May 24, 2005

an interview with bono

Have you ever found yourself relating to someone who has seemingly perfected the art form you practice? I mean, this is several orders of magnitude beyond my experience, but the words ring true. Incredible. So, as this is a blog, I figured I would enter the conversation as I was able.


We never wanted to be a garage band.
We wanted to get as quick
as we could out of
the garage.

The people who say they like the garage usually have two or three cars parked outside.
Rock music is niche.

This morning I was listening to XRT. I tend to steer clear of Morning Edition on NPR lately because I find plenty of stress at the office. I don't need to hear how the world is falling apart. I see plenty. I miss it sometimes, but XRT has hit the spot. Today there was an interview with Greg Kot from the Tribune about his interview with Bono. You can find the full transcript here.I have to admit that I was floored. It was a great conversation about a conversation. Kot raises many good points about the very coporate (read: sell out?) profile of U2. I think it is worth some exploration in general. As many know, I love U2 and Bono is quite cool in my estimation. What he says in the interview is interesting though. When has a band (an artist) sold out? Do artists sell out when they only meet the needs of the niche that spawned them? Do they sell out when they have a larger sense of whom they can reach? I thought it was interesting.
Bono:We looked at the iPod commercial as a rock video. We chose the director. We thought how are we going to get our single off in the days when rock music is niche? When it's unlikely to get a three-minute punk-rock song on top of the radio? So we piggy-backed this phenomenon to get ourselves to a new younger audience, and we succeeded. And it's exciting. I'm proud of the commercial, I'm proud of the association. We have turned down enormous sums of money to put our songs in a commercial, where we felt, to your point, where it might change the way people appreciated the song. We were offered $23 million for just the music to "Where the Streets Have No Name."
That made me pause in my reading of the interview. When does an artist sell their work? Sometimes I think we always are. Those of us who have ever made money, even $25.00 for a church gig, have sold something of ourselves. It is unavoidable. But as Bono suggests, the associations matter.
...We almost did. We sat down. I know from my work in Africa what $23 million could buy. It was very hard to walk away from $23 million. So we thought, "We'll give the money away." But if we tell people we're giving the money away, it sounds pompous. So we'll just give it away, and take the hit. That's what we agreed. But if a show is a little off, and there's a hole, that's the one song we can guarantee that God will walk through the room as soon as we play it. So the idea that when we played it, people would go, "That's the 'such-and-such' commercial," we couldn't live with it.
I remember a conversation I had many years ago with Sarah about how I felt about making any money at all when I sang in a church service. It is a hard thing to balance. For a while I refused to take money. At times I still do. Then there are those days that I have to feed myself and I humble myself to the generosity of a parish. My reason for this is the senseo fo servanthood I feel. I serve the Spirit in worship as revealed in song. So, by extrapolation, I serve the song. Bono says it this way:
I hear so many songwriters describe their songs as their children, that they have to look after them. [Nonsense!] They're your parents, they tell you what to do. They tell you how to dress, how to behave when you're playing them. They tell you what the video looks like. If you listen to them, they manage you. And if you get it right, they pay for your retirement [laughs]. Because songs demand to be heard.
Sometimes I feel this way. Sometimes the music demands a hearing. Perhaps especially music...I have written tunes, some I would call "good." And they sit in my little books unheard. I am afraid to air them in public. To follow the metaphor, I am like some petulant teen who is embarassed to be seen with his parents. I am embarassed by what these songs show of me, the serene and the brutish, the talent and the inability...that vulnerability is too challenging at times.

