A Quote by Leon Redbone
I got out of the music industry many years ago. I had a charlatan for a producer who I wanted nothing to do with. He's dead now, so I guess I can't beat that horse any more. It left a very bad taste in my mouth, so I just went on about my business doing what I do and not involving myself with record companies, except for distribution.
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I went to so many record labels - name any one - and they all turned me down. For some reason I just got the thumbs down for years and years. It sounds like I'm making that up, but it's true. I'm too serious about music and my creations to take just any kind of deal. There were a couple of companies that wanted to put me with a producer, and I said, "Well, I just produced my last album," and I wasn't about to go backwards.
Darwin's theory is as dead as he is. Everyone is surviving, fit or not. Years ago, any kid dumb enough to chase a shiny object down a well was dead, and out of the gene pool. Now they got the technology and medicine to save the fool so he can breed more open mouth breathers.
I used to ride the school bus to school and just listen to music with my headphones. I'd stick my head out the window and just think about how much I wanted to be a singer. I always wanted to do it, but I think I was always in the wrong place. I didn't really have any opportunities. So I left LA four years ago and I really just left my old life behind. I threw everything into pursuing music.
Unfortunately, you don't get artist development anymore. Record companies have become a huge corporate thing. It used to be you'd meet someone [in the business] and they'd have a little history of music. Some people in the companies now don't even like music. It's just a job. So I miss the days when someone would go out on a limb and pick a band that was different. I just don't see that anymore. It's the same with the film industry.
I don't know if there was really ever a golden age of the music business. Most of what was released has always been garbage and some has been able to get through and last. I don't know that it was much better thirty years ago. The music industry just wasn't as efficient. The music industry was more oddball guys who did it for fun and now they are huge corporations that have become more structured.
You can't please everybody, and basically I just decided to please myself first on this record. This record is more like my diary and I am expressing myself through my music. And that's what it should be about. That's why I didn't change my name or anything. It's not about the name; it's about the music. The old saying goes that video killed the radio star and it's very true. And now I'm just letting everything revolve around the music. There is no image; I am just being myself.
The Derby experience had not been good for me and the way it finished left a very bad taste in my mouth so I questioned whether I wanted to go back into management.
Our business,The Producers Guild, has a good record in some areas, and a bad record in others. There are many well-intentioned people trying to change things. The Producers Guild has been committed to this for years now, and I think personally does more than any other guild to give opportunities to people who come from outside of, I guess you'd call it, the expected avenues for advancement.
When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.
I most definitely wanted to make a record out of it. Due to the fact of the negativity and things that transitioned over the years, I just wanted to give [Chris Rivers] his space. I had this record "Danger" which Free Smith produced the beat. It was one of the first beats I got when I started recording again and one of the first I sang to.
The music industry is so fickle, there's so many politics. I think a lot of people don't pay attention to the credits or the artistry no more. I think there's so much concern about what's going on right now instead of the actual artistry. But that's how the record business is, but for acting, I got that covered.
Actually, I have another record I made with them in 1976, but I've had such a bad experience with record companies, because I keep my head so much in music and not in business.
I had business experience. I had made my living designing and building electronic equipment. Basic business was not new to me, but the music business was completely new to me. I knew nothing about distribution, or any of those things.
When I left Genesis, I just wanted to be out of the music business. I felt like I was just in the machinery. We knew what we were going to be doing in 18 months or two years ahead. I just did not enjoy that.
I didn't worry about my career ending, but there were days where I felt pretty beat up by it all and just pretty tired, because they didn't make it easy for me. And coming right off the last lawsuit, it was the last thing I wanted to get involved in. When it was over, we didn't really celebrate, we were just exhausted. I lost all interest in the record business and never wanted to do anything except hand in a record again.
I still make music. I still write music and I record music, I just don't trust music promotion [and] distribution right now enough to record a new set of diligently worked-upon compositions. I do trust the audience and the audiences very much.
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