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Sheryl Crow, image control and the Fox Theater (of the absurd?)
A few years ago the city decided to spend about $30 million dollars to renovate the Fox Theater and turn it into a state of the art performing center which would revitalize the downtown area and serve as the anchor to redevelopment. It opened for business a couple of weeks ago and last night it hosted it's first concert with Sheryl Crow headlining. There's only 1600 seats to fill and she didn't quite do it, but the paper reported that it was a successful opening nevertheless.
The Press-Enterprise has been touting the Fox's opening all month and this morning they had planned to splash photos's of Sheryl's performance on the front page so the community could feel a sense of pride in the new center. But there were no pictures to be seen...Sheryl's contract forbid it.
I've worked with many musicians over the years and there have been more than a few who have tried to control their image by not allowing photo's or recordings, and asking for final approval on interviews and such. It's a throwback to the old Hollywood studio days where everything was tightly controlled to present the image that was needed to sell tickets and prevent scandal. Of course today with the internet, paparazzi, cell phone cameras and reality TV, you would think that performers would accept that in exchange for celebrity, they'd lose the right to control what people see or don't.
Now I don't know if Sheryl Crow has any idea about the rider in her contract prohibiting photos, or if it's just a standard line put in by her management company. I do know that I wasn't able to grab a picture of her from her website this morning because it wouldn't let me...so I got it from Yahoo News. She's a beautiful woman and I can't see why she wouldn't mind having her pictures shown in the news media and if she isn't getting drunk, forgetting her underwear or crashing her car into a tree at three in the morning...what's she got to lose?
On the walls of my office and in my desk drawer I have hundreds of pictures of myself with all sorts of musicians and performers acquired over three decades of working in the business. A friend of mine posts his in a folder on Facebook that he calls "Standing next to people who don't know me" and it's the obligatory music/film industry souvenir you get when attending an opening, release party or the backstage "meet and greet".
The only person I've ever come across who demanded "control" on these types of photos was Paul McCartney. After an intimate lunch in the Capitol Record's studio many years ago, I shook his hand and we each smiled for the camera. Usually you'll get that photo back within a week or two , or sometimes if the artist wants to personalize and sign it, maybe longer. It took almost seven months to get the color 5X7 of me and the Walrus because it sat on the desk at his home until he could find the time to approve it. The thought of Paul agonizing over my five seconds with him and making sure there weren't any crumbs on his lips or a misplaced hair is pretty crazy I think. But he was a Beatle and all, so it just became part of the experience.
I've got to go walk the dog and I don't mean to rant about this...but it all seemed sort of silly to me when on the front page of the paper today they had a box stating why there were no Sheryl Crow pictures as promised. I think that made her look worse than if there was a crumb on her lip.
Tags: california, crow, fox, mccartney, paul, riverside, sheryl, theater
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Comment by KayLyne on January 23, 2010 at 12:10pm -
Sheesh! Want some cheese with that whine?
Oh, and the pic you posted is from her performance last night with Kid Rock & Keith Urban at the 'Hope For Haiti Now' telethon.
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Comment by Easy Ed on January 23, 2010 at 1:29pm - Kay: You are correct about the picture I used. It was taken at the telethon last night, prior to her gig in Riverside which started at 8:45 PST. I'm sorry if what I wrote came off to you as whining about something. It was simply an observation on the consequences of attempting to control one's image in the digital era.
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Comment by Kyla Fairchild on January 23, 2010 at 1:46pm -
This is yet another example of "old school" music biz thinkers who aren't willing to let go of the past and the way things have been and look to the future and reinvent themselves and their way of doing business.
Bob Lefsetz blogs about that sentiment often. Here is an excerpt from a blog he posted a couple days ago. The post had nothing to do with artist handlers trying to control their images, but is fitting nonetheless....
