It’s a problem as famous as The Beatles.
The GF (example Yoko Ono) becomes obsessed with the singer and gradually pulls him away from the guys in the band.
In Yoko’s case, she was already a renowned artist. While some blame her for breaking up The Beatles, others say she protected John’s career and legacy, and inspired songs such as Imagine and Jealous Guy.
Jealousy can be part of the problem. It’s natural for the GF (girlfriend) or BF (boyfriend) to want a role in a band they like. But it can become toxic and difficult to escape.
Sometimes the partnership works. A husband-wife team led Montreal-based band Arcade Fire to international success. Fleetwood Mac achieved fame singing about their own domestic disputes. Their projects worked because the Lovers were skillful musicians dedicated to sacrificing countless hours to honing their chops. Regine Chassagne is a jazz singer who plays drums, accordion, xylophone, keyboards and guitar in Arcade Fire. Before joining Fleetwood Mac, Christine McVie was a session keyboardist, and singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks had already produced an album with her BF Lindsey Buckingham. Nicks wrote Dreams and other classics for Fleetwood Mac, and her solo albums were big sellers too.
In many bands, however, the jealous GF or BF can create new challenges, especially in indy bands without managers or agents to shield musicians from friends, fans and lovers.
The downfall follows a predictable pattern. The GF, who didn’t spend years practicing an instrument, tries her hand at karaoke and singing in the shower. But she isn’t ready to sing in a rock band drowning out her vocals. So they only let her sing one or two songs. She can’t hear herself on stage. She doesn’t have the musical ear to know when she’s sharp, flat or off key. But she gets addicted to the attention and applause (even if it’s only polite applause).
To stay on stage, she plays tambourine or shakers. But she doesn’t have the timing or listening ability to keep the beat. Her playing bleeds into recordings and throws off the other guys on stage. The guys look at each other but don’t want to trigger the leader by criticizing his GF.
So she becomes a fixture in the band. Even though she’s lost in a sonic whirlpool, and can’t tell the difference between minor chords and major keys, she positions herself to look like the band’s frontman in videos, blocking the view of the drummer and pushing others into the shadows.
The guys in the band no longer feel like equal members. They can’t communicate openly anymore with the leader, who is mainly focussed on pleasing his GF to avoid punishment. The band devolves into a duet vanity project for the loving couple. The other guys feel shut out. As they say in Thailand: “when the girlfriend moves in, the friends move out.”
Much depends on whether the Diva can deliver. If the Diva can deliver like Amy Winehouse, the other musicians will keep their mouths shut. But if it’s a “Diva who don’t Deliva”, things can turn ugly. The GF, sensing the knives around her, becomes paranoid, obsessive and manipulative. She must stay in control of her lover (the lead singer) at all costs. She won’t let him play without her, because the guys might have too much fun and never let her back on stage. Craving attention, she tries to upstage her lover by creating dramas in front of audiences in order to break his spirit and enslave him. Everybody loses face, and the lovers look like losers (even if they are simply going thru common domestic disputes).
Other musicians start looking for a more peaceful band, or they simply tune out the tantrums because “the show must go on”. But the show often doesn’t go on. Bands who can’t solve the GF problem tend to fall apart. Venues stop hiring them. Band members quit. Projects don’t get done. The GF and BF blame each other. Their domestic spat becomes an all-out war of attrition. In some cases, the leader quits playing music altogether, because music is no longer an escape from reality; it becomes associated with stress and heartache. The GF, meanwhile, refuses to see her role in the band’s demise. She blames her lover, and then takes it out on him at home.
While some bands struggle for years with the GF or BF problem, many successful bands have dealt with it by drawing a clear boundary line between what happens on stage and off stage. Courtney Love (a heavyweight singer and guitarist in her own right) could hang around Kurt Cobain or Billy Corgan, but she could not become a member of Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins. There is a reason why it’s not common to see GFs singing on stage with Bono, Chris Cornell, Anthony Kiedis, Eddie Vedder, Metallica or Oasis. They all sought to avoid the Yoko Ono scenario, even if their partners were integral to their success in business and life.
Others have found their own ways to keeping everybody happy.
Japanese rock icon Asai Kenichi has created jobs for the GFs in his Sexy Stones company. They can’t perform on stage with Asai and his bands Blankey Jet City, Jude and Sherbets. But they can manage his office, interact with fans, handle social media, arrange security and logistics, and sell merchandize. It has created the atmosphere of a family working and then partying together after the show. Everybody respects their roles and boundaries.
In the 1990s, Thai rock icon Rang Rockestra took his beautiful girlfriend into his band as “Sexy Cindy”. She would often sing one set of Latin songs with Rang’s band Rockestra, and then exit the stage to let Rang sing the other two or three sets with the same musicians on stage. It worked. It gave Rang time to greet fans while Cindy was singing, and then it gave Rang maximum spotlight for the rest of the show.
After his albums went platinum in Canada, Big Sugar frontman Gordie Johnson moved to Texas and assigned his wife Alex to manage his career and handle the logistics of organizing tours, booking flights and hotels, paying musicians, and other important work behind the scenes. Anybody dealing with the band was instructed to speak to his wife first. It has worked. Gord and Alex are still together after 30 years, and Big Sugar’s shows as a trio are as good as ever.
Gypsy party band Lemon Bucket Orkestra went to new levels after Mark Marczyk brought his wife Marichka from Kyiv to Toronto to take over as lead singer and accordion player. She stunned audiences at WOMAD and other festivals with her virtuosity and angelic voice singing Ukrainian hymns and folk songs. Mark and Marichka also branched off on their own projects without the other LBO members. As their domestic dispute grew more intense, Mark and the other members eventually found a way to surge forward after Marichka’s separation from Mark and the band. They have solved this problem and other personnel dynamics by maintaining their standards of professionalism (showing up for rehearsals, sound-checks and concerts in uniform and on time) regardless of who is coming in or out of the band.
Ultimately, each band should find a solution that works for them. If the GF or BF can’t really sing or play an instrument, they might be great at photography, videos, multi-tasking, merchandizing or organizing logistics. They might be a socialite who can make (and enforce) business deals. Or they might find happiness being a DJ or joining another band.
Not everybody connected to the band has to be on stage. If a band wants to be awesome, they should only have the most awesome musicians on stage. Sometimes that means finding a way for the GF or BF to support the band in other ways, off the stage.
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