I'm a Session Musician in a Two-Hit Wonder Band....

Factual Questions
1

Watching Bands Reuinted on VH1 raises interesting questions about the nature of money in the music industry. Some of these former bandmates are somewhat wealthy (one guy from Flock of Seagulls owns a mansion in the south of France); others are borderline poor (another guy from FoS works in a factory in North Carolina).

So I’m going to give a purely hypothetical story here, in the hopes that someone with knowledge of the music industry can help fight my ignorance.

In 1983 I was a session musician in a two-hit wonder band. I was the synth player for Crowded Flock of Kajagoogoos from Berlin. Our first hit, Don’t Dream about Eileen, hit #2 on the US charts on July 1983 and stayed there for four weeks, eventually falling off the top 100 by December. In January 2004 our second hit, You Spin my Breath Away, hit #17 on the US charts and stayed there for one week, falling off the charts by February. For about four months we were all over teen mags, posters, lunchboxes, and the like.

Our first album, London Tubes, sold one million copies. Our second album, London Buses, only sold about 200,000.

We toured sold-out stadiums from July 83 through July 84, until our crowds started dwindling. By December 84 we were playing in small clubs in Toledo. At that point I unplugged my synth and called it a day.

Now, assuming that I didn’t write any of the songs (and thus didn’t get any of the royalties), and assuming that I had a record contract typical of that day, how much money am I likely to have made in that time span?

2

Predicting the future… further evidence that the charts are rigged by the man behind the curtain.

If you don’t have intellectual property in the songs or a contract that gives you a bit of residual income, you probably got paid per gig. I know some session musicians who only get maybe $100/gig or less to play a club date. If the band is getting a piece of the gate, the musician may get a share (but maybe not an equal share). In these cases, the sit-in musicians may make more money than the core members of the band. I know some singer-songwriters who take a loss playing club dates because they can’t cover expenses and pay their musicians with what they make from the club. In this respect, it’s kind of like a small business where an owner may take no salary for years when he’s building the business, but when it takes off, he’s making big money and the employees are still on salary.

I know other session players who get five figures per session, but they’re playing with big names (e.g. a guy called in to play instrumentals on an Elton John track, but this is studio work, not gigs). I’m not in the music industry, I just hang out with some musicians, so don’t take this as too authoritative.

3

Session musicians also typically play on a work-for-hire basis (and there’s usually a contract to spell the terms if there is more involved).

“Work-for-hire” is a term used for any work that is commissioned for a specific project. As such, the artist that is hired to complete the task (like a session musician) is essentially contracted as a temporary employee – like a piecemeal laborer. As an “employee” of the production or project, the session musician has no intellectual property claims on the work that is produced and is not entitled to any royalty payments for their contribution on an album or single (unless the contract specifies otherwise).

Analogy:
You are a bricklayer. You are hired to build one wall of a house. You build the wall in two days, you are paid for your work upon completion, and you go home. Although you built part of the house, you do not own it and you do not get to live there. Your wall was a work for hire.

4

So, HeyHomie, the problem with your post is that you’re describing two different musicians:

session musician–a “hired gun” paid to play on a particular recording session
bandmates–guys that hang together in the band and split the profits (if any)

If you were the synth player on the whole album, and you toured and had your picture on the lunchboxes, you were probably a bandmate rather than a session player. Your take from the profits would be a contract matter, but usually 1/x (where x is number of people in the band) after everything else had been paid–manager gets 15%, record company gets a cut, studio costs get paid, etc. etc. etc.

There are exceptions. Ian Anderson is Jethro Tull and he just pays a salary to the other players, even though some of them continue with him for multiple albums. Tom Sholtz (sp?) did all the recording and production on the first Boston album in his basement, so there was very little taken out of sales for studio and the recording company.

Then you have to decide what to do with the money after you get it. Given the youth of most rock stars, it’s not surprising that many squander it away. Even with funds that one would think were unlimited, it’s possible to blow it all. Eric Clapton did so much cocaine that he was reduced to selling cars and houses before he woke up and noticed that he had a problem.

So it’s quite possible that the guys in Flock all got paid the same, and one blew the whole wad and the other invested wisely.

5

If you were just a hired session musician, you wouldn’t be in the mags, posters, etc. at all. Session musicians are folks like the professional singers that the Beatles hired, who used their highly trained vocal skills to sing the “oompa loompa stick it in your jumper” (what Paul McCartney says they sang… some people think there were some words about smoking pot thrown in) type stuff in the background. You come in, you play for a day or two, you get your paycheck, and then are never seen again. You also don’t get paid ever again.

