The Year in Music

Paranoia stalks the industry! Thousands panic as profits are devoured! Has the record biz had it? Will video-disc come to the rescue?

It was only natural that the music industry would start finding enemies every place it looked in 1980. Record sales continued to languish 35 percent below the pleasant levels they achieved in 1978 and the sale of concert tickets fell 25 percent from last year's sorry pace. Never mind the few cranky retailers who dared scream that the real bogeyman was the greed of the record companies themselves or their insistence on raising the cost of albums already too expensive for people to buy. There were too many other factions to blame, too many obvious scapegoats. There were the familiar and (text continued on page 206)Year in Music (continued from page 178) visible tormentors--wholesalers who kept raising the price of raw materials and "creative" types, musicians and writers, who kept agitating (and sometimes suing) for more royalties. Harder to identify but even more menacing were the huge battalions of invisible foes stacked up beyond them. Those included the pirates and bootleggers, who were costing the industry an estimated one and a half billion dollars a year world-wide, and, most ironically, the consumer himself, an object of loving advances from the industry when it tried to sell him its video-cassette recorders and tape decks--but a parasitical threat to its well-being once he started using them to record albums played on the radio. It was also ironic that the middlemen through whom record companies channel their wares to the public had also become enemies. Radio stations that tightened their play lists and refused to give new records a chance were clearly on the side of the Devil--and those were legion, since the majority of stations continued to think demographics instead of music, playing only what their listeners wanted them to play, according to the surveys they commissioned (another touch of irony, since it was the record companies that influenced radio to move in that direction). Stations that played LPs in their entirety, thus aiding and abetting the home tapers, were yet another menace, though the chagrined folks in the honeycombs of the record companies knew there wasn't much they could do about it, since they needed the radio people more than the radio people needed them. Also on the enemies list were record stores that sold blank tape and counterfeit stock--allegedly the case in 90 percent of 500 retail outfits surveyed by the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (N.A.R.M.).

If the radio stations were beyond coercion and the home tapers themselves were free to exercise their rights as free American consumers, at least temporarily, the other miscreants certainly would not get away scot-free with their shenanigans. The FBI, making copyright infringement a major part of its war on white-collar crime, continued to raid the laboratories and warehouses of bootleggers, and the industry continued to enlist the aid of governments in Asia, Europe and Africa in similar operations against the record numbers of record pirates operating in their bailiwicks. Retailers thought to be dealing in counterfeit product were subject to investigation; a tip from one convicted counterfeiter led to the discovery of bootleg records in returns from Sam Goody, and charges were levied against two of Goody's top executives. The N.A.R.M. convention heard angry threats of more action from record-company representatives ("We want you to hurt ... badly"). Codes, chemicals and electronic sensors to separate legitimate products from phonies were developed in secret by the record companies, which also offered cash rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of bootleggers.

The companies also took a number of actions that flew in the faces of their music-business colleagues. With their records selling fewer and fewer copies, they lowered the number of unsold copies they would take back from retailers, who hollered that their slender margin of profit was being destroyed. They also cut off cooperative advertising funds for retailers who ballyhooed the sale of blank tape with albums. They cut their advertising in the trade journals and cut off the "tour support" they had used to underwrite promotional tours by groups whose actual drawing power wasn't sufficient to cover their expenses.

With the frontiers of the business shrinking, everyone tried to protect himself. Arista started charging college stations for records, and the stations responded with an immediate boycott. Musicians, whose collective wages dropped ten percent in 1979, the first such setback in recent memory, were striking on both coasts, picketing Hanna-Barbera's Hollywood studios in quest of residuals from TV films and, in New York, forcing disruption of the Metropolitan Opera season. As usual, half the people in the business seemed to be in court, and there was turmoil at the very top as the Bee Gees sued their longtime manager Robert Stigwood for $137,000,000, claiming that he and his companies "maximized their own rewards from the Bee Gees' activities"; Stigwood filed a $310,000,000 countersuit charging the group with libel, extortion and other ungentlemanly actions. Donna Summer sued Casablanca Records--and Neil and Joyce Bogart--asking for termination of her contract, plus exemplary and punitive damages of $10,000,000; Casablanca's cross complaint, filed after Summer had signed with David Geffen's new label, modestly named David Geffen Company, charged her with unlawfully breaking her contract and sought a minimum of $42,000,000 in damages. But the most amusing suit of the year was filed by guitarist Gabor Szabo, who sought more than $21,000,000 from the Church of Scientology and from Vanguard Artists International, claiming that Vanguard, now run by Scientologist Chick Corea, had miscalculated his fees, coerced him into giving $20,000 to the Church of Scientology and misappropriated $15,000 for his own Scientological training.

