If you’re a Baby Boomer, you may have a memory of a certain band called The Beatles appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show. That appearance is cited by so many musicians as the moment when they knew they wanted to start their own groups.
However, there was another period where a group of successful, but less lauded, bands had a similar effect on the generation that came after the Boomers. And although those bands were inspired to get into the music business because of the success of The Beatles, their influence was also an inspiration to some metal and grunge acts that flowered in the ’80s and ’90s — or so Doug Brod mentions in They Just Seem A Little Weird: How KISS, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz Remade Rock and Roll. Now, if you’re looking at that list of iconic bands and scratching your head over the name Starz, you’re not alone.
Starz is like one of the countless bands that had talented players, the right look, good (if not some great) songs, and a strong work ethic for whom the, um, stars did not align. But Brod remembers them — and gives them quite a bit of ink starting with their origins in the soft rock band Looking Glass — whose biggest hit “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl) is essential for any Mellow Gold collection. However, what makes the members of Starz so integral to the story of these bands is how intertwined the members of KISS and Aerosmith were with Starz. They were all up-and-coming groups around the same time — and they all had players who had the chops. Often they would sit in for each other on demos, contribute lyrical ideas, be opening acts, or just fill in at live shows. Not quite colleagues, but not entirely competitors, Starz and KISS shared the same manager (Bill Aucoin), and in Brod’s telling (with supporting quotes, of course), Aucoin used Starz as a tax write-off on expenses related to promoting KISS. So while Starz had songs that sounded KISS-like, they were never going to get the kind of push like KISS did. The members of Starz didn’t know this at the time, but after a time they figured out they were the proverbial sacrificial lamb to the tax gods.
Should you care about an almost-famous band? At first, I was reticent about bothering with the sections that focused on Starz, but as I read their story, I found it compelling and instructive for any band that starting up, has a goal of selling millions of records, and performing in front of stadium-size audiences. What’s compelling is how bands that sound similar to other (more successful) groups can sometimes grow an audience and essentially stay in business for years — if not decades. Then, there’s the instructive side: the business of music. Being in a band is like creating a small company. Sure the fringe benefits of sex and drugs can be great — until they are not. But knowing how bands make money in a business that’s notorious for ripping off artists is also key in understanding how to be in it for the long haul. Two of the four members of KISS understood that. Aerosmith did to an extent, too. And Cheap Trick’s work ethic alone (sometimes playing opening slots for $3000 a night) in order to stay relevant demonstrates how you sometimes gotta take a loss/eat shit when you don’t have a hit on the radio. Starz, on the other hand, had a similar path to prosperity that looked good on paper, but because of mismanagement by Aucoin they ended up as a band whose name evokes a one-word response: Who?
While Brod does an excellent job weaving the stories of the four bands into a tight narrative, his tale shines is when he highlights all the lousy deals and shady characters in the music business. Cheap Trick taking a loss on opening for $3000 a night is nothing compared to what drummer Bun E. Carlos said about The Kinks: “[They] threw us off the tour because we wouldn’t give them kickbacks…Five hundred bucks a night! We were making, like, fifteen hundred dollars.” If it wasn’t for an opening slot on KISS’s Love Gun Tour in 1977, things for Cheap Trick might have gone the way of Starz. However, heeding Gene Simmons’s advice to get a new album ready before heading out on the road, the band recorded In Color, which had the studio version of “I Want You To Want Me” (The live version that came out a year later would be the one that got more radio airplay). Although the Love Gun Tour didn’t pay well ($1000 a night), it paid off in other ways with exposure to radio DJs and rock critics. You can say a lot of bad things about Gene Simmons (and there are plenty to choose from in Brod’s book), but he and Stanley were very good at spotting talented bands and inviting them to open for KISS. And from what I’ve read about other bands who opened for them, KISS almost always treated their openers with a lot of kindness and respect.
