Posts Tagged ‘Rolling Stones’
“Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.”…
Indeed, they fall; they very rarely go willingly. And as autocrats rise in a growing number of countries, this is an increasingly valent issue. The estimable Branko Milanovic on why they hang on…
In an interesting paper he tweeted yesterday, Kaushik Basu discusses, using a mathematical model, an old problem: how rulers once they are in power cannot leave it even if they wish to do so, because their road to power, and in power, is littered with corpses that will all (metaphorically) ask revenge if the ruler were to step down. Furthermore, since the number of misdeeds and of rulers’ real or imagined enemies multiplies with each additional period in power, they need to resort to increasingly greater oppression to stay in power. Thus, even the originally well-meaning or tolerant rulers become, with the duration of their rule, tyrants. Basu is aware of the millennial nature of the problem; he cites Shakespeare’s Macbeth. He could have also cited Tacitus’ description of Tiberius’ descent into murderous suspiciousness and folly.
Basu terms this issue “temporal inconsistency” because his assumption is that the ruler would like at one point to leave and spend the rest of his life in affluence and leisure. (I write in “his” life because all individuals listed in Basu’s paper are men, and he strangely resorts to the use of “she” and “her” in the mathematical part of the paper.) This assumption of a ruler who wants to retire is unrealistic, and I will explain why below, But before I do so, I need to note that there is no inconsistency in the ruler’s or dictator’s behavior in each individual period. (Basu acknowledges this in the latter part of the paper by stating that fully rational maximizing behavior in each individual period may still lead to on overall suboptimal outcome.). Assume that the ruler plays an annual game where he wonders: am I better off if I retire now or if I commit another crime which would make my retirement next year more difficult but my rule this year safer? The answer is simple: he is better off committing another crime in the expectation that this would make his overthrow less likely. He replays that game every year and every year he reaches the same conclusion. Thus, the ruler’s decisions are not at all irrational or even inconsistent…
When power as such becomes the objective, as it is among all politicians, and autocratic rulers especially, there is no amount of worldly goods that could substitute for power. Rulers cannot be cajoled (as Basu seems to believe) into leaving power. And this is not just because of the possible punishment that may await them in retirement, but because they crave, and they need, the exercise of, power…
The same applies to ideologues. Or perhaps even more so because ideologues believe that they are on a unique mission to save their nation or the world, and obviously then being in power is a necessary condition for such a salvation…
… there is nothing that can be offered to dictators to make them step down. They have to continue to rule until they either die peacefully in their beds and after death became either vilified or celebrated (or at times, both), or until they are overthrown, or meet an assassin’s bullet. Once on the top, there is no exit. They have become prisoners like many others they have thrown in jail…
What drives autocrats: “There is no exit for dictators,” a sobering read from @BrankoMilan.
* Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography
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As we ponder power and its products, we might recall that on this date in 1965 the number #1 song on the U.S. pop charts was “Get Off of My Cloud,” by the Rolling Stones (lyrics by Jagger; melody, Richards)
“If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization”*…
That’s perhaps especially true of cultural organizations. As Ian Leslie explains, while rock bands are known for drink, drugs, and dust-ups, they have something to teach us: beyond the debauchery lie four models for how to run a business…
… The notion that bands should make music for the love of it was always romantic and now seems positively quaint. Rock groups are mini-corporations (some of them not so mini). Bands such as Coldplay or Kings of Leon operate sophisticated corporate machines that are responsible for multiple revenue streams; at a recent conference, Metallica’s drummer spoke about the importance of using the right customer-engagement software. Yet the music machine ultimately depends on a small group of talented individuals working closely together to create something magical. Once members of a group decide that they can’t stand to be in the same room as each other, the magic stops and the money dries up.
If rock groups are businesses, businesses are getting more like rock bands. Workplaces are far more informal than they used to be, with less emphasis on protocol, rank and authority. Many firms try to cultivate the creativity that can come from close collaboration. Employers attempt to engineer personal chemistry, hiring coaches to fine-tune team dynamics and sending staff on team-building exercises. Employees are encouraged to share lunch, play table tennis and generally hang out. As the founder of Hubble, a London office-space company, put it, “We hope that our team will become friends first, and colleagues second.”…
Successful startups have to make a difficult transition from being a gang of friends working on a cool idea to being managers of a complex enterprise with multiple stakeholders. It’s a problem familiar to rock groups, which can go quickly from being local heroes to global brands, and from being responsible only for themselves to having hundreds of people rely on them for income. In both cases, people who made choices by instinct and on their own terms acquire new, often onerous responsibilities with barely any preparation. Staff who were hired because they were friends or family have their limitations exposed under pressure, and the original gang can have its solidarity tested to destruction. A study from Harvard Business School found that 65% of startups fail because of “co-founder conflict”. For every Coldplay, there are thousands of talented bands now forgotten because they never survived contact with success.
The history of rock groups can be viewed as a vast experimental laboratory for studying the core problems of any business: how to make a group of talented people add up to more than the sum of its parts. And, once you’ve done that, how to keep the band together…
The Beatles, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, REM, and the Rolling Stones– four bands, four models for business success: “A rocker’s guide to management,” from @mrianleslie in @1843mag.
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As we learn from the loudest, we might recall that it was on this date in 1968 that The Beatles (one of the four cases discussed in the piece linked above) performed “Hey Jude,” the #1 song in both the U.S. and the U.K. at the time, on the television show Frost on Sunday on BBC-TV.
