Post by Spook on Nov 9, 2004 11:31:42 GMT -5
For those who didnt see the article in the sunday times:
November 07, 2004
Pop: We’ll take America
MTV has followed the British band Busted’s attempt to break the States. It may be the making of them, says Mark Edwards
Not long after their last UK arena tour, when they played to hundreds of thousands of screaming fans, Busted landed in New York on their first visit to America. A bored-looking limo driver greeted them on arrival. “Are you Buster?” he asked, capturing in three words the extreme lack of interest America shows in even our biggest bands.
Busted are the latest British band to attempt to conquer America. They’ve already conquered their home territory, beating Coldplay to become the biggest-selling UK band last year, selling out 50 arena shows this year (including 11 at Wembley) and racking up four No 1 hits. But all this counts for nothing once you cross the pond, as countless home-grown stars who have failed to crack the world’s biggest market could tell them.
America remains distinctly underimpressed with the acts we send out there, whether they’re our biggest rock bands, such as Oasis, or our smartest pop stars, such as Robbie Williams. Why should Busted be any different? Perhaps because they have an unusual weapon in their armoury: their own reality-television show. Later this month, MTV will be screening the six-part series, America or Busted, which follows the band’s attempts to break America. MTV’s cameras followed the band on their initial 10-week visit to the States — essentially a promotional tour to introduce the band to influential radio stations.
The first episode of America or Busted begins with the band performing to 25,000 screaming fans at one of the UK arena shows; but then the three lads, Charlie Simpson, James Bourne and Matt Willis, are quickly brought back down to earth. First, they have to come to terms with the fact that nobody in America knows who they are.
Second, they quickly realise that — having spent two years trying to escape being positioned as a “boyband” and gain some recognition as a proper group — they’re going to have to jump through all those same hoops again.
There is a wonderful scene where the band and their manager, still in London, take a conference call from an enthusiastic American record-company executive detailing all the fabulous PR plans she has for them. As she reels off the names of the teen magazines and kids’ television shows, the lads’ faces sink. Fletch, the band’s manager, carefully and diplomatically explains that his boys aren’t going to go on any TV shows where they get covered in slime. The executive takes all this on board. Days later, the band are seated in the New York offices of the record company, where a suspiciously similar PR itinerary is — equally enthusiastically — read out to them all over again.
A couple of weeks after their return from America, as we sit and talk in a trendy West End club, the band groan at the memory of that meeting. “We’d talked on the phone a few times before we went over there, and we all seemed to be on the same page,” says Willis, friendly and outgoing despite a stinker of a cold. “They were, like, ‘Yeah, guys, we know exactly where you’re coming from, we don’t want to market you in a way you don’t like.’ And we got there, and it was, ‘Oh, so everything you said to us before we came over was just bullnuts to get us here. We get here and it’s the same old crap.’”
The views of the American record company are summed up by one executive who says bluntly that Robbie Williams came over first-class, “but we sent him back coach”. The subtext isn’t subtle; the band are being told to shut up and do what they’re told. “Yeah, we’re listening to you, but you know what?” says Willis. “We’ve done this a thousand times.”
Busted are, in fact, a fascinating hybrid. At one extreme, yes, they are a teen (and preteen) band, and you can fully understand why the record company wants to sell them in this way; yet at the other extreme, the band members write their own songs, play their own instruments and reckon they deserve to be seen as a proper group. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, they write their songs, but alongside a bevy of co-writers; yes, they play their instruments, but there are other musicians on stage with them. If you wanted to be cynical, you could say they were a manufactured group being marketed as a non-manufactured group. But I wouldn’t agree with you. Personally, having met them, having heard how passionately they talk about music and been pleasantly surprised by the depth of their knowledge (a conversation that ranged from the early-1990s powerpop group Jellyfish to contemporary alt-rock bands such as Sparklehorse, the Flaming Lips and Death Cab for Cutie), I think Busted are trying to be a pop group in the old sense of the phrase, but coexisting with an industry that wants to treat them like a pop group of today.
This is the conflict that makes America or Busted potentially fascinating (only episode one was available to view at press time). Here is a band who want to succeed on their own terms (or who have ideas above their station, as the record company no doubt sees it), but who are smart enough to know that they have little chance of making an impression in the States without compromising.
For the band, the high point of the US tour was when they finally got to play live. “Just us three and a drummer, and such a small stage; a really cool environment. We had to work the crowd, win them over,” says Willis. But for the record company, you imagine, this was an irritating diversion from the real agenda of glad-handing radio executives and meeting the media.
“We’d rather be seen the way we want to be, and not be huge, than be seen as a boyband and sell a lot of records,” says Simpson. This could be disingenuous coming from a band who agreed to have MTV cameras follow them around; but another key difference between Busted and most of their peers is that, with a steady stream of songwriting royalties coming in, breaking America is less financially important to them. “We’re all quite happy with what we’ve got,” says Willis. “Who wouldn’t be? We’re chuffed to bits with it.”
