing. Pass. I'll stick with my music. Instead, about a year later he started up an indie label called dfa which stood for Death From Above. And for the next eight years he worked with a variety of unknowns and semi knowns on the New York City indie scene. In 2001 he started up his own band, LCD Sound System. They were something of a local hit, but nothing really happened until 2005 when a self titled debut album came out. Lots of critical acclaim, decent sales, and from that point on, LCD Sound System was one of the leading lights of the New York indie rock revival that also included bands like the Strokes and the Yay yeah Yeahs and Interpol. By the time all this happened, James Murphy was 35 and going gray. But hey, better late than never, right? I waited seven years and 15 days. Let's look at another woman who refused to give up. Amanda Palmer got into performing in theater and on the street as a busker. In the late 1990s, her first real band was the Dresden Dolls, a two piece outfit that was highly visual. She was about 27 at the time. They were excellent, but a mainstream breakthrough eluded them and and they broke up in 2008. From there she went solo. Lots of gigs, lots of theater, lots of critical acclaim, a couple of books. There was even an album where she played nothing but Radiohead songs and a ukulele. And in the process she attracted a solid cult following. Her big break came in 2012 when she announced that her new album would be funded by a Kickstarter campaign. Nearly 25,000 people chipped in, raising almost $1.2 million. To that point, no one had ever raised that much money on Kickstarter for a musical project. Since then she's exploded. A memoir that was a New York Times bestseller, an acclaimed TED Talk on the art of asking Concerts, festivals, more theater, a podcast, activism. Her fan base is global and it took until she was just 36 for everything to start falling into place. If you don't know Amanda's music, let's go back to that debut album from the Dresden Dolls. This was a self titled album from 2003 and was part of the fierce female aesthetic that appeared in the 90s with artists like Alanis Morissette. This is a track called Girl Anachronism. The Dresden Dolls featuring Amanda Palmer, an overnight success at age 36. More stories of late bloomers from the world of rock coming up. In a world where swords were sharp and hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is, two fearless historians, me, Matt Lewis and me Dr. Eleanor Yanaga, dive head first into the mud, blood and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History. Hit wherever you get your podcasts. This is a program featuring artists who did not give up. Even as the years ticked by and their hair started to turn gray, they refused to stop chasing their musical dreams. Let me give you another example. When we look back on the early days of the Police, we tend to remember them as a young post punk slash new wave band from England. But their members were actually a little older than their contemporaries. When their first album, Outlando's D', Amour, appeared in 1978, Sting was already 27, which was getting up there when it came to his peers. Stuart Copeland was 26, but guitarist Andy Summers was a stately 36. He'd been playing in bands since the middle 1960s. He was also a studio guy and a guitarist who backed up other artists with their touring bands. That included a stint in the animals back in 1968. Andy was doing okay, but he really enjoyed being in a band where he could contribute. So after bouncing around for years, in 1977 he accepted an invitation to join Sting and Stuart Copeland in the Police, which was just starting out. They broke through the following year. At 36, he was far older than the Police's punk and new wave contemporaries. 10 or 15 years older. Few people realized it and you know, almost no one cared. Nathaniel Raitliff was almost in his mid-30s before things turned his way. He relocated from Missouri to Denver when he was 18. His first band was called Born in the Flood. They were something of a local sensation. The New York Times even called him a folk pop hero. There was an indie album, but for some reason Nathaniel turned down a record deal. For the next five years, he alternated between playing with Born in the Flood and doing solo gigs under his own name. There were more records, a couple of one off record deals and hundreds of gigs. Reviews were generally good, but that really didn't translate into any big paydays. Yes, it was a living, but it was a hard one. Then in 2013, a decade and a half after moving to Denver, Nathaniel changed up his sound and frankly, this was a Hail Mary pass. He was so discouraged with the way his career was going that he was going to give things just one more chance. The new songs weren't as dark and somber and instead more soulful. He called his new band Nathaniel Ratliff and the Night Sweats, and they got a deal with Stax Records, the great soul label out of Memphis. A self titled album arrived on August 21, 2015. It started slow, but then this song went viral and suddenly everybody was talking