What's a Record Exec To Do With Aimee Mann?
Critics loved her, but she couldn't remake herself as a 90's
pop star. Now, with the industry in turmoil, she may not
have to. By JONATHAN VAN METER
I should be riding on the float in the hit parade/instead
of sitting on the curb behind the barricade/another
verse in the doormat serenade.
-- "Put Me on Top," Aimee Mann
July 1999: Aimee Mann
can't sit around these days
waiting to hear what the
record-label executives think of
her new album. She is far too
busy doing things for herself --
choosing press photos, writing
her own bio, running to Fed Ex
and, literally, licking stamps.
But things weren't always this
way.
July 1998: Aimee Mann is
holed up for the fourth day in a
row in the windowless,
hyper-air-conditioned bunker
that is Mad Dog Studios in
Burbank, Calif., recording two
new songs for her third solo
album, trying her best to create
some magic. Outside, the sun is
ridiculously bright, the heat stifling, the whir of traffic numbing. Adding to
the unreal out-of-time feeling that 10-hour days in a dimly lighted,
soundproof room can produce is the fact that the singers Sheena Easton
and Jeffrey Osborne are in the next studio shooting a Christmas video.
Mann is here today because shortly after she delivered seven new songs
to Geffen Records, she was told by her manager, Michael Hausman, that
the A&R executives "didn't hear a single." A few days after she got the
bad news, she said, more resigned than angry: "There's never a single
unless you're earmarked for greatness in the first place. I wish it would be
called for what it is. Like, 'These are good songs, but they're just not
grabbing me for some reason.' Or, 'Production-wise, this doesn't fit into
the format of radio right now.' Or some sort of practical thing. But it
never is. 'Well, it's just not a single.' How can I correct that? 'Oh, well
then I'll write some magical thing that will put you into a trance.' But
having said that, sometimes I think it is magic. Sometimes I think they
think it's magic. So they're waiting for magic."
She heaved a big sigh -- and then gathered steam. "But don't tell me it's
not a single. A single is a record company's job: to pick out a song that
they think is good and make sure people hear it. It's also incidentally,
their job to come up with a way of selling records if, say, I don't have a
single at all. What I still have is a great record with great songs." I asked
Mann if she is ever tempted simply to give them what they want. "I've
sort of tried to do it," she said. "I'll keep it in mind. I'll think, 'Well, this is
pretty catchy' or 'I've kept this simple enough lyrically so that any moron
can understand it.' But anytime I do that I get bored, and then I don't
know how to finish the song. I really have to force myself to write and get
into the studio, because this is the only career I have."
So, having resigned herself to the necessity
of incanting some magic and delivering a
single, one of the two songs that she is
recording at Mad Dog today is called
"Nothing Is Good Enough." Mann is
known for writing clever, disappointed love
songs that can also be read as damnations of the music industry. Lyrically
and musically, they are sharp and subtle, angry and vulnerable. Her last
solo record's title -- "I'm With Stupid" -- was a sardonic reference to her
choice in both lovers and labels. "Nothing Is Good Enough," however, is
a bit more direct. It's a song about defeat and the misery of delivering
new material to an indifferent record executive.
"It doesn't really help that you can never say what you're looking for," she
sings with aching sadness over a beautiful piano arrangement that brings
to mind the classic pop of Burt Bacharach and Carole King. "But you'll
know it when you hear it/know it when you see it/walk through the
door/so you say, so you've said/many times before." It's a testament to
her melodic gift and emotional phrasing that such a subject could sound
so lovely, so memorable. It sounds -- could it be? -- like a single.
The next day, Mann, the
session musicians and a
producer, Buddy Judge, are
back in the studio, and Judge,
who worked on the song after
Mann left the night before,
plays a polished version of it.
Mann is unhappy. She fears
that the piano is too pretty, too
"ballady," and sounds too much
like another song on the album.
"It's not the Moody Blues 70's
flavor I was looking for," she
says, slumped in a chair. "It's
one thing to have a song be played as a gentle, sad ballad and another to
be played as an '[Expletive] you,' which is what it's supposed to be. That
anger can certainly be shown and be played. It's very hard for me to
show it in the vocal, which never translates."