Not that their American visit was all about conflict. Along the way, they found time to fit in a visit to the Playboy mansion. “It’s an amazing place,” says Willis. “We met Hugh himself. In the crimson robe. It freaked me out a bit, though. You’re standing there talking to some model and she’ll go, ‘Look, this is my issue of Playboy.’” Willis mimes the act of unfurling a centrefold. “And you say, ‘So it is.’”
Most of the trip was spent on the tour bus, in the care of Ward, the driver. “You get on the bus in the morning,” says Willis, “you drive all day, look out the window and think, ‘Have we gone anywhere? Was someone just outside shaking the bus all day?’” “It was just like an ocean of land,” adds Bourne. “I’ll always remember, everyone else was asleep and I was up the front with Ward, and I hear this pfftt, pfftt — like rain, but heavier. These huge june bugs were hitting the windscreen, their guts pouring out. Then it got more intense: wham, wham, wham. It got so bad you couldn’t see out, and the windscreen wipers weren’t helping — they were just smearing bug guts everywhere. We had to stop the bus, and Ward got a hose and washed the bugs off the window.”
Although the band have been focused on America, their UK fans are being catered for, too, with a new live album (released last week) and live DVD (out on November 29), both of which act as a timely reminder of how many good pop songs the band have produced in their short existence. Their next arena tour kicks off in Nottingham on November 15 and runs until just before Christmas.
After that, they should be returning to the States to build on the profile the MTV series creates. As to the success of their first visit, the band remain unconvinced. “I don’t know how successful we were,” admits Willis. “We don’t really know what’s going on. We get told things are going well, but we don’t know how true that is.”
“There is a lot of bullnuts in America,” adds Simpson. “I tend not to believe anything until I see it for myself. You learn quickly that everything is hyped, that nobody wants to tell you bad news.”
“I think the series is going to be integral to us breaking America,” says Willis.
“Oh, yeah,” agrees Bourne. “Without the show, we wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Bands on film
Despite This Is Spinal Tap’s skewering of the thingytail of pretension and stupidity at the heart of so many bands, today’s stars are queuing up to have their foibles filmed. DiG! shows how the Dandy Warhols’ ascent affected their friendship with the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Some Kind of Monster shows Metallica and their $40,000-a-month group therapist (geddit?) trying to record their last album, while Destiny Rules is a riveting exposé of the musical chemistry and personal resentment that drives Fleetwood Mac.
America or Busted launches on MTV on November 25 at 10.30pm. Busted Live: A Ticket for Everyone is out now
November 07, 2004
Pop: We’ll take America
MTV has followed the British band Busted’s attempt to break the States. It may be the making of them, says Mark Edwards
Not long after their last UK arena tour, when they played to hundreds of thousands of screaming fans, Busted landed in New York on their first visit to America. A bored-looking limo driver greeted them on arrival. “Are you Buster?” he asked, capturing in three words the extreme lack of interest America shows in even our biggest bands.
Busted are the latest British band to attempt to conquer America. They’ve already conquered their home territory, beating Coldplay to become the biggest-selling UK band last year, selling out 50 arena shows this year (including 11 at Wembley) and racking up four No 1 hits. But all this counts for nothing once you cross the pond, as countless home-grown stars who have failed to crack the world’s biggest market could tell them.
America remains distinctly underimpressed with the acts we send out there, whether they’re our biggest rock bands, such as Oasis, or our smartest pop stars, such as Robbie Williams. Why should Busted be any different? Perhaps because they have an unusual weapon in their armoury: their own reality-television show. Later this month, MTV will be screening the six-part series, America or Busted, which follows the band’s attempts to break America. MTV’s cameras followed the band on their initial 10-week visit to the States — essentially a promotional tour to introduce the band to influential radio stations.
The first episode of America or Busted begins with the band performing to 25,000 screaming fans at one of the UK arena shows; but then the three lads, Charlie Simpson, James Bourne and Matt Willis, are quickly brought back down to earth. First, they have to come to terms with the fact that nobody in America knows who they are.
Second, they quickly realise that — having spent two years trying to escape being positioned as a “boyband” and gain some recognition as a proper group — they’re going to have to jump through all those same hoops again.
There is a wonderful scene where the band and their manager, still in London, take a conference call from an enthusiastic American record-company executive detailing all the fabulous PR plans she has for them. As she reels off the names of the teen magazines and kids’ television shows, the lads’ faces sink. Fletch, the band’s manager, carefully and diplomatically explains that his boys aren’t going to go on any TV shows where they get covered in slime. The executive takes all this on board. Days later, the band are seated in the New York offices of the record company, where a suspiciously similar PR itinerary is — equally enthusiastically — read out to them all over again.
A couple of weeks after their return from America, as we sit and talk in a trendy West End club, the band groan at the memory of that meeting. “We’d talked on the phone a few times before we went over there, and we all seemed to be on the same page,” says Willis, friendly and outgoing despite a stinker of a cold. “They were, like, ‘Yeah, guys, we know exactly where you’re coming from, we don’t want to market you in a way you don’t like.’ And we got there, and it was, ‘Oh, so everything you said to us before we came over was just bullnuts to get us here. We get here and it’s the same old crap.’”
