the less time a band has on its hands, the more quickly it will 'grow'. Reading the schedules of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones from the early to mid-1960s makes me wince. They played so many shows and made so many records in such a short space of time that they could only improve as writers and musicians. Nowadays bands' schedules are also hectic, but are taken up more with the kind of mind-numbing PR duties that are perhaps a hinderance to creative growth.

Is it not fair to say that if your debut album is unsuccesful you're more likely to be dropped now than you would've been a few decades ago?

I think that's what people are normally referring to when they talk of bands not being given time to develop.

But your 'Historical Research' is hardly exhaustive, now is it? It is a received wisdom, but it's going to need more than that to disprove it. If I were to cite, oh lets say Elbow as an example of an act who were dropped more than once before 'making it' as proof that the 'received wisdom' is correct, would that be enough? Or would you want a bit more evidence?

I think it's down to the perception that while acts like the Beatles got in thousands of hours of live performance before getting a sniff of a recording contract, it's not unreasonable in 2010 for a band with the right contacts to play their first gig in front of six journalists and a hoard of A&R men on a Tuesday night in Camden.

were dropped by EMI two years ago..........

Blur and Radiohead were allowed to make two shit albums before going on to greatness, mind

...and delivered In The City and (in particular) This Is The Modern World, I'm not sure they'd have been given the opportunity to make All Mod Cons.

Point of order on Elbow: they were signed to Island in 1997 and dropped before they delivered a note, in wake of the Universal takeover of PolyGram.

I don't think it was the case that record companies gave the bands time after they'd got their signature, but that bands played together and remained unsigned for a longer time than appears to happen today.
I can recall from time to time the music press in the 70's and 80's touting the names of and running feartures on hot new bands and the subsequent courting of them by various labels.
Roxy Music, Dr Feelgood and Siouxsie & the Banshees are three that spring to mind. There are probably many more.
I'm not quite old enough to have firsthand knowledge of the rise of Free, but they were a prime case of a band building a following on the live circuit, honing their act and having a decent amount of material before going into the studio.

In today's market, would Bruce have got away with selling 35,000 (or whatever it was) of Greetings From Asbury Park NJ, on a major?

Kate Bush. Her case was highly unusual, and the kid-glove treatment afforded to her was in large part due to the exceptional combination of her youth and her talent. Who's to say that if another once-in-a-generation precocious genius came along, s/he wouldn't also be given this fabled time to grow? Doesn't mean it was ever the norm.

Got to make records pretty-much because he was Bono's mate. Island Records' marketing department were under orders directly 'from Chris' to throw everything they had at Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves and Shag Tobacco despite both being turds of some steam and hiss.

But I'm sure I've read when Jeff Buckley was signed (to Columbia?) it was as a "heritage artist", i.e. one the label believed would have a long career and although would never sell by the bucketload would always have a core of fans a la Dylan.

Tragic circumstances obviously stopped that ever coming to fruition, but I don't know if labels these days would be willing to take such a long-term bet on a relative unknown.

Reading the above posts it strikes me that it's not so much the labels not giving bands 'time to grow' anymore, so much as the labels in question not lasting more than a year or two before merging/collapsing. And (I'm blindly guessing here) maybe people stayed in their jobs (at the labels) longer.

So a Springsteen equivalent nowadays could see his 'John Hammond' disappear for a new job in sales, his 'CBS' get bought by 'Greggs the Bakers' and himself quietly dropped in a re-shuffle.

consumer-oriented culture these days which has allowed greater dominance of aggressive capitalist policies over collective/collaborative business cultures. Businesses are run by bean-counters who are there to maximise shareholder dividends and not to develop businesses "organically" whereas in the past there would be more people at the higher echelons who were there for the product not the profit margin.

The music industry is no different in this respect. It feels these days as if acts are signed to reach a pre-determined consumer with a recognised pre-disposition and disposable income level to buy product from that type of act whereas in the past acts were signed because someone at the label said they sounded good.

