Band Drama

1000 ways to get things wrong, only a few ways to get them right.

Let’s talk about something that is as ubiquitous “couples drama” or “workplace tension.” In fact, let’s talk about a phenomenon that in some ways lies squarely in the middle of those two things.  “Band Drama” is a lose term used to describe a whole spectrum of situations that arise from the collaboration of a group of people on a musical project.  100% of bands experience it, 99% of bands fail because of it.  While we can give names to the root causes of dramatic band breaking episodes, the fact is that from the outside looking in, it would be almost completely impossible to fully comprehend for someone who hasn’t lived it.  As someone who has lived through many “band drama” episodes I am writing the below to provide a window in for those uninitiated in band dynamics, and hopefully provide some comforting validation to anyone who has felt stung by a situation similar to those I’ll describe.  Let’s dive in. 

I’m going to give a few possibly offensive mini titles to the type of drama that I will describe.   Please don’t let this kill your vibe. 

1.  The Yoko Ono

So everyone knows that band member whose girlfriend or boyfriend loves to be a part of the action.  They show up to rehearsals, they are at gigs, they become such a part of the band family that onlookers often think they are part of the crew.  They get so comfortable in the band dynamic, that maybe they are even given a tambourine, a background vocal part and start having their opinion factored in to what opportunities the band accepts and how it operates. 

On the surface, some people find this endearing, and other members of the band might find it deeply annoying,  but why does this cause “drama”?

Let’s back up. What did the bass player have to do to get into the band?

Well, they likely had to spend countless, thankless hours learning their instrument and practicing the songs.  They probably weren’t given a mic to sing a background part until they had proven they could sing in tune, and they probably were showing up to gigs even before those gigs paid anything. 

Now, the band has a sound, a bunch of songs, and even a few fans that will show up consistently to shows.  They make the guitar player, the drummer or even the lead singer seem so much more appealing because of the amount of work they did. The fans perceive their tight unit supported by the strong low end because this band has had the same bass player since day one. So impressive has become their show, that one of those fans who was always showing up to shows, started make the lead singer breakfast after every gig (if you know what I mean… wink wink).

Fast forward a few months and the band has a new acquisition.   No audition, no work, no showing up to any gigs they didn’t feel like doing and no, they aren’t helping the set up, tear down or sound check.  They are extra weight.

Let’s call this person “Yoko” just so we know what kind of person we are talking about, although I don’t want any of what I am about to say to seem like an attack on the real Yoko who I think is badass for a lot of reasons.  

Yoko is not a professional musician. Yoko would have never even cared to show up to the 100 gigs the band did before it got enough fans to seem impressive. Yoko does not sing in tune nor have good time on the tambourine. Yoko has no insight into the band’s business or the music business as a whole.  Yet, the bass player finds himself cutting a smaller of piece of the band’s income so that Yoko can feel like an additional member of the band. 

Let’s also add that Yoko’s presence fundamentally changes the lead singer’s disposition towards the band. He no longer wants to get together for late night writing sessions that yielded the edgy first batch of songs that the band recorded.  He doesn’t stay and have a beer with the rest of the band once the gear is loaded out and packed.  The couple in the band become their own unit, sliding out of frame to go do their couple activities and stop generating new memories with their colleagues altogether. 

Can you see how the other members of the band would see Yoko as an intrusion? They would perhaps blame her, and her partner’s addiction to her presence for the band’s lack of movement.  It can be a pretty awkward scenario for someone to say “hey can you tell girlfriend to not hangout at rehearsals all the time, it’s pretty distracting.”  If the lead singer is even half has narcissistic as he needs to be make a career happen he is going to storm out of the room and then you have “band drama” on your hands.  The Yoko Ono would perhaps better be generalized as “members of the band succumbing to outside influences.”  It sucks, but if you really want to make a band work, you have to be willing to separate your personal relationships from your professional ones. Without a doubt there is a time that you will have to make a decision in favor of one or the other, and if your personal relationship is right there on the tambourine messing up everybody’s time and not aligned with everyone else’s vibe who you need to succeed, you are bound to not set the right balance for the business to work. 

2. Whose Band is it Anyway?

You may not always perceive who is at the helm of a band but In some situations it is obvious.  Metallica, for example, is lead by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich.  Everyone who knows the band understands that, even though they are technically a band of equals.  

Billy Corgan was clearly the leader of The Smashing Pumpkins.  The other guys (and girls) might as well have been hired guns despite contributing something meaningful to the identity of the band that never had the same impact without them.

