Ultimate Guide To A Healthy And Successful Career in Music [Exclusive Book Excerpt]
Sound Advice: The Ultimate Guide To a Healthy And Successful Career in Music will be published later this year, but Hypebot has an exclusive book excerpt.
Written by journalist Rhian Jones and performance science researcher Lucy Heyman this is book is a much needed resource for musicians and music industry pros. The book has been endorsed by UMG, Sony and WMG.
“Sound Advice is a great resource for artists, songwriters, producers and musicians. The pressure of creativity and success in music is a heavy burden and can be overwhelming.” – Nile Rodgers, GRAMMY Award-winning musician and producer
From Sound Advice: The Ultimate Guide To a Healthy And Successful Career in Music
When all the hard work in the studio is done, going on tour, sharing your music with audiences in person, and having people singing the songs that you’ve written back to you can be incredibly rewarding. Musicians have said that the experience of performing is one of the most enjoyable facets of their career and may be one of the reasons so many can justify spending time away from their families and friends as they take their music to far-flung places.
But despite the highs, it’s on tour that things can, and often do, start to go wrong. Touring can be physically and mentally challenging, with many musicians reporting they get ill due to a lack of healthy food and proper rest. Exhaustion from little sleep and constant travelling can result in breakdowns in communication and relationships, not to mention mental breakdowns when it all gets too much. With friends and family being so far away, support systems can be hard to find when problems arise. Psychotherapist Tamsin Embleton, who spent 10 years working in the live music industry before retraining, explains: “Emotions are amplified and you’re away from support networks, self-care routines, and all the things that help to make you feel grounded.”
One of the phrases that crops up time and time again when musicians talk about the challenges of touring is that of the ‘highs and lows’ they experience regularly. Playing in a packed venue full of fans is swiftly followed by a night alone in an empty hotel room or crammed into a tour bus or van. Days are spent travelling, being bored and killing time, before arriving at the venue ready for another high. Idles drummer Jon Beavis explains: “Being on tour with a band is the ultimate high but it can also mean ultimate lows. It’s very tough when you’re in the back of a van for three months, or even three weeks. Everyone’s tired because we put in so much for all the gigs and you’ve then got to do all the merchandise, load out, drive to the next hotel or the next place to just park your car and sleep in the van. It’s insanely tiring.”
Singer and songwriter Nina Nesbitt adds: “You have to hype yourself up to go on stage every night, even if you’re knackered, and the adrenalin gets you through. But after that, you get a crash, and sometimes you can’t sleep because you’re buzzing from playing the gig. It’s a weird mental space you have to get yourself into.” These frequent rushes of adrenaline that Nesbitt refers to can make it difficult to maintain a balanced mental and physical state, even when you’re not on stage. Embleton further explains: “Performances can be euphoric but they also involve a lot of adrenalin and cortisol flooding the nervous system, which can make it hard to regulate emotions and bodily states. Artists who have underlying issues may find that those issues are exacerbated if they don’t have good support networks and routines that help them to wind down and recover from events or periods of stress.”
There’s also the high of touring for three months, then a low of coming home back to reality, sometimes having forgotten how to look after yourself. This might sound ridiculous but if you’ve spent three months with managers, tour managers, and other crew members taking responsibility for everything from passports to whether or not your preferred flavour of Pringles are on the rider, it can be hard to adjust to not having an itinerary when you wake up in the morning. One participant in a recent study on touring said “the void” that touring leaves “is actually more dangerous than the activity itself”. Trying to manage these feelings alone can lead to alcohol and drug use, as the study further described.
Nutritionist and tour manager Suzi Green, who has worked with artists including PJ Harvey, Marina Diamandis and The Chemical Brothers, says common health problems she sees on the road include addiction in various forms, substance misuse, exhaustion and burnout. She says:
“I don’t think many people on tour manage to get eight hours’ sleep more than once a week if they are lucky. Moving is inherently stressful and there’s a lack of consistency in your surroundings, which on its own puts your body under quite a lot of stress. Also, the trouble with touring or travelling is that unless you are at a certain level and touring with a certain amount of budget, you don’t always have a hell of a lot of control over what you eat, where you eat or if there’s even any time to eat. Personally, I think food and sleep underpin everything. If those two go out the window then you are a bit like water on a tray — it’s harder to keep your equilibrium. You might get away with it for a short time, especially if you’re younger, but you definitely won’t get away with it for long or when you’re older.”
In years gone by, unhealthy lifestyles on tour were almost seen as badges of honour. David Bowie was rumoured to exist on milk, peppers, and cocaine during his Thin White Duke period, while Keith Richards has said that the Rolling Stones’ 1975 tour was fuelled by a rule of ‘one song, one bump’ of cocaine — lines of which were strategically hidden behind the speakers on stage. Many more examples of the self-destructive excesses of major touring musicians can be found within films, books, and documentaries. However, as the music industry increasingly relies on touring for the bulk of its income, unreliable musicians are no longer tolerated. Dave Webster, who is the National Organiser of Live Performance for the UK’s Musicians’ Union, says: “The drunk touring band is a cliché, especially with the strict driving rules now in place. The raised awareness regarding fitness, good diet and the effects of drugs and alcohol are something people take far more seriously these days.”
Tour manager Erica Leite, who’s been on the road with Dua Lipa and Bastille, agrees. “I think touring is so different now than it was even ten, fifteen, twenty years ago,” she says. “Back then you were doing loads of drugs and drinking all the time. Now it’s like, ‘Would you like a bottle of water and a banana?’ Everyone is way more health-conscious.” There’s another reason why it makes sense to keep in shape — as Webster says, increased competition and scrutiny in today’s music business means that there is no room for error in performance, which will be negatively impacted by ill-health. “Delivering consistent performance is so important,” he explains. “Especially with the growth in social media, which now dictates that a poor performance on one night can influence subsequent performances and future sales.” When there’s a venue full of smartphones pointed at your performance, capturing each moment for later review, the line between ‘rock and roll’ and ‘total shambles’ disappears — and it’s fair to say the ruse of nipping behind a speaker stack for a ‘livener’ like Richards did would now be quickly rumbled by social media detectives.
