Generic Glamour
It’s usually within the first song that my recidivist Plus One will elbow me in the ribs and yell over the din, “This band has been styled to within an inch of their lives.” I look up at these mop-haired whippets, weighed down by their instruments, in hipster thrift-store tee shirts and skinny overworked jeans and think, “Well, have they?”
Straight away we can dismiss almost all acts on the charts. Australian Idol has exposed the bare bones of the level of manipulation to the point that the show was celebrated as some sort of country bogan makeover program, quite irrespective of the musical aspect. And we’re all aware that the punk-as-fuck gutter zombies in the Sex Pistols were not only dressed but assembled by svengali Malcolm McLaren. But how many of your local rock gods have had the extreme makeover?
Pop music in Australia follows the brazen American model but Australian rock is revered as genuine; raw, unrefined, no-bullshit. It’s almost impossible to imagine even after successful albums that a stylist would fuss over someone like Bon Scott, especially considering the legacy of photos of the great man missing teeth, a haircut or even a sense of decency when it comes to the size of his jeans. Ironically, even though he died in early 1980, Bon has become some kind of absurd fashion icon of the current succession of 80s fashion-recycling.
Still, not one of the hundreds of bands annually dubbed “The Hardest Working Band In Australia” will ever admit to being in the same room as an image maker. It’s the rock industry’s dirtiest little secret. Major labels will almost gloat about advances never recouped and booking agencies will consider hijacking a bill as a victory. But the moment you’re propping up a bar with a rock pig in leathers and Chuck Taylors and mention stylists, a look of disgust will spread across their face.
It’s undeniable that it happens. During an expansive chat with freelance stylist Kim Black, she mentions that she’d rather I didn’t specifically name any of the major local rock acts she’s worked with. “I feel it’s quite confidential,” she cautions. When it comes to a band of the stature of the Rolling Stones, who did a tour openly in association with the Buddhist Punk label, Black notes that they can get away with mutual endorsement. When it comes to a local group shucking their first cd in stores, she suggests, “You aren’t big enough yet to say ‘I get my haircut here, etc’ because it’s too much ego. It’s too contrived. They’re already cool, but they don’t want to blow their cool.”
Unfortunately Black is not privy to the percentage of bands playing the traps that are professionally styled. Due to the level of mystery around the issue, it would be near impossible to find anyone who is. But she agrees that most bands with a decent album or photo cover are, in her words, “totally styled”. All it takes is a band’s first flirtation with the media to necessitate paying a clandestine visit to an expert like Black.
In 1991 Kim Black did a fashion design degree in New Zealand. Due to her social circle, she was intimately associated with the music scene there and was a natural point of reference regarding nascent photos and videos. Black insists that none of these Flying Nun-type bands were professionally styled. In 1992 she produced a video for a band called Pretty Wicked Head and the Desperate Men for their song All New Zealand Heroes, which was subsequently banned after two airings due to the combination of flesh and the New Zealand flag. She cackles, “I don’t think it went down very well.”
This rebel attitude led to Black producing fashion shows in New Zealand and when she moved to Australia she designed wetsuits for Quiksilver in Wollongong, bought a nightclub there, and eventually moved to Melbourne to work at styling and selling retro vintage fashion at St Kilda’s Velour. Just working at the store, Black has observed, “A lot of musos are coming in and wanting clothes for playing on stage, doing photos, even going to the ARIA awards, ‘What are we going to wear?’”
From experience, Black says that the record companies are barely involved. It all rests on the shoulders of the band’s manager, who inspects the store and comes to an arrangement with them to borrow clothes for a photo shoot in exchange for a byline credit for Velour. The discussion about any particular look is most often a triangular agreement between the band, the manager and the stylist, and a band’s stage look is far removed from a poster or cd-cover photo-shoot look.
“They have an essence of themselves that is there, and that’s the basis of their music, but a lot of them come in and have no idea,” she admits. And that’s mostly because of the classic adage that men don’t know how to shop for clothes. Although Black will lay things out for band members to narrow the choice, it ultimately boils down to what feels comfortable.
A recent client who was playing the piano for a television appearance took a good 45 minutes to be convinced to go with a jacket in a colour he doesn’t usually wear. “He bought two in the end,” Black laughs. “If it was a photo shoot he would’ve felt really cool and funky and really quite gorgeous, you could see how he was looking at himself in the mirror,” Black says, but since it was a performance, he was resistant to change from his comfortable brown. “Bands are quite happy to dress up for a photo shoot because they treat it like a fancy dress. When you explain that it’s just a one-off thing, a look that you’re creating, it’s okay.” Apparently, once the eyeliner is on, “They love it!” Black says the important strategy is giving them an association: it’s Ziggy, it’s Alice Cooper. Either that, or get the managers to start pushing.
