Flak Magazine: Review of Footnote and You Wanna Be A Rock And Roll Star, 02.11.05

They come, they hit, and they're gone: Such is the nature of the one-hit wonder. It's an odd phenomenon — one that in most other industries would simply be called a "bad investment." But because stardom is so coveted, a certain curious notoriety is attached to the one-hit wonder (especially if that "one hit" is a damn catchy tune, spawns the popularization of an entire genre or really, really sucks).

The fact that you can "make it" but not really "make it" is fascinating and makes one-hit wonder status perfect fodder for VH1 filler material. And if there's one thing VH1 has taught us, it's that our hunger for pop culture back-story is insatiable.

As if in response, two recent books written by one-hit musicians pick up where "Where are they now," "Behind the Music" and "Pop-Up Video" leave off. The first, "So You Wanna Be A Rock And Roll Star," is by Jacob Slichter, the drummer from the band that brought the world the song to play when you want people to leave your bar: "Closing Time" by Semisonic.

The second, "Footnote*," is written by Boff Whalley, co-writer and co-singer of the song that couldn't seem to get knocked off the radio: "Tubthumping" by Chumbawamba.

But while these two tales of bite-sized stardom have the same premise (i.e. if you know the song, then you'll want to know the story), the books don't sing the same tune. Slichter's account, based on the road diary he kept while on tour with Semisonic, catalogs each step in the business of making a song a hit. Whalley's tale is more of a memoir: a portrayal of a time (the '80s and early '90s), a place (Northern England) and a group of lads with some instruments. For Slichter, rock and roll fame is the inciting incident, the climax, and (once wonder-dom fades) the denouement; for Whalley, stardom is merely one interesting anecdote (a footnote, perhaps?) to relate along the way to another, broader, story. And in the end, this is where each book fails: Slichter, like Top 40 radio, plays his tune to death, while Whalley, like a follow-up single, leaves the hit-curious reader a bit unfulfilled.

If you want to know what it takes to make an unknown pop song into a hit pop song, Slichter has written a comprehensive guidebook. "So You Wanna..." offers the details, day-to-day routines and straight-up explanations — of everything from television performances to awards show politics — someone curious about the mechanics of hit making might want to know. Slichter explains, for instance, not only that radio stations are corrupt, but how they are corrupt, and most importantly, how to capitalize on this corruption.

In addition, Slichter offers this advice in a tone that is never self-aggrandizing. He's played the fame game, so when he depicts the famous, they are merely that — players in a game, not marketable royalty. When he writes: "Every band needs a sex symbol, and every sex symbol needs a weird-looking guy to stand next to," his candor is welcome — especially since he is the weird-looking guy in question.

Much of what he teaches about the "true nature" of the music business will be welcomed by bitter readers (both those miffed at not being rock stars themselves, and those just generally jaded by the shallow nature of consumer culture). But when he moans about the fact that his semi-talented band is not becoming the next Björk, Radiohead or REM — when he half-blames the record label, the press, the radio programmers and everyone else — the books gets a bit, well, annoying. Yeah, super stardom would be cool, man. But anyone who reads the book is probably impressed enough by one hit and thinks that semi-stardom ain't too shabby.

In "Footnote*," Whalley is more comfortable writing from the semi-star perspective. In the opening, he reminds readers of the Tubthumping Gorilla Doll — the 10-inch toy ape with boxing gloves that when you wind it up, knocks itself over while singing the refrain: "I get knocked down!/ But I get up again!/ You're never gonna keep me down!" And it is with this trinket, this ridiculously marketed toy, that Whalley asks to be identifed: "Remember me this way: a grinning monkey in boxing gloves." And for all its dry sarcasm, this is a fitting request.

Whalley knows Chumbawamba's minutes in fame were barely fifteen, but he is a capable enough writer to make the years before the hit captivating. Whalley gives such a sense of where this quirky and unusual "hit" song came from — a deep, thorough and human sense — that at the end of reading, purchasing the entire Chumbawamba catalogue after a sing-along at the pub (a custom that inspired "Tubthumping") seems like the only viable reaction. Impressively, Whalley's narrative (as it should be called — not "rock memoir") is a piece of literature first (gasp!) and an interesting story about a notoriously fickle industry second.

Even if Whalley's objective was only to explain that Chumbawamba was not just a hit-centered project put together with the sole intention of achieving rock fame; even if his objective was to somehow justify the fact that Chumbawamba, an anarchist, anti-capitalist collective, sold an album five million times (alongside a line of gorilla dolls); even if: He has written an impressive book, and not PR fluff. "Footnote*," as a book published by a small publisher in the UK, will never reach as many hands as "Tubthumping" reached ears — but if it only could. Elegant, sensitive and honest, Whalley's portrayal of the search for authenticity and substantiality in a world drowning in superficiality works. Each vignette about English drinking, European anarchists and frozen clubs in Denmark makes the absence of the specifics of "Tubthumping's" rise on the radio well worth it. Thankfully, it's not gossip, just good writing.

The fact that two former pop-stars' reminiscences about their jaunt in the spotlight could be so different, comes down to one fact: Being a one-hit wonder is simultaneously a sign of success and failure. It's failure if you wanted to be a many-hit wonder, and it's success if you never intended to "hit" at all. The fact that Whalley understands the irony and novelty of his fame, while Slichter bemoans the short-lived nature of his, speaks to the essence of each.

— Joey Rubin (joey at flakmag dot com)