When Will We Be Famous?

Usain Bolt. What a guy. His supreme and yet somehow implicit (rather than explicit) confidence that he is totally at the top of his game coupled with a real talent for self deprecation is a sure sign of mastery. A serious man who knows the importance of not taking himself too seriously.

That one of the most celebrated athletes in the world wears his fame so lightly is a characteristic I admire tremendously.

Why then do I occasionally run into musicians who are trying so very hard to be so important? Just the very fact of being able to pursue this career is something for which we should all be quietly appreciative, particularly given that our industry is not entirely without the over entitled few, whose lack of perceived success is always someone else's fault. Perhaps the near total lack of material wealth and approbation on offer to players of instruments is a root cause of resentment which is sadly all too frequently aligned with addiction and self destruction.

I do stress 'quietly appreciative', though, as the 'honoured and humbled' brigade can get really tiresome really quickly too. Easy on the quasi Dickensian forelock touching please: you're talented, you worked hard, you stuck at it and you got there.

I must admit I did 'quietly appreciate' this the other day...

However I nearly gagged on my cappuccino some months ago when a capable but really not even slightly well known fellow drummer described himself as 'famous' in a Facebook post. I think he may have been attempting dark humour. I do hope so, as anyone dedicating their life to honing virtuoso instrumental skills had better not be expecting mainstream media coverage and megabuck paydays. Mr Warhol's promise of 15 minutes each seems ever more prescient and I suspect that while my back was turned I may have had mine already.

To more practical concerns therefore. Your bank balance will fare significantly better if you are fortunate enough to land a gig with a name artist, which brings me to the most frequently asked question from people outside the industry.

"Have you ever worked with anybody famous? "
This question is a key reason why I try to avoid talking about my work when in the company of non musicians.

The other big misapprehension is that we all live in huge detached houses in the home counties with expensive cars on the drive.
The reality of this business is a long way from what many people might assume.

In my 20s I became friends with a great British jazz drummer whose international profile was unequalled at the time. He was an inspiration and a favourite, watching him live was a turning point and made me want to be more than just a big band player. We became acquainted and he invited me to his home. I was surprised that the expected five bed detached with a carriage drive turned out to be a considerably more modest mid terrace, and that I had a better car than he did. This goes on to this day where even a small amount of industry profile is mistakenly equated to significant wealth. It isn't like that at all, we're all mostly trying to make a reasonable living, indeed arguably the most universally revered drummer alive today said in my hearing that he "couldn't afford to retire", (which is good news for the rest of us as we can still go see him play).

Of course it wasn't always like this.

Once upon  there was an era when instrumentalists had borderline household name status, of which there can be no better example than Gene Krupa, who became a bona fide star in the United States and beyond in an era when instrumental virtuosity and popular appeal were more closely in alignment than at any time since. The musicians of the swing era were big names in their day, this continued for several decades after the birth of rock and pop music yet nowadays the instrumentalist is marginalised and ignored quite unlike anytime previously. The last truly 'famous' drummer was Ringo, and we're talking north of 50 years ago, which when you consider the impact that the sound of musical instruments makes on our daily lives is, in the words of the Velvettes, really saying something. Imagine a West End show or a Hollywood blockbuster without musicians, what a monochrome world it would be without the sounds we make.

Support your local instrumentalist!
The quid pro quo here is that if you are generous enough to do so we promise not to fill an entire set list with original compositions none of less than nine minutes duration.

For playing to be truly great it has to appeal to a non-specialist listener without compromising integrity. Tricky but not impossible.

My three key formative influences were demonstrably master players. Even if you know nothing about the art of drumming it is immediately obvious how great Joe Morello, Buddy Rich and Louie Bellson were/are. The generation who followed were every bit as gifted albeit perhaps  a little less user friendly to the non specialist listener  (reflecting the way in which jazz itself was evolving, nota bene).  More recent decades have witnessed the growth of 'muso' music which is largely aimed at and appreciated by other instrumentalists, little or none of which has succeeded in escaping from the niche market, therefore not growing a new audience. That's why my big band hardly ever plays shows on Saturdays-almost all of our target audience will be out somewhere doing a gig of their own.