A decision is made to bring in a different drummer, and Mann tells the
piano player to play his part as if he were "a drunken clown." Hausman
suggests a "John Lennon, immature piano player" approach. While
waiting for a new drummer, Dan MacCarroll, to arrive (he is also an
A&R man at a small, independent label), Mann sits down with Hausman
for a talk. "If this record doesn't sell," he says grimly, "Geffen's going to
drop you." Mann, who calls Hausman, her former boyfriend, "Boo,"
sinks farther into her chair and says nothing. "I just want you to know the
worst-case scenario and to begin to think about what you're going to
do." Hausman -- ever the optimist -- throws out a few suggestions: go on
a small acoustic tour! Start a new band! Play bass for someone else!
"Goddamnit, Boo," Mann says with mock indignation. "Look at me. I
can't even sit up. I don't even have the energy for good posture."
Before long, MacCarroll arrives. As Mann strums out the song for him
on her bass guitar, MacCarroll says, "What beat do you want me to play
it in?" She stares at him for a few seconds through her poker-straight,
bleached white hair. "How about the hit-single beat?" she says, and they
both snicker. "You're an A&R guy now. You know the hit-single beat."
As she steps into the booth and puts on her headphones to record the
song once more, she says into the microphone -- her dry, reedy voice
now amplified through every speaker in the studio: "Whatever you do,
don't ruin it for me. This is my last chance."
If this truly is Aimee mann's last chance, it will be a small tragedy. At
38, she is widely considered by her peers and music critics alike to be
one of the finer songwriters of her generation. She has collaborated with
Elvis Costello, Jules Shear and Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook of
Squeeze -- all purveyors of the same kind of sophisticated pop music
that gets little airplay these days. When alternative rock's perennial
sweetheart, the singer-songwriter Liz Phair, met Mann backstage at a
concert a few years ago, she knelt before her. Writing in Time magazine
in 1996, David Thigpen called "I'm With Stupid" one of the "catchiest
pop albums of the year, brimming with poised three-minute
mini-masterpieces," and said that "Mann has the same skill that great
tunesmiths like McCartney and Neil Young have: the knack for writing
simple, beautiful, instantly engaging songs."
And yet she remains largely unrecognized by
radio and the music-buying public. Bad timing,
dumb luck and a rebellious attitude are partly
to blame, but Mann's history of being
mishandled by three different labels over a full
decade reads like a cautionary tale about the
struggle to be a serious recording artist in the
contemporary music market. She carries with
her the distinction of having had not one of her
three solo albums released on the label it was
recorded for, and the fate of her latest effort --
which Jim Barber, her A&R representative,
says is Mann's best work yet -- is still up in
the air. It's a sad, sorry tale that she is all too
happy to spell out in her bittersweet songs. "You pay for the hands
they're shaking/The speeches and the mistakes they're making/As they
struggle with the undertaking of/Simple thought," she sings on a song from
"I'm With Stupid." These digs at the label can be seen as brave, foolish or
a little of both -- but they've certainly not helped her case.
Mann is not a complete stranger to fame and commercial success. One
of the first songs she ever wrote by herself, "Voices Carry," went to No.
8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985, and the album went on to sell more
than a million copies, and made her band, 'Til Tuesday, early MTV
favorites at the height of New Wave. By the second and third 'Til
Tuesday albums, Mann was flowering as a serious songwriter, and the
synthesized dance-pop of the first album gave way to a more mature
acoustic sound ("Strummy songs in D," Mann says), which did not go
over well with either her label or her bandmates -- even as the acoustic
sound of Suzanne Vega and Tracy Chapman was becoming popular.
Mann recorded three 'Til Tuesday albums for Epic Records in the 80's
and then left the label after a rancorous battle over creative differences. It
took her three years to get out of her contract, and all the while Epic
wouldn't let her record elsewhere or release any new material. "That was
the beginning of the funk," Hausman says, "the record-company roulette
with contracts and lawyers. That really changed Aimee." Dick Wingate,
who originally signed 'Til Tuesday to Epic and was the executive
producer on "Voices Carry," quit the label after the first album, leaving
Mann with no champion.
