Joe Boyd has enjoyed a distinguished career in the entertainment industry that spans over 40 years. In addition to producing records for artists such as Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention and REM, he's also produced the documentary Jimi Hendrix and the film Scandal. He started Hannibal Records in 1980, and also occasionally writes for the Guardian, Independent and opendemocracy.net. His first book, White Bicycles - Making Music in the 1960s, is currently available from Serpent's Tail (www.serpentstail.com).
SK: What prompted you to write a book at this point in your career?
JB: Well, the blunt answer to that question is getting sacked by Ryko/Palm. I was running my Hannibal label within the Ryko/Palm structure and by the year 2000 that was kind of falling apart. I was very unhappy and I was asking for changes in the way the thing was structured and they finally said; "You're obviously not very happy here, why don't you leave?" My first thought was to start another record label, but in the year 2000 if you were looking around the business with a clear eye you would have to conclude that this was not the right time to start a new label. I'd sort of planned on writing a book one day and I'd done a bit of writing. I'd written some pieces for the Guardian, and I'd always enjoyed banging out press releases and doing interviews. I'd also done more and more radio and T.V. interviews where people would ask me about Newport in '65 or London in '67 and I had the feeling that I was telling everybody else these stories and soon I wouldn't have any left for myself. So I decided to sit down and write my own book.
SK: Was there an advantage to being an American working in Britain in the 60's?
JB: It was certainly helpful to go back and forth. I remember going to a club in Birmingham in 1964 and seeing the Spencer Davis Group and thinking to myself; "This is folk-rock! We have to do that in America!" Then going back and talking to Paul Rothchild and seeing what was going on in the bars and the clubs in Greenwich Village and putting together a group that kind of morphed into the Lovin' Spoonful. That was inspired by seeing something in England that gave me perspective on what was going on in America. I suppose I also came to the English folk scene colored by my experience in America around Harvard Square and feeling that there was nothing wrong with trying to make the roots of a particular country popular in a broader sense then just the narrow world of folk songs. I guess from the very beginning the one thing that gave me the biggest advantage of all was the fact that I was never particularly wed to a conceptual view of music in the sense of I like this kind of music or I disapprove of that. My view in those years was pretty much whatever sounds good is what I like. A lot of folk people in England were very resistant to the idea of combining music with electric guitars - I didn't care, I was happy to do it if it sounded good. If you've got Richard Thompson and Dave Swarbick playing electric instruments it was pretty hard for it not to. So I guess that was the main thing that I brought from America, and I suppose a lot of English people - particularly middle class people and people from London - were kind of snooty about their own folk music and I certainly wasn't. I didn't have that prejudice, so I guess outsiders do have an advantage in some ways of seeing things that natives don't see.
SK: Frank Zappa once said that the reason so many different types of artists got signed in the 60's was because back then record companies were still run by older executives who weren't part of the underground culture, and consequently signed everything in an effort not to miss out on the next big thing. Do you agree with that assessment?
JB: I'm not entirely sure that I go along with that, because I think an awful lot of the great signings of the 60's were done by people like Ahmet Ertegun, or Horst Smoltzi at Polydor who signed Hendrix and the Bee Gees and The Who and Cream. I mean he was an enthusiast, he was a music enthusiast and Ahmet Ertegun was a music enthusiast, as was John Hammond who signed Dylan and Springsteen. The formula of the industry vet who doesn't really know what these kids want so we'd better sign a bunch of different stuff and throw it up against the wall to see what sticks is a cliché that I didn't really see very often.
SK: Is it a misconception then, that we have less diversity these days than we did 40 years ago?
JB: Actually, from a diversity point of view it's pretty healthy. There are two big differences - the stock market and the scale of the industry. If you go back and look at the entire release schedule in Britain for a three month period in 1968, from all of the major labels and the larger independents, and you just list every release - I could probably tell you that I've heard something of all those records. Or at least I know something about them. There were very, very few releases in comparison with today where you have MySpace and iTunes. There's just an avalanche of stuff.
Then there are pressures of profitability which come down from Wall Street and the stockholders. You have these huge corporations that demand focus on sure things. The music business has always been an anomaly. In the pharmaceutical business if you get a hit it sells for the next 15 years and keeps your company going around the world - from just one good drug. In the music business you have a hit and two weeks later you've got to have another one. Record companies today are trying desperately to apply corporate structure to an industry that's completely unpredictable and very irrational. It's very hard to do, which is why if you look in the review section of a magazine anywhere and you look at all the records that are getting written about - you haven't heard of half the labels! They're all new labels, imprints that get distributed through a major perhaps.
SK: It does seem though, that back in the 60's A&R executives had the luxury of signing acts that were more in tune with their own personal taste whereas now the focus seems to be more on hitting on a formula that will produce large and quick results.
