Martin Atkins

I don’t know if you know this; but I do a lot of research before most of my interviews. I like going in prepared, knowing the history behind the band and with a solid set of questions under my belt. This was not the case with my interview with Martin Atkins, author of the Tour Smart text book – a comprehensive guide on how to survive the touring world, and drummer for acts such as Public Image Ltd. (with Johnny Rotten), Ministry, Pigface, Nine Inch Nail and Killing Joke. On top of that, he also teaches at Columbia College in Chicago – a job he got accidentally by the way.

Instead this interview happened organically. We were introduced to one another as we were driving to the rehearsal day of the 2010 Vans Warped Tour and had an entertaining conversation about music, selling out, soccer and butter ads for a twenty minute car ride and then went our separate ways. An hour or so later, as I hung around backstage with Lanny at the Home Depot Centre in Carson, California, we saw Martin strolling the venue and filming it all for prosperity’s sake. Lanny and I turned to another and decided to see if Martin would be interested in doing an actual interview – touch on some of the topics we previously discussed in the car ride over and more about his ideas on touring. He graciously agreed and we dove into an interview that quickly turned into an organic conversation about the music industry and so much more.

We talked about Twitter, the miracle of the fax machine, Amanda Palmer playing mandolin at Dublin’s International Airport, pay-what-you-want salad, brewing companies, soccer, the ultimate cover band, 56 unreleased PiL recordings, Johnny Rotten, U2… oh, and his book about touring too. Martin Atkins is a DIY guru and his words ring true; if more bands followed his advice, they’d have a much longer career.

 

---

Bobby: Starting with the basics, you said Kevin Lyman had asked you to do a spoken word presentation on Warped Tour – what exactly are you doing on the Warped Tour?

Martin: For about the last four years, I’ve been constantly trying to refine advice. So I guess Kevin’s hoping that I would help some bands. I’m not doing a spoken word, I lecture – hopefully in a funny way because otherwise who gives a shit?  There’s enough information about there to help you do anything – you can build an atom bomb or start a band or a record label. It’s all out there, I just try to deliver that information with a sense of humour and a bit of real world “you are completely fucked, nobody gives a fucking shit about your music, nobody cares more than you, wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” kind of deal.

Bobby:  Do you think that’s one of the problems with today’s music industry where people write a song in their basement and instantly think “everybody’s going to love this. I’m going to be the next U2.”?

Martin: Well that’s always been the problem. But I saw U2 play for seventeen people at the Rock Garden in London. There is a path between the Rock Garden and selling out somewhere like this. It’s very much compounded by the internet. Bands think “click, click. MySpace page. Now my music is available to the world.” And it’s only the bands who come out, put themselves in front of people, meet people, present their music, give people a reason other than their music. Because who fucking cares? There’s enough great music in the world. Give people a reason to care about you and they’ll excuse slightly shitty mixing, slightly crappy lyrics and they’ll go on that journey with you as you develop that band because of the people that you are.

Bobby: At the same time, that’s more realistic than if you come out – you’ve never released a CD before and you have this perfectly polished album with a hit single – it’s like “well, where the fuck did you come from? Who are you? Why should I suddenly care about you?” There’s no relationship.

Martin:  Well people don’t suddenly care. So that whole thing doesn’t work. You’ve got people trapped in pursuit of what they think is perfection. You can have you – the band, the producer, the manager – come up with what you think is perfection but if it doesn’t have input from what could be your potential audience, how can it be perfection? You work on your songs with your audience. They leave when you play a shitty ballad and they applaud and blow you when they fucking love it.  You do more of the stuff they love and less of the stuff they don’t; and that’s why it’s a journey.

Bobby:  So what type of advice are you giving to these new bands? Through your book, through your lectures here?

Martin: Don’t be afraid to play to eight people with an unfinished album and a partially finished song. Don’t recreate the bullshit of the past. You don’t have to make a perfect album. You can do a three song EP and people might think “I love the first song, the other two are shit.” Alright, well three months down the line do another three song EP. Maybe put the good song from the first one on the second one. Go about your business and work incrementally in little steps forward.

The world is more and more about instant explosion of success; and first off, people should spend a bit of time thinking about what success is. Because I’ve played in places like this and it didn’t feel very fucking successful to me. It was horrible. If you’re looking for money, you could play in a place this big and loose money.

