Musicians Who Take Risks

In my recent post on documentaries, I mentioned how much I admire musicians who take risks in their work, as was highlighted in last year’s Linda Ronstadt documentary.  She is just one example of artists who took a leap of faith, followed their instincts, and stretched themselves creatively.  Some bands will churn out the same kind of music album after album to great success (Bon Jovi comes to mind) and there’s nothing wrong with that.  In fact, one of my favorite bands (Pearl Jam) probably fits into that category.  But I also like to see artists try something different and in this week’s post, I’m going to highlight some musicians that have done this very well.  One thing you will find in common with all of these examples is that each artist was at a career crossroads following an explosion of fame.  Let’s dive in.

U2 – 1987 – 1991

Whenever I think about this topic of musicians who take a risk to try something different, I immediately think of U2, who has now been making music for over 40 years, an astonishing feat considering they have stayed intact as a band the whole time. 

U2’s growth in popularity started in the mid-1980s.  Following the modest success of their first three albums, they started to gain in popularity with 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire (with hits Pride (in the Name of Love) and Bad), and a memorable set at Live Aid in 1985.  But things exploded in 1987 with the release of The Joshua Tree, an album that would go on to sell 25 million copies and win the Grammy for Album of the Year.  If you were in high school or college during this time, everybody you knew had this album and loved it.  They toured for most of 1987 and documented the tour in the film Rattle and Hum, which was released in 1988, along with a soundtrack of new studio songs and some live tracks from the tour.  I remember loving the movie and listening to the soundtrack a lot.  But the critical reaction was mixed and this was the start of U2 overexposure and fatigue.  The biggest complaint was that the film exposed the band’s arrogance and was self-congratulatory, especially some of the live scenes when Bono would go on a political rant.  If this happened today, you’d see it in the form of social media backlash.  Being the biggest band in the world suddenly had a downside and the band struggled with what to do next.

Following a break, they reconvened in Germany in 1990 to start work on a new album.  The struggles that they encountered were filmed and released as part of the 2011 documentary From the Sky Down, which did a good job of demonstrating the challenges musicians can feel when they feel they are at a crossroads.  The band spent several months in Berlin, and later in Dublin working through new material.  After a decade together, they knew they wanted to do something different, but struggled to pinpoint what they were trying to accomplish.  In fact, during this period, the sessions became so tense that they considered breaking up.  The film includes members of the band discussing a breakthrough they had during their writing session for One, which would be one of the band’s bigger hit singles from the resulting album, Achtung Baby, released in November 1991.  About a month before the album was released, the band released the single and video for The Fly, which introduced the world to a new sound – industrial, grinding guitars, dance mix beats and decidedly NOT The Joshua Tree.  The album cover included several crazy pictures of band members in heavy makeup and women’s clothing, reflecting the change in direction that the band was taking in their music and their artistry.  The album is outstanding, from the grinding guitar of the opening track, Zoo Station, through the beauty of One and Mysterious Ways, down to the haunting closing track, Love is Blindness.  It’s a true masterpiece and would launch the band into the insane Zoo TV world tour that would promote it.  What I admire about this record is that despite the challenge of following up an enormously successful album and tour, and the personal conflicts they faced as a band, they pushed through with their creative energy and didn’t give up on delivering their vision of what they wanted to do next.

The Beatles – 1965 – 1967

While the U2 example resonates the most for me because it occurred during my formative college years, the band that probably best exemplifies an artist taking risks in their music is the Beatles.  Between 1963 and 1970, they released 13 albums, plus over 20 singles (back in the day when singles were released separately from albums).  That’s an incredible amount of music in a short period of time, but what is even more impressive is the diversity of styles of music they wrote and recorded, particularly between 1965 and 1967.  The beginning of this period saw the release of Help! and Rubber Soul in 1965, what I consider to be the end of the “Beatlemania” phase and the beginning of the “Grown Up” phase to their music.  The combination of music and lyrics became more sophisticated with tracks from these two albums including You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, Yesterday, Nowhere Man, and particularly, In My Life. 

The Beatles took it up a notch in their songwriting for their next album, Revolver, released in 1966.  Here is where the experimenting phase of their recording really began, including George Harrison’s Indian influenced track Love You Too, two tracks that were likely influenced by the bands increased drug use, She Said She Said and Tomorrow Never Knows, and songs like Taxman, Eleanor Rigby,and Yellow Submarine, that were a clear departure from the love songs of their early years. 

While Revolver stretched the Beatles in a new direction, their follow up pushed the boundaries of rock and roll recording to an even greater level.  After deciding to stop touring in 1966 and focus their time only on writing and recording, they went into the studio determined to create something even greater than anything they’d done before.  Using new studio experimentation like backwards recordings, overdubs, and splicing together multiple takes of the same songs to change the time signature, they broke new ground with the 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  The new sound actually started a few months before the album release with a double single (Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane), and the album continued this trend with the title track, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, and one of their best songs, A Day in the Life.  While I recall living through the U2 example above, I was not alive during the 1960s (insert old joke here) to witness the Beatles transformation.  I can’t imagine what it must have been like to fall in love with their music in 1964 with A Hard Day’s Night and then three short years later hear Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  The album is considered one of the greatest of all time and considering what the Beatles attempted in such a short period of time, it’s astonishing that it all worked out in a successful way.  Hard to argue with the greatest band of all time.