“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do”*…
Wirecutter is best known for recommending things that are the best of the best. But on occasion, we discover the worst of the worst.
Sometimes this happens during testing (like when we had to force down countless cups of bad Keurig coffee), or when an entire category fails to deliver (like great-smelling but useless essential oil bug repellents), or just because a thing has no business even existing (we’re looking at you, air fryers)…
A list of products to which we should just say no: “Wirecutter’s Worst Things for Most People.”
* Steve Jobs
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As we resist the urge, we might recall that it was on this date in 1995 that (to the commercial accompaniment of The Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up”) Microsoft released Windows 95 to retail.
“One of These Days”*…
The Velvet Underground at The Record Plant on May 6, 1969, during a session for VU. L to R: Doug Yule, Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker, Sterling Morrison, engineer Gary Kellgren
The Velvet Underground album VU is the binding agent in a career of releases that differ so dramatically one from another as to be almost artistic reversals. VU has the dark majesty of The Velvet Underground & Nico, the neurotic strut (if not the head-wrecking dissonance) of White Light/White Heat, the tenderness and emotional insight of The Velvet Underground, and the pure pop sensibility of Loaded. In its 10 tracks, it contains refined versions of what the band did well during the four years they lasted. The irony is that VU wasn’t released until more than a dozen years after the Velvet Underground disbanded.
Recorded primarily in 1969, after the ouster of multi-instrumentalist John Cale, and later cannibalized by principal songwriter Lou Reed for his solo career, the recordings that make up VU were shelved for 16 years. They stayed in the MGM vaults, mostly unmixed, until discovered during the process of reissuing the band’s catalog in the early 80s. As a result, VU benefitted from much improved audio technology and was released to a world not only better prepared for the Velvet Underground, but one that had largely absorbed its lessons. The album made a beautiful tombstone for the band’s career, at a time when all the members were alive to see it…
The story of an epic album that almost never was: “Shelved: The Velvet Underground’s Fourth Album.”
* Lou Reed (title of one of the cuts on VU)
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As we slip on the headphones, we might recall that it was on this date in 1973 that Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert premiered on U.S. television, featuring a performance by the Rolling Stones. It ran until 1981.
“Don’t be tricked by the verisimilitude into forgetting this is fiction”*…
Stranger Things
Thanks to obsessive online forums that pore over a production’s every anachronism , [the entertainment industry] requires increasingly discerning and dedicated prop hunters. Nowhere is this more apparent on set than with the technology that surrounds actors. Mad Men inspired its dedicated watchers to complain that the Sterling Cooper office’s IBM Selectric typewriters were a year ahead of their time, and the numerous period-specific shows that followed have only had to be more diligent.
Now, as television is trending toward ’80s-era creations like Stranger Things, The Americans, Halt and Catch Fire, and The Goldbergs, decorators are finding it increasingly difficult to fill their sets with gadgets that won’t cause persnickety fans to froth at the mouth. It’s a very first-world Hollywood problem, but a fascinating one. The breakneck pace of consumer technology development — the same thing that has brought us generational inside jokes and those viral “Kids React to Old Computers” videos — is trailed by landfills full of mass-produced gadgets. They are not made of metal or wood, but a beige and flimsy plastic that tends to yellow over time. As the production designer for the first two seasons of The Americans, John Mott, put it, the ’80s “were also a time where design had kind of lost its way.” As a result, gadgets from that era don’t tend to be on most collectors’ radars, even if they’re in high demand in the entertainment industry…
It can’t just be a computer from the ’80s — it has to be THE computer from the ’80s: “How Hollywood Gets Its Old-School Tech.”
And for more on the viewer-side energy driving this, see “The Internet Is Spoiling TV.”
* Sha Li
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As we aspire to accuracy, we might recall that it was on this date in 1970 that Gimme Shelter was released. A Maysles Brothers documentary edited by Charlotte Zwerin and produced by Porter Bibb (with incidental assistance from your correspondent), it chronicled the last weeks of The Rolling Stones’ 1969 US tour, which culminated in the disastrous Altamont Free Concert.
One of the most immediate and compelling documentaries ever committed to celluloid, it was released twelve months to the day after the era-defining tragedy that it depicted. Before directing Gimme Shelter, Albert and David Maysles had made vérité documentaries focusing on celebrities such as Marlon Brando, Orson Welles, Truman Capote and the Beatles and it was the latter experience that convinced Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones to invite the brothers and their creative collaborator Charlotte Zwerin to film the free concert they were headlining at the Altamont Speedway. The concert was attended by an enormous 300,000 people but the free love party was so large that the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang were recruited in the last minute to act as security for the event. Rather than being a West Coast version of Woodstock (which had been held earlier that summer) Altamont instead became infamous for the death of Meredith Hunter, an 18-year-old African-American man, stabbed to death by the Hell’s Angels after drawing a long-barreled revolver. Amazingly, the Maysles caught the incident on film, turning Gimme Shelter into, as Amy Taubin succinctly put it, rock ‘n’ roll’s answer to the Zapruder footage of JFK’s assassination. Not only does the movie feature the fatal incident but, even more compellingly, in one scene we see a clearly affected Jagger watching the incident again as the Maysles edit the footage. A great concert film as well as a hugely important cinematic document hugely altered the trajectory of the Maysles’ career and remains, along with Don’t Look Back, one of the most important music docs ever made.
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