about Nathaniel. At age 37, Dan Wilson was another guy who kicked around for very, very long time before it was his time. He began working as an artist and an environmentalist, dabbling in music on the side. His first serious band was Trip Shakespeare, an excellent psych band from Minneapolis who had some success in the alternative world. They released a string of Records between 1987 and their breakup in 1992. By 1995, he was in a band called Semisonic. Their debut album got some decent reviews, but nothing that really catapulted them into the limelight that came with their second album, Feeling Strangely Fine, which appeared in 1998. There were a couple of singles, but this is the one that everybody remembers. It was a massive hit and got a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Song. You know it. It's closing time Closing time Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings and yeah, I know when that song came out in early 1998, it quickly became a monster. And after years of trying to make it, it finally happened to Dan Wilson. He was 37 and he's done okay since. Closing Time still brings in plenty of royalties because it's something of a pop culture staple. There was a third Semisonic album and a series of solo records, along with plenty of soundtrack work. But it is as a songwriter where Dan has made the real money. He's written at least six songs for the Dixie Chicks, one of which netted him a Grammy for Song of the year. He wrote three songs for Adele on her 21 album, including the global hit Someone like youe. Dan has also co written with Taylor Swift, Tom Morello Celine Dion, James Bay, John Legend, Josh Groban, Jason Mraz, Vance, Joy Halsey, Cold War Kids, Kayflay, Phantogram, Weezer, Panic at the Disco, Florence and the Machine, James Blunt, Pink, Nat as well. I think you get the picture. So Dan is feeling strangely fine, and he's more than made up for the lost time. Two more names to go. One guy who didn't make it until he was 40 and another guy who was in his 50s. You know them both, too, trust me. So far we've spoken of artists who have had to wait until their mid to late 30s before they cracked the secret of success. But what about somebody in their 40s? Michael Fitzpatrick was born in France but grew up in California. He studied a little music, but experimental film was really his thing. When he graduated from college, he got a job working as an engineer in a recording studio. That was a good gig. He got to work on albums by Beck and the Dandy Warhols and dozens of others. In 2002, at the age of 32, he began taking piano lessons. He'd always been able to play by ear, but this was Michael's first formal training. Again, he was 32. In 2008. When Michael was 38, he had a chance to buy an old church organ for $50. He somehow wrestled it into his apartment, where he began to write songs. He was happy enough with the result that he decided that he should form a band. Gigs began at the end of 2008 and continued through the next 12 months. A debut EP was recorded in early 2009, and by the end of the year they were opening shows for Maroon 5. And late in the summer of 2010, the group released their first full album, which they called Pickin up the Pieces. And bam. That record hit. Five singles were released from it, and the band was on its way. Several other successful records have since followed. Okay, so who's Michael Fitzpatrick? Well, he's the Fitz in Fits in the Tantrums. When this became the band's first breakthrough single in 2011, Michael was 41 years old. Money Grabber from Fitz and the Tantrums, featuring Michael Fitzpatrick, who had to wait until he was 41 before he had his first big hit single. One More, and this one is. Okay, a bit tricky because you could also classify this man's mainstream breakthrough as the second act of a successful career. But hear me out on this. Leonard Cohen started writing poetry in the late 1940s. He continued to write poetry and novels through to 1966, when, at age 32, he decided then he was going to be a songwriter. A year later he was living in New York, hanging out with the Warhol crowd. He met up with Judy Collins. They started performing together. This led to performing at a couple of folk festivals. And it was during one of these gigs that he came to the attention of John Hammond, the Columbia Records talent scout who also discovered Bob Dylan. Cohen got a record deal and began releasing albums between 1967 and 1984. He was very well regarded amongst a very specific music crowd. There were plenty of good reviews and lots of performances in small theaters and various festivals. A couple of his songs like Suzanne and so Long Marianne were turned into hits by other artists. It was a good living, but nothing like what was to come. In 1987, Jennifer Warrens, one of his former backup singers, released an album of Cohen covers called Famous Blue Raincoat. It became a big hit for her, drawing more attention to Cohen than he'd ever seen before in his life. Now here's my personal story with Leonard Cohen. In 1988 I was working an on air shift and the policy at the station was that