The diminishing profile for musicians in the wider world brings it's own set of problems. Smaller audience numbers mean promoters are understandably less willing to take a punt on new artists and less familiar material. The jazz tribute show has been with us for a long time it seems, but you don't have to go back much more than 20 years to find a time when this was very much in the minority and the players were the draw rather than the repertoire.

Another upshot of this is that a lot of players get sidelined, young and old alike. Even back in the 90s when the big band first began to get up a head of steam and was generating significant interest I was always disappointed by the attitude of certain promoters towards us. Back then the average age of the band was far lower and a comparative lack of big name credits seemed to deter  some bookers even though a great many of the then lineup had broken into West End shows and studio work. In short, an aggregation of superb talent was regularly sidelined because we didn’t have associations with famous names and I was (at that time anyway) doggedly determined to carve out a repertoire which was 'ours'.

The need to be approved of and to have audience appeal is more a part of the equation than ever. With dispiritingly increasing  regularity  I see gig billings which read more like a CV, with each musician's name followed by a list of credits, from the truly hip to the utterly irrelevant and downright absurd. Who a musician has played with is not a true measure of his/her value or ability, it's as much to do with circumstance as anything. A player with a background in the session world (such as it still is) is inevitably more likely to have played with more 'names' than someone from a different background. Does it make them a better player? Of course not.
My penchant towards the sardonic means that it is only a matter of time before you will see me listed as

Pete Cater  (Val Doonican, Max Bygraves)

Does this sort of thing really get any extra bums on seats? Or does it have the negative effect of insulting the intelligence of the audience by presuming an ovine reaction along the lines of "Oh he must be good, he did two tours with Rose Marie", (don't  remember? Lucky you) and therein lies the problem; if you had the gig with Dollar or Brother Beyond way back when it's not going to mean a whole lot now, and several decades more experience has hopefully made you a better player. Nothing goes out of date quite like a CV.

The other key marker for a measure of a musician's ability is received wisdom. In the upper echelons there is often not a great deal to separate one player from another, a lot boils down to personal preference and sheer good fortune. Very often a musician is considered to be a superior player because "someone else said so", even some of my industry colleagues are guilty of this. Truthfully it all boils down to perception, which thanks to social media is something over which we can have possibly more control than ever. Here I can speak with authority having become prominent only since my mid 40s. Whilst I continue to strive for improvement I'm not twice the player I was when relatively unknown.

To prove my point here's some ultra low definition video from almost twenty years ago.

I owe my later career almost entirely to the internet, and the people with video cameras who captured some of this footage. Thanks to platforms like YouTube and MySpace I was able to establish and to some extent control my online presence to the point where roughly ten years since my first video upload I get professional opportunities I could only have dreamed of in years past.
Note this carefully because you can do it too, and it has nothing to do with associations with big name artists.


The downside  of all this is that musicianship is woefully undervalued, possibly more than at any time in recent history. We are faced with the option of giving away a certain amount of content at no charge, but to put a positive spin on that remember the importance of accumulation via speculation. Quite possibly the wandering minstrels of days gone by didn't have it any worse. Apart from a brief glimpse during the Proms there is  very little presence in mainstream media, so we have to create our own playing field.  The upside of the internet age is that it's much easier to get yourself out there and slowly the scene is actually becoming more meritocratic. The days when you weren't a part of the in crowd unless you drank and played golf with the right members of the funny handshake brigade are happily very much in the fourth time repeat of the coda.

In conclusion, don't make value judgements on a musician's ability only because he or she played with someone famous.
So when I get asked the question I just say yes and leave it at that.

For more information about clinics, masterclasses, personal tuition, guest appearances or any of my bands click here.

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Postscript on the life changing power of the internet.

The www had perhaps the biggest unintended consequence when I discovered the UK National Drum Fair whilst browsing. I took myself off there only to find Ian Palmer was doing a clinic. I hadn't seen him in years and that day he asked me about taking part in an event he was planning some twelve months hence. The rest most of you know, but the moral of this digression is that the 'right place, right time' theory works best when you make the effort to put yourself in the right place.