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Topic: Jagger's Edge Return to archive
03-11-03 12:34 PM
CS Jagger's Edge
The eight-point plan from The Rolling Stones Inc on success and staying the course. You can make it if you try. Start me up, you say?

By Richard Lim

HE SAYS: 'They all have income streams like any company. They have different business models; they have different delegated people that look after them. And they have to interlock. That's my biggest problem.'

That's not Jack Welch speaking, but Mick Jagger.

And from the mouth of Keith Richards: 'The whole business thing is predicated a lot on the tax laws.'

Whoa. The two grand old men of rock - both will be 60 this year - are talking about corporate business. No prostate complaints, thank you.

Their business is The Rolling Stones Inc, a global conglomerate that is staffed by investment bankers, immigration lawyers, accountants and line managers.

Jagger, Richards, Charlie Watts, 61, and Ron Wood, 55, are the partners of the blue-chip mothership firm which 'interlocks' companies that include Promotour, Promopub, Promotome and Musidor, each dedicated to one aspect of the business, such as touring, records, music rights, sponsorship and merchandising.

The firm is based in the Netherlands which offers tax advantage for foreign bands, according to a Fortune magazine cover story on the Stones last year.

Like a new economy company which comes together for a project, disbands after it's over, and then regroups for the next one, Rolling Stones Inc has a lean core staff of not more than 50 people.

As Richards says: 'Mick likes to run a pretty tight ship.'

When the band hits the road, as it has been doing since September last year, the staffing may go up to more than 350. And at the end of the tour, the production crew or 'roadies' - those guys whose buttock lines show above their shabby jeans - go their separate ways.

The current worldwide Licks Tour, which has taken them through the United States and Australia, is a celebration of the Stones' 40 years as a band.

Their rival, the Beatles, lasted less than a decade as a group.

In their wild, early days, no one would have bet that the individual Stones members would live to see the dawn of the new millennium, much less still kick butt.

Over the years, through trial and error, the Stones have learned to become not only the longest-lasting band in the short history of rock 'n' roll, but also the most successful, financially.

Certainly, along the way, there were wrong turns taken, and free falls down the slippery slopes of the celebrity lifestyle.

One among them, Brian Jones, drowned in a swimming pool in July 1969, shortly after he was sacked by the others. He was too wasted on drugs to even hold a guitar.

And there had been all those lurid tabloid stories of the group's excesses in the 1960s and 1970s. In recent years, the media has been busy keeping count of Jagger's trophy girlfriends. As this alpha male grows older, his mates get younger.

Buckingham Palace awarded him a medal last year, but Sir Mick has yet to find the time to go and collect it.

Together with the Beatles and a mish-mash of lesser bands, the Stones helped forge a new creative industry which revitalised a post-empire Britain.

This was at a time when its manufacturing sector was fast sinking, as Japan and its former colonies in South-east Asia played catch-up, and its coddled unions were helping to push it under water instead of helping to save it.

According to the latest stats from the Department of Arts, Media and Sports, creative and media revenues add up to some ¥112.5 billion (S$303.75 billion). The sector employs more than 1.3 million people, or about 5 per cent of the workforce. Exports contribute about ¥10.3 billion to the balance of trade, which is more than 5 per cent of the country's GDP. The music business alone was worth some ¥3.6 billion in 2000.

The Stones started making serious money in 1989, when they finally got their business model right, and went on their Steel Wheels Tour. The tour pulled in more than US$260 million (about S$450 million) worldwide. Since then, they have generated more than US$1.5 billion in gross revenues.

The Rolling Stones Inc could be described as the GE of the rock 'n' roll trade. Its business model, based on creativity, innovation, and high brand-recognition, may offer us some instructive lessons, at a time when such assets are critical.

8 keys to career Satisfaction

1. IMAGINATION

A POP song being often a three-minute ditty, the barrier to entry is so low that just about anyone can give it a shot. The competition is necessarily intense and brutal, because you are competing with millions of aspiring songwriters and musicians the world over.

You have to be exceptionally gifted - and blessed with luck - to make the cut. No amount of formal education or official fiat can ensure you pop stardom.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards obviously have a natural flair for writing songs and performing them.

With each new album, barring some duds, they were able to surprise their flock with new licks, yet not sound so different as to lose them. At the same time, they continued to seduce new converts to their fold.

You need lots of imagination and creative juices to do that.

2. SENSE OF REALITY


UNLIKE many musicians who emerged from the counter-cultural 1960s, the Stones eschewed political causes and mystical meanderings. They knew they were musicians first and last, and their job was to entertain the folks and get them to boogie, not to change the world.

They might play at being the wild boys of rock, and even the devil's advocates. But unlike many of their more naive fans, they didn't buy into what was essentially an artfully manufactured public image.