R.E.M. – 1991 – 1994

I first discovered R.E.M as I was finishing high school in the late 1980s, based on the popularity of Document and Green, their fifth and sixth albums.  This was the time when the band first started experiencing mainstream success, especially with the singles The One I Love, Orange Crush, and Stand.  Prior to that, the band seemed to be trying to find their way in the music industry and who they wanted to be as musicians.  After coming together in 1980, they spent the early 1980s as one of the first “college radio” bands of that era, developing a loyal audience through their relentless touring and recording (releasing six albums between 1983 and 1988). 

The band went on a massive tour for almost all of 1989 to support Green, with over 100 dates all over the world.  They later said they were exhausted following the nonstop recording / touring cycle they experienced for the better part of a decade.  They took some time off and then went into the studio to record what would be their biggest commercial release, Out of Time, which was released in 1991.  The album’s lead single, Losing My Religion, and accompanying music video (remember when those were a thing? Yeah, me too.) were massive hits and they were nominated for seven Grammys, winning three.  Side note:  If you aren’t a huge R.E.M. fan, don’t be dissuaded by Shiny Happy People, the album’s second single featuring Kate Pierson from the B52’s – it’s not that great.  Instead, listen to the other song she sings on (Me in Honey) – that’s a great tune.  Who decides what to release for singles anyway?  Just look at Stand and Shiny Happy People – probably two of my least favorite R.E.M. songs. 

So, what do you do after you release a massively successful album?  Go on a huge world tour, right?  Nope – this is where they took some risks.  Still feeling burnt out from the Green world tour and feeling energized from the songwriting and recording process from Out of Time, they went right back into the studio and worked on the follow up, Automatic for the People, released in 1992 to critical and commercial acclaim.  The album feels like a companion piece to Out of Time and also features a more somber tone than some of their heavier songs from Green.  Featuring the singles Drive, Nightswimming and the massive hits Man on the Moon and Everybody Hurts, this album is a masterpiece from start to finish and still holds up almost 30 years later.

So, they have to tour after this album, right?  Nope – the band wasn’t feeling a large sprawling tour coming off of two relatively low key albums.  Instead, they played a handful of acoustic shows in Europe and the U.S. in 1991 and 1992, including a fantastic performance on MTV Unplugged in April 1991 following the release of Out of Time, and a Greenpeace benefit show in Athens, GA in November 1992, following the release of Automatic for the People.  Both of these shows were recently released and it’s great to hear the band in this unique acoustic format, playing new versions of older hits, along with songs from these two albums. 

After a handful of acoustic shows and two subdued albums, the band decided to stretch themselves in a different direction for their next record and plan a world tour to support it.  With the release of Monster in 1994, led by the lead single What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?, the band introduced a loud, grinding guitar sound that was decidedly the opposite of their previous two albums.  Drummer Bill Berry, anxious to tour again and tired of playing lightly on his drums during acoustic shows, insisted that the next album needed to “rock.”  It certainly did, and R.E.M. was, once again, off and running in a new direction.  If you want to read a great book about R.E.M., check out Perfect Circle: The Story of R.E.M. by Tony Fletcher

Bruce Springsteen – 1982 – 1987

It’s hard to overstate the height of Bruce Springsteen’s popularity in 1984 and 1985, following the release of Born in the U.S.A.  Granted, Bruce was already considered one of the top singer / songwriters following the breakout success of Born to Run in 1975.  During the period from 1975 – 1981, Bruce and the E Street band established themselves as the preeminent live performers, with routine marathon live concerts and varied setlists from night to night.  Bruce will definitely be part of a future blog post about my love of live music. 

Following a long world tour to support The River, Bruce took the first artistic risk since he first tasted success by releasing Nebraska, a quiet acoustic album, in 1982.  This was truly a unique experiment, as Bruce first recorded a demo version of the songs (in which he played all of the instruments) on a 4-track recorder.  Initially intending to re-record the songs with the E Street Band, he decided to release the original recordings after not liking the sound of the songs with the band.  Interestingly, the E Street Band version of the Nebraska songs (sometime referred to as “Electric Nebraska”) have never been released.  We’ve heard these songs performed live by the full E Street band, but the studio sessions still remain locked in the vault.  The released album is quiet, with some dark themes and lyrics, including stories of the working-class who are struggling to get by, reflecting a style and themes that Bruce would revisit later in his career on The Ghost of Tom Joad, Devils & Dust and most recently, Western Stars. 

