35
Nikki turns the page to an ad for Tina Turner, studies it and for a moment,
seems lost, deep in thought.
"I've never fucked a black chick," he says.
It's Thursday at the Marquee in London. The smell is smoke and pints sloshed on
the floor. Oooh, there's Hanoi Rocks! And Girls-chool [sic] with their new guitar player
from Australia! Rock Goddess with their dad the manager, and ex-Teddy boy in
drainpipe trousers who taught them how to play! Neil from Whitesnake! And a guy
who's been jamming with Jimmy Page! That's the audience.
Lita Ford is onstage. She's made a tremendous improvement since her first
album. At least she's gotten rid of a costume that looked like it was pieced together
from raids on Cher and Big Bird. Now she's wearing the same black Lita Ford
T-shirt anyone can buy out front by the bar. Her bass player has a swastika
magic-markered on his arm. He sometimes like to draw them in lipstick, too, on backstage
mirrors. Yeah, Hitler's sort of happening again. Ozzy Osbourne, the godfather of
heavy metal, has been going onstage with a little mustache and such a great jodhpur
and boots getup, you'd almost think it was the Fuhrer himself.
Back at the Marquee, there's only one black person in the crowd. He's got
close-cropped hair, long pointed sideburns, and a dirty sports jacket. He is rocking back
and forth, back and forth, bending double to his knees, locked in spasms of silent
laughter, relishing some cosmic joke to which only he knows the punchline. Lita
kicks into a selection of songs from her recent album: "Lady Killer," "Dressed To
Kill," "Hit and Run." Inspired, perhaps, he reaches inside his jacket and starts to
pull out something dull, metallic. Later the bouncers are full of assurances that it
was only a starter's pistol.
Jerry Jaffe sees heavy metal as "just another form of the pop music machine that
is here with us right now. It doesn't mean more or less than those old bubblegum
acts. Except the image is a little more striking. Maybe because it can be exploited a
little easier through videos. But basically it's just another phase in the record industry."
Cliff Burnstein, however, says the longevity of a heavy metal band is usually
quite long, as much as 12 to 15 years. He cites Rush, originally a power trio who
released their first record independently and have developed a progressive individual
brand of "art metal" whose audience is faithful enough to fill 20,000 seaters like
Madison Square Garden regardless of the success of a particular album.
A new band gets only a couple of shots, according to Jaffe. "You don't have to go
so much by airplay. You can see how much they're improving in what a promoter
will pay for them and the sales, because that really is the bottom line. If a new act
sells 30,000 albums, I pick up the option, and the next one sells 75,000, we would be
$250,000 in the hole. But because I see they've doubled their audience, I might go
for a third album."
But because, as Jaffe suggest [sic], this is the only genre where a band can build a
substantial audience by touring, record companies have reinstituted a practice from
pre-slump
Some of the expenses of touring can be offset by merchandise advances. As Cliff
Burnstein explains, heavy metal bands sell far more merchandise (in some cases,
like Motorhead's, they may sell more T-shirts than records) than such successful
pop acts as Hall and Oates, for example, who've had more top 40 hits than just
about all of the heavy metal bands put together. Bands no longer assume any risk
for shirts, bandanas, party hats, and assorted favors kids may not go far.
Merchandising was once an afterthought, often turned out by the people who did
custom work for record companies. Now there are at least three major
Jaffe says some bands are getting as much as $1 million advances for T-shirts and
assorted merchandise. Other sources say the figure, for an established heavy metal
band, is $250,000. A new band without strong hype or a strong gimmick may get
$25,000. The successful heavy metal band will sell a T-shirt (or football jersey) for
$10 to $14 to at least 50 per cent [sic] of the audience. The merchandising companies
usually travel with their own trucks and crews, arrange for licenses and sales tax,
and make their own deals with the hall. In some cases, halls may take as much as . . .
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