I’ve been watching “Supernova”, and it strikes me that the show and the band are treating the singer as a vehicle for the music, whereas Bono and Mick, etc. are creators of the music. I’ve read in one of the U2 bio books that it’s arguable that Bono is due 62.5% of the songwriter’s royalties (50% for the lyrics, 25% of the remaining for the vocal melody).
Can anyone name respected rock vocalists in real bands who are only vehicles, and not creators? I’ve often wondered if Ozzy or D.L. Roth were creators. Did they write the vocal melodies, or are they frontmen for other writers?
Can’t address your questions directly, as I simply do not know, but I am making a prediction here and now that the whole Super Nova band looking for a singer is crap. I think they are doing this just for the vehicle of the show. It doesn’t matter a lick who wins. Less than a month after the show wraps they’ll fire the ‘winner’ and hire a more reputable singer for the band. More than likely, he/she is already waiting in the wings.
I’ve often wondered about a similar thing. I am lead singer and guitarist in my band. I write all the songs, words and music. However, the bassist and drummer come up with their own parts with usually fairly minimal direction from me. In the unlikely event that the songs get published/earn royalties, how should it be split?
That’s up to you to decide. I’d suggest you’d get it in writing, too.
Songwriting credits are set up according to agreement among the members of the band. The Doors, for instance, originally credited all songs to “The Doors,” allowing all four members to share in the songwriting royalties. Later, they started using “Morrison-Doors” and “Kreiger-Doors,” probably because Robbie Krieger got tired of everyong thinking Morrison wrote everything (I remember one critic saying how it was Morrison’s songs that were making all the money for the group, when their biggest hit – “Light My Fire” – was written by Kreiger).
More famously, “Lennon-McCartney” apply to songs written by both. McCartney seems to have written more songs than Lennon for the Beatles, but Yoko gets half of everything. McCartney probably feels a bit like Kreiger, which is why he wanted to bill his songs “McCartney-Lennon,” a perfectly reasonable suggestion that got shot down for no particular reason.
Getting back to the OP, I’d say most singer-front men do write at least some the songs (Mick Jagger*, Jim Morrison, etc.), or at least the lyrics for them.
One major exception is Roger Daltrey of the Who (He does have one song credit on “A Quick One,” but one sales gimmick of that album was that all members of the band wrote at least one song; I suspect “See My Way” may have been written by Townsend. But, in any case, that is unusual).
*Keith Richard has commented on Jagger’s ability to take a fragment Richard worked on and turn it into a full-fledged song.
I know that U2 pointedly publish their songs as “all songs by U2” sometimes with “lyrics by Bono”. It’s widely reported that they were told early on that one of the major points of contention in the Beatles was the money that Paul and John were making, so they spread it throughout the band. They’re famous for considering the band a group of friends first, and a group of business partners a distant second.
(Reportedly) Neil Young [looking at Adam Clayton’s house]: That’s the BASS player’s house!?
Adam has reportedly bought a house overlooking the high school that expelled him.
Also, depending on your definition of “respected,” Liam Gallagher of Oasis (at least until he started writing songs a couple years ago, quite good ones too).
There are a number of bands where the singer does most or all of the writting. Dee Snider of Twisted Sister did most of the writting, as did Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy.
I’m sure I could think of plenty of other bands that do this, but not off the top of my head right now.
She sings with the New Pornographers quite a bit and has even toured with them. While, on her own, she is a fairly accomplished songwriter and a decent guitarist, with the group, she just sings. And boy, does Carl Newman ever know how to use her voice.
Neal Peart writes the lyrics for Rush, and Geddy Lee sings them. There are lots of bands with lead singers who don’t write.
But I disagree with the premise in the OP in the first place:
I disagree. Songwriting skills have been a big part of the contest so far. First the contestants had to make up lyrics and melody to a Supernova song without warning, to see how quick they were on their feet. Then they were given a group songwriting contest to see how they could collaborate with others. Then they were given an individual songwriting challenge, where each one had to write the lyrics and melody for a Supernova track. And now the next stage is that they will be performing their own song compositions (Zarya already did that).