Aerosmith, on the other hand, was a kind of nightmare band from Boston. They certainly had the chops, Steven Tyler had the swagger as a frontman, and the band’s songs both rocked hard and had great hooks. What they excelled in musically, they often failed in the personal relations department. Joe Perry’s substance abuse was a train wreck, Tyler’s personality issues (no outside writers) came to haunt the band when a few albums stiffed and they were on the way down. If it wasn’t for songwriter Desmond Child (the guy behind “I Was Made For Loving You”), the group would likely be a kind of a footnote in music history as one of those “Hey, those first couple of albums were killer” type of bands. But he helped them with a number of hit songs that reignited their career like “Dude (Looks Like A Lady), “What It Takes,” and “Crazy.” And it took Dianne Warren’s “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” to really vault The Toxic Twins back to the top. Brod is very good at explaining why bands as good as KISS, Cheap Trick, and Aerosmith had to bring in outside writers — and it’s pretty simple: the main songwriters for each band lost their ability to write hits. This is pretty common for many songwriters. You write some hits, have some solid deep cuts on the albums, tour, build your audience, and then eventually start to create work just not as good as what came before. The audience may still turn up to see you play the hits live, but record sales and radio play tend the drop as the quality of the songwriting decreases, too. It’s gotta be difficult to realize that you were the person who wrote “Surrender,” or “Detroit Rock City,” or “Walk This Way,” only to find that your ability to capture lightning in a bottle time and time again gets harder and harder as the years grind on.
But you gotta hand it to KISS, Cheap Trick, and Aerosmith. Despite not having any hits for, well, a very long time, they know their fans would show up to see them play. Playing the hits live pays off. Late career new album releases…not so much. Those are risky ventures because who’s going to play your songs with the amount of time and frequency needed to move album sales beyond the core fanbase? Sure there’s streaming, but with the all-you-can-eat buffet aspect to it, most won’t get significant plays to cover the cost of making the record — unless your Taylor Swift. The music business is still a tough one — probably more difficult to make it because it tends to reward single songs and not whole albums made by superstar producers. That may change over time, but one thing that hasn’t is the business culture that signs artists to one-sided deals — deals that benefit the record labels first — and then tosses those creators aside when the goose stops laying golden eggs. Soundcloud success stories like Billie Eilish help to reinforce the myth that anyone with a laptop, some homebrewed beats, and a decent set of pipes can go from a bedroom recording studio to stadium tours in short order. When you read about how KISS, Cheap Trick, and Aerosmith did it, it was because these guys were relentless in their pursuit of success through consistent touring, word of mouth, fortunate connections, and a dedication to writing good songs. Now, clearly, this career path isn’t the sure-fire road to riches because, well, see the story of Starz. They had similar luck smiling on them, but their career was likely killed not by radio ignoring them –or fans not digging their shows — but rather their manager.
Though incredibly entertaining, Doug Brod’s They Just Seem A Little Weird is also a cautionary tale of the perils and pitfalls of following your rock and roll dreams. The slimy, creepy, and shitty characters that come in and out of the orbits of these bands could make some reconsider their choices as professional musicians. The risk is high, but if you’re like three of the four groups featured, so is the reward.
Brod, who was the editor-in-chief at Spin and an editor at Entertainment Weekly among other music-related bona fides has packed his book with a lot of information that is clearly teased out from the number of interviews he conducted with over 135 people — and it shows. I’m sure as he spoke members of the bands — and those who were in their orbit — Brod started to see how their lives and careers intersected in ways that may not have been possible if he only researched secondary material in magazines, newspapers, and other written sources. After all, you can’t ask follow-up questions on an article written 40 years ago. And that’s just part of what makes They Just Seem A Little Weird a wonderful read. Brod keeps the stories moving by never focusing too much on one band in any given chapter — but he doesn’t give them the short shrift, either. Instead, Brod provides a rather balanced look at KISS, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, and Starz and how their success (or lack thereof in the case of Starz) affected the culture, inspired a younger generation to keep on rockin’ in the free world, and why their careers have endured when many of their contemporaries called it quits years (if not decades) earlier.