"She's the model of an artist who has been chewed up and spit out by the
music business," Wingate says. "But Aimee herself is a pain. She's not a
good people person. She's never really allowed herself to be close to
anyone at any record label, including me. And the more bad luck and
disappointment she had, the more distanced she became from the
process."
In 1991, Mann released the material she had been working on for Epic
as her first solo album, "Whatever," on Imago, a new independent label
owned by Terry Ellis. Just as her second solo record was about to be
released, Imago lost its distribution deal and financing and went into a
tailspin; Ellis would neither release her album nor let her out of her
contract for almost two years. Ellis finally sold the album to Geffen, which
then signed Mann in 1994 and nearly a full year later released "I'm With
Stupid."
In 1997, Mann married the
singer-songwriter Michael Penn
(Sean's older brother), another critics'
darling who, like Mann, had a hit
single, "No Myth," early in his career
in 1990 and has since suffered
through two labels botching his next
two releases. (Penn has a new album
due out in September from 57
Records, a division of Epic.) The
couple have been keeping busy,
though, cobbling together a new kind
of middle-class rock career making
music for films and performing Tuesday-night shows together at Largo, a
sort of mellow rock supper club in West Hollywood. Since Largo
opened two and a half years ago it has become the home for a group of
wayward singer-songwriters, including Elliott Smith, Fiona Apple, Rufus
Wainwright, Jon Brion, Grant Lee Phillips (of the band Grant Lee
Buffalo) and the godmother of the underappreciated, Rickie Lee Jones.
Their music can best be described as adult alternative pop. Put more
simply, it's mature music. Jon Brion shot a pilot for VH1 that tries to
transport the Largo vibe to TV, and some have suggested that Largo is
the perfect model for the kind of smaller, focused record label that could
lovingly and successfully break what the industry deems "difficult" artists
like Mann.
Another comfort zone for both Mann and Penn has been the film
industry. He has found work as a composer for the director Paul Thomas
Anderson's movies, including "Boogie Nights" and "Hard Eight," while
she has had songs on a dozen soundtracks in the past few years.
Anderson, a Largo habitue and Fiona Apple's live-in boyfriend, has
practically written his new film, "Magnolia," starring Tom Cruise, around
eight Aimee Mann songs. "Simon and Garfunkel is to 'The Graduate,"'
Anderson says, "as Aimee Mann is to 'Magnolia."'
Music artists stand to gain from the independent movement in the film
industry. Elliott Smith's song "Miss Misery" appeared in Gus Van Zandt's
"Good Will Hunting" and was nominated for an Academy Award. His
performance on the Oscars in 1998 surely provided him with the largest
audience he'll ever reach. Says Brion of Mann's work on "Magnolia," due
out later this year, "That might be an alternative way of letting the world
see that this is really a good batch of material."
It is, to put it mildly, a lousy time to be making popular music that's not
aimed at teen-agers. On Dec. 10 last year, Seagram, which owned
Universal Music Group, bought Polygram's musical holdings for $10.4
billion and collapsed the two organizations into one giant company --
which now accounts for 25 percent of the U.S. and European music
markets. Honoring a promise to shareholders to unload assets and save
$300 million a year, Seagram dismissed 3,000 employees and dropped
some 200 artists from its rosters -- most of them album-oriented rock
bands that have failed to thrive in today's teen-pop, singles-driven
market. When the Seagram buyout was reported in The New York
Times a few days before Christmas, the article was illustrated with a big
picture of Mann, sinking into a couch, looking glamorously forlorn -- as
good a visual representation as any of the despondency and uncertainty
in the music industry.