I met a fireman in England and he was in a band with five other firemen, playing cover songs in uniform. And the whole time – I bought a house from him when we lived in England – he was so apologetic because he wasn’t in PiL or Killing Joke or Ministry. That’s all he could see. I was like “well, tell me about your band.” They had their own van, their own trailer, their own little PA system. They played in their firemen outfits so they could got the fire brigade to pay for their cleaning. They got paid more than a regular cover band would because they were firemen, people applauded even when they were kind of off because they were firemen, people bought them drinks, they were getting more shags than the Rolling Stones, and he kept apologizing. I’m like “this is the holy grail. You succeeded. I want to join your band. It sounds great.”

Bobby: But you’d have to go to fire fighter training first.

Martin: Or just get the uniform and sit in the back drumming. I could see this look on his face. His face went from kind of apologetic – “sorry, I’m just in this cover band” – to like “oh fuck? You know what, I am having a good time. We did get paid, I’m getting shagged, people are sending trays of drinks over.”

Bobby: Do you think, at times, people just need to change their mind set of what success is? They need to get a more – maybe not realistic – but maybe more down to earth view of what success is as opposed to just selling out venues like this?

Martin: I mean, obviously there’s a lot of bands playing this whole fucking area and with all of them, they’re going to fill a stadium. Just listening to people who are telling it how it is as opposed to “fuck yeah! An overnight sensation!” People believe that just as easy and the amount of work that it is horrifying. Its five years of every day, constantly [working].

How do you fit twenty thousand people in a stadium? Well, I don’t know how you do that – or, you can’t do that. But what you can do is make friends with two people on Monday, two people on Tuesday, two people on Wednesday and after five years there’ll be twenty thousand people in the stadium. But I’ve watched bands when I’ve told them that and they’re like “yeah right, fuck that. We’re gonna talk to this guy who used to work with A&M Records. He’s got a new management company, a promo company who, for five thousand dollars, can double our audience.” It doesn’t happen.

Bobby: That ground work does work. A friend of mine just released their second album a couple months ago and on their CD release show they played a two hundred and fifty capacity venue. It was sold out, people were waiting outside so they went out and played acoustic songs for people who couldn’t get in.

Martin: That’s cool.

Bobby:  It was all friends. It was a great atmosphere because everybody there was a friend of somebody else; because they’re the most friendly people you’ll ever meet. You meet them and then introduce them to other people.

Martin: Normally, a band would go “I think we can sell out that two hundred and fifty capacity place so let’s book a thousand capacity place!” Three hundred people show up and three hundred people in a thousand capacity venue is a catastrophe. Three hundred people in two hundred and fifty capacity venue – that’s a riot. But bands are always thinking and managers and agents are always like “you know, I can help you…” but you can get there yourself; you just have to do it.

Lanny: Do you mind if I cut in? For the two people and then those two people… do you really embrace the digital side? The Facebook, the MySpace – do you think that’s a great thing for the music these days?

Martin: Yeah, of course but it’s not a replacement. The fax machine was great. I’d be on the phone “it’s coming out the other end! Fuck! Woooo!!!” We’d fax record stores. The fax machine was amazing. I’ve been around so many changes, it’s just a tool. When people think “we’re on the internet” it’s like “but what are you doing?” It’s not “how,” it’s “what.” What are you giving people to talk about on the internet, or through a fax, machine or on a telephone, or in brail?

You have to concentrate on what is that you’re doing and how it’s published. Somewhere on the bus, somebody just sent me a band’s album that’s on a thumb drive that’s moulded into the handle of a ray gun. Fuck, I’m going to have fun with that.  I’m going to talk about that before I’ve even listened to the music. You’ve got to give people a reason to talk. Yeah, the internet’s great. Amanda Palmer’s doing great stuff. I’m Twittering, I’m Facbooking, doing all that shit and I’m started to get into it more.

But there are only solutions out there. There’s Nimbit for Facebook. It’s a tool that sells your music but they also do product fulfillment. It sounds really easy, you don’t have to do a thing because they have to guarantee that if they charge somebody’s credit card – three days later they’ll get the thing. I want them to sell my book so I have to send them my book. But that doesn’t work for me because I want to personally sign my book “hey Steve, blah blah blah blah blah.” There’s a box on my website where you can type something that I will write. “Hey Steve, I’ll never forget our weekend in Paris, blah blah blah. Kiss kiss kiss” You write it and I’ll sign it. But that can’t happen with a third party fulfillment. So all of these solutions that make it seem like it could be less messy – aren’t; because you need it to be messy. You gotta go there. You just have to do it.