Once at the label the whys and wherefores of an act's contractual fortunes are probably as random now as they were then, it's just that we're more attuned to and savvy of the capitalist machine than we were back in the day.

with Kasabian was despite the pressure for success NOW they have produced 3 very different albums and winning a Brit last night this far into their career is relevant. I have a hopeless memory but The Darkness 1 album Brit, 2nd Album flop, no 3rd album is an example of what I was trying to say. The Jam 1 album success, 2nd album very dodgy, 3rd Album great and the rest is history. So while Weller would undoubtedly had solo success eventually Justin Hawkins disappears into obscurity, thank the lord, bad example but I'm not starting this again.
Perecption? Probably with no real evidence to back it up BUT Kasabian to me are following a more traditional route to success which should guarantee them longevity over The Kooks, Kate Nash, Pigeon Detectives, and others of that ilk that WERE overhyped 1 album wonders (there's a thread for someone). What DO people want from a noughties rock band? (there's another thread)

...again not scientifically proven but after the initial cash in single for Christmas his winners don't seem to produce an album for a year - admittedly in time for the next season TV show.

because back in the 1960 / 70's the business model was, "Records make lots of money for artists and labels but tours lose money; however, you have to tour to get your name out there and encourage the punters to buy the record so go out on tour, lose money or maybe break even on the gigs but make it on the consequent record sales."

Today, of course, record sales make 2 tenths of nothing for all but the mega-sellers while touring and merchandise rakes in the money. So in a way it's a reversal of the old model: why bust a gut making records when the money is earned in the concert hall? (Especially when punter reaction tends to be, "Play some old!")

Elton John made umpteen records in the '70s because he was on an exceptional creative streak and they're still purchased today. Caravan might have been on a creative streak but their sales suggest it's not one the public particularly liked and it perhaps indicates that the only way they could keep going was to keep bashing out records for the faithful to buy.

that Ahmet Ertegun nurtured Neil Young et al., although maybe his sales were pretty respectable post-'Ggoldrush' , so that would have justified it.

Other artists that come to mind as being given 'time' before achieving commercial success. (Both by Island/Chris Blackwell) are Robert Palmer and (solo) Steve Winwood.

Mr Hepworth's original posting is right in as much as (Kate Bush excepted) there probably was never "a time when record companies used to give bands loads of money and then leave it to them when they delivered their records. That way they were allowed to mature like fine wine."

But artists like Prince and U2 were given a fair bit of time to develop into the truly huge artists they became, surely?

come from stories told by those on labels like Warner Bros - major labels able to nurture talent? However, these stories tend to be told by those that benefited? Randy Newman probably didn't sell a whole lot of records (would hardly be a huge number now) but it was to Warners’ benefit to have him around because a) his songs were being picked up and recorded by other artists and thus giving him a profile and b) that profile made the record company look good, providing some benefit. The same might be said for Dylan - I'm not suggesting he's not a profitable artist, but a number of artists have said they wanted to sign to Columbia because it was Bob Dylan's label, a factor that would count heavily in his favour if his balance sheet wasn’t looking too good.

The few artists that were allowed to mature, or given space to make good records that may not have sold a truckload are vastly outnumbered by those that were given a good sized advance that was never seen again, regardless of how much support may have been offered. The problem is that "things ain't what they used to be" always makes a better story, particularly when you compare "classic" music periods to today. Isn't the argument just A&R vs Marketing looked through a prism of purism?

with Mr Hepworth.

If you actually think about it - golden times were never that golden. Golden Wonder crisps weren't that good. Goldfrapp is better than Goldie Lookin Chain - who were about the same level of good or otherwise as Golden Earring. But "Silence is Golden" by The Tremeloes is a tremendous record.

However, it's not the record comapnies who give people less time. It's us - because we've got less time and many more things to do in the time we do have. The range of entertainment options is far greater, the amount of available inventory infintely greater, the time we are prepared to spend with things much shorter.

As usual, David B... - no wait - what I meant to say was that - as usual - the "fault" if that it be - lies with ourselves. The rekkid companies - or digital unit suppliers - simply follow the beat of the age.

..out of studio pre-production than there used to be (touched on in the podcast as I recall) but there can be no doubt that record companies were way less conservative in the 70s than they later became. It may be a cliche that the music men were replaced by number-crunchers, but it's a cliche borne of truth..that's why the majors (such as they now are) are the last place you'd look for interesting music.
Labels like Harvest, Vertigo, Deram, Island etc may have been expected to make money from their big brothers, but they were run my fanatics like Mike Vernon,Malcolm Jones and (on the periphary)Joe Boyd, who all continually signed interesting, but uncommercial artists.

IRS, or more specifically, Miles Copeland, bankrolled REM for years. Contrary to popular belief they were not shifting bucketloads of records and it was only when they binned IRS in favour of Warners - who could guarantee them the worldwide distribution they were after - that they really took off.

Not many know that Copeland effectively paid for them out of his own pocket because he believed in them, and for much longer than many labels would have done, if they would have bothered at all.

It took IRS a long time to get over that one.