What was it like in the 60's and 70's?

 

All of them had toured in the 60's and it was a real pleasure just to meet them let alone work with them. They all became bitter and had this kind of social breakdown. They were already laughing at 1975 and when the business changed for the worse in 1980...the were given orders not to play Jazz to a full house whenever they felt like it or....stop with the prog cover bands and limit the money growth in that. Let's worry about our own pockets and go with the flow which is "New Wave". So skilled musicians who had been on the scene since the 60's and all through the 70's....worked in all the N.Y. studios were now being told to play songs....(just songs in general) that are 3 to 4 minutes long and let's keep it that way or your work will be cut. The "Blackball" concept from the empire above. So musicians who toured popular circuits became foul and tried to fight for the cause. Some of them broke through like Happy the Man and by 79' I recall jazz musicians telling me it was a sign for things to change. The industry grew further and further away from promoting a musician based on his ability to be diverse in nature. People were foul.

 

I had many great keyboardist friends who were very Julliard and also did the jazz scene in the city..or played Vangelis and Emerson style in a original or prog cover band. When the scene changed 3 of them went the suicide path. It's so strange to know somebody for that amount of time on the road and then they die tragically because the scene was changing? And then all the great Jazz musicians in Philadelphia and N.Y. were very sour because they had been cut of their liberty to perform what they wanted to in huge venues with full house and top dollar profit. Everybody on the road in this age bracket was bitter and deeply hurt by what had been taken from them. It's like the girl in the dressing room putting her electric bass away and picking up her cello and bow. Now she has to pick up the electric bass, enter the stage and play commercial music with vast limitations. That is how every musician in that age bracket felt. It was very selective in the sense as to what you could divide from their world and yours. This is why I ended up traveling with a lot of R&B cover bands who played the early Chicago or one instrumental at least. You could no longer do the prog cover band scene and it remained selective from the agents to just book a handful of them. This is around the time when Tom Evans from Badfinger was stopping into bars and drinking. He was always with Joey Molland and they were easy to spot as they wore these funny looking hats. Then I discovered later that a few musician buddies of mine were backing that current Badfinger formation. They were on Elektra label. Then it was reported that Tom Evans tragically killed himself and it was the industry that destroyed him.

 

Look at what the industry did to Judy Garland. Getting her hooked on drugs when she was in her teens. I don't pat attention to what the industry is like today, but I do know that in the 70's and 80's it was tragic for a great many musicians. Someone should count the suicide rate from 79' through the 80's. I'm not joking ...there were many entertainers and musicians who blew their brains out or overdosed due to the pressures put upon them from the industry. That was a tragic scene during those years ....like right out of a movie...not even thinking as you witness it that it could be real. It was when the industry made that quality business leap into the 3 or 4 minute song. Then at a club I played in Fort Dix N.J Johnny Winter was over turning all the food trays in the dressing room and just throwing stuff around. People were wigging out! The scene was changing and the original rules set by the higher ups were no longer made available to us in order to make a good living. A good honest living where you make a thousand dollars a week performing prog covers. Some people blame it directly on the drugs. But no....not in the moronic sense.  Drugs were the exit out of this life. The cut-off.  So many musicians did exit that way. But I was on the road with them for decades and you can see plainly that their frustrations and doom lies within the  changing of the industry. When Genesis became a hits band. But that was the gloom and doom scene up and down the east coast anywhere from late 70's and through the 80's. I worked in this 1 particular music store and Carmine Appice had a drum clinic and gave a speech on how corrupted the music industry is. I found it interesting that he would even open with a topic like this. He spoke about crime mostly. He told us about the difference between his previous experience of hope in the music business and what it developed into much later. There was a tone in his voice that expressed frustration and yet he wanted to make all the musicians in the store aware of his experiences. It was his method of reaching people who take music seriously.