Punk Britannia – featuring TV Smith, Johnny Rotten, Richard Strange – BBC4 Friday 01 June 9.00 pm
The Queen’s Jubilee celebrations approach and “Punk Britannia” hits the screens this Friday on BBC 4 – featuring several of the artists I’ve interviewed or seen recently at Richard Strange’s Cabaret Futura. It seems that punk is back in fashion, given the imminent arrival of the Queen’s Jubilee. I recall that my band partner cum journalist from our punk group “Alternative Posing” was censured on national TV in 1977 when he printed a punk fanzine which featured the Queen with a safety pin through her nose. How the times, they have changed!
I bumped into another Punk HR manager on Twitter last week – none other than Perry Timms who has coined the Twitter hashtag #PUNKHR. This reminds me to mention that you can still get a FREE copy of my new micro book Punk Rock People Management. Mail me with PUNK in the title at peter@humdyn.co.uk Punk Rock was about simplicity, brevity and authenticity and Punk Rock People Management is about these timeless qualities rather than the need to pogo whilst doing staff appraisals. Feel free to post a response on these questions:
How can we simplify business processes to the advantage of customers, staff and business?
How can we deliver products and services faster than our competitors?
How can we be more authentic in our dealings with customers?
Check the contents page of Punk Rock People Management out if you have not got your copy yet:
God Save Punk Rock HR
Contact us for a Punk Rock Business event or 24 hour retreat to consider critical challenges facing your business. We have none other than Bernie Torme, who fronted Punk Rock band Skid Row, coming along to our next showcase event shortly – just 15 tickets left. Finally, let’s see what started all the fuss about the Queen’s Jubilee:
Richard Strange gets ready to execute Kevin Costner
What’s the link between Harry Potter, Jarvis Cocker, Twiggy and Robin Hood? Richard Strange of course! Quoted by Johnny Rotten on the BBC’s ‘Punk Olympia’ as the man who invented punk, author, academic, Robin Hood’s executioner and the man who ate Harry Potter… This is part two of the interview with Richard on creativity and innovation parallels from art, empire and industry. Read part one atStrangeways here we come.
The Phenomenal Rise of Richard Strange
PC : I read a review of the album ‘The Phenomenal Rise of Richard Strange’ and it said it was the greatest concept album ever made. How did the concept for the album come about?
RS : When the Doctors finished in 1978 I’d already started to have the idea for the album. The Phenomenal Rise describes a figure who wanted to play the system just because he could, not because he wanted to achieve power. A cerebral pursuit. He was someone who had learned the tricks of Rock’n’Roll, self-promotion and advertising. Quite cynically, but also because it was a game, he wanted to see just how far he could take it. Because he did not want the material trappings of power, he knew he could give everything away, all the stuff that people would obviously want from it. He had just started to put his strategies into place when the system turned against him.
The character in the album was a glamorous figure, a little bit like a rock’n’roll Ronald Reagan, way before Tony Blair. This idea of using techniques from show business but applying them to the acquisition of political power, in the same way that the Nazis did, held a great appeal to me at the time. Perhaps it was influenced by some films I watched at the time by Francesco Rosi, the Italian director of films like The Mattei Affair and Illustrious Corpses. These films concerned corruption, power, the way that the system is bent and skewed and so on.
The Phenomenal Rise of Richard Strange starts with kidnappings, bombs, terrorism, civil unrest and so on – a great backdrop! By appealing to the Hearts and Minds, He gets power (Magic Man). Like all futurologists I got that bit wrong – I thought that technology would give us more time. The reverse of this is of course true! The press turns against him as he starts to dismantle the system that put him in power (Gutterpress). His wife kills herself (International Language). He sees his death coming (Premonition). We think he has been kidnapped although it might all be an elaborate hoax to stage his own demise (The road to the room). Finally, there is a kind of ‘My Way’ – a classic torch song at the end (I won’t run away), although I wanted to end it with a question mark. The whole album has a cinematic feel, which sets it apart from most rock albums.
PC : How did the music industry respond to this?
RS : The Doctors of Madness finished on a real low point. We self-imploded, blown away by the punk rock that we had helped bring into existence. The Sex Pistols supported us. The Damned supported us and so on. I spent a couple of years writing the Phenomenal Rise and noticed there has been a shift in what people were saying about the Doctors of Madness. Then I went off to the US and Canada touring the Phenomenal Rise with just a Revox Tape Recorder and a guitar and realized I never wanted to play a rock club again. It was liberating.
Like a virgin – Intuition + experience
The experience of touring without a rock band is how I came up with the idea of Cabaret Futura, a mixed media club with performance artists, poetry, short films and so on. I opened in December 1980 in Soho. The very first thing that happened to you as you entered the club was different as you were greeted by a large python, which was the pet snake of the receptionist. Cabaret Futura became a big hit, ahead of time from the new romantic clubs of the 80’s like The Blitz and after punk had more or less extinguished itself. We started to have bands coming through that were a little more art school. The negativity and destructiveness of punk rock had given way to a slightly softer more creative feel. We’d get people like Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, The Human League, Echo and the Bunnymen, Spandau Ballet, Richard Jobson and so on. Richard Branson became very interested in signing me to Virgin. We arrived on Richard’s boat in Little Venice with a copy of the album on cassette. He loved the first track and made me an initial offer of £54 000 for the album. I declined. He loved track 2 and came back with £58 000. Track three did not go down so well – £42 000, but I thought he would like the final track and the offer back to £54 000 – I thought I’d better accept at this point! They were also signing bands like Simple Minds, The Human League, Japan, Culture Club, Heaven 17 – bands that were much easier to market with good haircuts. The Phenomenal Rise referenced Edith Piaf, Bertolt Brecht, Jacques Brel, electric disco and so on – much more difficult to market.
Overall, I’d say that record companies did not, and do not, offer much help to artists who wanted to break away from accepted music paradigms. Added to that I was always able to assist in my own inimitable way! For example, I opened the Manchester Virgin Megastore launch event on my back in a comatose position and ended up in a worse state. Record companies don’t always understand such things!
No Limits – Stone Age Innovation
Innovation is just banging two existing rocks together and seeing what spark is produced.