JB: This is again a question whose parameters I'll perhaps dispute. My father is a great one for platitudes, and most of them were like water off a duck's back to me. But there's one that I've always remembered vividly. He said that people will tell you that there is an inherent conflict between aesthetics and pragmatics, but there is no such conflict. There is always a way to resolve that conflict and to make it work, to make the things that you like succeed. I believe that, and even though I don't have much interest or sympathy for the records that make it to #1 these days, I'll bet that there's a young A&R guy behind them who loves them! I don't think those records are the product of somebody cynically sitting down and saying; "Well, I hate this crap but it's gonna sell, so let's do it." I think it's all a product of people who genuinely like cheesy pop! And there are lots of people out there who resonate their tastes, and that's what makes those records successful. It's people whose tastes can resonate with the broader public, but have also figured out how to make that taste work in the marketplace with packaging, marketing, touring and relationships with managers. I think that most big successes in the music business come from that nexus rather than cynicism.
SK: So where do you see it all going from here, with the effects of things like MySpace and YouTube.
JB: Well, I had a very interesting day last week. I have a music publishing company and I went out to a meeting with Proper, which is a very big distributor here who do those sort of out-of-copyright sets of Lester Young and Blind Lemon Jefferson and also distribute world music and country music and blues and alt-country - basically music for people over 25. I was reading the paper on the way out to the meeting, and there was an item that said that Apple is reporting a steep drop in iTunes income in the first six months of this year. When I got to the meeting the people at Proper said that November was the biggest month that they've ever had in their entire history as a company, and it's all sales of CDs. None of it is cyberspace. Obviously, some of it is through Amazon, but were talking about just shipped, finished product.
SK: What do you attribute that trend to?
JB: Well, to me an MP3 is like Chinese food with MSG. You know, if you get used to it I suppose it's O.K.., but to me it sounds like shit. It's interesting, I was just in a big music store in the West End and they've got a whole wall of vinyl! One whole section of the shop is now vinyl. And I swear to you, any mega-store in London, six or seven years ago would've had one tiny bin of vinyl. And now there's a whole section about 10 yards wide. That's big compared to what it used to be. I also met this guy recently who runs that studio in Hoxton where the White Stripes record. He's got this big room that's full of German microphones and tape machines! They discourage artists from using ProTools. Now, I don't know that the tide will actually turn, because the tide in the digital direction is so huge. I just think there's something going on there which is interesting.
I don't have the capability to deal with the mainstream; I've always dealt with niches. At times in my career the niches have been large enough to pay my rent and other times they haven't, but I think that the niches are getting bigger. I've always recognized that my tastes relegate me to the margins. I wouldn't be any good at trying to make one top ten single after another. I wouldn't have been in the 60's, I wasn't in the 70's and I'm very unlikely to be today - but I think the possibilities for niches and specializations is greater than ever.
SK: For people who are involved in a niche genre I guess it is easier to market directly to the people who would be interested in that. I mean, even through MySpace, if you're a folk-singer or songwriter all you really have to do is a search to find people who like Nick Drake or Leonard Cohen to send them an MP3 and say; "Hey, I'm playing at a place in your area - come down and check us out." So I guess that's a positive aspect of the whole thing.
JB: Yeah, yeah! Listen, today in London the amount of concerts and club dates from really good, interesting musicians - jazz, world music, folk, whatever - is huge! There are many more interesting tours and events going on than 5 to 8 years ago for live music. There are still some very worrying trends, though. I usually find myself distressed by what is being marketed as world music these days, but that's the subject of my next book.
SK: Have you already started working on that?
JB: Yes, it's going to be about world music as a phenomenon. Obviously I have some experiences and anecdotes from my life that will go into the book but it will be less limited to things that I participated in and observed than White Bicycles. I've already done a lot of interviews with people who talk about things that I wasn't a part of or around for, just saw from a distance. But I've gotten close to and talked with people who were involved. So it's a different sort of book, but it's one that I'm enjoying and I hope to finish it in the next 6 months.
SK: I did notice a posting on your website (www.joeboyd.co.uk) that says if somebody sends you music you'll listen to it, but you're not looking for any production gigs at the moment. It sounds as if you're set on developing your future as an author at this point.
JB: Yeah, I think so. You know, I've spent all of my life working with artists who to greater or lesser extents listened to or did not listen to the advice that I gave them. I mean, it goes back to the instance I describe in the book where I was the tour manager for Muddy Waters and Sister Rosetta Tharpe and several others. On the first day of the tour and I said; "Now here's what you should do." And they said; "You're out of your fucking mind! We're not gonna do that!" And then, by the end of the tour they were doing all of those things and it was great. I also remember hammering the door at Warner Brothers' promotion department for 6 months trying to get them to release "Midnight At The Oasis" as a single. They finally did, and then four months later some station in Portland, Oregon started playing it and it got to be a hit. That was very gratifying, but most of my experiences were with people who basically did half, or seventy five percent, of what I told them to do. I'm finally managing a performer who does every single thing I think he ought to do - and that's me. And I'm enjoying it!
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