Band People: the artistry and economics of supporting musicians

Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music is a new book from writer and musician Franz Nicolay that turns the spotlight on the unsung heroes of rock & roll: the backing band. Specifically, the people who have made careers for themselves as supporting musicians, often for a multitude of different bandleaders.

Basically, the middle-class laborers who produce the goods that make rockstardom possible.

Nicolay himself may be considered one of these "band people," having performed as a regular member (but never frontperson) of acclaimed acts, including the Hold Steady, Guignol, and the World / Inferno Friendship Society; he has over 100 recording credits to his name, according to Discogs. But rather than focus on his own personal journey—which was already chronicled somewhat in his earlier book, The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar—Nicolay uses Band People as an opportunity to speak with other Band People, combining their interviews with academic excerpts from other texts about the working relationships between collaborators in the performing arts.

But those other texts from which Nicolay draws are largely based on jazz music, which has a longer history and much different rules from the world of rock & roll. Nicolay acknowledges this difference but smartly uses these excerpts to create a sense of juxtaposition—and to remind the reader that, well, rock & roll is a weird sort of industry. People—often teenage friends, at least initially—self-associate together and loosely form a group, often building the airplane as they fly, as it were. These autonomous collectives of rockers typically imagine themselves as some sort of anarcho-communist collective, even as one or more personalities tend to take on leadership roles. That creates an inherent tension, which can get even more difficult once money gets involved.

Nicolay speaks to a wide range of band people throughout the book's roughly 300 pages, from career bassists who've toured with people like Madonna to founding members of groups like Against Me! and Hole and even people who may seem like a central part of their band but still play a supporting role to another, larger personality. These musicians share their stories of struggles and successes; of when they learned to take feedback (or learned to push back); and how they figured out how to make a (sort of) stable life out of the whole thing, sometimes even with a family (or not). Some of them were musicians I was already a fan of; some were people I'd never heard of. But the book isn't concerned with fan service of any kind—it's focused more on labor and relationships.

Nicolay does not shy away from pointing out that every band faces an almost constant conflict between Marxist and Capitalist instincts and that the balancing act can be a tricky one. Similarly, the text itself sometimes struggles with the balancing act between anthropological or sociological analysis and quirky rock & roll anecdotes. But even that tension is something that will be all too familiar to anyone who's ever made a career doing creative things. Are you working in service of the art or the paycheck?

Why not both?

You also lose interest in the behind-the-music drama because of the relatability of the cast of characters featured in the book. Every time you think you're getting a glimpse of some dark secret between collaborators, Band People will have you flashing back to your own similar creative-professional relationships instead. The book drudged up things for me of past collaborations that were never healthy, articulating the problems that I knew were always there in better ways than I had ever managed to do myself. It also frequently reminded me why I keep going back to certain collaborators and why those relationships work. By illustrating other people's successes in creative relationships, the book allowed me to better understand and articulate my own similar successes.

While Band People is an intimate examination of the working relationships of rock groups, Nicolay smartly avoids turning the book into juicy behind-the-music gossip. Sure, there are plenty of critical moments where musicians say, "Yeah, this relationship with so-and-so was shitty for XYZ reasons." But Nicolay thoughtfully edits these moments to keep the focus on the tensions of labor and artistry instead of letting someone's personal grudge overwhelm the pages. This is an impressive feat and one of the real unique values of the book. A reader may themself trying to read between the lines in search of the drama (as I even found myself doing a few times). But that's not the point. The point is that people do make mistakes, and some working relationships clash or simply don't work out, and there's value in reflecting on those moments and learning from them.

You also lose interest in the behind-the-music drama because of the relatability of the cast of characters featured in the book. Every time you think you're getting a glimpse of some dark secret between collaborators, Band People will have you flashing back to your own similar creative-professional relationships instead. The book drudged up things for me of past collaborations that were never healthy, articulating the problems that I knew were always there in better ways than I had ever managed to do myself. It also frequently reminded me why I keep going back to certain collaborators and why those relationships work. By illustrating other people's successes in creative relationships, the book allowed me to better understand and articulate my own similar successes.

Even if you're not a creative professional, I think Band People holds a lot of value in the way it explores the inherent tension of trying to do anything passionately while living in a capitalist society.

Previously:
• David Byrne's How Music Works