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Patience that no ticket buyer would ever see
1883 Magazine has a promo piece on a book called Once A King, Now A Prince by one Ira Blacker. It is a memoir of a talent agent, who at some point in time was representing Deep Purple, among others.
The public image of rock and roll was built from photographs: singers under spotlights, guitarists leaning into amplifiers, limousines, hotel rooms, screaming fans, and the appearance that success came from talent colliding with destiny. Talent was essential, but destiny usually had an office, a telephone, a contract, and several people arguing over who controlled the next move.
That is the world I describe in Once A King, Now A Prince. It is a rock and roll book written from the agency side of the desk, where careers were negotiated, tours were assembled, egos were managed, and decisions made in a few minutes could follow an artist for years.
Other realities were less comic. Deep Purple could deliver performances that helped define an era, while dealing with Ritchie Blackmore required patience that no ticket buyer would ever see. Rory Gallagher was one of the most genuine people I represented, a world-class guitarist with an appetite for performing that required an agent capable of keeping him on the road. Nazareth were not yet kings when I began working with them, but I treated them as though they mattered because careers are often shaped by whether someone with power behaves as if an artist has a future before that future becomes obvious.
Read more in 1883 Magazine and check the book on its own website.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
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