And then there is the whole issue of colaberation. I had not heard about the dynamic within U2 before. This quote cracked me up:

I'm only one member of this band, and Edge is three. And if he thinks an arrangement is perfect, why mess with it? He says, "I'm not jamming here. That's a guitar melody. I've written it. I can't improve on it." Adam and I are the jazz men in the band. But the Teutonic Larry Mullen and the Presbyterian Edge always demand, "No fat. Back to the original arrangement. We're not going to change the bass line just because we feel like it."
Too funny. There are many ways of measuring success in an artform like music. How one relates within the band matters. But it also matters how one relates to those who hear the music, even to the industry itself. Kot said, "There's no shame in not selling" about the album Pop. Now, "not selling" for U2 is a little different than "not selling" for One of the Girls. Heck, we really don't sell! It is to laugh. But I wonder about the dynamic of self-expression, obedience to an artform and simple history of profound success. Pop can then be perceived on several levels as a failure. If OotG plays "Wild Rover" and people love us even if we get lost somewhere between verses or I blow the mandolin solo it is a success. If I lay my soul out there and Sean and Tom sing the hell out of it and Roger has one of his inspired moments and people still sip away at their beer, it is failure. The song was never heard for what the song is. The dynamic between artist and audience is a wilderness with no map to navigats. No compass can help.

I dunno, guys. Read the whole interview. Tell me what you think. Where are you in relation to your art form? How do you experience/appreciate/encounter art? In what ways do you make a comodity of it?

Posted by tripp at May 24, 2005 01:20 PM
Comments

I read the article this morning with great interest. The things discussed, I think, are things any artist thinks about constantly. I know I struggle with this all the time.

Where I think U2 hits the nail on the head is the way they go about making their decisions. They come from a much thought and contemplation. The decision to do the iPod commmercial (for no pay) is an example. How do you get a song out into the air? Especially in a format dominated, cliche ridden radio market. Take a chance and created a video to market an item you beleive to be the next big thing in music, and use one of your songs to help push the iPod and your new record. If you have the means go ahead.

I think the audience is smart enough to know if you are making choices based on conviction rather than commercialism. If your choices happen to be a commercial success, cheers to you. If you sacrifice content for a buck, boo. I do not see that with U2. Their new album is one of their deepest, maybe not musically best, but lyrically.

When I choose what shows to work on, I struggle. I admit I am a little different than most theater folk here, but I get pretty selective about what I audition/apply for. I want the content to be artful and important. I would like for mobs of people to come see it, for that is why I do it, but even if a few come and are moved to something, then we are accomplished.

I am rambling here, but let me close withthis summary. I respect artist who have acheived commerial success with out sacraficing intellictual/artistic inegrity.

Posted by: justin at May 24, 2005 02:57 PM

I compose primarily for dance. I hire choreographers, dancers, composers, artists, whoever, for a vision.

I have no problem paying them whatsoever.
They have no problem taking their pay.

I live a double life. I have worked in an office my whole life as well as been an artist.

The artists I work with have much better attitudes and work ethics than most anybody I've
ever worked with in an office.

If someone can come to a dance rehearsal or a music rehearsal, etc. and see how hard these people work and say they don't deserve anything for it, I say they are CRAZY!

I always feel down and embarrassed because I know
what the professional rate per hour for a dancer or musician is and I can't quite pay that.

I've seen my dancers come into a rehearsal for me- they've been in classes and other rehearsals all day, perhaps even performed somewhere else.
They are exhausted. They are holding their eyes
open while warming up. When it's time to start
rehearsing somehow they are "On" and are Magic.

It amazes me.

Damn straight artists should be paid. And well.

I keep finding/praying for more open doors to
provide better for my artists. Slowly but surely it is happening.

I think the money thing gets bad when people become greedy with it. Obsessed with it.
Arrogant about it.

One of the ballerinas from my latest piece, Virginia, was talking about how when she was
a toddler she couldn't stop dancing. She danced up and down the aisles in the grocery store.
Giada, the choreographer, was saying how obvious
it is that each of us have a gift. It is given to us. There is no other explanation.
Virginia was meant to dance.

My brother is a welder. He is very good.
His focus and sheer exquisite attention to detail is intrigueing to watch. He can make
$10,000 for 1 job.

If each person is given a gift, why should it be that one person's gift is worth more than another's or deserves to be paid and another not?

I think that is nonsense. God is no respecter of persons, eh? I think all should be paid.