PC : What should the record industry do now? Is it the engine room of its own innovation or destruction?
RS : The idea of the pop star as we understood it, like the Stones, David Bowie and Madonna is over. Rock music is now just a series of reprised poses and posturing. It is impossible to hold a guitar without referencing Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townsend or Keith Richard. It really has ALL BEEN DONE. And that’s tragic for our kids. What chance do they have except as purveyors of pastiche?
Music has become more disparate. Malcolm McLaren said “We live in a pick and mix culture, where everyone wants a bit of this and a bit of that.” Malcolm got a lot of things wrong, but I think he got this one right. It was much easier to target stuff. Now, there is just so much stuff and it is all much more bespoke. The democratisation of music has made it possible for everyone to put make their own music and sell it, but the chances of anyone finding it on their own without a distribution or advertising machine is limited. For example, I’ve got a 19 year old student with a lovely voice who sings cover versions – she has had 500 000 hits on youtube by using search engines and so on. If that had happened in the world before social media she would have had a number one hit for many weeks in the UK, but she is still nowhere in terms of profile.
It would be clinically insane to predict where social media will be in five years time. Everyone assumes it will get bigger and bigger but who knows. No one saw it coming ten years ago., so who can say where it’s going?
Mark Zuckerberg has said that the writing of computer code should be compulsory at school. Spoken language has been round for hundreds of years. Computer language for maybe 50 years. The horse and cart has been around for longer than the motor car, but who would say that the horse and cart is the future? None of us know – all we can do is extrapolate from a few signifiers. But in all probability computing is an important development.
Pop will eat itself? – Will music be it’s own enema?
PC : Music now can be considered to be the mixing of genres. In some cases what emerges is sublime. In other cases, something else comes out. How do you see the thin slicing of genres, which is probably a marketing invention.
RS : I think musical genres are a total marketing invention. All music is mongrel. The Beatles rehashed a bit of Country and Western, a bit of old Rock’n’Roll and a bit of Tamla Motown and came up with Merseybeat. The Stones did the blues – Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry. What were Oasis except the Sex Beatles? – a bit of attitude from here, a bit of melody etc. What was Paul Weller ever apart from an accretion of influences? David Bowie was Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Anthony Newley, Iggy Pop, Jacques Brel and Lindsay Kemp. But the SUM of those parts, those existing elements, was something we would call “original”.
There is no innovation in music, it’s all recombinant DNA. It is just banging two existing rocks together and seeing what spark is produced.
In the afterglow – Strange views on the future
PC : What are you doing currently to pull art, empire and industry by the nose?
RS : I’ve always liked mixing up genres as a means of developing new stuff. I host a monthly live chat show in Soho, called “A Mighty Big If”, with guests from the worlds of music, theatre, literature, comedy, art and film to come for an informal chat and to answer questions from members of the audience, plus some live performance.
I’ve been approached by Don Boyd, a film producer who did the Derek Jarman and Sex Pistols movies and so on. After being on the receiving end of some shabby behavior by some TV commissioning editors a few years ago, he decided to set up an online arts streaming channel, HiBROW TV. What he got crucially and uniquely right was to have practicing artists commission the actual work to be shown. So, he has a number of curators, not broadcasters, not suits upstairs, not counting budgets etc. deciding what to commission. There’s Gary Kemp, myself, Gavin Turk, Sir Richard Eyre, Mike Figgis, ARTISTS who decide what is worth commissioning – We then get a film crew and go and film it. Because we don’t have to put it through committees etc. and leave it too late, it remains fresh and innovative, before all the life has been drained out of it. If you can get a camera into the rehearsal room in the second week of rehearsal, that’s where all the creative stuff is done. I know this, having been in a lot of plays. By the 2nd night of performance, the play is dead. You’ve done all the interesting work in the rehearsal room….and all you are doing in the theatre is rehashing it again and again and again.
I’ve also worked with Marianne Faithful on the Tom Waits / William Burroughs / Robert Wilson collaboration The Black Rider, performing in theatres in London, San Francisco, Sydney and Los Angeles. It’s a Faustian story with Tom Waits writing the music, William Burroughs wrote the book and Marianne Faithful playing the devil. Absolute precision was required down to the last detail. I came out of that experience to work with Harmony Korine on a film called Mr Lonely. Harmony’s way of working is to use improvisation. We were cast as impersonators living in a retirement home for impersonators up in the highlands. I was Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplain, Three Stooges, James Dean and so on. He says, “This scene is where Michael Jackson brings Marilyn Monroe back for the first time. I want you all to be discussing a barbecue / picnic”. So, we work out this scene. Just before we start shooting, Harmony comes up to me, whispers in my ear and says “I don’t want you to do any of that. I want you to talk about taking acid in Vietnam”. Then he shouts, “action!” and waits for the fun to start! So creativity is often what happens off the stage.
PC : An implication for businesses interested in innovation is to find out what is ‘off stage’ and nurture it without trying to mainline it?
RS : Yep. See what is happening on the street, in the clubs, listen to what is getting people excited. Be prepared to ditch your preconceptions about “The Next Big Thing”. You will nearly always get it wrong.
Kiss Hello Tomorrow – Strange but wise advice for innovators
Richard concluded by reminding us 3 pieces of advice to the aspiring artist trying to carve out an innovative niche for themselves.
1. Always carry a notebook
2. Be prepared to kill your babies
3. Never underestimate the power of charm
More at Richard Strange’s website Check him out in person by attending Cabaret Futura or a Mighty Big If in London. All details on the website.
Let's pretend we're married ... "Prince" attempts to forge a strange relationship with Miss Haversham and Scrooge
Employee engagement – what does it mean really? Do more engaged employees do more and better work for longer? Is engagement some kind of secret code for ‘in company dating’ or a causal relationship between casual workers and casual sex? And so on… I attended an academic meeting on the vexed questions of employee engagement at the University of Kent the other day. I took the opportunity to extract the gems from all the World Class speakers who presented. But not before we take an insight from one of Rock’s Honorary Professors, none other than Prince:
Starting with Professor Paul Sparrow, Director of the Centre for Performance Led HR. I’ve summarised Paul’s most compelling insight from his opening keynote:
Engagement is needed in the current age for three reasons: When the world outside changes incrementally or radically; When you want to change the rules of the game for disruptive innovation or; When you want to become more fluid / adaptive
The last reason reminded me of Chris Argyris’ and Peter Senge’s work on learning companies – see the post on Britney Spears for more on this.