"But this is the kind of thinking that would have Kodak saying that they’re relying on film, or newspapers saying they’re relying on print, or labels saying they’re relying on CDs. Just because you can’t see the cliff from where you are, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Everybody said no one would read a book on a hand-held electronic device, and suddenly everyone’s saying the opposite, Kindle’s got many competitors and Apple’s unreleased tablet gets more press than a starlet without panties getting into a car outside a bar.
The old ways are history. But am I really going to respond to musicianscoaching.com? Actually, doesn’t matter what I say, that’s what I love about the Internet, you can’t steer, you can only jump in the river and keep your eyes open, and try to detect where the current is going. In other words, the public triumphs, it has control, the only way to possibly steer is to be so far out ahead, no one knows what you’re doing. That’s the Apple paradigm, not the major label paradigm."
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Comment by Charlie Baker on January 23, 2010 at 2:49pm - the way I see it is this, you rant on & on about the photos you take with famous people who you've met @ functions. I've often wondered why any professional person would feel it necessary to get photos with other professionals so they can hang them on their wall. You don't know them & it's very unlikely they even remember you if they see the pic in print somewhere. But you do this to prove your self worth to show you've been somewhere & done something you deem important. I've always felt it to be intrusive to ask someone for a pic, I mean why do you have to put people in that position, why do they owe that to you? Especially in this day & age where photos can be manipulated or exploited; of coarse artist want to protect their image. Sorry your ego was bruised & your time was wasted thinking about Sir Paul having to toil over whether or not to approve your pic. How much of his life do you think he has to waste doing those mundane task because people want to have their pic with him so they can feel like they're important. You're important without all the pics, aren't you?...
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Comment by Jim Hoffman on January 23, 2010 at 3:33pm
- I'm just curious why you think Paul McCartney would take the time to approve your photo himself. It's much more likely, in my mind, that it sat on someone's desk at his management company's office, waiting for his manager, or just as likely, some admin asst. to do the deed.
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Comment by hyperbolium.com on January 23, 2010 at 4:13pm - I'm not so sure that pictures are the only part of Sheryl Crow's career that's been airbrushed. Her breakthrough album Tuesday Night Music Club, the ad hoc weekly gathering of musicians from which it sprang, and the importance of Kevin Gilbert in writing her hits have been the subject of a great deal of revisionism.
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Comment by David Danelski on January 23, 2010 at 7:58pm
- see more at: http://www.pe.com/reports/2010/fox/stories/PE_News_Local_W_sheryl23.4470f39.html
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Comment by Jim Pipkin on January 23, 2010 at 8:26pm - I somehow don't see Crow's people losing much sleep over this, but I bet it was a bummer for the newspaper folks.
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Comment by Easy Ed on January 23, 2010 at 11:37pm
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Charlie: I absolutely agree with you about the culture of the photo taking. It always struck me as rather silly and although I never can recall me asking for them to be taken, it's just the way things occurred over time. As I mentioned in my original post, there are some on my walls and many, many more in my desk and closet. I would imagine it does convey some myth of importance but also it's a marker of time like so many other things one collects. It's really not unlike the old bowling trophy or little league picture I think.
Jim: It does seem strange that Paul would give a rat's ass about approving photos and you could indeed be correct. The story was passed on to me from a senior executive at Capitol and the photographer who was LA based and someone I knew well. I bumped into Paul at a restaurant in NYC a few weeks after 9/11 and as he was leaving someone took him over to the table next to ours. There, four people who had traveled to town to volunteer at the World Trade Center were having dinner. The restaurant host introduced Paul to them in a loud voice; every patron stood and applauded. A camera came out and pictures were taken. Paul was not with handlers or security and he was cordial and seemed very touched at the chance to meet these folks. Point is...maybe I was misled.
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Comment by Jim Pipkin on January 24, 2010 at 1:25am
- Here in Arizona Paul had the rep of being a sincere man and a great neighbor. I can recall at least one instance where he and Linda were out riding and did not hesitate to come to the aid of a person in distress. Point is he never came across as someone with much patience for being "handled", so my opinion (little that it matters) is you were told the straight story.
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