And frankly, after hearing Supernova’s first song, they had better pick one of the rockers who’s a really strong writer, because that song sucked. Fortunately, a few of them actually are very good songwriters. Storm, Lukas, Toby, and Ryan all have serious songwriting chops. Ryan Star has a band and has been touring for years, singing nothing but his own compositions. Magni has 6 albums of original material.
Anyway, the lead singer for a rock band isn’t just a vocalist. He’s a frontman, because the others are tied down behind their instruments. So if the show is going to have any life, the lead singer has to put on a show. Most of the great rock vocalists were also great showmen (think David Lee Roth, Freddy Mercury, David Bowie, Jim Morrison, etc).
But what SuperNova needs more than a great singer is great songwriting, and maybe a lead guitarist. Gilby Clarke has been underwhelming so far, and he usually played rythm guitar with other bands. So Supernova is made up of three rythm players - a bassist, a drummer, and a rhythm guitarist. They need a lead vocalist and a lead guitarist, and at least one of them needs to know how to write a song.
Ok, so a more pointed question: I’ve often wondered how critical DL Roth and Ozzy were to the success of their bands. I know that Dave’s super-sex-macho posing drew in the female crowd to an unusual level for metal, so that sold some records. There’s no denying he could actually sing, too, but did he write the vocal melodies or anything else. Could he have been replaced with another egotistical guy with a good throat? Same question for Ozzy, basically.
Roth wrote all his own lyrics and vocal melodies for Van Halen. I remember reading an interview once in which he said the band would give him a tape of the intrumental tracks and that he would drive around in his car singing along with it and trying various things out until had found a melodic angle or a lyrical hook that worked.
I’m pretty sure that Ozzy also wrote all his own lyrics and vocal lines for Black sabbath and I’ve also read that for his solo albums, he used to sing lyrics or skat melodic ideas to his guitar players and have them write riffs around it (I remember Randy Rhodes, in particular, saying that Ozzy would make him sit with a guitar and basically go “how about something like this…Bom bom ding bom chicka bawow” and Randy would do his best to duplicate what ever Ozzy was skatting).
Just to add one more thing, even though Ozzy doesn’t play an instrument he’s always had a very canny sense of what he wants from his musicians and a nose for talent as well.
This is a really good question, and I’m having a really hard time coming up with any prominent frontmen, other than Roger Daltrey, who didn’t also do at least a little of the creating/songwriting for their bands. I can’t find songwriting credits, but I wonder if Katrina Leskanich of Katrina and the Waves might qualify. Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.
Well, I can think of a few lead singers who wrote very little or no music for their bands:
Gordon Haskell and Boz Burrell wrote no music for King Crimson. (Other King Crimson vocalists, like Greg Lake, John Wetton and Adrian Belew wrote songs, too).
Ozzy Osbourne shared songwriting credit with the rest of the members of Black Sabbath, but it’s pretty well known that Ozzy never wrote a song in his life. Practically all of the music was written by Tony Iommi, and practically all the lyrics were by Geezer Butler.
Robin Zander has written or co-written a few songs for Cheap Trick, but not many. Rick Nielsen has always been their primary songwriter.
Marvin Lee Aday (Meat Loaf) has almost always relied on others (like Jim Steinman) to write his songs.
Tom Scholz has written the great majority of Boston’s songs- Brad Delp has only contributed to a handful.
Art Garfunkel has gotten a songwriting credit or two, but for all practical purposes, he’s a non-songwriter.
Keith Relf didn’t contribute many songs with the Yardbirds.
The Beach Boys had a number of non-writing lead singers. And they brought in outside writers (including Charles Manson!) to write lyrics. Mike Love’s claim to have played any significant part in the lyric writing process is highly dubious.
The Band had three lead vocalists, all of whom were not the group’s primary songwriters. Rick Danko and Richard Manuel contributed an occasional song (usually cowritten with someone else), but Levon Helm is only credited on one or two minor songs. Robbie Robertson, who did the lion’s share of the songwriting, did not sing, even though his songs were about 80% of the Band’s original output.
Dennis Locorriere and Ray Sawyer of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show did very little songwriting; most of their songs were by Shel Silverstein or cover songs.
Mickey Dolenz and Davy Jones of the Monkees did not write songs, though they sang lead.
Manfred Mann lead vocalists never did much songwriting, but they were essentially a cover band.