Monday, April 23, 2007

The Music Business - The Devil’s Garden

For your entertainment here is a video of what appears to be two staff bloggers filling in for the regular newscasters at WKRN Channel 2 in Nashville. Items of interest on the video are as follows.

Number one, apparently the guy in the video, because he is not a professional, must not be aware that you hold the microphone in your hand and don’t put it in your pocket – or wait! Maybe that’s not a microphone! Maybe he just gets off being on camera.

Number two, the May, 2006 report includes a segment concerning Hal Bynum, a Nashville songwriter who obviously has a green thumb when it comes to growing herbs.

I knew Hal from way back when he and Roger Bowling wrote the Kenny Rogers hit “Lucille”. I could tell stories that are better left untold.

Hal’s co-writer on Lucille, Roger Bowling, used to occasionally hang out at the same watering hole and was one of those guys who would get real melancholy when he got drunk. He often would be seen sitting at a table in a gloomy funk drinking alone. This was also back in the days where a lot of cocaine was available in Nashville music circles and I imagine Hal and Roger may have been partaking as well but Roger's demeanor doesn’t fit the description of cocaine highs that I’m aware of – maybe coming off cocaine, which is described as a miserable low.

Anyway, Roger, who I also knew casually, eventually moved back to Georgia I think it was. He ended up allegedly committing suicide on his couch in 1982. It was an overdose of sleeping pills as I recall – a sad end for someone once so creative and passionate for music – and young. Roger was only 39.

Not all the success stories in Nashville have rosy outcomes and many successes are short-lived. Many songwriters or artists riding high on the charts one year might be washing cars or painting houses a few years later.

I briefly knew a well-known, highly successful producer of an amazing number of hit artists who near the end of his life couldn't find employment and I saw driving an old Ford Escort. I’m not sure that he was destitute but he must have been down on his luck. He died still fairly young in 1997.

And then there's Gary Stewart who ended up taking his life, despondent over his wife's death and from being a bright star who fell off the charts years before. Drinking, drugs and his wild nature played a big part in destroying his career although many who shared his wild lifestyle have survived and are successful.

It seems the little guys are always the most rowdy and wild. That would include Stewart, George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Paycheck, Johnny Rodriguez and several others I can't think of at the moment.

As an artist or songwriter, the music business seems most often to either make you very wealthy or destroy you unless you plan for possible failure and have a backup means of support. I would stop short of recommending it to any young dreamer but still, although risky, it’s a romantic adventure, can be highly entertaining and makes for a lot of great memories.

Like one might imagine, the Devil’s garden is full of excitement, many temptations and lots of danger.