During his long career, Doc McGhee has managed many major hard-rock bands, including Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, KISS, and Skid Row.
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At the recent KISS Kruise: Landlocked in Vegas event, McGhee took part in a number of Q&A panels, during which he shared stories and reflected on the current state of the music business.
Doc helped guide Bon Jovi to superstardom during the 1980s, but he admitted during one panel that he wasn’t sure if the band would’ve found success if it was starting out today. The reason, maintained, was that labels no longer give artists enough time to develop.
“I don’t believe Bon Jovi would have made it, because it took too long for us to get to [the band’s breakthrough third album] Slippery When Wet,” McGhee said, according to Ultimate Classic Rock. “Now today, we don’t have three album deals. We have one single deal. We have 187,000 songs that go to Spotify every day. That’s crazy. And they think that in the next year or two there will be over 300,000 songs [per day].”
McGhee then compared the music business to a marine ecosystem that was no longer thriving because of a flooded market and corporate greed.
“We used to have an ecosystem that allowed everybody to live, like a reef,” he maintained. “The managers could only do so much and eat so many of the fish, and the publishers could only eat so many of the fish… but we kept the reef alive. And now the corporate world has come in here and killed the reef.”
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McGhee lamented that some great young artists might stop making music before finding success due to lack of financial opportunities.
As he noted, “[T]he new kids that come in will say, ‘I can’t make money touring, it’s too expensive. I can’t get on Spotify, I can’t get on anything, because there’s too much clutter, too much information out there.’ So what we’re going to do is lose the next Bob Dylan, the next Mötley Crües, the next AC/DCs, the next Led Zeppelins, because they’re going to say, ‘I can’t make money doing this, so I gotta go work for my Dad.’”
Looking at one of the other well-known artists Doc managed, Mötley Crüe, he noted that he thinks that group would’ve been successful had they started out today.
“I think Mötley Crüe would have happened because of how infectious that was, and how kids connected,” he said.
McGhee also mentioned one current young rock artist who he thinks has a chance to make it big.
“The one I’m hoping for, I don’t know him, I have nothing to do with him, is Yungblud,” he said. “I think he has that connection piece to people.”
(Photo by Paul Natkin/WireImage)
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