We all know the 'in' jokes about the life of a working musician being seventy five per cent hanging about. Well since we've been on one hundred per cent hanging about I have spent a little time reflecting on how I got to this point, while I sit here with my fingers crossed that the curtain hasn't come down on my forty three years as a working player. Here's how it started.
In 1977 aged just 14 I took to the stage for the first time to play music at a professional level, I was the youngest in the band by about three decades. My fellow players were all contemporaries of my father, who had put me forward to do the job as he felt that my precocious maturity as a drummer was sufficient to come up with the goods. His faith in me turned out to be justified and thus I took my first fledgling steps in a career that has sustained me through good times and bad throughout the intervening 43 years.
Immediately I became the highest earner in my school year. A typical weekend gig paid between ten and fifteen pounds back then whereas my classmates would be up at daybreak to do their paper rounds in all weathers for a couple of quid a week. Such was my progress that a couple of years later whilst in sixth form I accepted a five week contract to play for an international circus at the NEC, Birmingham. This was big league stuff and was paying £220 per week which was a tidy wage in 1979. Inevitably word got out and my headmaster was informed as to the real reason for my absence from school. My career paused until my A levels were out of the way but I still relish the look of astonishments on the headmaster’s face when he learned that I was, albeit temporarily, earning more a week than he was.
Attending school and completing your education was compulsory of course. Show business back then, as now, was entirely elective. Participation as a performer or audience member was entirely the free choice of the individual, an inalienable right that was abruptly taken away, however well-intentioned the motivation, in March of this year. Our vast, unusually enlightened and culturally diverse community was sent home abruptly and without negotiation. Also don’t forget that for the first few weeks it seemed as though the self- employed were going to be thrown under the bus en masse, before the Chancellor of the Exchequer relented, applying the metaphorical handbrake to the relief of us all.
So, being a pretty resilient, resourceful community we’ve all moved online, trying to do whatever is possible to maintain a basic income, with mixed results. Overnight we have gone from competing for gigs, sessions, shows, tours and teaching to competing for attention online. Also given that the monetisation criteria of sites such as YouTube make it very difficult for the newbie, niche artist to get so much as a foothold the sad truth is that much of this well-intentioned entrepreneurship will be in vain.
What we (really, really) want though, is to have our lives back and to have a parole from lockdown that is free of any probationary caveats.
Thus far there is scant cause for optimism. In normal times very few governments take too close an interest in the cultural life of our nation apart from the occasional photo opportunity when various awards are being handed out, with the possibility of a few canapes and a glass of something fizzy if you’re lucky. That and the opportunity to rub shoulders with some eighties pop star turned quangocrat whose angst-ridden lyrics meant so much back in uni.
For the most part though, they leave us alone.
This is exactly what we would like them to do right now, with immediate effect. Not a chance though, and the prospects seem pretty bleak. The catastrophic effect of the despised and largely unproven two metre rule has been the cause of grave concern for musicians for several months now. And yet, if you thought the 14 day quarantine measures were absurd we are now told that ‘experts’ are recommending that performers on stage should observe distancing of three metres. From this I can only conclude that someone playing a violin is deemed to be a fifty percent greater infection risk than somebody in the queue at Primark. Similarly it is recommended that no more than six singers be on stage at any one time. It all feels faintly arbitrary and a little ludicrous.
Limiting performer numbers will harm certain genres terribly. Just visualise a virtuoso classical soloist playing to a backing track for a moment to get some idea of the implications of this impending cultural engineering. If these rules stay in place for any length of time it will be tantamount to euthanasia for much of the cultural life of the nation.
Ironically lockdown has been a double whammy for me. Having had cataract surgery indefinitely postponed I struggled to read music and then drive home from my final day’s work at Abbey Road studios in March. So now I wait to see whether my surgery will be reinstated before gigs come back; gigs which I will almost certainly have to turn down if non-urgent procedures don't restart.
Incidentally, in case you are reading this and have never pursued music as a profession here’s a little background. Most importantly we are not all millionaires. Those people you see on stage at the Proms, playing cover songs at your best friend’s wedding, or providing the indispensable accompaniment to a stage musical, or your grandchildren’s annual panto treat are more than likely earning less than you are. In a great many instances quite a lot less. A good day’s income for a freelance more often than not falls in the £150-£200 range. Occasionally we’ll do quite a bit better, and there are a whole lot of gigs out there that pay significantly less. These we almost always undertake for the sheer pleasure and artistic fulfilment of performing particular genres and/or specific repertoire. Also take in to account that for many of us a car is the only viable means of transport, so we have to factor in fuel and parking charges, together with congestion charges and low emission charges (x2 if you are still in the zone after midnight) so you can easily burn your way through £50 of that fee before you take the cost of day-to-day living into account. Also don’t forget that we are not earning these fees every day, except in a tiny minority of circumstances. In times immediately prior to lockdown three or four gigs a week was considered doing pretty well. Don’t get me wrong though; we don’t look at Kylie, Stormzy, Robbie, Dua, Drake or the dearly departed Dame Vera for that matter, and consider them to be the ‘lucky’ ones. Anyone fortunate to earn their living playing music is ‘lucky’, it’s just that some are luckier than others. Some are multi-millionaires and others get by on £20,000 a year. None of which has anything whatsoever with talent or merit.
I;m not famous, have never toured with massive global bands, nor do I have gold discs adorning my office wall. I have, however, by a process of hard work, initiative and dumb luck, grown into exactly the musician I dreamed of being as a six year old. Unless you are a diehard jazz fan or perhaps a drummer yourself there is no earthly reason for you to have heard of me. Remember though that it’s people like me who are the majority and without support of returning audiences sooner rather than later the future is not promising. I feel sick that at just 57 I am contemplating my career in the past tense. For my degree students who only the other day finished their studies with online presentations instead of the traditional final recital I can only cross my fingers.
I hope that when normality returns people will have had enough of Netflix and be eager to come out and experience live performances having come so perilously close to losing the opportunity possibly forever.
Since I first drafted this piece a few days ago an announcement has been made detailing a five point plan for the perforning arts to return to normality. Well intentioned though it may be, it reads like a generic, civil service briefing note that displays no understanding of the specifics of how our industry functions, nor any real empathy with what it means to pursue performance as a profession.
We are all ready to perform again ministers, so in addition to following the science why not lend an ear to those whose livelihoods you hold in the balance. There may yet be a fight for freedom for freelancers.
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