There's nothing like a little antagonism between performers to stimulate the press and get music sales moving. Shift offers a fight card to the one aspect of the music business that never fails to spill out of the ring: inter-artist rivalries, real and created.
The icon, the young lion, the showdown
Twenty-six years ago this month a young man walked on to the Vancouver Jazz Festival stage expecting recognition and instead got what-for. The young man was Wynton Marsalis, and in 1986 he was king. He'd won five Grammy awards for both his jazz and classical recordings and was all over the media as the man who was bringing millions of new listeners to both genres. He was 25 years old.
Miles remained unimpressed. In 1986 Miles Davis was in the midst of a comeback, but, typically, it was nothing like what anyone had hoped or expected it to be: a completely electric band and sets that including long, amorphous jams and Cyndi Lauper covers. He had no time for a man half his age playing music he'd abandoned decades ago, and he said so.
When both were booked for the Vancouver Jazz Festival that summer (with the city jammed with Expo 86 visitors) the stage was set for a showdown. Unfortunately for Wynton, though, that stage belonged to Miles. When Wynton walked unannounced, hoping to show his stuff, Miles told him to "Get the #%*! off the stage!" When Wynton stayed and began to play, Miles stopped the band and glared the interloper away as only Miles could.
Five years later Miles was dead, and now, these twenty-six years later Wynton is the authority figure he once sought to impress, but the incident remains a defining moment.
The good, the bad, the invented
Pop music's most famous rivalry captured such an elemental divide that decades after the dust settled it still turns up in games, books, songs and mostly, as a reliable ice-breaker question at parties. Which band is better: The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?
It's too bad the rivalry didn't really exist.
The lads got on quite well, thank you very much, and on at least one occasion shared material and sang on each other's songs. Still, the idea of one versus the other was too good a story to pass up and the marketing departments, the fans and eventually the boys, themselves decided to run with it, even long after it was clear they were playing the wrong parts.
Yes, Paul was nice and cute and concerned about the seals and all, and yes Keith Richards falls out of a palm tree every now and then, but if there ever was a bad boy born to the role it was the smart-ass troublemaker John Lennon, not the son-of-a-Tory teacher Mick Jagger. And why did the Stones supposedly incorrigible bassist Bill Wyman suddenly retire? Because he was tired. And what about the drummers? In 1991, cut-from-granite Charlie Watts revealed that what he really wanted to do was tour a big band/crooner show that made Bing Crosby sound like a nervous teenager. Since then, he's been named one of the world's best-dressed men. Meanwhile, fifty years on, all Ringo wants to do is rock, and keeps doing just and only that with whomever he can convince to hit the road with him year after year after year.
Still, back at the beginning, the Beatles, suits and haircuts and all, got there first and stole the good boy spots, so there was nothing for Mick and Keef to do but raise bloody hell and pretend to be the kinds of boys parents would hate and daughters would never tell them about.
Someone should tell them they can stop now.
Enjoy a pleasantly awkward interview and performance with Charlie Watts from 1991, during a break from the Stones. The performance features his jazz quintet:
The egos, the swords, the button
In 1703 a 19-year-old George Friedrich Handel had a good gig in London's Goose Market Theatre. He was directing the orchestra from the keyboard for Johann Mattheson's opera, Cleopatra. Matheson was a good friend, but he was testing Handel's patience. It wasn't just that he chewed the scenery each night as the heroic lead in his own opera, but after he died on stage (finally!) in the last act he'd run offstage, change into his conductor's clothes and arrive in front of the orchesta just in time to take over for Handel and hog all the applause.
Eventually, Handel refused to move. A fist fight ensued, and when that didn't resolve anything, the two (followed by an audience that was surely thinking it had really gotten its money's worth) spilled into the street to settle the dispute with swords.
Mattheson was, as you might expect from his on-stage heroics, built like a leading man. Handel wasn't. He is universally described as having been at the very least corpulent, if not fat and especially "unwieldy in his motions." Things were looking very grim, indeed, for Handel when his muscular friend saw an opening on what was, after all, a large target, and lunged. Instead of piercing flesh, though, Mattheson's sword struck a decorative brass button on Handel's tunic, and deflected away. The close call was enough to bring both men to their senses and they called it a night.
Mattheson went on to a storied career as a theorist and diplomat and writer, while Handel lived to create some of the most beloved music there is. The two eventually patched things up, and when Mattheson wrote his Encyclopaedia of Music he included a lengthy article on his old friend and one-time foe, but still, the entry on his own life and achievements was four times as long.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
We know there are countless other stories of great inter-artist and intra-band rivalries. What have we missed? Alagna vs. La Scala? Brahms vs. Wagner? The Eagles vs. themselves? Take your best shot in the comment box below. We won't tell either of the warring parties who told us the real story.
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