The views of the American record company are summed up by one executive who says bluntly that Robbie Williams came over first-class, “but we sent him back coach”. The subtext isn’t subtle; the band are being told to shut up and do what they’re told. “Yeah, we’re listening to you, but you know what?” says Willis. “We’ve done this a thousand times.”
Busted are, in fact, a fascinating hybrid. At one extreme, yes, they are a teen (and preteen) band, and you can fully understand why the record company wants to sell them in this way; yet at the other extreme, the band members write their own songs, play their own instruments and reckon they deserve to be seen as a proper group. The truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, they write their songs, but alongside a bevy of co-writers; yes, they play their instruments, but there are other musicians on stage with them. If you wanted to be cynical, you could say they were a manufactured group being marketed as a non-manufactured group. But I wouldn’t agree with you. Personally, having met them, having heard how passionately they talk about music and been pleasantly surprised by the depth of their knowledge (a conversation that ranged from the early-1990s powerpop group Jellyfish to contemporary alt-rock bands such as Sparklehorse, the Flaming Lips and Death Cab for Cutie), I think Busted are trying to be a pop group in the old sense of the phrase, but coexisting with an industry that wants to treat them like a pop group of today.
This is the conflict that makes America or Busted potentially fascinating (only episode one was available to view at press time). Here is a band who want to succeed on their own terms (or who have ideas above their station, as the record company no doubt sees it), but who are smart enough to know that they have little chance of making an impression in the States without compromising.
For the band, the high point of the US tour was when they finally got to play live. “Just us three and a drummer, and such a small stage; a really cool environment. We had to work the crowd, win them over,” says Willis. But for the record company, you imagine, this was an irritating diversion from the real agenda of glad-handing radio executives and meeting the media.
“We’d rather be seen the way we want to be, and not be huge, than be seen as a boyband and sell a lot of records,” says Simpson. This could be disingenuous coming from a band who agreed to have MTV cameras follow them around; but another key difference between Busted and most of their peers is that, with a steady stream of songwriting royalties coming in, breaking America is less financially important to them. “We’re all quite happy with what we’ve got,” says Willis. “Who wouldn’t be? We’re chuffed to bits with it.”
Not that their American visit was all about conflict. Along the way, they found time to fit in a visit to the Playboy mansion. “It’s an amazing place,” says Willis. “We met Hugh himself. In the crimson robe. It freaked me out a bit, though. You’re standing there talking to some model and she’ll go, ‘Look, this is my issue of Playboy.’” Willis mimes the act of unfurling a centrefold. “And you say, ‘So it is.’”
Most of the trip was spent on the tour bus, in the care of Ward, the driver. “You get on the bus in the morning,” says Willis, “you drive all day, look out the window and think, ‘Have we gone anywhere? Was someone just outside shaking the bus all day?’” “It was just like an ocean of land,” adds Bourne. “I’ll always remember, everyone else was asleep and I was up the front with Ward, and I hear this pfftt, pfftt — like rain, but heavier. These huge june bugs were hitting the windscreen, their guts pouring out. Then it got more intense: wham, wham, wham. It got so bad you couldn’t see out, and the windscreen wipers weren’t helping — they were just smearing bug guts everywhere. We had to stop the bus, and Ward got a hose and washed the bugs off the window.”
Although the band have been focused on America, their UK fans are being catered for, too, with a new live album (released last week) and live DVD (out on November 29), both of which act as a timely reminder of how many good pop songs the band have produced in their short existence. Their next arena tour kicks off in Nottingham on November 15 and runs until just before Christmas.
After that, they should be returning to the States to build on the profile the MTV series creates. As to the success of their first visit, the band remain unconvinced. “I don’t know how successful we were,” admits Willis. “We don’t really know what’s going on. We get told things are going well, but we don’t know how true that is.”
“There is a lot of bullnuts in America,” adds Simpson. “I tend not to believe anything until I see it for myself. You learn quickly that everything is hyped, that nobody wants to tell you bad news.”
“I think the series is going to be integral to us breaking America,” says Willis.
“Oh, yeah,” agrees Bourne. “Without the show, we wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Bands on film
Despite This Is Spinal Tap’s skewering of the thingytail of pretension and stupidity at the heart of so many bands, today’s stars are queuing up to have their foibles filmed. DiG! shows how the Dandy Warhols’ ascent affected their friendship with the Brian Jonestown Massacre, Some Kind of Monster shows Metallica and their $40,000-a-month group therapist (geddit?) trying to record their last album, while Destiny Rules is a riveting exposé of the musical chemistry and personal resentment that drives Fleetwood Mac.
America or Busted launches on MTV on November 25 at 10.30pm. Busted Live: A Ticket for Everyone is out now