Bobby: You gotta put in the effort, you gotta put in the energy.

Martin: It’s tough and I’m starting to sound like an old sod – “you gotta serve your dues!” But I mean I do it now with my book and my lectures – and I used to do it with music – twenty eight hours a day otherwise you fail.

Bobby: You mentioned Amanda Palmer. Do you work a lot with her?

Martin: No! I just see what she’s doing. I was sitting at my house, had a cup of coffee and I see this Tweet from her “ninja, mandolin gig, gate 42. Dublin International Airport” and I’m like “wow, that’s fucking great.” And then I’m like “now, hold on… how many Amanda Palmer fans are at Dublin International Airport right now?” Maybe one.

Bobby: Whose on Twitter at that moment.

Martin: Right. Maybe there’s one but they’re not on Twitter. Because she gives this global idea that she’s playing mandolin to a hundred people at the airport and she isn’t. There’s probably a guy sweeping up, somebody else mopping up some puke and that’s genius.  But she does fulfill that promise of being awesome to her fans. So she’s doing it right.

That’s why it’s so disappointing to see John [referring to Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols and PiL]….I like John but it’s so disappointing to see him take the PiL brand and look for a deal with K-Tel Records. Start your own fucking label dude, and if you don’t know how to do it, find someone who loves you that will do it. I’m not suggesting me, but fucking hell just do it.

Bobby: There’s enough information out there, like you said, that you should be able to figure out how to make an atom bomb. So you should be able to figure out to put a record out on your own. Especially with somebody like Johnny Rotten.

Martin: Right. That’s the problem for me. My book’s called “Tour Smart” so I was doing a radio interview in Manhattan at WFMU and it’s just outside of New York and we were stuck in traffic. So I had to phone the guy and he spent like half an hour having a go “oh! so it’s Tour Smart but you’re stuck in traffic!”

You’ve got to be careful when you’re the king of fucking anarchy and you’re following the curse of your own model. It’s like come on dude.

Bobby: It’s like we were talking about earlier, things to do change. Lanny and I were discussing earlier – you know the band Screeching Weasel right?

Martin: Nope.

Bobby: Well, they’re this old Chicago punk band that’s been going since like ’88 or something like that.

Martin: Why don’t I know them? I live in Chicago!

Bobby: Well they’ve been on and off for the past few years. Ben Weasel, he also plays in the Riverdales and the Methadones.

Martin: Okay.

Bobby: I interviewed him last Christmas and he said people still hold him to things he said in interviews fifteen years ago, twenty years ago. It’s like “well, I’ve changed. I was a teenager then. I’ve had more life experience. I have kids, I have a mortgage. I’m not ‘Fuck the System’ anymore.” You can’t stick to the things you believed twenty years ago because things change, life changes.

Martin: I understand that… Oh Hey! *someone runs up and gives him his Warped Tour laminate he reads what’s written on it and laughs* “Fuck Off, I’m With Kevin!” That’s wicked.

Bobby: That’s awesome.

Martin:  One of the things I talk about is how the blank cassette used to be evil. Now it’s the internet and file sharing. People sharing music on cassettes didn’t stop music, it fucking turned me [on to music]. I wouldn’t have joined Killing Joke if I hadn’t heard them on some mix tape. I wouldn’t have known who they were. There’s all this hysteria and things have always been changing. That quote, “The Only Constant is Change,” that’s Herclitus. That’s fucking Roman. That quote is Roman. So don’t say “oh, everything’s changing too quickly for John”. Fuck off. Everything’s always been changing. I started a record label and we were doing vinyl and cassettes. And then the fucking CD came out and I was doing CD, vinyl and cassette and then we phased out the cassette…. I’ve bought Steve Albini’s eight track tape machine and now we’ve got digital and they keep changing digital. Everything’s always changing.

Bobby: It’s a constant revolution. Even things that go out of style always come back in style five years from now.

Martin: So yeah, it’s disappointing. The more I think about it [Johnny Rotten looking for a record label], the more disappointing it is and I’m surprised a couple journalists haven’t called him on it. I think maybe they have and then they got thrown out of the interview – I don’t know how that works.

Bobby: He may even have final say in what is printed because some bands say “You can’t print it until we approve it.” So he could be doing that.

Martin: Well then that’s not particularly punk than is it? *Kevin Lyman walks by and talks to Martin for a bit where Martin asks if soccer’s already playing on their bus and Kevin says yes.*

Bobby: Soccer’s always on right now. Warped Tour will start late because everyone will just be like “hold on, the games on!”

