My approach to writing about music is to do it up close. This approach is not for everyone. Many critics – and there is no right or wrong to this – flourish in the distance. Detaching oneself can be very useful for maintaining impartiality and making sure the compass of one’s critical faculties is not left unmoved by proximity. I understand that. But it’s not my approach. Writing about music, which I began properly in print 20 years ago at the age of 15, has given me my career, and so no matter which paths I wander down, I am, first and foremost, a music journalist. That muscle will never unflex. It is my most honed one.
I heard Ryan Adams’s first two records – Heartbreaker and Gold – when I was coming towards the end of my school years. They are brilliant albums. Come Pick Me Up was like the sequel Dylan never wrote to Buckley’s Lover, You Should’ve Come Over. Then, released just a few days after 9/11, Gold began with the rallying call: “Hell, I still love you New York!”
Honestly, my skin generates electricity when I listen to that song, New York, New York. In the socio-cultural-political context within which art can conjure the type of magic and impact that offers a clarity that cannot be articulated (just listen to the tunes, dammit!), it is similar to the feeling experienced when listening to Springsteen’s The Rising, or Steve Earle’s The Revolution Starts Now a few years later. The world had changed, and these men with their guitars were measuring those radical alterations for us. “Can’t see nothin’ in front of me/ Can’t see nothin’ coming up behind.”
A small number of high-profile figures in film and television are in the middle of a reckoning, instigated by the #MeToo movement. We ain't seen nothing yet. Hunter S Thompson famously wrote: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." This quote has taken on a different meaning for me as I've grown older. I've long moved away from thinking it's funny and clever, to viewing it as the perfect articulation of how low our standards are for acceptable behaviour in the music industry, how dark it is, and how much we've re-enforced terrible behaviour by characterising it as a necessary component of the industry, which is such a messed-up thing to think and accept.
I am not surprised by the allegations against Ryan Adams. Adams has denied the allegations, but he has long had a reputation for being curmudgeonly, difficult, egotistical, self-important, and worse.
The story raises wider questions. Being a good music journalist draws on the faculties of anthropology, empathy and damn good taste. My approach has landed me in the company of musicians for 20 years, which is my favourite company to be in. I’ve hung out with guys you’d imagine will be absolute horrors, and turn out to be dotes, and with guys you anticipate will be beautiful souls, and turn out to be the worst (or maybe they were just having a bad day, or a bad year).
Bottom of the industry
I have seen how, time and time again, artists are pushed to the bottom of the industry even though they are the only reason the industry exists, and I have seen how power can exert itself once an artist actually makes it and finally has the autonomy and authority to take control of their vision. I’ve seen how fantastic that can be, and also how terrible it can be: how it can manifest as a reign of personal terror. I’ve seen epic displays of drug-taking, monumental drinking sessions, the temper tantrums, and moments of profound empathy.
I’ve seen the impact of psychological and financial warfare labels can exert when they want to destroy an artist. I have, on occasion, thought about trying to literally rescue musicians from terrible managers who were manipulating people to the point of what I would categorise as abuse.
I’ve seen the alcoholics, the drug addicts, the sex addicts. The tears, the fights, the breakdowns, the suicidal ideation, the liars, the sociopaths. I’ve seen the beautiful, gorgeous souls, the exhilarating artists, the comedy geniuses, the empathic wonders, the type of talent that would make you cry, the tenderness, the vulnerability, the joyfulness.
There is a narrative that the industry hasn’t had its “#MeToo moment”, even though plenty of people have been speaking out over the years, especially recently. But we haven’t even scratched the surface of the record.
One of the reasons it is going to be much harder to confront the awful, sometimes criminal behaviour of musicians, producers, label execs, tour managers, managers, A&R folks, engineers, music journalists, DJs, bookers, agents, and everyone else in between, is because ultimately music holds a far deeper emotional attachment in our lives than television or film.
We don’t remember where we were or what we were feeling the first time we saw a Harvey Weinstein movie. But music? Music is everything. It’s our childhood and teenage years and first girlfriends; it’s our parents, our hard times, our moments of profundity and our hometowns. It is not going to be easy to dig into how polluted these emotional connections may be if the people making or facilitating that music turn out to be those “thieves and pimps”.