Tom Dunne: How I deal with that dreaded question about my band not making it
Something Happens.
“Why did your band not make it?” One of my favourite questions. I love being asked it at dinner parties, in front of new people or ideally on TV or radio. If you can follow it up with a shake of the head, a nod of disbelief or both hands raised to heaven you and I might one day holiday together.
Luckily I am somewhat inured to this suffering by a long time coming to terms with it during the 1990s. I was a member of several support groups, including ‘Irish Bands that Didn’t Make It’, who used to meet up Tuesdays in the Harcourt Hotel. Nine deep at the bar on the quietest of evenings.
It was fraught with emotion. “No one knows who you are here,” the facilitator would say reassuringly. He meant well but as I eyed Jerry and Liam at the bar we’d nod and mutter, “too feckin’ right, no one knows who we are anywhere.”
Standing up in that room, eyeing your peers, and declaring, “Hello, my name is Tom, my band didn’t make it,” wasn’t easy. But the response of “Welcome Tom” from that room of mostly hairy men with a very small but equally talented percentage of women still lives with me.
Afterwards it might get messy. Someone might say, “Technically we did kind of make it in Switzerland,” before being talked down off the ledge. Then we’d stand: “God grant me the serenity to accept the songs I cannot write, the courage to write the ones I can, and the wisdom to know a hit when I hear it,” we’d say and hug like it going out of style.
I was reminded of these heady times in a podcast this week. I love podcasts. Like apps a few years ago there is one for everyone and everything. Unlike apps, though, no one seems able to make money from them, but like indie music itself, that hasn’t stopped them from trying.
Mario Rosenstock’s podcast is a joy. The risk of an imminent attack from Roy Keane or a quick shift in the questioning to allow Miriam O’Callaghan to bring a new level of forensic examination to the table hangs palpably in the air. You can be asked, “Why did your band not make it?” by all of the leading figures in Irish life. Even the president might ask.
In these situations you need to have your answers well-rehearsed. Luckily mine, “Better bands than mine failed, and far worse bands made it,” is still visibly tattooed on my arm, chest, back, both calves and inner lip.
I always felt ‘more is more’ when it came to tats, plus the 3-for-2 offer was more than either me, Liam, Nick, Jerry or Christy could resist.
These things do make me defensive though. “Big Star,” I will say. “Two albums that have become the blueprint for bands such as REM, The Posies, The Gin Blossoms, Teenage Fanclub, the Paisley Park movement and jangly, harmony-heavy, pop the world over. Their song 13 is the Yesterday of that world. And, history will record they too, ‘didn’t make it'.”
“The Replacements,” I will add. “Singer Paul Westerberg was at one point seen as the natural successor to Springsteen. The most gifted writer of his generation. ‘Couldn’t fail’ was the phrase bandied about. They were punky, dangerous and literate. ‘Bastards of Young,’ a total anthem. History will record,” I will again intone.
But the best must be saved for last. When Bowie made his way backstage at a Velvet Underground gig in NYC in early 1971 to shake the hand of Lou Reed, he found himself shaking instead the hand of a man called Doug Yule. Lou had left the band, because, yes, you’ve guessed it, history will record, etc.
Theirs must be the most epic, inspiring failure, the GPO of Indie music. It established not selling any albums at the time of release and having no commercial success as something that wasn’t quite failure at all. You were simply ahead of your time, too good to be appreciated just yet, and somehow even the better, more heroic for it.
It’s a model that has stood bands in good stead ever since. And there is a certain poetic power to it. Whipping Boy’s Heartworm, A House’s I am the Greatest, anything by the Stars of Heaven. They lie there waiting to be discovered anew, to declare again, “Look on my works ye mighty.” Just less of the “didn’t make it” stuff, okay?
