Nick Duerden: what happens to pop stars after the hits dry up?

UK journalist and author Nick Duerden has spent years interviewing the most famous musicians on the planet and believes, without exception, they are at their most interesting when they've peaked and the spotlight has faded.

Duerden interviewed 50 musicians who experienced fame and lived to tell the tale for his latest book Exit Stage Left: The Curious Afterlife of Pop Stars.

Some, like Natalie Merchant, found surprising new careers, others like David Gray were able to keep making music on their own terms. Then there are the members of the likes of  Tenpole Tudor who watched their groups fade quickly from popular memory.

The book, however, is not about failure, Duerden told Kim Hill.

“I don’t see this book as talking to people about failure, if anything it was more of a celebration, these are people who haven't faded away after 15 minutes. Yes, the spotlight may have swung elsewhere. But they're still going. They're still making music, they're still touring.”

Many artists were almost freed after the initial flush of success faded, he says. David Gray being one.

“He was fascinating, because he was anything but an overnight success. As he told me, White Ladder was his last gasp attempt, he hadn't managed to crack the UK market.

“And, so he had the idea for White Ladder, and he funded it himself, released it on his own label. It picked up a head of steam in Ireland, and then had that vanishingly rare occurrence where it was word of mouth.

“And it then took off in the UK, and then abroad. And then all over the world.”

Once the spotlight retreated Gray still had an audience, Duerden says, despite subsequent album releases selling many fewer than White Ladder which sold 7 million worldwide.

“I'm sure he was a little stung when the albums that followed only sell 100,000 copies instead of a million.

“But I came away with the sense that he was actually really quite satisfied with the fact that there was a discernible, global David Gray audience out there to listen to what he put out.

“And he didn't have to play that pop game anymore. He was able to step off the carousel.”

KLF, an avant-garde pop group co-founded by Bill Drummond, didn’t wait for their audience to move on, he says.

“KLF were unusual in 1992, at the very peak of their commercial powers, they split up, they deleted their back catalogue, and they disappeared.”

Drummond believed that once your moment in the sun was over it was time to stop, he has no time for the nostalgia circuit, Duerden says.

“Drummond and the KLF are highly unusual and brilliant since they did exactly what he told me all bands should do - die young and leave a good-looking corpse.”

Natalie Merchant had huge success with her band10,000 Maniacs, went solo and was even more successful, he says. She now volunteers as an early childhood educator in New York state.

“Natalie Merchant was someone who fundamentally never wanted to be famous. She was a good singer, and she wrote beautiful songs, and she wanted to do that - fame found them [10,000 Maniacs].

“And the bigger they got, the more she realised she was becoming a marketable commodity for a record company, desperate to make as much money out of her as possible.

“So, after a while of doing this, because obviously it's an interesting thing to happen in anyone's life, she quit, and she decided to become a solo artist. And she knew that once she stepped away from the band, she will be far less successful. But this suited her.”

But it didn’t work out that way, he says.

“The trouble with Natalie Merchant was that she was actually very good at what she did. So, her debut solo album called Tiger Lily came out in 1995, it sold 5 million copies.

“Suddenly, she found herself an even bigger commercial proposition than the band she left had been. So suddenly she was on the treadmill again.”

But a life of constant touring wasn’t for her, he says

“She told me she liked being in a small town, where the postmaster knew her name, or the lady at the corner shop knew her name.

“Eventually, she did stop altogether. She had a young child at the time, so it suited her to spend more time at home. And she ended up volunteering as an arts and crafts teacher for underprivileged children in New York State, which is where she lives.”

Suzanne Vega had massive success in the mid 1980s going very much against the commercial grain.

“She was very unadorned at a moment in time in the pop landscape, certainly in the UK in the US, where it was all shoulder pads and Madonna and Cyndi Lauper and Duran Duran, I mean it was lights and camera and action and everything was flashy.

“And she was very pale under a single spotlight with an acoustic guitar, singing ‘Marlene on the Wall’ and I was just utterly hypnotised by her and how out of sorts she both looked and sounded and that's why I thought she was so incredibly special.”

Again her success gradually waned and she found herself not selling out the large venues she once had, he says.

“She became unfortunately a 'victim' of her own success, but I use victim in inverted commas because she went on to have precisely the career she wanted.

“By 1990 she was on to her third album. And so she embarked upon her biggest tour to date, thing is the audience had moved on. So, she was playing to half empty halls when the last tour she had been selling out everywhere."

Vega had created a musical trend and now there were earnest singer-songwriters all over the charts.

“The record industry did what the record industry always does, they get look alikes and sound alikes.

“Tanita Tikaram was on the scene, and Martika and Sinead O'Connor, and a few years later, Jewel and Alana Morrisette and Fiona Apple.

“And so suddenly this corner of the music world that she dominated was flooded with singer-songwriters. So the audience had moved on to see these new artists.”

But Vega was a canny operator.

“She realised that in the three or four years that she'd had as a major success, she built up a significant fan base, who would probably follow her in whatever guise she decided to do next.

“And that's precisely what she's done for the last 30 years. She keeps on releasing albums, she recently had a Broadway project that was hugely praised and got terrific reviews. And she's never stopped. She's never stopped working as a successful singer-songwriter.

“She can play venues all over the world, maybe not as big as in 1986-87. But she sells out everywhere she plays. And when I asked her whether she would like another hit, she said, 'Well, I wouldn't say no, but I'm certainly not going to chase it'.”

Sometimes even a one hit wonder can sustain a career, he says. A case in point being Tenpole Tudor fronted by Edward Tudor-Pole and ‘Swords of a 1000 Men’.

“One, summer he was touring with his band. They hadn't had any hits yet. And his band was doing his head in so he hid in the toilet of the tour bus, took his guitar in there. I don't know how it fit, but he says it did.”

The song ‘Swords of a 1000 Men’ was the result.

“He thought, oh my god, I've just written a hit single. So he knew that he had just created something that could outlast him. And he was right.

“The song was a huge hit. There was a huge pressure immediately afterwards to follow it up. He was entirely confident, he could do it. He was misplaced in that confidence, he couldn't, the band split up because they all immediately hated one another. He thought he could go off and do it by himself, he couldn't.

“He went back to acting, found he didn't like it. He almost landed the part of Withnail in Withnail and I. He got down to the last two and Richard E Grant got it.

“And so, he was a struggling actor and a former pop star who'd had less than 15 minutes of success. And then in his mid-40s he was married, he had a child, and he needed to earn money.

“The nostalgia circuit was suddenly picking up. So, he thought people haven't forgotten 'Swords of a 1000 Men', I'll see what happens.”

Tudor-Pole continues to earn a living from his one-off pop hit, Duerden says.

“He has clung on to that song the way Kate Winslet clung on to that door in the end of Titanic, and it kept him afloat. And I just think what a, what an optimistic story that he didn't quite get the career he wanted. But that three minutes of magic has sustained him from his 20s to his 60s.”