Dr Amanda Shantz from York University, Canada offered us some great insights into what to do with disengaged employees. Dysfunctional relationships are at the heart of such problems and therefore part of any potential antidotes. Once again Prince offers us a gem of wisdom via his piece “what’s this strange relationship, ship, ship, ship, ship” :
Amanda went for some good old-fashioned job design ideas courtesy of Hackman and Oldham. I confess I found myself enjoying these since they align well with ideas I presented in Punk Rock People Management. Just because Hackman and Oldham are a bit untrendy, does not mean that they should be displaced by a “7-dimensional model from a trendy HR consultancy firm”. Click on the PUNK ROCK HR link to get a free copy of the book and some wholesome common sense on job design and engagement.
A no-nonsense guide to people management for busy people
On to Professor Rob Briner from University of Bath, who posed the ‘Morrissey question’: How bad an idea is employee engagement? A jolly good question in my view ! He provoked the audience in a very skilled way to question the notion that engagement is actually a good thing, supported by a good deal of well researched data. Rob demonstrated eloquently the problem of HR gurus such as Gary Hamel, who seem to mouth the word ‘engagement’ at HR conferences more times per minute than Robert Plant used to sing ‘baby’ in the average Led Zeppelin song. Rob’s wonderful talk ‘forces’ me to play Morrissey’s great hit on person-job fit and the HR ‘happiness’ agenda:
Dr Brad Shuck from the University of Louisville looked at the ever-present dilemma of measurement. We are able to measure almost everything these days and many businesses do just that. Just because you can measure everything doesn’t mean you should. One quote from Kahn stood out “The fragility of engagement is a function of how vulnerable we feel, and are, when we risk being fully present in a situation”. Feels more like a poem or a lyric than a management consultancy concept I later found out that Brad is an avid jazz and country musician which explained a lot for me. A great treatment on a troublesome topic.
Professor John Purcell posed the thorny question “Is embedded employee voice an essential pre-requisite for engagement”. But what did it mean? John eruditely rehearsed the vital, if not Rock’n’Roll, concept of reciprocity. In Punk Rock HR terms this translates to “What do I get?” i.e. If I give you something, I will expect something in return. I think that is a handy definition of engagement although I don’t think it is well understood in the business world.
Finally, David McLeod and Nita Clarke outlined the steps to be taken in partnership with HR practitioners and academics to make high performance a part of ‘business as usual’. For more details on the University of Kent’s work in the field of high performance working, contact Katie Truss. Professor Adrian Furnham’s work on this area is incisive – see the post on Adrian Furnham for more. Or come along to our next event Riffs and Myths of Leadershipfor some high voltage lessons on employee engagement. We have a few tickets available, although they are going fast now due to our incorporation of an honorary Professor of Rock,Bernie Torme, guitar player to the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne and Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan.
THE Business and HR Leadership event of 2012 - a few tickets left
We must of course return to Prince for some salutary advice on the psychological contract, reciprocity and discretionary effort. As usual Prince takes the whole subject of engagement well beyond the usual limits – you’ve gotta love him for it
"Let's pretend we're married" - Oh dear I look like Thomas Dolby At HRD 2012 with Lauren of www.growthepeople.co.uk
I’m delighted to announce a very exciting event coming up. We are putting on a ‘Monsters of Rock Business’ event. A unique blend of a leadership keynote, business to business networking, a live music performance and an opportunity to meet Bernie Tormé and John Howitt, star performers. See below for details. Limited tickets are available for the event – To buy tickets, click on the link RIFFS AND MYTHS OF LEADERSHIP or e-mail me direct peter@humdyn.co.uk.
The event is part of an offering that we can deliver to businesses in a variety of formats from 90 minutes to a full day experience wrapped around specific business issues, identified in advance or as part of a corporate leadership development programme with one of our partners e.g. Imperial College London.
I interviewed Bernie Tormé the other week alongside the rest of the band and two clients, Steve and Andy, who came to Bernie’s studio for a private masterclass, to get the inside track on music, creativity and business. Oh, yes, and joy of joy, we even had a jam session with the great man himself
Bernie : In the course of my career, I have worked with a fair mix of class A rock stars. The music business is a great teacher of life skills such as negotiating, marketing, teamwork, high performance and so on, both how to do them well and occasionally the dark side of the force. We’ll be discussing these and other topics at the event. At the same time, I’ll be playing some music, which is always a lot of fun. I’m leaving the satanic art of business to you lot!
On Improvisation and Innovation
Peter : Given that Rock’n’Roll has its own conventions and that there are only 12 intervals in an octave and so on, tell me about your approach to the guitar when you are trying to come up with something new?
Bernie: For me, it is not an intellectual process. I try to go blank and start afresh. If then I spot something that I like, then I will refine it until I have something that hangs together for the piece I’m writing.
John : The Americans call this “If you think, you stink”. It has to be fluid. Some jazz players spend so much time intellectualising how to move from one chord to another that they never produce anything of great value.
Bernie: I have applied the same general approach to lyrics. I’d play the songline over and over and just write phrases until they start to fit. I’d thought that this was fairly unique but I’ve since found that its not. It’s not exactly Bob Dylan ! but then I think even he did that from time to time.
Peter: Sam, you teach music for a living. How do you escape the tramlines of rock history when composing or teaching others to improvise?
Sam : For me, the quote of Albert Einstein is instructive. He said something like: The people who seem like the best geniuses hide their influences the best. So, at my tender age, my music is a sandwiching of my influences, although you would need to know what those were if you were to dissect a piece into its constituent influences. If you did not know this information, you may well find something novel in it. Perhaps novelty arises out of the combination of influences into something new and sublime.