Martin: Who’s playing next? Denmark and Japan?

Bobby: I’m not sure. It’ll be interesting to see because of lot of the big teams aren’t doing that well so far.

Martin: I’ve been reading about that as well and I’ve bee trying to take some lessons from soccer. It seems to be that if you’re developing a star player, he might get the job or he could get his legs broken. Same with the music business really. You move a player on in the fucking indie label model. Then I’m hearing about Jim Powers who has Minty Fresh Records in Chicago – he’s involved in his own little brewery.  He was on NPR Radio saying it’s very similar to indie music – indie brewery stuff. I just love all of this stuff from all these different places.

Bobby: Everything’s kind of interconnected in a way. You can’t necessarily take the some model from one business to the other, but you can take the same ideology and basic ideas from music to brewery, to soccer, to hockey, to whatever.

Martin: Well Radiohead’s “pay what you feel” idea – a restaurant in London took that idea. Pay what you feel for the food. It’s an underground little thing; I heard something on BBC about it. Now Panera Bread – it’s a huge chain down here – one of their stores is now pay what you feel. They’re being smart about it because they didn’t open it in some ghetto. It’s in the middle of St. Louis, which is their home base so they can monitor it, in a very up-scale neighbourhood. You can go in there and say “I want the eleven dollar salad and I’ll pay four dollars.” Everything’s gone nuts and John should be in the middle of it.

Bobby: I guess some people get stuck in their old ways in some aspects – where they’re not willing to change.

Lanny: Well it kind of sounds like he wants it to come to him and he doesn’t want to work for it.

Bobby: It’s like he’s falling into the trap where all the new bands have falling into these days where “you should come see me” instead of “I should come see you.”

Martin: Right. I’ve got fifty-six cassettes from my five years in PiL. Unreleased mixes from unreleased songs, live stuff, radio interviews, more shit. I mean he doesn’t need to look for a deal. We should talk. He could put out fifteen albums where every one of his uber fans will buy every one of them because there’s amazing shit on them. The Paris au Printemps release that we did, I have the night after that was never released. Same with Tokyo. Just fucking start a new model. It’s not about selling ten thousand albums. It’s about selling a thousand copies of ten different albums. It still ten thousand units if you want to think about units, you just need to work a little harder.

Bobby: Do you think those albums will ever see the light of day?

Martin: I don’t know, I guess I should talk to him [laughs].

Bobby: You can make the first phone call.

Martin: Yeah but sometimes he’s nice – sometimes he screams at me. And you know, I don’t feel like dealing with that. You know?

Bobby: Yeah, some days you’re just like “I don’t want to deal with that.”

Martin: I don’t want to get screamed at.

Bobby: You deserve some modicum of respect.

Martin: Well maybe; but I just don’t feel like being screamed at.

Bobby: Can you tell us a bit about your book, Tour Smart? What is that about?

Martin: It’s six hundred pages about the business of touring. I started teaching Touring Live Entertainment at Columbia College in Chicago six years ago by accident. I went to get some interns to work a package tour I was putting together – three busses, eighty thousand promotional post cards, whatever. And they said “yeah, when can you start?” I said “I need some interns now.” And they’re like “No, no; when can you start teaching this? You should be teaching this.” So I started teaching while I was rehearsing for the tour and the textbook we were using was written in 1966. So I started to write my ideas – about strategies, writing, geography. So I pretty quickly had this text book.

But then I’m like “yeah – but there’s none of the poetry of touring, there’s none of the stress.” So I added sex. I had the sex advisor from Time Out Magazine do a thing. Drugs. I got Lee Fraser from Sheep on Drugs, who’s a world renowned expert on drugs to write on it. All this different stuff.  Henry Rollins, Kevin Lyman, Jason Pettigrew from Alterative Press – what does it take to give a good interview? What do they like, what do they don’t like? I’ve got over a hundred people. I blackmailed Henry Rollins because he wanted a b-side to a PiL single for his radio show. I’m like “I’ll give it to you if you do a little thing for this.” So it’s me and a hundred other people and teaches people how to tour. It says “Fuck” 166 times so it can’t be used as a textbook. I wrote it as a textbook but it can’t be used as a textbook. There’s lot of illustrations and it kind of speaks to people who don’t like reading.

Bobby: Have you been able to take any of the stuff you wrote – or any of the stuff the other people wrote – and bring it to the Warped Tour atmosphere or does Kevin have it all down pat?