Not all the court action involved lawsuits, and not all the policework involved bootleggers. Former Beatle John Lennon, 40, became the latest rock superstar to die tragically and prematurely when he was gunned down outside his New York apartment in early December. Ironically, the year had begun with Lennon's onetime songwriting partner, Paul McCartney, getting busted for taking eight ounces of reefer into Japan, which is not a good place to get caught with illegal drugs, even if you're Paul McCartney. Meanwhile, John Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas was nailed in Long Island for allegedly distributing pills, narcotic and otherwise, around New York. Police busted some fans for smoking pot at a Ted Nugent concert in Florida, then were besieged in a trailer by a crowd of rock hurlers. Injuries and arrests followed the announcement in Toronto in August that a sick Alice Cooper wouldn't be able to keep a concert date. Elton John's manager, John Reid, was sentenced to work in a "crime diversion" program for striking the doorman of a San Francisco hotel with a cane; and Chrissie Hynde, lead singer of the New Wave band The Pretenders, kicked out a police-car window while en route to the Memphis calaboose after allegedly biting the doorman and swinging a chair at the manager of a local night club. Disco star Sylvester was accused of passing bad checks around New York, then cleared after a fake Sylvester was shot in the foot by a wary jeweler. Todd Rundgren's brush with the law also came through no fault of his own, when four masked men entered his home, tied him up and forced him to listen to repeated humming of his hit tune I Saw the Light while they carried off his valuables.

Controversy and contention swirled around the outskirts of the music world, too, as the bad karma and dirty lyrics of rock drew the ire of social commentators, just as they had during rock's entire 25-year history. Paul Harvey complained about "pornography of the airwaves," a subject later exploited by TV newspeople in Chicago. A New York politician wanted to tax the airplay of records advocating drug use. And that was mild compared with the reception rock got in Iran, where the Ayatollah Khomeini, having denounced all music a year ago, started hauling his country's pop performers into court on charges of spreading corruption (music-industry people here braced themselves for similar onslaughts by the Moral Majority after Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency). The Ayatollah inspired various warlike and/or satiric songs by American musicians, the most successful of which was Bomb Iran, sung to the tune of the old Beach Boys hit Barbara Ann by Vince Vance and the Valiants, an oldies band from Texas that had finally found an attention-getting gimmick after years of knocking around the bushes.

In the general atmosphere of gloom, the thriving video industry offered a solitary beacon. Manufacturers of video machines showed surprising strength on the New York Stock Exchange, and retailers reported brisk business from coast to coast. All the major record companies got into the production of video cassettes, video discs and machines to play them on. Rundgren started a video production company of his own. Mike Nesmith, the wise old Monkee and producer of Popclips, a Top 40like TV show that paired hit tunes with imaginative film shorts, called the video disc "the single most important event in the history of the rock-'n'-roll music industry" and forecast the possibility of LPs' "doing hundreds of times the business they are now." Probably the surest indicator of a boom was the Japanese decision to make and export nearly 4,000,000 videotape recorders in 1980. There were skeptics, however: Arista president Clive Davis warned against grasping at the video disc as "a quick panacea for industry problems," pointing out that we'd all seen other novelties come and go and that the possibilities of the phonograph record were far from exhausted.