Editor’s note: Sam will not be able to be at the event as he has a hobby of extreme sports and is jumping out of a plane while we play guitars. He will be replaced by Vicky Nolan of the rock band “Genital Sparrow”. Here’s a bit of Sam’s work so you can see what you will miss on this occasion:
On tools for creativity
Peter : Are you aware of any techniques or approaches that assist you in the creative process?
John : I find that listening with new ears is a very important skill. For example, I have been listening again to Glenn Miller of late, noticing things that I’d never noticed before. I think that’s an underrated skill in business.
Steve and Andy : We work in a highly regulated industry (Railways) with a long history. Nonetheless, we need to constantly look for new ideas in the search for improvement and innovation. The idea of looking again at old practices in a new way is highly transferable to our environment. One of our difficulties is the ability to get people to empty their collective minds, due to the long legacy of our industry. So, getting our people to ‘escape’ from the ‘burden’. People tend to look towards their seniors or previous solutions which is not always the best way to solve problems.
Hear my train a comin' - Heavy industry meets heavy rock!
Bernie : I can relate to that. Some bands I’ve been in have had a strong hierarchy – basically “it’s my way or the highway”. Big companies are far more complex, although it’s not as different as you would think. The core of a band is surrounded by a plethora of people involved and they don’t always act in the bands best interests, so even a band is a what Peter would call a complex adaptive system.
John : Can you (Steve and Andy) comment on the impact of the work we did for the kick off of a major IT project? Especially in regard to the value of music in that event.
Steve and Andy : Basically, in one day, we achieved as much as we would have done in 3-4 weeks of meetings in terms of developing a cohesive team that can work, learn and play together.
On whole brained musicianship
Peter : Where do you look in your personal search for inspiration re playing an instrument?
Bernie : Using pure intuition to create and a more intellectual process to judge your work. It sometimes helps to have a producer to fulfill this job as these two jobs require different sides of the brain – the right hand side for the more intuitive, playful style and the left hand side for judgement and evaluation. I also love getting my hands on another instrument to shift gears in my thinking and playing. I had a Sitar for a few years for example. It only had 4 or so songs in it for me, but I would not have had those songs without it.
Peter: What examples would you point to re an innovative approach to rock music?
Bernie : For me, Jimi Hendrix epitomizes innovation in rock music still. His willingness to explore sounds that were way beyond those being used by his contemporaries at the time still stands up to scrutiny. He had a playground approach to using equipment and effects that was totally alien at the time. If you listen carefully to Hendrix’s playing, you can hear hints of Steve Cropper, in the way in which he put in little fills and subtleties. He also fused styles in ways that others would not dream of.
"Genital Sparrow" warm up for some hard rock with Bernie Torme
On the music machine
Peter : Can you tell me about the good, the bad and the ugly of working in a rock band that is printable?
Bernie : NO, NO, NO Peter ! :-) Suffice to say that some of the stories in ‘This is Spinal Tap’ are funny because they are not so far removed from real life. I may offer some ‘Rock’n’Roll life lessons’ at the Monsters of Rock Business event coming up in June, but only if you are very nice to me indeed! :-)
Peter : OK, so what can business people learn from music?
Bernie : One of the difficulties is that once you hit a success recipe, management are interested in you repeating that for years unless you are the exception. For example it’s well known that Ozzy Osbourne is a great Beatles fan, but he has a great reputation for doing heavy metal and he knows that his fans expect that from him and he’s bloody good at it anyway!
John : On the other hand, some bands split up because they don’t evolve. In your talks Peter, you discuss Madonna, Prince and Bowie as examples of that. Is it too far a stretch to suggest that some businesses fail if they don’t evolve?
Peter : Absolutely, for some businesses, stagnation is not an option, but it’s a fine balance – Editor’s note – check out the posts on AC / DC and Learning Companies in this respect.
Bernie : I spotted an opportunity when I was in Ian Gillan’s band. We had a top 10 album although the songs were written by someone else. I found a niche in helping the band repeat and improve on that performance for the next two albums.
John : So, innovation is a brilliant thing, but it does not necessarily put food on the table. A balance between existing and new ventures is needed in any enterprise.
Peter : What can business people learn from the music business?
Bernie : The music business is something of a basket case compared with the sorts of businesses you tend to work in Peter. I understand that you have had a fairly lucky life, working in Research and Development for ‘decent’ companies and in academia, where work is play. That’s pretty much a Rock’n’Roll lifestyle. But my understanding of most businesses is that they are not about that. In that respect management in the music business is no different to what happens in the ‘grind em down’ type of businesses that cause so many people to find work a chore.
Peter : I guess I do have the luxury of working for businesses that by and large have decent leaders and managers My early years were spent at Wellcome Foundation, who gained 4 Nobel Prizes for its work in Tropical medicine etc. We worked hard all day because we could and we played hard all night as well. By modern standards, the company was poorly managed, but excellently led and I draw important parallels between this and the world of rock bands. Perhaps that time has gone, or maybe we are at the tipping point where capitalism must rightly be balanced by a proper sense of purpose if we are to solve important world problems. I have found that you get the best out of people by treating them as humane beings rather than human resources. The world’s greatest leaders in business understand that. The rest, well, perhaps they match some of the worst excesses of the music business.
So come along to Monsters of Rock Business and get yourself a supercharge of Rock’n’Roll Wisdom. Here’s three summary points:
1.If you want to innovate, learn to ‘clear the screen’ of industry limitations for enough time to see the future.
2. Accept that creativity is necessary for innovation but insufficient – perspiration is always more important than inspiration. Learn to sweat as well as glow.
3. Know when to intellectualise and when to behave like an animal in business.
Let’s get the real deal out – here’s Bernie Torme in action, causing some Trouble with Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan – it really does not get much better than this – see you at RIFFS AND MYTHS OF LEADERSHIP for some lessons from the School of Hard Rock.
What’s the link between Twiggy, Led Zeppelin, Andy Warhol, Spiritualized, Bill Nelson, Johnny Rotten, Jack Nicholson, William Burroughs, Martin Scorsese, Marianne Faithfull, Harry Potter, Jarvis Cocker and Robin Hood? Richard Strange of course!