When Jagger stopped over in Singapore in 1979, after a holiday in Bali with his then-girlfriend Jerry Hall, the then-35-year-old singer told The New Nation (okay, I was the reporter):

'I try and relax when I'm not working because if you don't, you'll end up like the others... dead. You can't live your image, you can't be on stage 24 hours a day.'

To be grounded in reality and yet let the imagination take flight in bursts of creativity - that's not unlike what Shell looks for in its potential leaders.


3. SWEAT 'N' STAMINA

BOXER Mike Tyson once made this telling observation that although he might be in the ring for 15 minutes or slightly more, he had to live his life in a such a way that once he got into the ring, every minute counted against his opponent.

It was a regimented, disciplined life of exhaustive workouts, carefully controlled diet and adequate rest and sleep.

The Rolling Stones had their early years of celebrity excesses. But since the late 1980s, they have led a fairly regimented life which revolves around their work.

They have persevered through a number of set-backs, and ridden out the different fads - the glam rock of David Bowie, disco, punk, MTV. Now with pop music scattered in all directions, many of them leading to everywhere and nowhere (download today, trash tomorrow), the Stones are a comforting fixture.

These men (except newcomer Ron Wood) are not postwar babyboomers. They were born during World War II, and they were formed by the postwar years of bombed building ruins and queues for food stamps.

Like Eric Clapton and Paul McCartney, they internalised an ethos of hard work that got lost among the boomer generation who grew up in the swinging 1960s. As wealthy as they are now, they don't have the gentry's gift for a life of ease and leisure.


4. NO LETTING UP


THE Stones started out as a blues band. They learned to play what was really slave music, from recordings by black musicians who came mainly from the Mississippi Delta.

They took the blues to America, and introduced their white audience to the music that was actually cooked in their own backyard, but which they had overlooked.

In the US, they opened themselves to other genres of music and influences - the country style of Gram Parsons (he launched Emmylou Harris' career), the psychedelic funk of Sly And The Family Stone, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and the 1950s Beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.

Richards is very much immersed in the blues of the early black musicians and confesses that he still finds much to learn. Charlie Watts finds new insights in his pursuit of jazz, his first love.

Jagger learned his stage antics by watching Tina Turner when she was still with her husband, Ike. Since he hit it big, he's been the model for just about every rock frontman, from Steve Tyler to Axl Rose. He likes to work with talented younger musicians, so that he doesn't get into a rut.

More importantly, he has conscientiously learned and mastered the business side of his vocation.


5. NOT FADE AWAY

THE Stones wear their age on their sleeves, allowing the creases on their prematurely old faces to be photographed up close and splashed on magazine covers. In an age of pretty, bland faces, their wrinkled mugs stand out in sharp contrast. They have managed to make middle age cool.

While the Stones are not averse to new technologies, they sometimes have the advantage when technology moves too fast and their fan base of babyboomers cannot catch up. Their double-CD set, Forty Licks, released last year, for example, could go to the No. 1 spot in the US album charts and elsewhere, largely because their fans aren't those who prefer to download music using file-exchange software.

The lesson here is not to push out the oldies too quickly to make way for the young, just because there's a whole new generation of youths out there in the marketplace.

One mustn't forget that there's still a whole older generation as well, and the multi-tasking kids aren't going to connect with them. These kids are samplers, they don't have the depth that can only come with lived experience.


6. BRANDING


THE Stones' logo of a tongue sticking out from a pair of pouting lips is as clever as it is simple. It captures the essence of the Stones' music: cheeky, sexual and defiant.

It was attributed to the New York pop-artist Andy Warhol, but it was actually Jagger himself and graphic artist John Pashe who came up with the logo, which was inspired by the iconographic tongue of Kali, the Hindu goddess of creation and destruction.

In their early years, the Stones had to play bad boys to differentiate themselves from the Beatles, who were cute and loveable.

When they found that it paid to be bad, they cultivated it into an art. 'Would you let your daughter go out with The Rolling Stones?' was their slogan.

Yet, they found out soon enough that they had to pay dearly for being bad. They then learned to insulate their private lives from their public persona. It is theatre after all, and they are but actors.

So be your own brand, as the business gurus preach, but don't mistake yourself for the brand.


7. THE POTENT MIX

THE mix of creative talents is critical to the success of an enterprise. You can have the best individual talents, but when the mix is wrong, and there is no chemistry and dynamic tension among them, then failure is assured.

The Rolling Stones have just the right mix: Jagger, the charismatic frontman and hard-nosed business boss; Richards, the languid outlaw who is the soul of the group; Bill Wyman, the stand-still-but rock-steady bassist (he quit in 1992); and Watts, the jazz drummer who always looks like he has wandered into the wrong band.