Martin: Oh yeah… do you mean am I here advising Kevin? [laughs] No. I mean I hope I can bring some of it to some of the bands. It’s difficult for a band in an atmosphere like this to get some real world advice about it. It’s also difficult for bands to say “yeah, I need some help.” So now I’m reaching out. I’ve got some cards with ten percent off at Guitar Centre. I used my fucking punk rock entrepreneurial skills to get Guitar Centre to jump on and I’m doing some consult with bands to help them see it.

Instead of having people tell them “oh yeah, we started the band and the next thing we’re headlining the Warped Tour;” I’m trying to tell them as it is. I mean I’m on the road more now with my book then I was with my band. It’s fucked. You’ve got to get out there and do it.

Bobby: And at the same time, Warped Tour is a fifty day tour. It’s a hectic tour, it’s a crazy tour – but it’s only fifty days. There’s still three hundred and fifteen days left in the year that bands still need to tour and they won’t have somebody to follow around and tell them what to do like they do at Warped Tour. They will have to do it themselves.

Martin: A band that sleeps in the next fifty days has got to be out of their mind. Because the Warped Tour is advertising to five thousand people a day. Fuck – what do you want? Tomorrow, within half a mile of where we’re standing there’s four thousand people. Where are you ever going to go flyering or go meeting that many people walking around? If you sit on that fucking bus…. I’m going to punch myself in the nuts because I’ll be watching soccer one day… but if you sit on your bus eating popcorn and “oh, look, there’s a sushi place that delivers” – fuck you! You’ve got to be out there talking to people. It’s not about the design of your flyer, it’s about you handing your flyer out and meeting people – that chemistry of human connection that happens when you’re actually face to face with people. Now the internet’s great after you’ve done that to go “hey, everybody that we met – here we are jumping into a batch of chocolate in Canada! Here we are in Norway!” You can stay in touch until you see them again; but you’ve got to form that connection. Bands just think that they’re on the internet and that’s enough.

Bobby:  The internet does make it so you can have that relationship but it is, in a way, a fake relationship because you’re separated by two different computer screens and miles of fibre wire. You do miss that intimate connection. So when you are playing for ten thousand people you do need to go out and meet them. Not every single one, that would be one long ass day, but meet as many as you can.

Martin: That’s what Dane Cook does. He stays. For ten or fifteen years, sometimes I think he’s funny and sometimes I think he’s just dick, but he stays at a venue until every single person that wanted whatever they wanted got it from him – and then he left. It was on an HBO Special and the other comedians on the tour were like “fucking hell, he’s crazy.” And now he’s there [pointing way up] and there’s a reason.

Bobby:  Do you think that’s one good thing about Warped Tour – that there are all those fan interactions. There’s autograph signings, there’s rock band tournaments, there’s a lot of fan interactions that the Warped Tour helps promote. Do you think that’s good about the tour?

Martin: Yeah. I mean I think that it’s smart. I’m sure they’d like to say “hey everybody, go interact” but sometimes if you throw a cocktail party, you’ve got to do something to help them mingle other than just get them drunk. You’ve got to get the Twister out, or get the DJ in or turn the lights off or whatever. So they’re facilitating some essential tools.

Bobby: Because sometimes you meet them and it’s like “hi.” “Hi. I’m so and so.” “That’s cool.” So what do you talk about? Whereas if you have Rock Band, you don’t even necessarily talk because you’re playing a game yet you’re interacting, you’re becoming friends.

Martin: That’s something I talk about with bands. It’s not enough to be amazing with all of your instruments, you also have to be able to fix your vehicle because you’re not going to be able to get to the show to show people that you’re amazing if your car breaks down and somebody needs to fix it. And once you get there and you do get an interview with somebody, you’ve got to say something interesting. What if you’re doing an interview and they say “well, we’ve done a new album.” Fuck off! Everybody’s done a new album. “It’s got an amazing cover.” Fuck off! You know, what’s interesting about you? What’s going on? What are you struggling with? What’s interesting? You were just in China, you just did this, what’s going on?

Bobby: I guess that’s about it. Thanks a lot. You’ve said a lot. Do you have any one final word of advice? For a band going on the Warped Tour or just a band touring – what would be your ultimate advice to them?

Martin: Never sleep. It should be like – and I know I’ve said it before – but that’s gotta be it. I mean those kids are out there, bands should be working in shifts in whatever the militarily uses to stay awake to meet every single person. They should be taking photographs of everybody to later identify them and track them down. That’s the opportunity.