Of course, while Davis was cautioning everyone not to get carried away with the video revolution, he was also signing a three-year, three-movie production deal with 20th Century-Fox. Which wasn't so unusual; the movies were bedding down with the music business every chance they got, especially with country music, as Hollywood continued to base productions on the lives of country performers (Coal Miner's Daughter) or on their songs (Middle-Aged Crazy, Take This Job and Shove It). Sissy Spacek, Clint Eastwood and Jane Fonda became country-and-western singers; Willie Nelson became an actor, in Honeysuckle Rose (so did Kinky Friedman, in a monster movie called Easter Sunday). And, as country music continued to grow in popularity, urban cowboys flocked to the burgeoning Western-apparel stores and redneck-styled clubs in every American city, eager to tie on cowboy bandannas and bust their butts riding replicas of Mickey Gilley's mechanical bull.

Not that the marriage of music and film was entirely a country proposition. Everyone in rock, it seemed, wanted to make a movie. Paul Simon became a film virtuoso with One Trick Pony. Robert Stigwood, undaunted by the colossal failure of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, came back with Times Square and a pair of runaway girls who make it in rock as the Sleez Sisters (easy, Reverend Falwell). Chrysalis got into film production with a $1,000,000 item called Babylon. The Sex Pistols made a film, The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle. Frank Zappa made a film, Baby Snakes. Linda McCartney made a film, Seaside Woman, that won a prize at Cannes. Of course, the most noteworthy acting debut by a rock singer in 1980 took place not in the movies but onstage, when multitalented David Bowie took over the lead role in The Elephant Man and stunned the critics with his no-make-up portrayal of the unfortunate John Merrick.

If the decision of the Japanese to export video-cassette machines presaged a boom for the video industry in America, the opening of discos in Russia--where they were translated into youth centers that combined dance programs with lectures and other "educational" maneuvers--was an equally sure sign that they were dead as a doornail here. Mobile discos were flourishing, and a few new multimillion-dollar jobs were under construction, but most of the middle-of-the-line establishments were foundering, and booking live entertainment, usually rock 'n' roll, to stay alive. Radio stations that rushed to embrace disco months before were now dropping it unceremoniously; disco producers, who were accustomed to better treatment, were suddenly unable to get their records aired or to coax advances out of the record companies--proving anew that what goes around comes around. They were paying for the failure of disco, a producer's medium, to develop enough artists who were genuine attractions; a producer's medium is anathema these days to the cost-conscious record industry, especially compared with New Wave rock, which offers the possibility of hit records with relatively little overhead. The highlight of disco's depressing year had to be the midsummer marriage of 80-year-old Sally Lippman--known as Disco Sally since her friends urged her to "get out and shake a leg" after the death of her first husband three years ago--and 28-year-old Yiannis Touzos, in a New York ceremony sponsored by the disco Magique, performed by Judge Bruce Wright (known as Turn-'em-loose Bruce for his habit of setting low bail for accused criminals) and attended by 2000 guests, including all of Gotham's disco heavies.

The shrinkage of the disco empire allowed R&B artists to throw off its yoke, slow down the beat and go back to doing soul music, even ballads that showed a country-and-western influence; R&B stations also opened their play lists to white acts ranging from Queen to Kenny Rogers (his across-the-board hit Lady was written and produced by Lionel Richie Jr., of the Commodores, who'd become specialists in the art of crossing over). It was a year, in fact, that saw most of the familiar "categories" of music lose their relevance. Country records used more hard-rock sounds and more old Motown material; there were discussions in the trade as to whether or not country music was still country music. Meanwhile, the continued success of Gospel records on pop charts stirred up speculation as to the point at which a successful Gospel artist might have to choose between success and the Lord. And as jazzmen also came out from under the spell of disco and began reasserting the power of bebop to move a young audience that had learned about the music in college, there was talk in the industry that perhaps jazz, by virtue of its modesty, was actually recessionproof. There was certainly no sign of a recession when jazz fans packed the Hollywood Bowl in June to watch a variety of stars perform at the second Playboy Jazz Festival, a two-day bash that Editor-Publisher Hugh M. Hefner promised would become an annual event.