Richard Strange is ‘punk rock’s illegitimate Godfather’, having preceded the Sex Pistols, The Damned, The Ramones and The Clash with his highly influential pop art band ‘The Doctors of Madness’. Richard’s career has spanned pop art, punk, writing and acting, most famously for his film roles in Batman, alongside Jack Nicholson and in Robin Hood and Harry Potter. I interviewed Richard close to where I first encountered The Doctors of Madness at London’s Marquee club, a place where cool cats and punk rats came to play, make love, die and do it all again the next day … This is part one of a two part interview.
Strangeways here we come ...
Into the strange – Innovation seen from the new consumer’s lens
PC : What do you consider to be the major consumer trends that will drive music consumption in the future?
The old model of the music business is in its death throes
RS : There’s never only one strand in popular culture or society. There’s always at least two and they usually go in opposite directions. For example, when I think about how we listen to music these days, one of the trends is to listen to it with 255 000 people in a field called Glastonbury, another one is to put two headphones in your ears and listen to it completely one your own. These two phenomena are both happening at exactly the same time in history, in terms of how we enjoy music and how music is delivered to us. The old model of the music business is in its death throes. What’s replacing it, this monster called “new media”, has an appetite for music that’s like nothing we’ve ever had before. Music makes us feel good. Music is friendly and cuddly and sexy. It doesn’t matter if it’s a telephone, a computer, a website. It humanizes the inhuman. The Machine. Everyone wants music. But they want it in different places and for different reasons to what they used to use it. It’s also more transient and disposable.
Network – Strange views on creativity
PC : Tell me about your work in encouraging collaborative creativity and innovation
RS : My wife works at the London College of Fashion. Part of her role as Director of Programmes is to make sure that the quality of their degrees is consistently good across the world. I went out to Hong Kong to accompany her. Whilst I was there, the Dean said ‘it would be shame to waste my presence there’. I then found myself giving some guest lectures to the faculty of digital music and new media. What I did was to talk about my process, projects I’ve done and what I’m doing at The Institute of Contemporary Music Performance here in the UK, where I occasionally lecture. I’m going back out in April / May to instigate and initiate a collaborative project between the fashion students and music students. In the old days, if you made a fashion film, you just added your favourite Velvet Underground or David Bowie track and the job was done. Now, these films end up on YouTube. Suddenly you’ve got copyright problems and off it comes. It just occurred to me that we have an amazing opportunity for kids on both sides of this creative process to get something on their showreel with a credit. The work is done to a professional standard, with high production values, original music being paired with original film, which can be put out on YouTube / Facebook etc. There is huge reciprocal benefit because now the London College of Fashion students get in touch with my music students for these collaborations. Both groups learn life skills, collaboration, negotiation, fulfilling a brief, meeting a deadline and so on.
A mighty big if - Richard Strange’s monthly live chat show in London - click on the picture for details
PC : Your comments on music and the arts match the condition in business. Innovation in many fields now is so complex that it is rarely the realm of the one person / one discipline. This is as true in art as it is in industry.
When did the future begin? – The innovation legacy of The Doctors of Madness
PC : Punk rockers followed The Doctors of Madness but they weren’t punk. Tell me more about how The Doctors were innovative.
The Doctors of Madness were their John the Baptist to their Jesus Christ
RS : I was talking to the BBC re this for a series of three programmes they are doing this year called Punk Olympia. If you looked at what The Doctors did on a checklist, we were punk rock: We had funny names; We had a certain cartoon caricature on stage image; We sang about a more urban lifestyle rather than a rural, pastoral one that came out of prog rock – that was always about wizards and cosmic themes, if you think about Yes and so on; We dealt with more difficult topics such as neurosis, psychosis, control systems, propaganda.
I had blue hair. I was Kid Strange. We sang about that. Half of our songs were ludicrously fast. We did not make a virtue out of musical virtuosity. In fact we made a virtue out of the reverse. It was all fairly shambolic and haphazard. When we made these songs, we would sit down in a circle and would try to blow each other off the planet and that’s how the songs came to be. Let’s see how that all works:
When you see the documentary of the Doctors of Madness, it isn’t punk rock. But you can see why the people who liked us, in that little gap – the blackhole between glam rock and punk rock, you can see why the Dave Vanian’s, The TV Smith’s, The Jam, Joy Division, Penetration and so on would gravitate towards us. I am told that we have been an influence on bands and people like Spiritualized, Simple Minds, The Skids, Julian Cope and Harmony Korine, who directed Gummo and Kids. Vic Reeves used to graffiti the public tubes in the North East with The Doctors of Madness. Shameful behaviour !
We really polarized opinion. We were untimely. We came out of prog rock so prog rockers hated us. We weren’t pub rock. We did not nod towards Los Angeles. We were very English, very British, very London and we didn’t mess around with many love songs.
PC : This is certainly true. Check out Mainlines, Billy Watch Out, Sons of Survival, B-Movie Bedtime and Richard’s more recent work to find out why The Doctors of Madness were innovators across music and art.
Mainlines to creativity
PC : What gets you in the creativity zone when you are composing?
RS : I was always and still remain a word junkie – I love a good lyric. I love a good text or a good idea that is eloquently expressed. And rather tragically I’m wasn’t into Rock’n’Roll, i loved writers like William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation at the age of 13-14. And I loved Contemporary Art. I would be found hanging out at the Tate Gallery, Indica Books and the Robert Fraser Gallery at the age of 15 rather than going to football matches or fishing.
PC : Speaking lyrically, tell us some of your maxims for an innovative text or lyric?
If something sounds like a cliché it probably is
RS : I set my standards quite high. I have tended to think, if I’ve heard that rhyme before I’m not gonna use it unless I absolutely have to. If something sounds like a cliché it probably is. So I’m very meticulous in staying away from the obvious rhyme – the obvious sequential lyrical development I’m very aware that use words that many people wouldn’t (or couldn’t – Editor’s note) touch with a bargepole. Let’s hear one of his great lyrics:
PC : My own observation of your lyrical creativity is that you use contrast and contradiction as a device. Are you aware of that and, if so, can you comment?