Mick Taylor, who replaced the dead Brian Jones, was the Stones' best guitarist. But he couldn't fit in. Wood, his replacement, is nowhere as good, but he plays the important role as the group's fool, always around to defuse tension among the individual egos before it boils over.

They have all made their solo forays, but none has succeeded on his own. Jagger and Richards have also learned not to let their personal differences come in the way of the business. They just work their anger into their songs.

Example: Richards wrote the exasperated Had It With You, aimed squarely at Jagger. The latter, however, sang the rocking number with the detachment of an innocent bystander, and even blew the harp for good measure. Now, that's professionalism for you.

'This thing is bigger than either of us,' as Richards has said.


8. HEALTH

FINALLY, one needs a healthy mind and body to succeed and to stay the course.

Richards, who lost a decade to heroin addiction, is still alive today because he was lucky, and blessed with a healthy constitution. That he had the money to support his habit, and the means to detox himself, obviously helped.

The thing is, never try to be like him, he admonished after he cleaned himself up by the late 1980s.

Jagger, with his washboard tummy, obviously has his father's genes. Jagger Senior was a physical education teacher who became Britain's authority on basketball. Yet, Mick must be working out as hard as Madonna. At 59, almost two decades older than the Material Girl, the old boy can still deliver a two-hour performance which is as physically demanding as Madonna's when she was at her peak.



The Rolling Stones will perform at the Singapore Indoor Stadium on March 24 and 26. Tickets available from Sistic.


Richard Lim's website is at www.limrichard.com



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Time was on their side in '65


The Stones came and left with a bang in their first gig here

THE year 1965 was when the first American combat troops arrived in Vietnam, and methodical bombing of North Vietnam began.

It was also the year Singapore got out of Malaysia and gained independence, on Aug 9.

Early in the year, The Rolling Stones - five scrawny, scruffy English lads - breezed into town on a Qantas flight from Australia.

Amid the racket of firecrackers - it was Feb 16, Chap Goh Meh, the 15th day of the Chinese New Year - the band played two consecutive shows at the Singapore Badminton Hall on Guillemard Road, and left town as quickly as they had arrived.

They left in their wake a convulsed British community, shocked to see pictures in the newspapers the next day of their teenage children crying and screaming and breaking down in hysteria at the shows.

There was a debate in The Straits Times' letters page about whether the parents had brought up their children properly, and the hapless principal and teachers of the British school found they suddenly had to defend themselves publicly.

This was followed by an expose in The Sunday Times (Feb 28, 1965) by Peter H. L. Lim, who would later rise to become The Straits Times' editor-in-chief.


Headlined The Anatomy Of A Synthetic Scream, the article revealed how the concert organisers, Singstar Associates, had orchestrated the screamfest at both the Paya Lebar airport when the Stones arrived on Feb 15, and at their shows on Feb 16.

The organisers had chartered three buses to ferry the fans from Capitol cinema to the airport, and inside one of the packed buses, where Peter counted 70 passengers when it was licensed to carry only 56, he discovered that there were young men paid to rouse the fans and lead them in the screaming.

You will find this hard to believe, but the tickets then were priced at $2 a pop, compared to today's $99 to $499. Businessman Stanley Tong, 53, is one fan who still has a ticket stub to prove it.

Wong Loke Teck, 55, managing director of O2 Advertising, remembers the firecrackers and Brian Jones, then the leader of the band, striking in his trademark page-boy hair-cut and his round-collared striped jersey.

Quest singer Vernon Cornelius, who at that time was fronting the Trailers, recalls how the amplified sound at the show was the loudest the Badminton Hall had heard. Two other British groups, The Kinks and Manfred Mann, had performed here before the Stones, but they were not as loud.

'You could hear the Stones above the screaming, and you could hear the firecrackers going off outside,' Vernon remembers. 'It was just incredible.'

A month before they hit town, the Stones had released their second album, titled simply The Rolling Stones No 2. On it was the defiant song, Time Is On My Side.

Now 38 years on, time may no longer be on their side. But as the late rock critic Lester Bangs said, nobody is young anymore, anywhere, anyway.


LICK THIS
WIN front-row seats - and be ferried to the concert in a limo. Just answer this simple question:


The Rolling Stones began in 1962. Yes or No?


Call our contest hot-line at 1900-914-0001. Each call costs 20 cents. The last call must be made before midnight Wednesday, March 12. Callers whose answers are correct will take part in an electronic lucky draw.

First prize: A pair of tickets for front-row seats, worth $499 each, for the March 24 show. Plus, you will be ferried to the venue in a Mercedes limo.

Second prize: A pair of $350 tickets, also for the March 24 show. at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.

Results will be announced in Life! on Monday, March 17.

Good luck.
03-11-03 10:02 PM
Daethgod great read.. thanks man


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