In other cases it may be a lot less apparent to those who don’t work in bands, but suffice it to say pretty much every band has a leader and every band has a gopher.  The leader isn’t always the person in front either.  For example, Collin Greenwood, bassist and founding member of Radiohead is one of the driving forces behind the band and evaluates all the decisions they make. Thom Yorke is a creative force within, but basically shows up to an agenda that has already been crafted. Collin gives Thom the schedule, rarely is it the other way around. 

The gopher is the one who is willing to pull out all the stops so that the band can succeed. If one of the band member's car breaks down they'll give them a ride no questions asked. If there isn't money to cover the sound guy from the gig they put it on their tab. So what happens when the gopher wants to assert themselves as a full member of the band, but they aren’t the one who is “actually” in charge creatively.  Well, the answer is two simple words: “band drama.”

What’s important to know is that getting a band off the ground requires a tremendous amount of money, time, strategic thinking and foresight.  Whoever is willing to put in all of this from the beginning is undertaking a huge risk.  Go head and dump your life savings into a career path that might take 10 years to produce a profit and see how willing you are to share the proceeds with your fellow bandmates. On the other hand, imagine you jump into a band that requires a huge push over the finish line and here you come saving the day left and right with administrative calls that keep the gig alive.

Imagine the first time you get offered an international gig and you have to fly your band out.  Even if the fee you get covers the costs which is very unlikely to begin with, the band member (usually the gopher) that actually puts those flights on their credit card is the only one really feeling the risk that they are taking.  How about the one who advances the production with the staff at the venue? What about the one who books the hotel rooms and acquires the band’s visas? What about the one who found the source for backline and who developed the marketing materials.   What is more than likely is that all of that time energy and money was spent by one person in the band who actually has a mind to do such things.  The other four guys showed up, killed it, and had a great time, but one of the guys did ALL the legwork and took ALL of the financial risk.  

The drama will often happen because the other guys still want to split the pie based on what was done on stage, however, all the behind the scenes work being done by one of the members is ignored by the others leading to a brewing resentment that may never get corrected. 

This, in part, stems from the fact that MOST musicians are kind of idiots (no offense).  I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s just that if they spend all of their time practicing, they likely don’t have the right kind of skills to forecast the revenue vs expenses of a 30 day tour.  They likely don’t even see that someone else does it when it does get done, and likely only even mention anything relating to logistics of their tour if something goes wrong. 

So imagine you are that guy.  You calculated all the fees coming in, the taxes and percentages you would pay, you rented the backline and the vehicle, you hired the driver and figured out the time distance between each show so you would know when to leave each place. You booked the hotels, put the tour schedule together and every step of the way are monitoring your email and text messages like a hawk for last minute questions from the promoters your dealing with.  Throughout the whole tour you didn’t party a single night with the other guys because you are keeping your eyes on the business.  Half way through the tour, Yoko, lets you know that you booked a shitty hotel this time because none of the rooms have enough towels and that she doesn’t want to leave at the time you scheduled because she might have lunch with a friend somewhere in town.  You are going flip out, you are going to seem like the dramatic one. You are going to want to flush the entire project down the drain. 

What is happening is that the band itself is ignoring a huge chunk of the work that it takes to make a band happen. While many times the cases of willful ignorance are not as extreme, such things have lead to quite a few bitter disputes among band members.  Especially when the creative and administrative roles are separated between a creative leader and an administrative gopher. The one who is the most creative in the band thinks they are entitled to far more than the one who does all the admin work, but neither can function without the other. 

Important tangent: When bands experience this kind of drama it is important that it be clear who is a "member" and what that means and who is a "hired gun" and what they are being hired to do. It is also important for everyone to value each other's contributions and not take other people's work for granted.

3. "I Identify as..."

So let’s say you locked yourself in a studio for a month with your four best friends (+ Yoko) and did a bunch of drugs and recorded a bunch of songs. All of you invested the time and were there for the whole thing.  I would be willing to bet that in this situation there was one of you that had 90% of the ideas that ended up on tape.   It just generally is that way.  Intensely creative minds are rare, and usually when you put more than one of them in the room at a time they tend to but heads more than headbang together.  There are a few notable exceptions of great songwriting partners, but even those will often descend into bitter disputes. 

Sometimes although one person is bringing idea after idea, another person is shooting them down like they are on the skeet range. Perhaps one person believes they are a part of the whole process but all they are doing is rolling joints for the other members who are busy tracking and producing. Even more frequently there is someone who considers themselves to be a musician of the same caliber, but needs to repeat takes 10 times more than everyone else. These people collectively are "The Band" but much like with the touring situation there is someone who is in charge creatively and someone who is in charge administratively. There also are a few others who either want to be heard, or want to be out doing other things.