It’s probably a colossal bonus that Black isn’t swayed by any band’s music. She’s always aware of the style of music they play but she only occasionally listens to an album. Ultimately, Black can style a band without hearing their music, but wouldn’t style a band without seeing the members.
Despite the rash of nouveau garage rock bands all looking virtually identical to each other (and identical to Blondie and the Stooges), no group has approached Black asking for a specific look. “They all think they’re individuals,” she says, “and they all think they’ve got something special going on.” Of course, when she styles a band once, they often take the example and style themselves along those same lines.
Spotting clueless tweens prancing about wearing “ironic” Ramones tee shirts or Iron Maiden patches oblivious to any kind of pop-cultural history makes it painfully obvious to whom labels direct their marketing. Since rock is populated predominantly by superficially tough young men having their mascara lightly smeared, Black agrees that styling is squarely aimed at the media-savvy, mostly underage, and often female, record buyers. She states as an undeniable truth: “More people are going to see them on a poster or a record cover than are going to see them live.”
Nick Cave has wandered in to avail himself of Velour’s campy 80s tee-shirt transfers, as have members of Dallas Crane. Bands will order and request specific clothes and come in for pre-tour wardrobe planning. Soon enough bands discover what works. One Australian band even has a designer making a line of tee shirts for them.
Black notes that for the future of rock style the look is veering away from the late 70s American punk edge to a more 50s rockabilly look. “We just had a thing with a hardcore band where they slicked all their hair back and looked very 20s,” she notes. “That was just for their promotional look and had nothing whatsoever to do with their music.”
Although it wasn’t, that band could’ve been Adelaide’s metalcore quintet I Killed The Prom Queen. Recent promo photos show greaser haircuts, full-sleeve tattoos and slippers. Australian hardcore punk acts are also tending toward the goth look resurrected from the Misfits by AFI. I have overheard one joker at a recent hardcore gig quip, “Keep Maybelline out of the scene”. Yet from the beginning, clothing endorsements have been stock standard in the punk scene.
Australian skate clothing label November have been sponsoring hardcore bands I Killed The Prom Queen and Byron Bay’s Parkway Drive for about two years, and coordinate it in the same way they sponsor skaters. “We don’t separate our bands and skaters,” says November’s Darren Kirby, “they’re our friends.” The label have been involved with the skater-punk scene for years and are in a position where they help put on shows for their friends, in tandem with supplying clothes to their favourite bands.
The skateboarding and punk rock scenes have been entwined for so long that there are adverts from the early 80s featuring an enthusiastic young Henry Rollins spruiking Independent Trucks. Most skate clothing labels will push clothes on to any touring band in the vain hope that they’ll wear something branded on stage. While Kirby and November are willing to admit that the label does gain a positive association with the hardcore punk scene, it’s undeniable that the company is far more involved in supporting the bands.
Even more orchestrated is the effort by Zatzit with Melbourne rock trio Osterberg. Zatzit is the third indie label from Melbourne music industry guru, James Young, positioned as an arm of his remarkably successful marketing company SEE. Young plans to handpick five Melbourne rock bands over three years but has devoted the first year to get it right with ex-Warped axe-wielder, Ben “Lightning Boy” Watkins’ new band.
“You gotta be super careful,” Young says of the fine balance between nurturing and interference. All of SEE’s high-profile corporate clients go through a strategy session to establish what they stand for. The same applied to Osterberg. “You define what it is they are that an audience wants,” he says, noting the buzzwords that he and the band settled on were things like ‘danger’ and ‘sex’ and ‘surprises’. Then he went to work.
Osterberg have been lucky to benefit from Young’s marketing nous. Drummer Ki Wone has appeared in an advert for Polaroid Sunglasses, their music has been the soundtrack to a Paris and Nicky Hilton Sportsgirl e-movie and they have a merchandising deal with Elwood. “Why I think we’re making a positive contribution to the indie music scene and to bands is that I’m sitting back and recognising that the old model of making money from cd sales is just not working for bands,” Young enthuses. “I’ve seen so many brilliant musicians who can’t even pay for a fuckin’ pot at a bar.”
