Decision-Making in a Rock Band
Table of Contents
How do you run a rock band and avoid endless arguing, frustration, and eventual breakup? It’s an age-old question, and today I’m trying to answer it.
Specifically, I’m going to discuss unknown hobbyist bands where no members are paid. It’s the only situation that I’m familiar with. And it requires the process itself to be comfortable and rewarding for everybody. There are no financial/promotional incentives to stay otherwise.
And people don’t! What’s the average lifespan of a band/lineup? Like, 2 years?
My 2 years in Постоянные
When I joined, I was the most educated and skilled member. I was respected for this. I had creative freedom to implement my ideas. We didn’t have “too many cooks in the kitchen”. The guys didn’t have as many musical ideas or were humble about them. This was great at the time because I had a focused vision for the upcoming album and the sound that I wanted to explore.
And at the same time, I wasn’t the formal leader, as in “the founding member” or “the only person interested in pushing the project forward”. This was great too, because I wasn’t responsible for everything the band has to do. My bandmates were writing lyrics; organizing shows; handling social media and promotion; finding photographers, videographers, album cover artists…
So far, sounds great. But, on the other hand:
- I was often mad at rehearsals and had to explain some things that seemed obvious to me.
- When re-watching our shows, I was often more disappointed in my bandmates' performance, rather than mine. And I still think that there were objective reasons for that.
- Similarly, when the time came to record the album, I was disappointed in the bassist’s and the second guitarist’s performances. I ended up recording their parts by myself. I wrote and demoed most of them anyway.
- As a result, that second guitarist felt strangled by my control and left the band. Eventually, we sorted things out and brought him back. But this episode demonstrates that something was wrong with my approach.
- And the process wasn’t pleasant for me either. Including demos and rehearsals, the album took 1.5 years to make. And a lot of my effort too. It was worth it, but when it was done, I was terrified of going through the same process again. I didn’t want to write and record the next one.
- I tried to change the process, let go of that control, and rehearse some of the other guys’ songs. But I didn’t like those and ended up leaving the band. And afterwards, I also took an extended break from music during the next 2 years.
Pondering
What can this story teach us? How can a band keep playing together sustainably? It’s a hobby, after all. I do this for pleasure. It shouldn’t cause all this negativity and require extended breaks to recover.
Wouldn’t my problems be solved if I found more skilled bandmates to play with? Yes, these problems would be solved. But go back and re-read the advantages of playing in that band. Why would skilled bandmates follow my every creative whim? The team dynamic would be totally different. It would be a herd of cats . And those bands also argue and break up all the time. See The Beatles , four absolutely talented creative individuals who all contributed a lot, but also argued a lot and eventually couldn’t work together anymore.
In theory, you could find an individual who’s good at music and has interesting ideas, but has no focused creative vision that would conflict with the leader’s vision. Actually, this is my current role at Мало-Помалу ! But this is a delicate balance that can change with time. What if I do develop a new contradicting vision in the future? Does the band have to change its direction? Do we have to start a new side-project and promote it from scratch? Do I need to assemble a whole separate lineup, even though I like playing with my current bandmates? All kinds of ugly questions arise.
Effort and ambition should be matched with power
No creative input, no day-to-day effort = useless band member, dead weight.
A “leader” who puts in little day-to-day effort = usually, he’s just an “ideas guy” clown. Maybe, with some lineups, this “philosophical guidance” might work? I haven’t seen this, though.
A “boring” reliable member with no burning vision = you usually need a few of these, provided that you already have a creative leader. But beware of the case when the leader is overwhelmed with responsibility, or the next case:
A member who puts in a lot of effort, wants to implement his own ideas, but his ideas are ignored = a dangerous situation that needs to be prevented. A breakup typically follows.
An empowered creative leader who puts in a lot of effort = every band usually needs at least one, but he can take too much responsibility and burn out or alienate the other members. A band can have many, but they can start conflicting.
You need leadership and specialization
You may note that I bring up the “creative leader” a lot. That’s because I think that you typically need one and full democracy usually doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because voting on everything is exhausting and slow.
Actually, my experience with Постоянные hasn’t inspired me to write this post. I’m writing it because of a very recent occasion in my current band, Мало-Помалу. We’re preparing a new single. The song is done, and we’re currently preparing the cover art. From the start, we already had a good “rough” idea that everyone liked. And we already had an artist in mind. But despite this, it took a lot of back-and-forth rounds of edits with the artist. And now I feel exhausted. He had some own ideas, we discussed them with the band, had our own little disagreements, and then voted and compiled a wishlist of edits to send him back. And repeated this process a few times. In the end, we settled on a compromise that’s closer to the version that I voted against.
As I think about it now, that’s expected. I didn’t write this song. I’m not the band leader. I’m not even competent in visual arts. I don’t have an authority on this topic. I care about this release because I really like the song, but I shouldn’t have got so invested in the cover art. In hindsight, I only wasted everyone’s time with these discussions. We shouldn’t discuss everything, vote on everything, and compromise on everything. Specialize instead! Pick an area that you’re proficient in and passionate about, and own it. Save your bandmates’ time and energy! You’ve already heard about “design by committee” . Avoid it! Don’t drag discussions on topics that you don’t really care about. Save your energy too.
Out of interest, I compared my band to my team at work. And I noticed that we barely ever vote at work. Especially among the whole 8-person team, rather than a subset. And that’s not because there’s some overreaching manager who overrides every decision. Quite the opposite! We have a team of specialists where everyone is hired for a specific role. We trust them to do their job well, and they have the final say in their responsibility area. We try to handle these areas by ourselves and avoid needless communication overhead. The issues are escalated and discussed if they fall outside of the personal responsibility area or if the person doesn’t have the skills/knowledge to solve a specific issue. I think, this is a very useful heuristic.
Another possible solution is picking a person who’s responsible for the vision on a single release, every aspect of it. To avoid burnout and slowdowns, you’ll probably have to rotate this role. Kinda like The Beatles alternated between Lennon and McCartney taking the lead.
I still prefer bands
Despite all of these complications, I prefer having a full band rather than a solo project. I prefer playing shows with live drums. I prefer not having to handle every single responsibility described in the section about Постоянные. I prefer merging different creative ideas (even if not in equal proportions). I prefer spending time with people.