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Want to know what the music industry is really like? Watch this film, says musician Dylan Wachman.
Whether you have an affinity for blast beats, bass guitars or big band, if you love music, you eventually discover a universally recognized truth: The music industry has always been a complete disaster. As someone with 10 years of touring experience, I can confirm that it’s worse than you think.
Many films have shown the lives of artists behind the curtains. We get a feel for the difficulties of the creative process, but the core of the film is usually the love of the medium. Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise — screening at IPH starting March 22 as part of the Grindhouse to Arthouse series — asks what happens when an artist’s soul becomes so tarnished that it can’t be repaired.
Phantom blends The Phantom of the Opera and Faust, with an antihero in a spray-painted leather jacket. De Palma banishes any hope that the powerful will ever do the right thing. He tells this story through violence and mayhem of the highest order, pitting artist against executive in a race to the bottom.
The 1974 film opens in a practice space with an earworm by The Juicy Fruits, a fictional power-pop band whose performance lives on in my real-world playlists. Aspiring songwriter Winslow (William Finley) vandalizes a Juicy Fruits gig poster in a fit of artistic rebellion: They’re commercial, they’re terrible, it’s manufactured music.
Winslow is next in line to perform at this very rehearsal. His goal is to impress Swan (Paul Williams, who also composed the songs). Swan runs Death Records and will soon be opening the hottest club in town, the Paradise. Swan wants Winslow’s music but not Winslow, so Swan steals his songs. Winslow seeks revenge and will do whatever it takes to sabotage Swan and the Paradise.
This is a common pain point for many musicians. (I never felt right about giving my band’s songs to a record label, which is why we left our label in 2022.) The relationship is essentially a payment for your work upfront, with the label hoping to turn a profit through sales. The problem is, they own your songs forever and can present them however they wish. You usually realize you traded control of your life’s work for a bad loan.
Look at decades of pop music, and you’ll notice that producers transform artists by chasing trends in a never-ending bid for relevance. In Phantom, we see the shifting persona of The Juicy Fruits and other bands. In their goth-glam performance at the Paradise, a simulated Frankenstein’s monster comes to life, created with a mixture of body parts and assembled with screams and howls. The corporation will stop at nothing to ensure a profitable product, even going to the lengths of literally manufacturing an idol. That’s one of the many cartoonish moments of allegory in Phantom.
This might be my favorite film. Maybe that’s because of the songs, Paul Williams’ outrageous costume or the references to Psycho and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It could be the camerawork. Maybe it’s the fact that Sissy Spacek, who won an Oscar® playing Loretta Lynn six years later in Coal Miner’s Daughter, was the film’s set dresser; she married its production designer, Jack Fisk. (He’s currently nominated for Killers of the Flower Moon.)
Phantom was a critical failure but has gained cult status. Critic Gene Siskel gave the film two stars out of four and called it “childish,” adding that “joking about the rock music scene is treacherous, because the rock music scene itself is a joke.” Gene, if only you knew how right you were.
Now, with the likes of Spotify putting its hands in the pot, AI rappers, the COVID-19 pandemic ruining touring and Ticketmaster ruining everything, Phantom seems prescient. As with many things in our modern world, the parody has become the reality. Sadly, the suits usually do win this war. I do not know how much longer I will be able to tour in a band in this environment. But at least I have Phantom of the Paradise.