if any record rep brought in an artist, we would immediately throw throw them on the air and interview them live. And one day I was told that Leonard would be coming in during my shift and that I would be the one doing the interview. Now I had heard its name and knew that he'd released some records back in the day. But I was this dumb kid, didn't have any appreciation for what the man had done. I also thought this was weird. Why was a 54 year old man coming in to plug a new album on an alternative radio station that played nothing but the newest and the coolest. This however, turned out to be a genius move on behalf of the record label. Columbia decided that Leonard Cohen's big comeback would be marketed to the open minded alt rock crowd. Forget that. He was 54. His sound, his image, his music was more alternative than anything else. So this would be his entry, or rather his re entry into the limelight. And it worked. The album was called I'm youm Man and it was a tremendous critical and commercial success. Something that was built through airplay on alternative radio. Three singles were taken from that record and Cohen was back. Three years later he was the subject of a tribute album that featured contributions from, wait for it, REM Nick Cave, the Pixies, James and a dozen others. He was retroactively credited as being an important component in the development of various strands of alternative music, including goth. Songs appeared in movies including Pulp Fiction and Natural Born. Killers. An older song called Hallelujah started getting covered again and again, starting with a version by John Cale of the Velvet Underground. Jeff Buckley had the most famous of these covers and then came along K D Lang and others. If you listen to Nirvana's Pennyroyal Tea from the In Utero album, you'll hear Kurt Cobain. Name check him. He inspired characters in movies and novels and for the rest of his life, Leonard Cohen was a global star. He was far, far, far more famous than he'd been in the first part of his career. Even after a five year period in a monastery and being ripped off for millions by his manager couldn't stop that. And it all began. Or began again, if you want with a record by a 54 year old that was marketed to 20 somethings in 1988. I'm very sorry baby it doesn't look like me at all I'm standing by the window where the light is strong how they don't let a woman kill you not in the tower of song Here are a few more musicians who found success later in life. The Stranglers, the fierce British band who blew up during the original punk era of the 1970s, were a few years older than most of their punk contemporaries. The group was formed in 1974, so by the time things were really rolling, most of the Stranglers were already in their middle and upper twenties. The Motors, another punk era band, were also older than most when they first showed up in 1977. Andy McMaster from the band was a stately 36 when they released their first album. Same thing with Butch Vig. He'd been knocking around for years as a recording engineer and record producer before he was asked to produce Nevermind for Nirvana. That set him up for life, starting at age 36. And speaking of Vig, there's his bandmates in Garbage. When they released their first album in 1995, Vig the Drummer, was 39, guitarist Duke Erickson was 44, bass player Steve Marker was 36, and singer Shirley Manson was the baby. At 29, the music business smacks of ageism. There's almost no way for you to break in for the first time. If you're older, the bias is that you're just too old. Your time has passed, you're out of touch. Unless you've been around for a million years and have dozens of hits under your belt, you just don't have a chance. Well, maybe, but not always. Tell it to the people we've heard about on this show. If you want more programs like this the Ongoing History of New Music is available as podcasts. There are hundreds to choose from and they're available for free on any podcast platform you care to visit. Just download and go. You're also invited to my website, ajournalofmusicalthings.com it's updated with music news and information every single day. The free daily newsletter will help you stay caught up. I'm also on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, and I can be reached anytime through email@allinalencross ca. Back soon with more technical productions by Rob Johnston. I'm Alan Cross. You've been listening to the Ongoing History of New Music Podcasts with Alan Cross. Subscribe to the podcast through itunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and everywhere you find your favorite podcast. Since the dawn of time, humanity has been at war. It has shaped the world around us, and if it somehow feels like we've been here before, it's because we have. I'm David Boris. I'm a military historian and on my new podcast, Hostile History, I take us inside history's most defining wars and rebellions, from Genghis Khan to the war in Iran. Find out how the past can explain the present. Search for and follow Hostile History on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.