Individual comebacks, not all by popular demand, were everywhere. John Lennon and Yoko Ono had just released their first album in five years, Double Fantasy, when the reclusive ex-Beatle was murdered. Comebacks were also made by several lesser but ultimately more fortunate entries in Britain's first rock wave; among them were Peter Noone, once front man of Herman's Hermits, who returned with a New Wave band called The Tremblers; and Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger's onetime heart, who came back with an album called Broken English. What else? Bruce Springsteen, who spends so much time on his albums that he's always on a comeback, made his first tour in two years. Latin percussionist Ray Barretto made a comeback after four years on the shelf, courtesy of an auto accident in which he almost lost the use of his right hand. Brenda Lee made a comeback. Les Paul made a comeback, on an Al DiMeola album. Elton John hardly was away--still, Little Jeanie was his first top-five single since 1976. Diana Ross got her first top-ten hit in four years--also the biggest hit of her solo career--with Upside Down, produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic. Sarah Vaughan made her first New York nightclub appearance in five years, at the Grand Finale. Legendary jazz pianist Red Garland made a comeback; and his onetime boss, Miles Davis, was reported back in the studio with a new band.

Rock-a-billy continued its comeback, with Nashville impresario Shelby Singleton insisting it was "the next big trend." Blue-eyed soul made a comeback on records with Daryl Hall and John Oates, and in live venues all over the East Coast, as white bands were playing the old Stax and Motown hits note for note. The Chipmunks ended two decades of nonviolence with an album of Chipmunk Punk. Buddy Miles returned to circulation after doing 18 months in California on a grand-theft charge; and Chuck Berry emerged from his 100 days in prison with a 328-page autobiography. Other rockers working on books were Noel Redding (naturally, the tome will detail his three years with the Jimi Hendrix Experience); punk hero Richard Hell, who was keeping a journal of his travels across the U. S.; and Paul Kantner of the Jefferson Starship, who was working on a book/ screenplay version of his 1970 science-fiction LP, Blows Against the Empire, when he was felled by a cerebral hemorrhage that miraculously failed to kill him.

Not as lucky as Kantner was John "Bonzo" Bonham, Led Zep's drummer, who drank himself to death at 32 and made the Playboy Hall of Fame (see page 177). Another who O.D.'d on alcohol, in classic rock-'n'-roll style, was Bon Scott, 33, lead singer of the Australian heavy-metal group AC/DC. Folk singer and songwriter Tim Hardin was found dead at 37 in his Hollywood apartment. Other rocksters who fell through life's trap doors included Larry Williams of Bony Maroney fame, who apparently shot himself to death at 32; Jethro Tull bassist John Glascock, dead of heart failure at 27 (his health hadn't permitted him to tour during his three years with the group); and Tommy Caldwell, bassist and singer with the popular Marshall Tucker Band, killed at 30 when his car overturned in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The blues field lost a trail blazer in Henry Roeland Byrd, a.k.a. Professor Longhair, 61, paterfamilias of the New Orleans rock/blues piano school that includes Fats Domino, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint and Huey "Piano" Smith. Jazz lost one of its most accomplished pianists when Bill Evans, a Playboy poll winner in 1971 and 1972, died at 51 of bronchial pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer. Among the other jazzmen departing this earthly sphere were clarinetist Barney Bigard, 74, author of Mood Indigo and C-Jam Blues; pioneer vocalist Babs Gonzales; altoist Corky Corcoran; reed man Bobby Jones; pianist/ arranger Duke Pearson; and Jimmy Crawford, venerable drummer of the Jimmie Lunceford band. Two swing-era vocalists who died were Dick Haymes and Jane Froman, who became the subject of a movie biography after she was crippled in a plane crash while touring for the U.S.O. Other casualties were Jimmy Durante, who played ragtime piano and sang with Dixieland groups prior to his comedic career; Richard Rodgers, the prolific musical-comedy composer who provided jazz with so many "standard" tunes; Sue K. Hicks, the Nashville gentleman who inspired Shel Silverstein to write Johnny Cash's 1969 hit A Boy Named Sue; and Mantovani, the grand dragon of "light classical." With the subsequent release of eight LPs, however, Mantovani quickly joined the ranks of the walking dead, a legion that included clone bands representing the Beatles and the Stones and a number of Jimi Hendrix impersonators, several of whom chewed their guitars in a San Francisco competition marking the tenth anniversary of Jimi's death.