Some bands have “tour only” members. Being an avid Genesis fan, this is the group that comes to my mind. On all of the posters, magazines, and such, there are only three members of Genesis, and I believe they do most of the studio work as well. In the studio, Phil Collins sang and played drums. Mike Rutherford played the bass and guitars. When they get on stage, they can only do one or the other, so while on tour Chester Thompson played drums and Daryl Stuermer played the guitar. Chester and Daryl were never in the magazine interviews and such. Only the three main members of Genesis (Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, and Tony Banks) got the magazine and tv interviews.

You, being a hired synth player, would get a similar treatment. Since the band isn’t an established band like Genesis, the contract with the record company sucks. They are all working as slave labor. The big fat guy with the cigar is collecting all the real money, not the band. You are probably complaining to your girlfriend (that you just met yesterday, and you’ll have a new one tomorrow) that the band is filling stadiums and they aren’t paying you squat. You are probably paid a small percentage of the sales that come in to the stadium, and it’s likely to be a very small percentage. Once the tour is over, you unplug your synth and Crowded Flock of Kajagoogoos from Berlin is left behind forever. You don’t get any more money from them, and VH-1 probably won’t even call you 20 years later when they do a special on one hit wonders, unless of course you can tell some really wild lies about what the band members did in the hotel rooms.

On the other hand, Chester and Daryl, who do essentially the same thing you do, make much more money at it because they are members of an established band (which means the original slavery contract has expired and they’ve negotiated a nice sweet one now), and Chester and Daryl both have a reputation which allows them to demand more money. I don’t know anything about the inner workings of Genesis and have no idea what is in their contracts, but I suspect Chester and Daryl don’t get anything from the albums, with the possible exception of the live albums like “Three sides live” and the “Mama” tour that was released on video.

A friend of mine from High School was the drummer for Joan Jett for a short period of time. You can see him in the movie “light of day” (I think he even has one line where he actually speaks). He got to live the life of a rock and roll star. He had a lot of money, for someone who was just a poor high school kid a few months earlier, but he wasn’t a millionaire by any stretch of the imagination, and of course he had more girlfriends than he knew what to do with. Joan was the one making the big bucks though. PJ was actually a member of the Blackhearts (Joan Jett’s band) for a while so I don’t know if that really qualifies as what you are calling a “session musician,” but it does seem to be pretty close to what you are describing.

6

Crowded Flock of Kajagoogoos from Berlin. Yeah I saw you guys…you sucked.

7

I know it’s not exactly what you were asking, but given that so much time has passed since these bands broke up, the disparity in wealth could likely have nothing to do with how much they made from the band and the work itself.

A guy in a band who sang, played guitar, and wrote all the music/lyrics could have earned a boatload, and the drummer who was hired late and never really fit in paid relatively little. But the singer could easily blow ALL his money in a couple years after the band breaks up and spend the little royalty money he gets on meth binges. The drummer takes the small amount he earned, opens a gallery in NYC, and over time becomes wealthy from it.

My theory is that musicians and other artists who make loads of money do so using skills that do not involve money management and therefore tend to blow it all once the money stops rolling in.

8

Courtney Love wrote an article a while ago in which she described the economics of record sales. Essentially, the band members get very little money from the records. The songwriters get their royalties, and can do pretty well. In her hypothetical example, a band with a million-selling record might earn $35,000 a year or so for the band members.

Even in huge bands, the guys who don’t write songs don’t necessarily make all that much. Pete Townshend has said that the only reason he still toured with The Who was because Roger Daltry and John Entwhistle needed the money.

I’m pretty sure that band members who don’t write music make the vast majority of their income from appearance fees, session work for other bands, and a share of the gate receipts from concerts.

9

Rick Wright, Pink Floyd’s keyboardist, was fired from the group in 1978. He was then re-hired for the 1987 A Momentary Lapse of Reason tour. Wright was hired back as a session player, so he got paid a salary.

The story goes, Wright was the only “original member” of Pink Floyd to make money from the tour.

Nick Mason (drums) and Dave Gilmour (guitar) got paid by Pink Floyd Ltd.
Since the shows were so costly, Mason and Gilmour didn’t make anything from the tour. Wright has since been re-admitted as a full-time member of the band.