He gushes about the talents of pub-rock veteran Watkins as well as the opportunities for marketing Osterberg, “The thing about my label is that I’m introducing new income streams into the band’s life. If they can make money from merch, if we can improve publishing deals so they get synched in TV, film, television commercials, computer games. And if we can, where it’s not putting a square peg in a round hole, use them in Yamaha music shoots or Polaroid Eyewear shoots or use their music for a Sportsgirl Paris and Nicky Hilton film, I reckon we’re helping to promote the band, whilst also making some money for them.”
Once the philosophy of the band is established, he says, “You’re not going to put them in an Arnott’s cream cookie commercial. But what you can do is say ‘Polaroid Eyewear are trying to break into the fashion area, Yamaha are all about music and are one of the most respected names in the world, Paris Hilton is a dirty slut’ – it’s a nice fit for the band.”
In another odd synergy, Osterberg’s debut single, ‘Talkin’ Out Loud’ began as a response to the online trash-talk about the band on mono.net – the forerunner to the messandnoise.com site.
From their onstage attitude down to their slick and gritty appearance, Osterberg has been approached as an entire concept. Yet Young says, “From my perspective we don’t do styling per se. I don’t tell Ki, Amy (Bell, bass) and Ben what to wear, because thankfully they already are rock’n’roll.”
Young admits that in the past he’s had to remind Ki and Amy about their strategy. “We said you were going to be sexy and surprising and scandalous and dangerous,” he recalls saying to the girls, “and it looks to me like you didn’t do your hair, you’re wearing glasses, where’s your make-up? You’re sexy as, you’re wearing black tee shirts, where’s the cleavage? I don’t tell them what to wear but next time I see them I go, ‘That’s fuckin’ better.’” Apparently after this kind of direction, the girls had a serious discussion and came to him, saying, “We promise we won’t dress like lesbians again”.
He insists that this direction is completely different to the scenario of the manufactured band, “We recognise the value of style. It’s intimately important to an emotional connection to an audience, but we’re trying to make that connection based on who we are and trying to live it to the fullest. It’s not the same as manufacturing a look and putting it on the next pretty girl who walks in the door.”
Young is quick to ridicule the current epidemic of $200 hairstyles for supposedly indie rockers, “They’re trying to look like Ron Wood and Keith Richards and the reason Ron and Keith look like that is because of the life they led and the fact that they had their head on a pillow after they’d crashed on an airplane. They’d never paid $200 for a haircut in their fucking life but these squeaky-clean kids …” he trails off in bewilderment. “There are bands like 67 Special and British India, where I think ‘Fuck, that is an impressive sound coming out of this young band,’ but in terms of them being rock’n’roll – and it’s unfair to say this since I went to a private school as well – they’re so private school. Their instruments are so new and so clean. And you’re drinking water on stage. You’re trying to be rock’n’roll but at the end of the day rock’n’roll is an attitude that can’t be feigned. You either are rock’n’roll or you’re not.”
While he is quick to assert that they have the potential to be great rock bands, “If you ask me, the missing element at the moment is that they’re not real, they’re not genuine because the haircuts and the poses are manufactured and they don’t come natural.” What every band needs, we go on to joke, is a Keith Richards-type smackie.
One pack of rock’n’roll renegades living the dream (if not getting on the skag) is Sydney’s Hell City Glamours. They’re not blessed with a trained cosmetician like Poison were, but obviously draw inspiration for their glad rags from the glam metal era. Guitarist Mo Mayhem admits that a lot of punters think they’re taking the piss, “But I think it’s more just wearing what we like,” he laughs. “Our perception of what looks good differs somewhat from most people’s.”
Let’s get it straight: while this band looks like they’ve been cut from the Nikki Sixx cloth, Mo is quick to assert that they’re not styled. “It’s not like we sat down and said ‘Okay you wear this, I’ll wear that,’ it just sort of evolved over time.” Due to spending probably too much time with each other both as a band and socially, he laughs, “We don’t see how we look that odd.”
Since their look is currently in fashion, Mo says that they often play with bands that will effectively ‘suit up’ for a gig, “looking like something straight outta Hot Metal magazine,” but then get into ‘street clothes’ after the show. Conversely, Hell City Glamours wears this outlandish gear from the moment they peel themselves off a floor in the late afternoon to when they collapse on the next floor in the wee hours. Mo sighs that only a certain section of the populace get that it’s not a joke, “But the way we look does seem to rub a lot of people the wrong way, which ain’t a bad thing.”