In the merger, Mann's label, the
alternative-rock-heavy Geffen
-- founded as an artist-friendly
oasis in the 70's by David
Geffen and sold to Universal
(then MCA) in 1990 -- was
swallowed up by Interscope, a
nine-year-old success story
that has made most of its
money from gangsta rap. Many
artists and executives were on
tenterhooks for weeks, waiting
to hear whether they still had
jobs or record deals. Jim Barber found out early on that he was moving
to Interscope, but Mann, who presented her new album just after the
news of the merger broke, remained a question mark through January. "It
changes every day, and she's on this shifting line," Barber said then.
"Aimee has been marketed as an alternative artist, and she's really a
classic, straight-up singer-songwriter. Alternative rock isn't selling
because alternative-rock bands aren't making records that anyone wants
to buy. The reason all these bands are getting cut is because the labels
hadn't totally dealt with that fact."
Says Jon Brion: "Everybody's talking about the implications of this whole
Seagram's buyout, and in the near future they're terrible. But when it is
made impossible for musicians to play for people who want to hear them,
other systems develop. What a dumb thing for a record company to do
when it's getting closer and closer to Internet trading for somebody
without a major label becoming a reality. They're absolutely encouraging
artists to be sovereign."
Brion has a point. With the example of artists like Ani DiFranco, who
successfully started her own label, Righteous Babe, and the hotly
contested MP3 technology, which allows listeners to download music
from the Internet, artists suddenly have more motivation than ever to
circumvent traditional -- some say soon-to-be-moribund -- means of
distribution. Many artists believe that the industry's blindered focus on
youth and singles will force their hands.
Nowhere has the shortsighted 60's manifesto "Don't trust anyone over
30" been taken more to heart than in the business of popular music.
"People in my demographic aren't considered the juicy part of the
record-buying public," says Gail Marowitz, 40, vice president of creative
services at Sony Music (and Mann's personal art director and best
girlfriend). "They think we're already old -- even though we buy plenty of
records." Says Brion: "There's a whole culture for whom buying records
-- new music -- is an important thing. That is a type of person."
Earlier this year, the Recording Industry Association of America released
its annual consumer profile data for 1998, revealing a significant increase
in music-buying by older women (the second year in a row that women
bought more records than men) and a drop in purchases by consumers
ages 10 to 29, with the worst slip among 20- to 24-year-olds, an age
group that bought just half the records that the same age group did 10
years ago. The conclusion that many in the industry are drawing from
these statistics is that young people today don't feel the need to own the
music they listen to -- and that they're distracted by the Internet and
video games. In other words, MTV and the radio will do just fine, thank
you.
"There's an accepted wisdom that says, 'It's not a marketplace, don't
market to people over 30,"' Mann says late one balmy night as we sit
outside at an empty cafe on Melrose. "Well, who's buying all those Yanni
records? Kids? From my perspective, record companies are looking for
people who are almost freakishly multitalented, and music's the last on
the list. People who are really attractive, so that they know how to
model, because making videos and taking photographs is an enormous
part of it. And you also have to be like an actor with an enormous
capacity for schmoozing and talking to hundreds of people and making
them like you, so there's a politician element to it. And you have to have
an enormous amount of physical stamina to travel a lot and to be a big
all-around entertainer, onstage and off. The music has become just a
soundtrack to the whole enterprise of celebrity. If Jackie O. could sort of
carry a tune, she'd be perfect."
Ladies and gentlemen/here's exhibit A:/didn't I try
again?/and did the effort pay?/wouldn't a smarter
Mann simply walk away?
-- "Nothing Is Good Enough," Aimee Mann
Back at Mad Dog Studios last July, Mann and I head outside to the
parking lot and sit at a picnic table under the shade of an umbrella,
sharing a cigarette. "I have to hammer out a new thing," she says softly.
"Can I pretend having a record deal is the greatest thing on earth that will
lead, automatically, to success, and people will love you for who you
are? In no way can I do that. Knowing the enormous pitfalls of the music
industry, I can't really pretend that anybody at a record company really
believes in me or art at all. It's not their job to believe in art and me. I
can't assume that anymore. And I really used to." She stops talking and
stares out at the traffic, searching her inventory for the right words. "I
think I've just learned from experience too well." She pauses for an
unbearably long time and looks as if she is about to cry. "I don't believe
in it anymore. I think I just gave up the dream. And the dream was not to
be rich and famous or sell a lot of records. The dream was that I would
work with people and they would be helpful, and if I was having a tough
time, they would be understanding and we'd all sort of work together.
