The Ethics of Fake Guitar 🎸

[Old Joad]

 

[T Boog]

I was recently watching this interview with Joey Allen, one of the two guitarist in Warrant. We didn't know it back in the '80s but they're producer brought in a ringer guitarist named Mike Slamer who played all the more difficult and better guitar solo parts. 

I'm amazed that the comments are 99% positive. Joey is a super nice guy but that's some Milli Vanilli sh*t in my book. I'd rather be broke & anonymous than rich & famous miming to someone else's talents and creativity. Oh, I feel a sneeze coming...

AaaaaaPOSER!!!  😜

 

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, T Boog said:

I'd rather be broke & anonymous than rich & famous miming to someone else's talents and creativity.

Easiest to be confident of when one has not been offered the choice.🤨

There are SO many highly-respected bands who have had players replaced by studio ringers/guests at one time or another, to varying degrees. Even bands much respected by other players.

The Beach Boys (probably most famously, on some songs not a single Beach Boy played a note), The Beatles, The Byrds, Steely Dan....and the list of ones we don't know about is longer than the list of ones we do know about.

What went wrong for Milli Vanilli was that they replaced the lead vocalists without giving credit (that's typically where the line is drawn, as in the case of film musicals), and were too successful and copped a Grammy. We always want to credit our guest musicians (except that most of the time we don't) and importantly, didn't even do the vocals live. Audiences expect that at least vocals will be live. Don't we?

Pitch correction, comping, drum replacement, note editing, arpeggiators....these things all exist to make musicians seem more skilled than they actually are.

I'm with the "athleticism" argument: if what's most exciting about your music is that it's hard to play, well, then you should be playing it as heard. I also agree with the genre specificity. When possible, obey the expectations of the genre.

In the case of 80's metal shred guitar, that's a tough one. If memory serves, appreciation of and admiration for the players' technical prowess was an integral part of the music. So from that standpoint oh no! Fraud! Say it ain't so, Warrant!

But I also remember that the music industry and the process of making records was different 40 years ago. The only path to getting your music out to a wide audience and making a decent living from it led straight through a big corporation that didn't care at all about things like musicianship and authenticity except to the extent that they were concepts that could sell records. And the contracts that artists had to sign to get these corporations to loan them enough money to record using the facilities and techniques of the day often (usually?) stated somewhere that the label had the last say in whatever producer the band would be working with, and that the band had to abide by that producer's decisions. It was, after all, the label's money that was allowing the record to happen at all. The penalty for defying them? They'd not release the record, and the project and the band itself would be effectively dead.

In light of that, I kinda admire Joey Allen for fessin' up all these years later. He made the choice to finally be honest about the process and risk attracting comments like "that's some Milli Vanilli sh*t in my book." 😄 Maybe it was, but whom to blame? A record company trying to maximize their return on investment (which was their primary job) or a group of young musicians at the mercy of the record company? A record producer trying to please the people who were paying his salary and also ensure that he would get hired for future projects?

Warrant as an artistic concept and sellable product wouldn't have existed (or at least not been the same) without the participation of Joey Allen. Was hiring another talented musician to cover some of his tasks during the production of a record such a terrible thing? Maybe it was by the expectations of the genre. Replacing Dennis Wilson on drums is different from replacing a metal guitarist who the fans idolize as an awesome player.

What of the Warrant fans over the years? Is the enjoyment they got from having it be the soundtrack of their lives now tainted? The kids paid to hear badass guitarists tear it UP, and I'll presume that Mike Slamer is indeed a badass guitarist who did indeed tear it up. He wasn't the badass guitarist they had been led to believe was tearing it up, but yet, up it was torn. Heads were banged, beers were consumed, babes were impressed, high school was endured. The product fulfilled its purpose.

It's a fascinating question, and one of the topics that Adam touched on was the matter of jazz musicians working out parts ahead of time. I was in a club 30 years ago watching a jazz ensemble with another alt roc guitarist friend who had done some time at jazz camp. Of course the band traded fours (or in their case maybe eights) and when it came around to the guitarist, well, what she played was not very interesting. I don't mind simple, but this was just boring.

Of course being guitar players we had to talk about this and I wondered why she apparently hadn't sat down with a recording and sketched out some ideas ahead of time. My own leads in those days were a mixture of ideas worked out ahead of time and in-the-moment improvisation. I would stock up on phrases for each song, and mostly stick to them, but if lightning struck, I'd run with it.