Mo is quick to defend the band’s effort to have a cohesive look, which tends to work against indie bands who don’t plan theirs. “When you get someone dressing you in clothes you couldn’t possibly afford, and especially to look like clothes that cost ten bucks, then I guess it stops being ‘you’ up there.” The “fashionable mullet, distressed denim, expensive 70s-style zip-up soccer jumper”-look befuddles him. “I just don’t get why people would spend so much money trying to look like they crawled out of bed,” he puzzles.
While image is obviously important for Hell City Glamours, does it need to be important for all bands? “If you’re not comfortable looking the way you do then it will come across, so I reckon just do what makes you feel comfortable. I like to look good; it’s just some people’s impression of what looks good is a suit and tie. I think it’s cowboy boots and leather pants.”
Again, Ron Wood and Keith Richards who, after ditching the suits during the earlier phases of The Stones, hit the nail on the head with their everyday clothes are evoked as style icons. Mo also posits bands like California punks NOFX and Rancid who have certain looks that aren’t “put on”. He muses, “Poison for example were totally lame, Guns N’ Roses were fuckin’ cool, and you can easily spot the difference. Bands like the Misfits or Alice Cooper are totally centred around their image but it’s not done by a stylist and there’s no illusion that it’s not centred around image. That’s totally different to an indie rock band being dressed by a stylist.”
One Australian artist to appreciate the preeminence of style is Mandy Kane. He was thrust upon the unsophisticated Australian public by Warner Music as a sartorially resplendent glam/goth figurehead – with the inevitable drawbacks. “There was an instance in Sydney where I turned up for a shoot to find that the stylists had assembled a collection of some of Australia’s finest stilettos, and expected me to wear them,” he recalls with bemusement. “Had I been a raving Scream Queen, this would have been a lovely thought. After much debate, I tried on a pair for a couple of shots, just for a laugh. What a disgrace. Somebody had obviously thought, ‘Ooh, he looks like Bowie and Manson combined! Great, we can get these heels in a few shots!’”
Kane admits being conscious of the role of image, but is quick to assert that nobody set out to create his. “The challenge we faced was finding an audience who might connect with who I am and the music I make. Ultimately, I found myself in a position where I was in serious danger of being typecast as ‘Australia's Marilyn Manson’, which although flattering (if that’s your thing), was misinformed nonetheless.” This hiccup, Kane says, lead to much confusion and frustration, “I can remember my former manager saying at the time that I had to be ‘put in a box’ if I were to sell records. I have since moved on.”
Warner Music did their best to assemble styling teams to facilitate a look, but Kane says, “Because of this preconceived idea people had about me being a suicidal, metal-fanatic goth, who was somehow plucked from the streets of Dandenong and turned into a pop-star, stylists would always try to dress me accordingly.” He says that he is only happy with a handful of promo photos, and the best were due to him being comfortable with who was behind the camera.
Kane asserts that rogue stylists were more likely to interfere than label representatives and A&R people. Clips with budgets that “could have fed a small country” were scrapped because they were too spooky for the ‘kids’ and not depressing enough for the goths, or because stripper footage had to be culled. The first clip on his own label Mummy’s Boy Records, for the single (UK) Hanky Panky, has been a realisation of the dedication to an artist that money just can’t buy. An unedited version will be available on his dot com.
While Kane is unabashedly a triumph of style as well as substance, he is positively venomous about so-called ‘Indie Style’. “Those acts are just as heavily styled as any other,” he snaps, “it’s just that the way this is done is not as flashy or obvious as pop acts. At the moment, you’ll notice all the little indie kids sporting the same pseudo-casual hairdo, the same Napoleon Dynamite-type outfits and the same indifferent disposition. No one can deny the importance of image in life, especially those involved with music.”
With major label backing it seems that Mandy Kane had a wealth of opportunity that most indie acts do not. This, of course, by no means guaranteed success. He found himself conceding to stylists out of politeness and letting them make career-altering decisions based on a tiny amount of time spent with him. Plus, he notes, “They also tend to dress you in clothes designed by their friends or purely for product placement.” Now he knows, “The only true indicator of whether something is working or not comes from that horrid sinking feeling in your stomach. If you feel that, tell that stylist to back the fuck off.”
“As an artist,” he implores, “you must have the ideas in place to begin with and make sure you follow them through.” Finally Kane has reached a point in his career where he has total control both of his music and his representation. After negotiating a path through the major label image factory, he can offer a priceless nugget of advice which will suit both those pining to be the next Jet, or those just sniffing tee shirts to find one clean enough for the show tonight:
“Most importantly, you must already be wearing whatever it is you wear, moving the way you do – just being yourself.” Only then will you have nothing to be ashamed of.
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