But that doesn't happen, and I don't believe it ever will. It's so distasteful
to me, the idea that I could once again go on tour and feel like a constant
disappointment. And you are a constant disappointment. If you're not
really on top of it and you want it so bad that you'll make love to
everybody that comes near you -- those kind of people aren't
disappointing. Their fans are people who meet them and say, 'What a
great guy Garth Brooks is!' He's got a limitless hunger that translates into
success. It's an ability that I just don't have. I'm tired of feeling like a loser
in that respect." Another long pause. "Musically, I don't feel like a loser at
all."
The riddle of Mann's existence is that she wants respect from an industry
that only rewards respect -- and artistic freedom -- to those who make it
a lot of money. Warner Brothers surely did not tell Madonna, "We don't
hear a single," when she turned in her last album -- one that sounded like
nothing on the radio. Setting out to write hit singles carries with it the
not-so-hidden danger of selling out -- and, consequently, the potential
loss of critical respect. "There's a fine line," Mann says, "between singles
and jingles."
It's more than a little odd that just a few hours after Mann told me that
she "gave up the dream," she went back into the studio and recorded a
song called "Red Vines" that Jim Barber said he believed was, at long
last, magic. "I think 'Red Vines' is a hit," he said to me in January. Of
course, he also had to deal with the sting of "Nothing Is Good Enough," a
song he felt was aimed directly at him. "I take offense to that line 'You'll
know it when you hear it walk through the door,"' he said. "I was way
more specific than that. I said to her: 'Aimee, this is why your choruses
aren't working. This is the kind of chorus you should write.' I made her
this tape once of songs that I think have good choruses."
By late January, Mann is "a changed person," according to
Hausman. Though the news of her getting picked up by Interscope
kind of trickled in -- no big call from the boss saying, "Welcome aboard"
-- she is happy that things are moving forward. She has presented a
dozen songs for an album that she plans to call "Bachelor No. 2." She is
told that everyone loves it. One day in January, I get an E-mail from her
in which she jokingly refers to the new "positive me." The songs "sound
great," she writes. "For the first time, I'm actually excited about my own
record."
Gail Marowitz explains: "Basically, I think
she's coming to a point in her career where it
goes down a little easier to play by the rules
than it used to. When we were discussing her
album packaging a couple of weeks ago, I
said to her, 'O.K., Aimee, come on, be honest
with me -- you wanna sell records?' And I
hear this dead silence. And I'm, like: 'Come
on, Aim, come on. Whaddaya think?' And she
says, quietly: 'Yeah ... yeah. I wanna sell
records.' And I'm, like: 'Good. Good. That's
the first step."'
One morning in January, Mann says over the
phone: "I've had this revelation about singles.
I've suddenly realized that if I have one song that they think is a single,
they really don't care about the rest of the record. Then I can make the
rest of the record good. This is my new philosophy -- I actually want to
be a one-hit wonder. It's only to my benefit."
And the good news keeps coming. She is asked to join this summer's
Lilith Fair, in the coveted slot of closing act on the second stage. Then,
on March 22, she has a big meeting with the three principals at
Interscope -- Jimmy Iovine, Ted Fields and Tom Whalley -- plus Barber
to discuss her album and, she thinks, a marketing strategy. Hausman,
who lives in New York, flies out for the meeting, and Mann, buoyant,
actually looks forward to it. Iovine is late, so the others start without him,
telling Mann that they love her record, and begin discussing its release.
But when Iovine finally arrives, a red flag goes up. He hasn't listened to
the record, but says, "The record's not done until it's done," and suggests
that she write some more songs. Iovine tells Mann he'll listen to it and call
her in two days. He never calls.
