According to Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French, there’s no point in giving any advice to young aspiring musicians today. And no, that’s not because young musicians don’t deserve help but, as Jay Jay explained in his recent appearance on the “Vinyl Ventures” podcast, but because the entertainment industry landscape is entirely different from what it was when he was starting out.
“When a young musician asked me for advice,” French recalled (transcribed by Killer Guitar Rigs), “young, like 22, whatever — and he says to me, ‘Give me some advice.’ And I said, ‘Giving you advice is a waste of time because my life, what we saw, and what you are dealing with today have nothing in common.'”
“And he goes, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Trust me, what we experienced and the economic structure that we looked at has nothing to do.’ He goes, ‘What are you talking about?'”
“My first band was before World War I!”
To put things into perspective, Jay Jay French explained things with his own example:
“If I walked in, and if I walked up to a 70-year-old guy in 1972, and said, ‘Can you give me some advice?’ He’d look at me and goes, ‘I was born in 1902.’ And he goes, ‘And my first band was before World War I. We were backing a young lady in a hotel bar that has nothing to do with you wearing women’s clothing and playing through Marshall amplifiers in a mob-owned club in New Jersey. I’m sorry.’ It’s a different world, right?”
Comparing it to today and a young musician who’s starting out in the 2020s, French said:
“So I look at these young people, I go: Listen, when we started, gasoline was 29 cents a gallon, hotel rooms were $19.95 a night, house rentals were $300 a month, electric bills were like $10 a month, a truck rental was $25 a week.”
“You got paid 150 a night, guaranteed six nights a week of work. That’s $900. With that economic profile, you could set up a business.”
“There’s no way my life relates to yours”
Meanwhile, today’s economy is not at all the same. And with musicians being paid far less for shows or pretty much anything else, it’s a completely different beast. Jay Jay continued:
“Today, gas is $5 a gallon, house rental is $5,000 a month, truck rental is $600 a week, hotels are $300, and you’re still getting paid the same 150 fucking dollars. There’s no way my life relates to yours.”
Circling back to the 20-something-year-old musician who asked him for advice, French continued:
“I said, ‘You have social media, you have a whole different thing. Now you can create your own music, you go online’. He said, ‘Yeah, but help me out’. I said, ‘Why help you out? Nobody helped me, I figured it out. I was 20 years old, I figured the fucking shit out.'”
Apart from being a guitar player, Jay Jay French was the business leader of Twisted Sister. Vocalist Dee Snider was the one writing most of their music and French was a performer in the studio and on the stage. However, he was mainly focused on the business side of things.
“Before you’re The Beatles, you’d better be better than the band next door”
So, paradoxically, the best advice is not to give direct advice. However, in not giving advice, Jay Jay French actually ended up sharing what every young musician today should be aware of — know the time and surroundings you’re living in. He offered:
“It’s like I say in my motivational speaking: observe your playing field, look around you, find a band that’s a little bit more successful. And you figure out what they’re doing, copy that for a while until you get to the next level, then look at the band maybe above you, right above that one.”
“Because you know what? Here’s the truth, man: before you’re The Beatles, you’d better be better than the band next door. Very simple. That’s not rocket science. That’s just business acumen. Luckily, I came from that world, so I understood it. And that’s kind of how it happened.”
“We just kept coming back”
In another recent interview, Jay Jay French talked about the importance of persistence if you want to score big success in the world of music.
“We just kept coming back,” he offered, “much to the chagrin of labels who rejected us [and who] thought, ‘Can they just go away finally? They suck.'”
“I’m not so cynical to tell you we didn’t suck. Sometimes, when someone tells you [that] you suck, you do suck, and then you have to figure out why you suck.”
“The discussion I have with young musicians these days… They say, ‘Jay Jay, give me some advice.’ I go, ‘Well, how old are you? 21-22? How long have you been together? Two years, three years? How many shows you played?’ ‘We’ve played a lot, man, like 50-60 shows.’ It’s like, 50-60 45-minute shows, in the last two or three years.”
“In the first two-and-a-half years of Twisted Sister’s existence, we played 3500 shows. We played five shows a night, six nights a week. And that’s how you get good. Before Dee [Snider] even joined, I already had 3500 shows under my belt. Dee joined, we added another 5000 shows. That’s 8500. And then we went out and toured the world.”
Photo: Alfred Nitsch (20140802-345-See-Rock Festival 2014-Twisted Sister-John „Jay Jay” French)
