Quick Q&A with Rock On's Dan Kennedy

nik.mercer — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:18:21 -0800

In 2002, Dan Kennedy scored a high-profile marketing gig at Warner Brothers records. He turned the disheartening experience into a recently published memoir, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, about the dying days of major labels—it’s a hilarious journey through the corporate music biz, with cameos from the Donnas, Duran Duran, and a pot-smoking Fat Joe. Kennedy was laid off in 2003, along with many of his co-workers, all casualties in the ongoing war of attrition the majors are fighting simply to stay afloat. Anthem checked in with the author to see if he thinks anything has changed since his own experience in corporate rock hell.

You left the world of major labels in 2003. What changes have you observed in the music community since then—as it gotten even worse? How do events like the rounds of EMI lay-offs, or Radiohead's self-releasing of IN RAINBOWS, further point to the dissolution of the major label status quo that you experienced first-hand a few years back?

I haven't been in the building or anywhere near the corporate rock scene for four years, but I can't imagine it has gotten any better or gotten a huge clue. In terms of the music community or the scene? It seems to be doing as good or better as it was when I was a kid in the eighties. I mean, how can this not be an exciting time in the music scene; you can fit a studio in your backpack, and you've got a worldwide distribution network that doesn't require stuffing one envelope. Music is doing fine. One can't confuse the death of music with a few skyscrapers of white guys with huge lofts and bank accounts having a hard time continuing their run at the top.

Are major label office politics really as cut-throat, superficial, and un-rock'n'roll as you seem to describe them in Rock On?

As horrible as some of the scenes are in this book, the truth is, I probably downplayed them out of some sense of decency. And the confidential email I get from people at major labels since Rock On came out have been amazing. These people emailing me through the book site, spilling the beans about these unbelievable lows, the swamp of moral bankruptcy and retarded ambition gone awry at the labels where they worked before getting laid off. Can you imagine getting fired after thirty years at a label, and the guy who cans you had you over for dinner the night before, looked you in the eye at the end of the night and told you what an awesome future you have with the label? Seriously, that's a sociopath. Seriously, you take that shit one step further and you're killing hitchhikers and hookers in a van without license plates and telling the authorities that they brought it on themselves.