The writing and recording sessions continued following the release of Nebraska, resulting in an incredible amount of material, some of which would end up on Born in the U.S.A. and some of which would be released on Tracks, an outtakes box set released in 1998.  As Bruce and the E Street Band narrowed down the inventory of songs to the final track list of Born in the U.S.A., it’s worth discussing the lead single (Dancing in the Dark) and the title track.  Despite all of the songs that Springsteen had written during these sessions (between 70 and 80 based on various articles), his manager felt that he still didn’t have the lead single.  Feeling angry about the situation, Springsteen promptly went and wrote Dancing in the Dark in one night.  The opening lyrics make a lot of sense, given how Bruce felt while trying to finish his album: 

I get up in the evening / And I ain’t got nothing to say 

I come home in the morning / I go to bed feeling the same way

The title track of Born in the U.S.A. was inspired by Bruce’s meeting Ron Kovic, the Vietnam War veteran and author of the book Born on the 4^th of July, and Bruce’s subsequent performance at a benefit concert for the Vietnam Veterans of America in 1981.  After he wasn’t satisfied with the version recorded during the Nebraska sessions, Bruce reworked the song with the full E Street Band and it became the opening track of his next album.  As the song became very popular, it was largely misunderstood to be an American pride anthem, when in reality it was about a struggling Vietnam veteran who felt his country let him down.  Famously, Ronald Reagan started using the song at his re-election campaign rallies, which really pissed off Springsteen.

Born in the U.S.A. was released in June 1984 and would launch Springsteen into the stratosphere.  Suddenly, he was a household name to more than just the dedicated fans who would flock to his live concerts.  Seven of the album’s twelve tracks would be released as singles and the album would go on to sell 15 million copies.  Bruce and the E Street Band would perform over 150 shows during a 1984 – 1985 world tour, cementing his status as one of the biggest music acts in the world.  Speaking of which, the 1983 – 1985 era of popular music included some of the biggest selling albums of all time.  Besides Born in the U.S.A., you had Thriller (Michael Jackson), Synchronicity (The Police), Pyromania (Def Leppard), Purple Rain (Prince), and Like a Virgin (Madonna).  See, the 80s weren’t all bad, despite the clothing and hairdos.

Following the exhausting world tour, Bruce set out to record his follow up.  With all of the material he wrote and recorded the previous few years, he easily could have released an excellent album that would have been similar in sound to Born in the U.S.A.  Instead, similar to Nebraska, he wrote and recorded a quieter album about relationships that would become Tunnel of Love, released in 1987.  Most of the songs were recorded without members of the E Street Band, another departure from his last album.  This was a dramatic shift for Bruce, and the style of songs was very surprising to his fans.  Coming off of the rock anthem style of Born in the U.S.A., and a career-spanning live box set that was released in 1985, fans were not expecting a journey through personal relationships.  With retrospect, it’s easy to see why these songs resonated with Bruce, as his marriage to actress to Julianne Phillips was falling apart, and he was falling in love with Patti Scialfa, a member of the E Street Band that Bruce has been married to since 1991. 

Tunnel of Love is a beautiful album that takes the listener on a journey from the beginnings of a relationship, through the ups and downs, and the acceptance that sometimes relationships don’t work out.  Springsteen would tour with the E Street Band in 1988, albeit a smaller, more intimate tour than the marathon Born in the U.S.A tour.  It was clear that Bruce was looking to change things up (even having the band members take different spots on the stage, and putting concert staple songs on the bench for this tour) and this was confirmed when he decided to move in a different direction following the end of the tour.  Bruce would go on to record a few solo records and tour with different musicians during the 1990s, eventually getting back together with the E Street band for the 1999 – 2000 Reunion Tour.  If you are interested in learning more about Springsteen’s life and his music, I highly recommend his autobiography (Born to Run, released in 2016 and the inspiration for his Broadway show) and Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs by Brian Hiatt, an excellent 2019 book that gives you the background to every song he has recorded and released, even the outtakes and B-sides.

What’s the point of these stories? 

Examples like those above show that even though a band may have the career success and clout to do what they want, it still takes guts to actually go out and do it, put your product out to your fans and see if it works.  And when it does, we get some pretty great music to listen to for years to come. 

As I was finishing this post, I started wondering why I admire the courage of artists like this and started asking myself if it connects to me personally at all.  In thinking back to different points in my career, I’ve had times where I’ve had to make difficult decisions about what to do next.  No one wants to fail when they try something new.  We’re constantly told to try new things, take risks, be willing to put yourself out there.  There were times I was pretty intimidated about a career move, but fortunately, I always had a manager there to help guide me and, more importantly, a strong support system in the office and at home to help me through the difficult times.  I also felt a sense of nervousness starting this blog.  Granted, it’s not like I have a major media platform that I am publishing to, but when you put your creative work out there for people to read (especially friends and family), it causes you to pause for a minute before you press that “Publish” button every week.  Again, having a strong support system helped me work through those doubts.  Maybe that’s what helped these artists work through any doubts they had about choices they made.  OK, enough self-analysis (for this week anyway).

Thanks again for reading.  As a reminder, if you’d like to subscribe for future posts, you can do so on my home page here.  Next week, I’ll be back with my first post on movies I’m looking forward to in 2020, starting with films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Until next time…