RS : I am not a narrative writer, I am a more impressionistic writer. I create mood, atmosphere and polemic.
PC : There is a large body of research starting with Wallas (1926) which suggests that creativity relies on a lot of unconscious work, spread out over time, rather than the instant flash of inspiration. Jean Cocteau and Henri Poincare concur. Does your creativity come out in bursts or do you develop things over time?
RS : Words and songs don’t pour out of me. They are hard wrought. I can’t bang songs or words out. For example, I was asked recently to write a piece for the closing credits of a Hollywood film, Dark Hearts, which was a real thrill. The film has a specific narrative about an artist who is on the skids, whose work isn’t shown any more. He starts to use his own blood in his work and his career starts to take off. A vampiric tendency takes hold, it ends up in a murder and a betrayal between him and his brother. They asked me to write song for the closing credits and it was a case of writing something that portrayed the themes but not the narrative. It had to deal with the themes of betrayal, addiction, dependency and so on and these were my way into writing the song. The last scene is in the desert with the protagonist screaming at the heavens. I know as an artist that certain sounds will work and others won’t. It had to come in with a vocal on the 1st bar and so on. So I spent two days trying the first two lines out, working out whether it was in 4/4 or 3/4 and just searching for the right sounds and words. My poor kids must have been driven crazy listening to me trying all this out.
PC : So you use the concept of ‘immersion’ as a method for creating?
RS : Absolutely, I like to become absorbed in a piece. I find recording to be a wonderful tool for writing. Sometimes words feel good, but they don’t sound good. And sometime the reverse is true. Recording and playing back gives a great sound picture and the sound of words, in song-writing as in poetry, enhances and emphasises the meaning.
PC : What about the idea of detachment, being ‘disconnected’ from the topic, rather like an arts director seeing their work from a dispassionate viewpoint. Do you recognize that as a skill?
RS : That depends on the song. Some songs are observational, some are immersed in the moment and the emotion. Different songs require the writer to adopt a different viewpoint.
PC : Tell me some more about how you manage to compose something different without falling into the trap of ‘karaoke rock’n’roll’? After all there are only so many combinations of music out there and we are bombarded by the stuff. In other words, how do you stay fresh?
RS : I only ever write a song if I believe it MUST be written. If it brings something new to the table. If it doesn’t already exist “out there”.
An example of Richard's writing - click on the pic to find out more
PC : Tell me a little more about the song creation process, perhaps by using an example. This could be a solo or group example.
RS : I keep notebooks. Always have done. Hundreds of them! I jot down a phrase, a word, a rhyme, a thought. Something I hear on the radio – a misheard conversation on a bus. Then I sift, refine, edit, try out conflicting ideas to see if sparks fly
PC : Some people swear by techniques to help them innovate, such as using random stimuli or reversal. Others use a more intuitive approach. Are you aware of any particular personal techniques or rituals that you find helpful to escape mainline thinking?
RS : Burroughs always recommended the cut-up method to escape writers block. But he also held that by setting the word free of the confines of syntax and obvious context, you liberated the “True’ meaning. Word falling… image falling… etc. It’s a useful tool, but not one that I use as a staple of my process.
Musically, it’s good to write on an unfamiliar instrument. To get an unfamiliar approach. The hands too easily form the shape of a familiar chord for me if I pick up a guitar, and I fall into cliché progressions. But if I sit down with an accordion, say, there is NO familiarity whatsoever.
PC : Oh yes indeed – a big empathy moment. At the ‘craft’ rather than the ‘art’ level of music, I found that switching genres towards playing in a gypsy jazz style was very helpful to escape the ‘mousewheel’ of playing rock guitar! We have an interview coming up with Bernie Torme, Guitarist to Ozzy Osbourne, Ian Gillan, GMT and Twisted Sister, who was on the bill with The Doctors of Madness. He says exactly the same thing!
Richard Strange with Spandau Ballet's Gary Kemp at 'A Mighty Big If'
Kiss Hello Tomorrow – Strange but wise advice for innovators
Richard concluded by offering 3 pieces of advice to the aspiring artist trying to carve out an innovative niche for themselves.
1. Always carry a notebook
2. Be prepared to kill your babies
3. If you change the instrument, you change the output
More at Richard Strange’s website Check him out in person by attending Cabaret Futura or a Mighty Big If in London. All details on the website. We can arrange masterclasses that cross the articifial divides between art and business. We’ll continue in a few weeks time with Part 2 – The Phenomenal Rise of Richard Strange:
Andy Warhol, The Factory and The Velvet Underground were synonymous with a groundbreaking synaesthesia in music and art in the 1960’s. Their influence has been pervasive over nearly 50 years on people such as The Sex Pistols, The Doctors of Madness, The Cure, The Psychedelic Furs, Patti Smith, Vaclav Havel, Bill Nelson, Iggy Pop, The New York Dolls and many more. Simply stated:
“The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.”
Today I’m looking at the qualities that led to the success of The Factory as a music innovation incubator, with parallel lessons for businesses wishing to make innovation part of their business as usual activity. My epiphany came about after many years of teaching an MBA programme in creativity and innovation for the Open University Business School. I noticed that the example of The Factory has useful parallels with the four ‘P’s of innovation: Person; Place; Product; Process. To help tell the story of Andy Warhol and The Factory to the uninitiated, I’ve linked these to music from the great retrospective album by Lou Reed and John Cale “Songs for Drella”. Note “Drella” was a nickname for Warhol – a combination of Cinderella and Dracula!