Elvis impersonators continued to abound; the Presley estate sought to put one of them out of business by filing a suit against the "Big El Show" starring a former Memphis construction worker named Larry Seth. Soul man Donny Hathaway cheated death by singing posthumously on a Roberta Flack hit, then on a "live" LP of his own. Otis Redding couldn't make it back but was represented by his two sons, who joined forces with a cousin and made a promising debut LP as The Reddings. There were no return tickets, either, for rock-a-billy pioneers Johnny and Dorsey Burnett, but their sons Rocky and Billy had hit records in 1980 and joined with The Reddings in serving notice to the Reaper that, claim whom he might, the beat would go on.

Records of the Year

Best Rhythm-and-Blues LP: The Blues Brothers (Atlantic). With Aretha, Ray Charles and parts of Booker T. & the MG's, plus ol' Jake and Elwood, how can you go wrong--even without the crashes?

Best pop/rock LP: The Wall / Pink Floyd (Columbia). Studio wizardry and future-shock art rock combined to make this one platinum-plus.

Best jazz LP: Give Me the Night / George Benson (Warner Bros.). Since he's started singing, too, there's no stopping this great jazz guitarist.

Best country-and-western LP: Urban Cowboy (Full Moon/Asylum). Just like your own jukebox--music to ride mechanical bulls by.

Best Rhythm-and-Blues LP

Best Pop / Rock LP

Best Jazz LP

Best Country-And-Western LP

Music Hall of Fame

This year's balloting heavily favored John "Bonzo" Bonham, Led Zeppelin's drummer, whose value was proved with the dissolution of the band following his death last year. The next few slots are pretty much business as usual, down to the arrival of Bob Seger at number seven and Jackson Browne at number eight, neither of whom appeared last year. Other contenders down the line who didn't show last time are Keith Richard, Jerry Garcia, Olivia Newton-John, Paul Simon, Ray Davies and Diana Ross.

Your Hall of Fame picks:

Readers' Poll

In these increasingly, well, careful times, it should perhaps come as no surprise that there were practically no surprises in the balloting this time around. Out of 27 categories (not counting C&W group, new this year), 20 of the winners were repeats; and of the seven nonrepeaters, only two had never won before and came out of nowhere to do so--Pat Benatar as pop/rock female vocalist and Charlie Daniels as C&W male vocalist.

In what news there is here, Bob Seger jumped to number two from nowhere in the pop/rock male-vocalist category; and among the female vocalists, Chrissie Hynde is a new face at number eight. In the voting for best pop/rock group, Pink Floyd went over the wall to the top from number 19 a year ago; and Christopher Cross at number 18 is the lone newcomer.

Michael Jackson came out of the blue to land at number two in the rhythm-and-blues male-vocalist slot; and Sam & Dave put in a welcome appearance at number 11. The Spinners, the Brothers Johnson, Kool & the Gang, Con Funk Shun and the Bar-Kays were absent last year but made the party this time around.

The jazz results remained so sedentary that some big news is that Michael Franks zipped up to number seven from number 19 in the male-vocalist category, and that among woodwinds players, David Sanborn and John Klemmer checked in at number five and number six, respectively.

And the country boom continues, but also with very few new faces--two of the nicest belonging to female vocalists Janie Fricke and Carlene Carter.

1981 Playboy Poll Results

Pop/Rock

Male Vocalist

Female Vocalist

Guitar

Keyboards

Drums

Bass

Composer

Group

Rhythm-and-Blues

Male Vocalist

Female Vocalist

Composer

Group

Jazz

Male Vocalist

Female Vocalist

Brass

Woodwinds

Keyboards

Vibes

Guitar

Bass

Percussion

Composer

Group

Country-and-Western

Male Vocalist

Female Vocalist

Picker

Composer

Group

"A New York politician wanted to tax the airplay of records advocating drug use."