We say we like innovation, but we prefer the same old shit
Stephen H. Provost
The author is a former journalist who has written books on rock music, defunct sports leagues, and the Trump presidency, among other topics. All are available in paperback or ebook form on Amazon. Featured photo: Barry Goudreau, left, and Mike Tyson.
Ask Barry Goudreau if labeling matters.
Who’s Barry Goudreau, you ask? Take a listen to a song called “Dreams” off his self-titled 1980 album. You’ll swear it’s a lost track from the group Boston, whose 1976 debut album has sold more than 17 million copies.
There’s a reason for that. Goudreau was a founding member of Boston, as were singer Brad Delp and drummer Sib Hashian, both of whom appear on Goudreau’s disc. By that time, Goudreau had parted ways with Boston and its founder Tom Scholz. But even though Goudreau’s solo release sounded just like Boston, it wasn’t called Boston. And that mattered. A lot.
Goudreau clawed his way to No. 88 on the Billboard charts, stayed there for eight weeks, and then vanished, never to reappear.
Labeling isn’t easy, though. The trick is to make your mark right out of the gate, and then make sure people remember you.
Boston’s follow-up sold less than half the number of records as its debut had (a still-impressive 7 million), but returns kept diminishing after that. After an eight-year recording hiatus, the third album sold 4 million, the fourth went platinum, but two subsequent releases have failed to crack the top 30.
Still, a lot of people still know who Boston is because it made such a big splash initially. It created not just a band, but a brand, together with a distinctive logo — a guitar-shaped spaceship — that made its releases recognizable.
The name’s the thing
Donald Trump followed a similar (downward) trajectory as a developer. His first big project, the Trump Tower, was a triumph, but most of his subsequent ventures failed to live op to that auspicious beginning. A lot of them were downright bombs. But because he’d made such an initial splash, and had created a recognizable name/label, he kept getting second chances.
Among authors, J.K. Rowling has published a number of books, but none of them have approached the popularity of those with “Harry Potter” in the title. That’s not to say she’s done too shabby. Those books paved the way for success with other projects, such as The Ickabog and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (which takes place in the Potter universe).
Would either of those have found the same level of success without Harry Potter? It’s impossible to say. Rowling is a gifted writer, but without the bespectacled boy wizard, she would have had a much bigger challenge ahead of her.
We Americans like to think of ourselves as innovators, people who “think outside the box.” We laud inventors and original thinkers... after they’ve become mainstream. But for the most part, we’re creatures of habit. We like the familiar, the tried and true. Heck, we even like the “tried” better than the untried, even if it’s not so true. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.
This is why bands that haven’t had a hit (or even released an album) in years (or decades) can make a comfy living with seemingly endless reunion and farewell tours, or by playing state and county fairs ad nauseam.
It’s why Mike Tyson, who lost his last professional fight to a journeyman in 2005, could earn millions for a televised exhibition bout 15 years later — which U.S. fans paid $50 a pop to watch on pay-per-view. It wasn’t because he was the best fighter in the world, or even in the top 10. It was because he’s Mike Tyson, and a very long time ago, he was the most feared boxer on the planet.
It’s why more people will watch familiar names like Phil Mickelson, Charles Barkley, Stephen Curry, and Peyton Manning compete in an exhibition golf match than will watch any given PGA Tour event — even thought three of those folks aren’t professional golfers. At least it was for charity. (Confession: I watched it, too.)
It’s why one landmark work can cement an author’s place in the American consciousness... even if that author never writes another novel. J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, and the fictional William Forrester come to mind. (Sean Connery, who played Forrester, admitted that Salinger was the inspiration behind the character in the film Finding Forrester.)
Familiarity breeds success
Once you make an impact, the echoes keep reverberating. But if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, the echoes gradually fade to silence. The same thing happens if a brand or a product fails to connect.
We pretend to celebrate people who offer us original ideas, but that’s disingenuous. What we really want is more formula. We don’t want a new football league. We want the NFL. Just ask the people behind every would-be rival in the past 50 years or so how successful their “innovations” have been. Does anyone remember the “action point” or the comically named “dicker-rod” from the WFL, or “opening scramble” from the original XFL?
How long have we been waiting for the “next Beatles” (Oasis, anyone?) or the “next Led Zeppelin” (thank you, Greta Van Fleet)? And how many original musical acts — with loads of talent but zero exposure — have we missed while holding our collective breaths?
If you don’t make a splash, you can’t make a ripple. That’s the world we live in. As Jesus once observed, those who already have will get more, and the have-nots? Well, even what they think they have will be taken away.
What ever happened to Barry Goudreau? He kept on making music with Delp in groups like Orion the Hunter and RTZ, neither one of which gained much traction even though they sounded a lot like Boston. As a matter of fact, Delp also kept singing with Boston whenever Scholz decided to make an album after an eight- or 10-year gap. But like many others, he couldn’t get over the Beatles: He played in a tribute band called Beatlejuice until his death in 2007.