Person – The song “Open House” makes reference to the grating tension between the Velvet Underground’s personalities – e.g. Reed – Cale and Warhol’s role as a creative leader – demonstrating permission giving behaviours and creating a climate where different things could happen. Many creativity experts only emphasise the positive aspects of creative people, yet much creativity comes out of struggle, sometimes with the task, but sometimes through tensions between the people. This also occurs in corporate life:
“Because of the trust and respect we’ve built up, like an old married couplewe are able to rubbish each other’s ideas. Yes we have to kill our babies – it’s the only way to arrive at a viable idea”
Simon Kershaw, Creative Director for the Land Rover Discovery
Check “Open House” out and listen carefully to the words:
Place – For me, the idea of ‘Place’ refers to the physical and psychological environment that encourages innovation. The parallel is in seeing The factory as a business incubator or ‘innovation hothouse’. John Cale said:
“It wasn’t called the Factory for nothing. It was where the assembly line for the silkscreens happened. While one person was making a silkscreen, somebody else would be filming a screen test. Every day something new”
Andy Warhol clearly understood what business schools would call ‘innovation climate’, building a physical and psychological environment where people would be inspired to think great ideas and then convert them to finished product. The principles behind innovation climate are neatly summed up by a rich picture designed by one of my MBA Alumni. Mail me for more background on this highly condensed view of innovation research.
Precepts for developing an innovation climate
Warhol cared less about traditional boundaries of art and this is what the rich picture calls ‘explore the givens’. This is epitomised in Reed and Cale’s piece “The trouble with the classicists.” Take a listen:
Product – The Factory produced uncompromising real life ‘art’ that dealt with subjects largely untouched by the art world – at the same time Warhol’s protégé’s produced an unending supply of sensational pop art, such as the images of Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s Soup. Despite the huge diversity, whatever emerged was instantly recognisable as coming from The Factory. In effect, The Factory was an ‘anti-corporate brand’ much in the same way that punk rock and punk clothing quickly became mainstream music and fashion.
Cale and Reed epitomised The Factory’s unending art production line in their words and music to the wonderously grating and dissonant piece “Images”
Process – Andy Warhol was a workaholic, contradicting the view that creativity was about waiting for inspiration to arrive. He favoured perspiration above inspiration and this is poetically summarised in Cale and Reed’s words to their song “Work”:
Finally, we finish with some questions to provoke your own innovation factory:
Have you got the right people in the right balance to make innovation regular and frequent? Inventors, Innovators and Entrepreneurs?
Have you got a physical and psychological environment that encourages creativity and calculated risk taking?
Do you seek constant innovation in the products and services that you provide?
Have you got reliable strategies and processes for divergent thinking (creativity), convergent thinking (deciding) and converting decisions into innovation (implementation)?
In the spirit of pop art and punk for punk’s sake, my latest micro book “Punk Rock People Management – A no-nonsense guide to hiring, inspiring and firing staff” is available for FREE. Simply e-mail me with punk in the title (peter@humdyn.co.uk) for your copy. A full colour illustrated print version is also available and an Amazon Kindle version. If you like the preview, you will LOVE the full feature ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll’ – so ‘BOGOF’ – Buy one and get one free! Contact us to book your next conference keynote based on our heady mixture of business leadership and music.
We cannot conclude without visiting Lou Reed’s classic “Walk on the Wildside” which tells stories of many of the personalities at The Factory – Holly Woodlawn, Joe Dallessandro, Candy Darling etc. Coming up soon an interview with the illegitimate Godfather of Punk and confirmed Velvet Underground fanatic Richard Strange.
This week, I have a great opportunity for writers, musicians and business leaders. I have just been appointed “Rock’n’Roll Innovation Editor” for a US based Global Innovation Company called Innovation Excellence. The company is run by Julie Anixter, who worked with Tom Peters and Seth Godin amongst other leading business thinkers around the world. Innovation Excellence is the most popular innovation website in the world with over 10 000 readers per day and counting. As part of my job there, I am planning interviews with people in the coming year such as Ahmet Ertegun’s biographer, CEO of Atlantic Records, Bill Nelson, Professor Adrian Furnham, Bernie Torme, Sir Richard Branson and Sir Paul McCartney. We’re starting shortly with a piece about the enigma that is Richard Strange, leader of proto-punk pop-art group The Doctors of Madness and perhaps punk’s godfather,
So, what then does the Rock’n’Roll Innovation Editor do? Good question! You don’t see many RNR Innovation Editors on the staff at the Financial Times or the New York Herald Tribune! My job is to interview, write or commission articles with any of the following types of people:
Innovative musicians – Names that spring to mind include Robert Fripp, Lady Gaga, Brian Eno, Madonna – people who have either innovated within music or are gamechangers in the music industry.
Innovation leaders – Especially those who get the idea that innovative leadership requires both discipline and improvisation – Virgin, Toyota, First Direct, Google, 3M, The Eden Project spring immediately to mind.
Innovation authors and academics – Again those who have a ‘Rock’n’Roll outlook’ on the subject – Brian Clegg, Tom Peters, Adrian Furnham et al are on my list of suspects here.
Innovation Excellence is also open to sponsors who wish to help build the best educational resource in the world for innovation. Contact me via e-mail at peter@humdyn.co.uk to see what’s on offer.
So, in the warped words of the hymn “Come all ye faithful … and also a healthy dose of firestarters …” Drop me a line and let’s see if we can create a guest article or interview.
Speaking of firestarters, time to finish with a bit of that…
There are very few things in business and life that have such awesome power that they cause the Catholic Church to attempt to ban them. Music is one exception. Read on after taking a look at the awesome power that is Black Sabbath:
Black Sabbath came not from leafy suburbs of Surrey, nor did they study classical music at Oxford or Cambridge. They crawled out from the gutters of the industrial heartland of Birmingham, with three degrees in classic rock. Their music reflected a much harsher upbringing. Pioneers of the music genre called heavy metal, their music conjured up images of grime, paranoia and … devil worship, according to some. Let me explain.
Sabbath’s title song from their first album ‘Black Sabbath’ contains a musical riff that uses the musical tritone, or the so-called ‘devil’s interval’ – the sixth note of the musical scale. Unlike the major scale (do re me fa so la ti do for the non musical readers) the tritone was considered so powerful that the Catholic Church attempted to ban composers from using the note in the 16th Century. Remember that music was largely an act of patronage at this time, the monarch and the Church were much more connected, society was much more superstitious and the enlightenment had not happened. Put simply, physics had not happened. Had the Catholic Church followed the work of Maxwell, Hertz, Faraday et al they would have realised that you cannot ‘ban’ electromagnetic radiation!