I had to attend a very ritzy benefit gala
for the dance company who sponsored the showcase my piece was in. At first I felt, gee, is this
shallow?

I decided, no.

I watched my composer colleagues how they networked to get their music out there.
Nothing shallow there. Just introducing their music.

I like being shown other people's gifts, why should I hide mine?

I found that the guests at this gala were as interested in finding out about me as the Big Dude with the Big Bio.

I was interested in learning about the Little Fish in the Big Pond as much as the Big Dude with the Big Bio, also. And I did. And I enjoyed myself. And the white wine and the nice catered hors d'ouevres.

Is this lifestyle my niche? Hardly.

Give me quaint and charming anyday.

Moneta, Virginia on Smith Mountain Lake is my hideaway.

However, we are all God's people.
I will sit on the subway and look at all the people and go. God loves everyone here.

My thoughts on the matter.

Posted by: teresa at May 24, 2005 03:56 PM

I make my living as an artist. Does that mean my art is a commodity? I don't have a strong feeling about the word one way or another; just checking on what your final question means, Tripp.

I encounter more art than I want. I'm exhausted by the amount of art in my life, and I'm equally exhausted by the amount of art-opportunism that I encounter. When someone meets me, I never know whether they actually want to know me, or just want to know me for what I can do for their careers.

Posted by: Megan at May 24, 2005 05:31 PM

Personally I think "selling out" has nothing to do with making money through one's art, and has everything to do with motivation and attitude, and what is produced.
I didn't read the intreview but I find Bono's point about songs being the parrents interesting. As a visual artist and Iconographer, I relate to that. In my personal paintings, I have an idea but that idea isn't the painting. The painting itself reveals itself in the process of painting, and at times it takes me away from the original idea. In Iconography I never begin with my own ideas, but with the forms of an ancient tradition, in a hightened sense painting an Icon forms me as I paint.
I have both given away paintings and icons and been paid for my paintings and icons, it makes no difference to me in terms of time and effort. "Selling out" I think means that money or the lack of it define what one does. Thus in a sense I would argue that one can never make money with one's art and still "sell out" if the artist is defined by avoiding payment.
Working on the screenplay and film "Say Hello to Clive for Me" all of us on the project are doing it with out pay, though with the hope that movie making may become for us how we make money. But this is so not because we want to make money but have the money to make good films, and tell good stories that people will see and enjoy. Making good art is hard work why shouldn't one reep monetary reward for good hard work.
I am not primarily concerned with making money, but I don't balk at being paid for my art, I also don't begrudge making art without monetary reward. To me one needs to be able to do art with this indiference towards money, otherwise making money could overwrite any true attention to the artform.

Posted by: Larry Kamphausen at May 25, 2005 10:39 AM

"I never know whether they actually want to know me, or just want to know me for what I can do for their careers."

I've experienced that also.

When in doubt, I look to my role models.
People in the business I respect and admire.

I noticed that in those situations when perhaps
someone is just interested in what they can get
from them, they still treat the person with dignity and respect. They are calm and approachable.

I like that. Regardless of what a person's intentions are, I want to treat them with dignity and respect. Leave the psychoanalysis
of who they are, what they're doing, etc. alone.
It really isn't any of my business. I may not
decide to hire them for whatever reason, but I
do not want to get into labeling people.

We're all just human anyway.

Posted by: teresa at May 25, 2005 10:44 AM

Oh, that dirty, dirty money.

It never ceases to amaze me, the extent to which people denigrate the best distillation we've come up with as a species for the portable fruit of work. If I pay a painter $150 for a painting of hers, that represents the exchange I recieved for time I spent working (and not playing, sleeping, being with family, or otherwise) that I'll never get back. That also represents a gift from me to her of a measure of greater ability for her to feed herself, provide for her family, and better her situation. Money is one of the most honest means we have to communicate appreciation, gratitude, support or any of these sentiments' opposites.

Why is doing something for money inherently (and ironically) cheap?

Posted by: Rich at May 26, 2005 02:02 PM