He shook his head and said that the idea with jazz is that you're supposed to be such a hot player that you make up every solo right on the spot, otherwise it's cheating or something. I guess the idea is that you're supposed to be in the moment and reacting to what's around you and playing only what you feeeeeel, man.

Which seems to imply that if you have a night where it's just not clicking, the audience is going to suffer. And I don't like making people who've shown up to watch me play suffer, unless that's part of the genre I'm working in (not entirely joking here).

And why are ideas that you've worked out in private less valid than ones you've come up with on the spot? It seems like some kind of weird snobbery. And as such, to me, inauthentic. Because why front that you don't care about entertaining the audience? If you really don't, why have you sacrificed so much in order to play in front of people?

So in this case, what was most "authentic" in the case of jazz solos was poseurism to me.

[T Boog]

3 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Easiest to be confident of when one has not been offered the choice

No offense my friend but that sounds to me like ur telling on yourself a bit. Would YOU compromise your principles if the pot was sweet enough? 

 My confidence on this comes from knowing myself well. I never valued fame or money that much. Esp not enough to mislead people into thinking someone else's artistic work is mine. I NEED to be able to look myself in the mirror and I deeply value integrity. (Whether u believe that or not is up to you)

And you're right, back in the 80s, it wasn't like the beach boys, the byrds or steely dan(which wasnt even a real band for the most part). When it came to 80s guitar, someone who was very talented on their instrument was held in high regard. They were musical heros. Joey Allen knew that VERY well. That's why he cringed at the idea of using a ringer. I guarantee you he had trouble looking himself in the mirror over that back then. (And I bet it still makes him cringe a bit)

Also, Mike Slamer wasn't a "guest' musician brought in for just a song or two. Bottom line, all the best & most impressive guitar work on both of Warrant's big abums are not done by either of Warrant's guitarist. I find that sad. You can disagree.

And you're right, that doesn't take away from the music but it absolutely takes away from Joey & Erik's legacy.

And btw, it's not just about Mike's technical "athleticism",  Mike created very musical & beautiful solos. He was the REAL guitar hero. ( I will give Joey and Erik some points for taking lessons from Mike and trying to get better but it's still sad to me).

I also disagree with u on the Milli Vanilli thing. They HAD to lie about who was singing because they didnt sing AT ALL on their album 😄. Nobody wouldve bought their album If they knew they were just good looking models who were lip syncing. 

Lastly, I have no problem with someone using studio tricks to make their recordings sound great.  As long as they're not being misleading about using someone else's work and they can do their songs justice live, I'm great with it.  Afterall, that's what most bands do. 

Btw, I still love u yeah Krupa. You're just a smarter business man than me. After all, my lofty pride & integrity aint exactly paying the bills 😂

 

 

 

[T Boog]

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

Easiest to be confident of when one has not been offered the choice

I had to come back to concede something to you Krupa. 

You worded it as "offered the choice". And I feel very certain where I would stand on that. But the truth is, I can't truly judge someone unless I know the whole situation.

The more I think about it, I bet Joey & Erik were VERY sweet talked and probably guilt tripped too. They probably told them things like, "Mike will just play on a couple solos and it'll just be for this one album. And Mike will even give you guys lessons so pretty soon we wont even need him". And "You don't wanna hold back your friends do you?"

Also I know how it is to be like brothers in a band. You dont wanna hold them back and you also don't wanna lose your best friends and the songs u wrote together.

Btw, I just looked it up and Joey is from Indiana and Warrant was together for 3 1/2 years before getting signed. So I'm sure the band had become his new family. That really is a bi*ch of position to be put in.

But I guess my main point is that there SHOULD be a price to be paid for misleading your fans like that. It SHOULD hurt your reputation. If not, the concept of integrity means nothing. If someone considers themself an artist, then artistic honesty should be greatly valued otherwise it's all just merchandising and BS.

That's why the music business is what it is these days. Intellectual property & artistic integrity have become greatly undervalued. It seems like everyone is just trying to shortcut putting in the hard work. Plus, now the world has AI to write it's songs. That's a very sad thing to me.

[Starship Krupa]

10 hours ago, T Boog said:

No offense my friend but that sounds to me like ur telling on yourself a bit. Would YOU compromise your principles if the pot was sweet enough?

My man, I have sold myself out for so much less than the guys in Warrant did. Getting paid peanuts by jerka55 drug addict or rageaholic bosses? Yep.