So how did Sabbath get the “Riff” and was there a devilish intervention at work? Guitarist Tony Iommi had an accident in which he lost the tips of two fingers on his right hand and he almost gave up playing the guitar. He capped the missing digits with thimbles made from plastic and covered in leather. He had to use lighter strings and detune them so he could grip them easily with the capped fingers. This combination gave a dark and foreboding sound and Iommi came up with the riff after a comment from Butler as he watched people queue to watch a Boris Karloff film. He said it was “strange people would pay money to be scared” The rest as they say is history with Osborne and Butler adding powerful lyrics.
Black Sabbath’s ‘riff’, when written down in musical notation, sort of makes up the number 666, hence the notion that it would summon up the devil. That’s why you won’t hear Kylie Minogue or Katy Perry using the tritone … Whilst popular rumour suggested that Sabbath conducted live sacrifices and so on, they were more into drinking in pubs than drinking blood! Ah well, that’s music marketing for you. Here’s a little video I made that proves for the first time that the devil’s interval is harmless to animals:
Just to add more to this fascinating story The Rockefeller Foundation conducted research into psychosocial stress to produce “mass hysteria” and found the sound wave that caused this to be A=440/741hz. Which is the same note as the Solfeggio (That’s the Devil’s Interval to you and me) banned by the Catholic Church and by coincidence the riff Iommi came up with for the song Black Sabbath. So was there devilish intervention at work or not?
Nonetheless, it’s interesting that music has such power. I will leave you with another Sabbath Classic, which also contains another ‘evil’ riff, using the flattened fourth, in the middle of the song:
Special thanks to Tom Hughes for co-writing this blog – Tom is a leadership trainer, enthusiasm generator and general music fanatic – Find him on Twitter @Thomas2BHughes
For more Heavy Metal Business articles – check SPINAL TAP on project management, DEEP PURPLE on improvisation, LED ZEPPELIN on strategy
Just before I started my business as a creativity and innovation specialist some 17 years ago, I had a brief moment dabbling with an invention in 1994. Recently someone pointed out that I effectively invented the idea for what became the Amazon Kindle, so I took a look back down memory lane for the original concept that sparked the innovation.
In 1994 I developed ‘The Virtual Bookreader’ – yes I know it’s not a snappy title! An extract from the patent document reveals the purpose:
The virtual bookreader offers a user friendly way to read books using computer based technology. This will be of particular use to frequent travellers who wish to save on luggage space, libraries for multiple book loans and book publishers wishing to enter electronic book distribution.
I registered the design for a year, to enable me to have commercial discussions with a number of large companies about the concept. Unsurprisingly, I got many rejection letters. Even the computer giant IBM even sent me a letter telling me that they did not think it had much commercial potential. Oh dear – how wrong could they be!
I did not sufficient money to develop the idea at the time, so I decided to let the patent lapse and publish the idea in my 1st book ‘Best Practice Creativity’, in the hope that someone would take the idea further. It seems they did. Take a look at the original drawing and the modern day Kindle:
The Virtual Bookreader and the Kindle - Extracted from the book 'Best Practice Creativity' - given a personal affiliation by Professor Charles Handy
What are the innovation lessons we can learn from this?
Since the Kindle only came out in 2007, it is fair to say that my concept was ahead of a market demand. This serves to demonstrate the importance of timing in innovation. Doh!
The concept was rejected by many serious companies. This points to the fact that new ideas are inconceivable before they have entered the market. Double Doh! )
Whilst creativity and invention is relatively easy, innovation takes blood, sweat, tears and money. Without sufficient cash to drive the innovation train, it is often better to sell your idea. Even then one needs the skills to crack the corporate hierarchy and persistence / resilience to continue after many tries. In my case, I had a startup business to run, so made the decision not to pursue the invention. Focus matters when running a business. But for a different time …. Doh !
Feel free to check out Best Practice Creativity – we have a few copies for sale directly. Or mail us (peter@humdyn.co.uk) for a free copy of the new book ‘Punk Rock People Management‘. Our previous books are acclaimed by Professor Charles Handy and Tom Peters and, oh yes, the book is available on Kindle at a very attractive price.
I just got sent this superb 28 minute film of Prince by Hollywood World Studio. It is especially good at showcasing the diversity of Prince’s talent, exemplified by his album ‘The Rainbow Children”. Oh damn, it got taken off my YouTube. You will just have to put up with a substitute
Some interesting observations about the original film:
The film covers several quite distinct musical genres: funk, soulful love songs, acoustic beatbox music plus Prince’s classic anthem Purple Rain.
The band is a genuine meritocracy, irrespective of gender, race and so on e.g. women taking on less traditional roles of bass and sax.
The show is meticulously rehearsed and this leaves room for a little bit of on the fly improvisation, mostly conducted by Prince himself, who gives signals to the rest of the band to extend passages, put solo segues in and so on.
How many artists could you say this about?
The potential downside of Prince’s desire to play so many different styles is that this may have lost him some of his audience along the way. Some people prefer a repeat performance rather than something different?
Turning to business, feel free to make a contribution on the blog around these questions:
If you decide to change your product or service, how do you keep your customers whilst acquiring new ones?
How do you genuinely make diversity and meritocracy work to your advantage?
How do you combine structure / discipline / preparation with creativity / improvisation / spontaneity to keep the customer experience fresh?
What can we learn from Prince about resilience, excellence and becoming a learning company?
A book extract about Prince from my last book ‘Sex, Leadership and Rock’n’Roll’ is available for FREE. Simply e-mail me with Prince in the title (peter@humdyn.co.uk) for your copy. Contact us to book your next conference keynote based on our heady mixture of business leadership and music. To read a previous post on the genius of Prince, check out the Hop Farm.
Sex, Leadership and Rock'n'Roll - contains a U-LOG-EYE to Prince
The press turns against him as he starts to dismantle the system that put him in power (Gutterpress). His wife kills herself (International Language). He sees his death coming (Premonition). We think he has been kidnapped although it might all be an elaborate hoax to stage his own demise (The road to the room). Finally, there is a kind of ‘My Way’ – a classic torch song at the end (I won’t run away), although I wanted to end it with a question mark. The whole album has a cinematic feel, which sets it apart from most rock albums.