After five days, Mann contacts Iovine's office, only to discover that he
has gone on vacation for two weeks. He does not call her while he is
away, nor when he returns. It is now mid-April, three weeks after Iovine
said he would call in two days. Mann is enraged. "The problem is, I'm
not hearing nothing because they love it," she says. "When I finally hear
from them, it's going to be something like, 'We really think you need to
rerecord four songs.' So I'm waiting for bad news. I just don't know how
bad the news is. I'm two inches away from saying: 'Keep the record. I've
had it. I'll make another one at home, and I'll be shed of you people once
and for all."'
What's most troubling to Mann is that it's now almost too late for her
album to be released in time to go on tour with Lilith Fair. "Their vast
indifference is costing me my career," she says. "I started recording this
album two years ago. So it would be a three-year-long project, four
years since my last record to come out, when I was waiting for people to
care. They're never going to care. They're never going to have that
excitement about me as they do about the new Britney Spears. They
consider Beck or Alanis Morisette edgy and risk-taking, which is crazy,
because they sell millions of records. Jewel is way out there on the edge!
That's what I've come into. It's the new legacy."
By the next day, the truth -- the bad news -- finally comes. "They don't
like the record," she tells me. "This is actually the worst it's ever been for
me. Iovine actually said to someone: 'Aimee doesn't expect us to put this
record out as it is, does she? If Aimee just wants to put out a record for
her fans, this is not the place to do it.' It's so disingenuous, because
they're trying to position it like: 'Doesn't Aimee want to be a big star?
Because that's what it will take.' Yeah, you know, I've decided not to be
a big star. I've decided I can't handle success. I'm doing this because I
wanted to be my own boss, because I couldn't take orders from people.
And all I get are more orders about something that can't be ordered
around: go write a hit song."
True to form, Mann sums up with a relationship analogy: "Part of the
problem was 'Magnolia' -- that Paul Thomas Anderson was so interested
in me. It raised my profile enough for them to go: 'Hey, maybe we
shouldn't break up with our girlfriend. Look at all the guys checking her
out.' But it didn't make him love her any more. It's the same rotten
relationship it always was. It just made him hold on a little tighter."
By the following week, Mann is beginning to feel a bit more sanguine
about her situation. And she is finally taking steps toward doing
something she probably should have done long ago: becoming sovereign.
Her lawyers are negotiating a price to buy back her master recordings
from Interscope. Hausman has hired someone to build a Web site. And
he and Mann are exploring the possibilities of starting their own label.
Mann would like to call it Superego Records. "If Aimee sold 70,000
records independently," Marowitz says, "she would be making more
money than if she sold 300,000 on a major label. And Aimee's good for
70,000, and she'll get major distribution. Ultimately, it's a very good
thing." And then more good news: Hausman gets a call from Dick
Wingate, who is now the vice president of content development at Liquid
Audio, the only Internet music company thus far to be endorsed by the
Recording Industry Association of America. (In April, Liquid Audio
enabled the first-ever promotional download of music on Amazon.com.)
Wingate, who hadn't talked to Mann in years, remained a fan. "This
technology should encourage disenfranchised artists like Aimee," he says.
"The Internet allows artists to distribute their music the moment it's done
if they want to and not have to wait for the typical cycle that a record
company requires. Artists want to communicate directly with their fans."
Indeed, Liquid Audio is only one of several companies competing for
primacy on the Internet. Alanis Morisette has become a partner in
MP3.com, while Microsoft and AT&T are weighing in with their own
formats. The paradigm is shifting.
In June, Mann gets booked on four Lilith Fair dates in early August:
Buffalo, Boston, Hartford and Jones Beach -- and says that there may
even be a record for sale by then. "I'm feeling good," she says of her
newfound independence, "because I'm tapped into something that I'm
more suited to." The decadelong major-label nightmare is finally ending.
As is her way, Mann turns to a metaphor to describe how she feels: "I
really picture somebody sitting in front of a big book and getting totally
fed up and slamming it shut, and a big puff of dust comes up from it," she
says, laughing. "I can read no farther. I don't want to know how this
book ends. I hate this guy's writing. It's over." She laughs again, not yet
knowing if it's the last laugh. She knows this much, though: "I'm never
going to open that book again."
--
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