I didn't develop the self respect necessary to get a good job until I got clean and sober 35 years ago. I even put in a full year at one legendary audio hardware company where the owner hired me mostly because he liked straight boys and thought I was cute. Everyone in the place knew this except for me. Until I figured it out.🙄

So yeah. Don't most people at some point do things that we'd rather not in order to survive? Maybe not. I can only say that I have.

I did abandon one potential career, radio deejay, because I had the opportunity to hang out at a radio station and learn how radio programming actually worked, that the deejays themselves had to obey the program director, they usually had little latitude to choose what they were going to play. I realized that I could never tolerate that and ended my pursuit of such a career.

I remember watching WKRP in Cincinnati and not realizing that Andy was supposed to be the protagonist. I hated him and thought Johnny Fever was supposed to be the hero of the whole thing. It was decades before I figured it out: that ***** Andy was supposed to be the hero! Johnny Fever was this cranky burnout who was an obstacle to Andy making WKRP as successful as it might have been.

Yeah, I was not temperamentally suited for the commercial radio business and I am forever grateful to my younger self for realizing that before I had invested anything.

10 hours ago, T Boog said:

Nobody wouldve bought their album If they knew they were just good looking models who were lip syncing.

Perhaps not. Can't fluff pop like that be marketed anonymously, though? I think that formula was more common and accepted in Europe. The guy who put Milli Vanilli together had already had huge success for the past dozen years with an act called Boney M. where he recorded the male lead vocals and hired 2 male and 2 female singer/dancers to do the donkey work of actually, y'know, being Boney M. Everybody knew it, nobody cared. It wasn't the kind of music where people cared about such details.

But Milli Vanilli became big in the US and won that damn Grammy award. You know, the same organization that bestowed Best Heavy Metal Album upon a Jethro Tull disc. If their success had been confined to the UK and Europe, where people knew the producer for having already created a popular fake band, there probably would have been no controversy.

One of the weirdest things, to the American mind, about Boney M. was that the guy who actually sang on the records was German while the performers were of various other nationalities and all of African descent. I just can't help but think that that fact might have rubbed some people the wrong way in the US. White singer/producer of dance music hires black people to perform as him? Uhhhhhh....

11 hours ago, T Boog said:

I guarantee you he had trouble looking himself in the mirror over that back then. (And I bet it still makes him cringe a bit)

I think you're probably right, and I also think that that right there is your "price to be paid." How about you get to fulfill your dreams of becoming a rock star guitar hero except it's not going to be your playing that your fans will fall in love with, and you'll have to pretend that it is? The most you get to do is learn someone else's parts so you can play them live, making you sort of your own tribute band. Sound like a dream turned nightmare? It kind of does to me. It was probably its own punishment. I would imagine that Joey and Erik would have been interviewed by musicians' magazines like Guitar Player and would have had to pretend to the writers (who at GP were also guitarists) that it was their playing on the records. And signing autographs for kids telling them that they were their favorite guitarists. Eek. That sounds awful to me.

But really, if your (as you put it) "family" is pressuring you to step aside, set your ego aside for the good of the band, and nobody has any idea how long this rock and roll enterprise called Warrant is going to keep generating income (it's a miracle fluke of destiny for it to even get that far in the first place), so are you going to stand up to the record company and be the reason that your bandmates don't get to own houses and drive decent automobiles? Which choice is even the one with the most integrity? They'll just bring in someone else to be the touring guitarists and you'll be a broke-***** never-was. "Hey, did I ever tell you I was the founding guitarist in Warrant? I quit because they wanted to have another guy play my parts in the studio and wanted me to just play the shows." You get one cocktail party anecdote out of the whole thing.

Guitar heroism back in the 80's, especially in the metal genre, was very much part of the package that they were selling. So I agree that they were guilty of deception, of selling a counterfeit product. But I also can't be too hard on Joey Allen for playing along.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't and am not disagreeing with anything you said, not at all. I just find it a fascinating topic and am tossing things out there. It's interesting to consider that what's "fraudulent" or "deceptive" can be dependent on the musical genre and even in what region of the world the act is working in. The line not to be crossed is in different places, depending.

For anything with lead vocals, it seems like the minimum expectation is that the person advertised as doing the singing is actually the person doing it....except that with Boney M. it never was and nobody gave a crap. Because Eurodance is a genre with little integrity to violate in the first place?

Here's another interesting approach: Prince, who was and is very highly respected as a singer, player, and producer, played most of the instruments on his albums, but back in the day, in the minds of the fans, thanks to the Purple Rain  movie "Prince and the Revolution" was a real band, not just a touring band whose members were sometimes called in to the studio to add some overdubs.