If Your Mangement Plan Is To Try And Get a Record To Blow Up On Tiktok You Don,t Have a Plan

Published At: 28 April 2022 , 12:31 PM

Their lawyer called me and asked me if I’d take a meeting [following the band’s split with long-term manager Pat Magnarella in 2017]. I was like, about what?! And he said, ‘Well, they’re thinking about managing themselves, but I’ve told them, even LeBron James needs a coach.’

My view was that it sounded like the best meeting ever, because I was such a huge Green Day fan, but, equally, I had nothing to lose; they’re gonna manage themselves anyway, so that’s cool, I’ll just be myself.

“MOST PEOPLE WOULD PAY A LOT OF MONEY TO DO MY JOB. BECAUSE MY JOB IS TO HANG OUT WITH BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG AND MILEY CYRUS AND SIA AND LORDE AND RIVERS CUOMO…EVERY DAY! THAT’S MY ACTUAL JOB!”

I mean, all of this… honestly, every day, I pinch myself, because my job is hilarious [laughs].

It’s amazing, you know; my job is to hang out with and talk to Billie Joe Armstrong and Miley Cyrus and Sia and Lorde and Rivers Cuomo…every day! That’s my actual job! Most people would pay a lot of money to do that job!

The broad strokes of management, I think, are still the same: make great records, have a great strategy, help inspire artists, and just figure out how to get things through.

Like, where’s the side door? If your management plan right now is to try and get [your] record to blow up on TikTok, you don’t have a plan.

100 percent. So many artists get shot out of a canon, and not everyone is built for that. Miley, she’s built to compete, she’s like an Olympic athlete in that regard. It’s incredible how hard she can go.

Whereas with other artists, the pressure’s too much. You have to treat everyone as an individual and tailor everything around them, with their best interests at heart, in every way.

There’s a Fall Out Boy record, Folie à Deux [2008], which is about the madness of two people, like when one person is sick and the other person feels the pain. I think about that a lot, and it’s so true of how management is, because when the artist is in a dark place, then, yeah, it definitely hurts.

I think perhaps it’s easier to have a hit and harder to break an artist, just because of the way the playlist ecosystem can blow up a track really quickly.

You know, if your song works on playlisting, it can really go fast – but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ever gonna have another one

I definitely understand why people do it, especially older artists. And we’ve all seen the catalog values go up and up. But we’d rather artists bet on themselves to have their success continue.

Merck [Mercuriadis, founder of Hipgnosis] is one of the leaders in that area, and I really liked how he’s bringing back sort of like the old maverick music business guy; I think that’s fun, regardless of the business model. It feels a lot more fun than data analysis.

I don’t think it’s snake oil, no. But for me it’s music-adjacent. I think it’s incredible for digital artists. Because before you couldn’t really build a fan base. You could do merch designs for an artist or whatever, but there was no way to be a rock star of digital art. Now there is, and that’s amazing.

But for me, so far, in music, there hasn’t been anything super-innovative or interesting. You know, selling shares in a song and all that stuff is fine, but you could do that without the blockchain.

I don’t know that most artists are that excited about that. I think in terms of Web3 they’re more excited about the idea of the big audience in gaming. We did a Weezer Island in Fortnite and that was great.

With NFTs, we’ve done a couple of things, and we have one coming that’s super exciting, but they’re not music-based; they’re art-based.

There’s Hella Mega, the biggest and best tour that we’ve ever done [featuring Green Day, Fall Out Boy and Weezer], which is heading to Europe. And then everybody’s working on music.

We have four Weezer albums coming, based on the different sounds and moods of the different seasons of the year, with spring being the first one. [Weezer’s SZNZ series kicked off with the release of Spring in March.]

Green Day are heading to London to record some new music. There’s a Lorde tour starting next month. I think all the tickets sold out like the first day we put them on sale, but then it’s been like a year of waiting because of COVID, so that’s going to be really special.

I have the best week ever lined up in the UK later this year: I have the Hella Mega tour, I have Alanis [Morissette] at the O2 and I have Lorde at Glastonbury and the Ally Pally [Alexandra Palace]. It’s my triumphant return to London!

Wow, that’s hard… The first was fall Fall Out Boy at a sold-out arena in Buffalo, with all the kids singing along. This was kind of before they were mainstream, and there were 15,000 people singing every word. I just thought, man, this little band is doing it for all the other little bands who never got past the basement.

And there have been so many since then. Like with Sia, when she made the Chandelier video, I called her and she said, ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever done.’ I said, ‘The best video?’ She said, ‘No, the best thing. Ever.’ And then she sent it to me and I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is gonna change everything.’ And it did!

Also, definitely Melodrama [Lorde, 2017] getting nominated for a Grammy was a big one. Because she was coming off Royals [from 2013’s Pure Heroine] being one of the biggest songs of all time.

Everybody was like, ‘Where’s the hit? You don’t have a hit on this record’. And that record [Melodrama] is now so beloved. Basically, if you can avoid the sophomore slump, you can do anything you want. And if you can’t, you probably won’t have a career; you’ll be singing Royals for the rest of your life. So that was big.

And then more recently, Hella Mega, for sure. These are three headline bands who risked a lot to be on the same bill. But from show one, it has been incredible.

I don’t know about advice, but what I would tell them is that if I have a great song, my job is easy; if I have a good song, my job is impossible.

There’s too much good music in the world; aim for great.