PRO TIP: When you are in a writing session don’t shut down ideas… Like ever. If someone says let’s double the guitars, you double them, if someone says they have a cool lyrical addition, add it.  It can always be removed later, but you are way more likely to harvest something truly magical if all the seeds get thrown into the soil.  Nothing stifles creativity than the words “I don’t think that’s really going to work” or “nah let’s not try that.” If you find yourself saying that during writing sessions you are the wrong person for the session.  Try to add and never subtract.  Similarly, don't over zealously edit people's ideas, let their ideas breathe and get flushed out before you say "we should change the key" or "that solo should be twice as long." People who are really successful at songwriting edit themselves and tend to bring already curated ideas into group situations, even if it seems like they are coming up with it on the spot. Let their ideas fully speak before you add words to them.

The band drama tends to arise when they don't make the desired progress towards a creative vision and people feel like their month in the studio was a waste.

Why did that happen? In part probably because not everyone really focused on that objective, they made it about themselves and wanting to be heard. Another part of it is because people didn't assume their roles comfortably. Whoever is the most creative should probably bring the artistic direction, whoever is the most proficient musician should probably musically direct and whoever understands Pro-Tools should get a life and use Logic or Ableton (just kidding). Any number of things can derail a great sounding band in the studio and In that case it does, one thing that I would recommend to anybody asking me (or reading this article) is paper work. 

You should know, if you go to a recording session and participate in a creative project with other people, you are entitled to a portion of the copyright of anything that ends up in the composition (whether or not YOU specifically created it) and a portion of the copyright of anything you recorded.  If you recorded it its yours, and if you came up with it, you have to be credited and compensated.  What usually happens is that when people create together, the MOST creative member will want to say that the entire composition and sound recording belongs to them.  It may be true that one person got more creative than the others during the session, but full ownership of the work would not be actually attributed to them if it came to a legal push and pull.  That is why when engaging in writing and recording sessions you ALWAYS want to have one of two things. 

1. Work for hire agreement: which specifies that the sound recording and the composition resulting from your work is being compensated up front, with a specific dollar amount, and the rights to it’s usage are being transferred to the final owner who can commercially exploit the work.  Without a work for hire agreement, part of everything recorded is yours inherently.  Or if you are the one creating, everyone who collaborates with you will have some claim to it.

2. A songwriter agreement:  An agreement that specifies under what terms you are contributing intellectual property and time recording to a creative product.  If there is no songwriting agreement then again, you are entitled to a percentage of any work you participated in, and the proof that you participated will be your recording on the tape.  Because you may not accurately document where each idea came from during the session, it is a relatively common practice to make songwriting credits equal among all the participants in the session (who don’t have work for hire agreements). If you intend to have it not be equal because you showed up with a pre packaged idea and worked on it with your collaborators, it is good to announce right then and there, and even write down or document in some way that you intend to retain the composition rights to this idea because it is in fact yours.  This will save you from a lot of legal trouble later on, and hopefully mitigate the creative differences between the members. 

This paperwork will at the very least neutralize any feeling of wasted time at the end of a recording cycle where you did a whole lot of work, but you may not know when the work will be put out and start making everybody money.   The fact is you may not make any money, but knowing that your collaborators are contractually obligated to either cut you in or pay you up front will give you some piece of mind.

Important Tangent: In order to collect any music royalty you need a few things. 

1. Be registered with your Performance Rights Organization (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC etc) as a Publisher. 

2. Be registered with your Performance Rights Organization as a Songwriter. (these are different things)

3. Have an ISNI number which identifies you as a performer when you are credited for your performance on a song. 

Basically, in order to have the “royalties” conversation with your collaborators you need to be able to provide 

Full Name

PRO Affiliation:

Writer IPI

Publisher IPI

Publisher Name

ISNI:

Have all this written down somewhere so that when you leave a recording studio, and there are rights attached to the work you did, you can give whoever called you these things so that they can register your participation in the song correctly. If they don't know where to get these, what they mean and how to go about registering a song correctly, have them contact me at tomas@soursoundsproductions.com, I'll get them sorted out.

Thanks for reading this blog post that only scratches the surface of the many band drama situations that can occur. I hope you find solace, and remember that no matter how much drama you encounter, you are there to make music and have a good time.