Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1082 Live and Learn

Live and Learn

We spent far too long in the shower, to the point that we were still damp and naked when the phone rang again. I answered it thinking I'd tell them we'd call back in a minute, but that did not happen.

Which is how I ended up having this conversation with two record company goons while wearing Ziggy like a cape with a hotel bedspread wrapped around both of us.

One of them was from A&R and one of them was a lawyer, but I honestly can't remember which was which. They sounded basically indistinguishable, both younger-sounding than I expected, but you can't really tell age from voices a lot of times. They both had WASPy names, too. Bob Bennington and Connor Parkhurst, maybe? I had tried to use a mnemonic to remember them and within five minutes I only remembered the mnemonic, not the names. In my head they were Beef Wellington and Cornish Pasty.

I'm pretty sure Wellington was the one from legal and Pasty was from A&R, but it was a little hard to tell.

"Mr. Ferias, Mr. Marks," Wellington said, "we're very glad you're interested in a resolution to these matters, which have dragged on far too long."

"Jeez," Ziggy said, from where his chin rested on my shoulder, "I thought you guys were interested in patching up this relationship."

"We are."

"Then you've gotta stop calling us Mr. This and Mr. That. You sound like you're serving divorce papers."

Nervous chuckles. They were trying to sound good-natured. "All right. Ziggy. Daron."

"That's better."

"I've been authorized to explore some ideas with you and your team and I would like to emphasize the exploratory nature of this call. Nothing agreed here will be considered binding until reviewed and approved by either party, of course." I think that was Wellington.

"Of course," Barrett said.

Cornish Pasty: "We're seeing a bit of a disconnect in the records product end between the expectations and the results. The 'Do It' single and EP has charted decently but hasn't really flown off the shelves. The 'Breaking Chains' stunt built up large expectations with off-the-charts airplay, but it didn't translate into sales."

"Those two products were never meant to connect," Barrett said. "AOR and disco have no crossover and we weren't expecting them to."

"We call it dance now," Ziggy snarked.

"Exactly," Barrett agreed. "Album-oriented rock and dance-oriented pop have no crossover is what I'm saying. And if you expected them to, well." You could hear the shrug.

"It's not so much that we expected them to as... we'd like to all get on the same page."

"The same page that pushed us in a dance-oriented pop direction in the first place?" Barrett asked, voice rising a bit. "You know that wasn't the direction we intended to go, but it was BNC that encouraged it. No, I'll come out and say it: forced it. Four producers, three studios, two coasts... what did you expect?" Before they could answer he went on. "Ironically, that brand of pop is what's breaking big for us in South America and in Japan."

Cornpop: "I wasn't aware that you hadn't made the record you intended. Did you have some kind of concept album in mind?"

Barrett: "This isn't about musical direction, it's about image. Mills was adamant about making Ziggy's image more accessible."

And that meant blander music? I had kind of known that but I guess I had blocked it out of my mind. My stomach lurched uncomfortably hearing them talk about it so plainly like that.