I’m always fascinated by these sorts of stories, and I’m hoping you can share what you know.
Basically, anything that is an incredible masterpiece or brilliant work of art (could be painting, song, book, etc.) that for one reason or another was almost never given public exposure. Here are two examples I can think of:
Frank Herbert shopped his original Dune around to publisher after publisher, being turned down time and time again. A lesser man might have given up, put his manuscript on the shelf, and just let it collect dust. But he persisted until finally he got a publisher to accept it, and the rest is modern sci-fi history. A brilliant masterpiece that almost never saw the light of day.
Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf had a very difficult time getting a deal for Bat Out Of Hell, being turned down and laughed out of the room and being told they had no talent, etc. They persisted and persisted and finally got a minor label to publish and push it for them. Today, it’s like 20X platinum best selling album and continues to sell well to this day. But it almost never got off the ground, and even when it came out it received mixed reviews so it’s amazing that it’s as well known and loved as it is today.
So… with those examples in mind, what are some works of art that almost never saw the light of day by the public at large? Could be because they had a hard time marketing it, or maybe it was lost and discovered later on, or whatever!
Watership Down was rejected by 13 different publishers before it was finally bought, since it was a weird book about rabbits by an unknown author. It’s sold over 50 million copies since.
– is like the king of this. It wasn’t published until 11 years after the unknown author killed himself, and only then by his mom finding a single carbon copy and haranguing a prof at Loyola to read it.
Emily Dickinson lived as a virtual recluse in her parent’s house. She’d jot down her thoughts and slip them into a dresser drawer. After her death a family member found her “poems,” (new style) and showed them to her contemporary writer friends who helped get them published.
This is my remembrance of her story. Some of it may be true.
Kafka, instructed that his writings were to be burned upon his death. They weren’t.
Keith Richards recorded the riff to Satisfaction for a few seconds on a tape before falling asleep. When he woke up, he actually rewound and checked the tape, which had kept running. He liked the riff and wrote the music, getting Mick to add verses to the chorus. They needed filler for their next album - probably why he checked the tape; he need material. When the album was done, the record company exec decided to release Satisfaction as the single and Keith went nuts - it was an after-thought, filler song - what could they be thinking?!
The book sold 5 million copies worldwide. It was originally rejected by 121 publishers, more than any other bestselling book, according to the Guinness Book of Records.
Vincent van Gogh. Poor guy only sold one or two paintings in his lifetime and at the time he died his entire life’s work would have been valued at pretty much zero. It could easily have been forgotten and ended up on the scrapheap.
And it was published by Chilton, whose main product was auto repair manuals. Dune was the first work of fiction they published.
Moby Dick was published, but to critical scorn and horrific sales. It was forgotten for years until Carl Van Doren raved about the book in 1917, leading to its rediscovery.
The Stunt Man – one of the greatest films about filmmaking ever and one of Peter O’Toole’s best performances – was almost not released by its studio, who though it wouldn’t make money. Director Robert Rush, who had waited eight years to film it, had to beg to get it into one theater to show it could be a success.
Which was a huge pain in the ass when it comes to confirming what was a “first edition, first state,” i.e., the true first. Chilton didn’t have the standards for identifying and tracking editions the way that higher-aimed publishers did; so there were a bunch of variations that took a lot of tracking down to sequence - fortunately, I didn’t have to get involved. I had one for a long while; love that book, but traded it for an old guitar
Famously, Elvis muttered his way into a studio session with Sun Records’ Sam Phillips, then proceeded to stumble through a variety of demo songs, none of which sounded any good to Phillips’ now-legendary ear. At wit’s end and fearing being kicked out, Elvis launched into Crudup’s That’s All Right Mama, selling it a bit harder out of desperation, and finally nailed it. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Theodor Seuss Geisel, an ad artist and cartoonist, shopped around his first children’s picture book, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street, to something like 27 publishers. He was ready to give up when,walking down the street, he ran into a former classmate who worked for a publishing company, who helped him get a contract for it. Within a short time, the world rang with a collective :smack: from all the publishers who’d rejected it.
Dr. Seuss later said, “That’s one of the reasons I believe in luck. If I’d been going down the other side of Madison Avenue, I’d be in the dry cleaning business today!”
Margaret Mitchell, not overly confident about her first novel, was about to chuck the whole thing in the trash when someone taunted her about not being smart enough to write a book. With that, she marched the manuscript of Gone With The Wind to a publisher, telling them, “Read this before I change my mind!”
Well, not exactly. Elvis had auditioned for Phillips previously, and Phillips was sufficiently interested to bring Bill Black and Scotty Moore into the studio with Elvis to run through some material. Nothing was really clicking, so they took a break; Elvis started fooling around with “That’s All Right Mama”, Black and Moore joined in, and Phillips overheard them. If it hadn’t happened that day, it’s likely that Phillips would have kept trying; he knew Elvis had something, but he wasn’t sure what.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian was turned down by their studio and backers due to the subject matter; the troupe was told to shut down and go home. George Harrison found out and formed Handmade Films to finance the movie.
