Roger McGuinn has spent a lifetime watching the evolution of the music
business - from his days as a kid in Chicago listening to Elvis on a
plastic transistor radio, to his rise to the top of the charts with the
seminal folk-rock band the Byrds, to his quiet yet honorable return to his
folk roots. And so McGuinn, a former long-haired icon of '60s
counterculture, had something important he wanted to share with the
members of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing testimony on
controversial digital music distribution programs earlier this week.
It was this: Apart from a modest advance, he never made any money off
the albums he recorded for the major labels.
Nada. Zilch. Nothing but the publicity that generated an audience for
his live performances.
''Even though I've recorded over 25 records, I cannot support my family
on record royalties alone,'' he told the committee, which is chaired by
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).
That's just something McGuinn felt the senators should know as they
decide whether to intervene in the ongoing battle over the digital
distribution of music. Technology companies downplay the fact that digital
technology facilitates music piracy, while the major record companies
contend that technology upstarts like Napster and MP3.com are infringing
on copyrights and stealing profits away from artists.
But McGuinn is one artist who doesn't have much sympathy for the
labels. ''They are not the poor victim in all this; they've made a
killing,'' he said during a phone interview yesterday from his home in
Orlando. ''For years, the labels had all the power, and the artists were
pawns. The artists were cattle.''
Don't get him wrong. This isn't one of those old-rocker-goes-broke sob
stories - far from it. McGuinn, who created a new music style with the
Byrds, continues to evolve with the times. Since 1995, he has been
contributing to a folk revival on the Internet; every month, he posts one
of his newly recorded versions of a traditional tune on the Folk Den
section of his Web site, www.mcguinn.com. He sells the recordings
on MP3.com. Ten years ago, he worked out a new royalty arrangement with
Sony for reissues of the Byrds' recordings, and he continues to perform on
the folk circuit. McGuinn, who turned 58 yesterday, is doing just fine,
thank you very much.
But he also feels compelled to express a sobering point of view that
hasn't been heard much in the great digital debate. Sure, on the one hand,
artists like Metallica and Dr. Dre have sided with the recording industry
against Napster; on the other hand, Chuck D. has long preached that the
Internet is going to provide new opportunities for all the starving
artists of the world. McGuinn falls between those two extremes and adds a
refreshing voice of reason to the whole brouhaha.
''I do like the wild and woolly nature of the Internet,'' he says. The
Net, after all, allows musicians instant access to a mass market; McGuinn
knows of many people who discovered his folk tunes on the Internet and
then went out and bought his CDs. The Web reminds him of the old
mom-and-pop record stores he frequented back in Chicago; back in the day,
customers could sit in a listening booth and sample 45s - remember 45s? -
before deciding what to buy.
In that sense, he admits, Napster is like a giant electronic listening
booth. But, he adds, ''I'm not pro-Napster, which stands to profit from
the illicit distribution of digital media,'' he said. ''I would like to
see artists compensated for their work.'' But the record companies haven't
exactly been compensating artists fairly, he added. At MP3.com, he earns
50 percent of the gross sales of his records. ''That's a lot better than
doing it for free.''
McGuinn, of course, has scoured Napster to see if any of his songs are
available on the music-swapping service. All the big hits are there -
songs like ''Mr. Tambourine Man'' and ''Turn, Turn, Turn'' and ''Eight
Miles High'' - but that doesn't concern him too much. Unlike technology
company executives who spew out hype about the glory of digital
distribution, he admits that the quality of MP3 files is inferior to CDs.
''It's not that much better than a good tape,'' says McGuinn, an expert in
high fidelity.
McGuinn has always been something of a gadget man, whether it was
tinkering with the 12-string guitar to create the Byrds' distinct sound or
carrying around a ''portable'' phone in a briefcase back in the '70s. He
was an early adapter to the Internet, accessing bulletin board services
via Prodigy and Compuserve, which now seem utterly quaint. In addition to
his work with Folk Den, he's recording an album of folk tunes with old
pals like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Judy Collins and he's traveling
around the country recording the songs with his laptop and a
top-of-the-line microphone.
There is, of course, sweet irony in the fact that he's using the
sophisticated technology to continue an ancient folk tradition. But it
makes total sense in a long career that has straddled so many genres; back
in the turbulent '60s, the Byrds merged folk with British rock, later
blending in jazz and country strains to create a whole new form of music.
But as the music evolved, so did the music industry. ''The business
strayed so far from the music I love,'' he said. But now technology
enables him to bring back the spirit that was lost as music became
corporate. ''It's a great release for my artistic expression,'' he says of
the songs he releases each month on Folk Den. ''And it goes along with my
feeling about the record business: The only benefit I got from releasing
albums was that people would like them and come to my shows. So with the
Internet, I figured, `Why not do it for free?'''
Admittedly, McGuinn already has a following, and he readily admits that
it is easier for established artists to get attention online than unknown
garage bands. He champions the technology, but is realistic about its
ability to explode the power system in the music industry. If an artist
gets ''discovered'' online, for instance, they're still likely to sign a
record contract and get sucked up by the system. ''If they want to be on
Leno and Letterman, they have to be with the big guys,'' he says.
And McGuinn himself has figured out a way to straddle both worlds. In
March, he performed at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin;
Sony promoted the show as part of its marketing of new Byrds reissues.
McGuinn also sat on a technology panel, where he sang the praises of
MP3.com, which was sued by the major labels, including Sony.
One thing he isn't doing is touring in shows for aging boomers. ''I
don't want to be an oldie rock artist,'' he said. ''I prefer to perform
solo as a folk singer.''
The man who once changed his middle name from Joseph to Roger because
an Indonesian guru told him it would ''vibrate better with the universe''
doesn't dwell on his legendary past. At the same time, he doesn't pretend
that the digital distribution of music is a revolution that's going to
bring about sweeping social change. ''It's a novelty,'' he said. ''It's
like swallowing goldfish or getting a bunch of people into a telephone
booth. Kids always need to do something different: We had long hair and
bell-bottoms.''
They also had sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. ''When I was in the Byrds,
and we were part of the counterculture, I never would have envisioned
myself in a government room,'' he said. But there he was, capturing the
attention of Hatch, the family-values Republican who chided
representatives for the recording industry at the hearing. Times change.
''I was surprised by Hatch and his knowledge of the issue,'' said McGuinn.
''I actually thought he was pretty cool.''
Send e-mail to mailto:%20hartigan@globe.com.
