Just as a creative career needs serious business back up to suceed, your creativity needs support too. People are seduced by the "great man" or "great woman" narrative that suggests one person, against all odds, alone created something or made a movement happen. In truth no one moves a culture forward without collaborators of various kinds, no matter how fabulously talented they are.
You probably don’t know who Maxwell Perkins is, but you know the names of the people he signed for their first novels and edited throughout their careers – F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe. Perkins, working for Charles Scribner’s Sons publishing house, edited some of the 20th centuries most important novels, helping Fitzgerald shape the glittering prose of ‘The Great Gatsby,’ finding the right rhythm for Hemingway’s tightly constructed sentences, and wrestling Wolfe’s mammoth manuscripts into publishable books.
Prince had an incredible body of work. Even his later, less disciplined albums, always contained highly musical songs or arrangements. Yet he had his greatest commercial success during the mid-80s when guitarist Wendy Melvoin and keyboardist Lisa Coleman formed the core of his Revolution band. Michael Jackson sang on hit records from before his adolescence right on through to his death at fifty-one, but there’s no question the trilogy of albums that Quincy Jones produced (Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad) are his artistic apex.
What other people add to the mix of a gifted artist is sometimes quantifiable. Sometimes it’s a bit more mysterious. The duo of Daryl Hall and John Oates were consistent hitmakers in the ‘80s. On all the hits, be it “Maneater” or “One on One” or “You Make My Dreams Come True,” Hall was the lead singer. They shared co-writing credit on most of the hits, but because Oates never sang lead people wondered what he contributed. The question is answered by the fact Hall, who has released six solo albums since 1980, only had one single ever reach the pop top thirty without Oates. Whatever Oates contributed, whether it was 50% or 10%, it made a difference.
Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones and one of the most charismatic front men in pop music history, has consistently flopped as a solo artist. While the Stones have been recording since 1963, Jagger didn’t do his first solo album until 1985, the modestly successful ‘She’s the Boss.’ But the three follow up projects (‘Primative Cool’ in 1985, ‘Wandering Spirit’ in 1993, ‘Goddess in the Doorway’ in 2001) made no impact on pop culture despite the Rolling Stones remaining one of the top concert attractions in the world.
Missing the alchemy of Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and the other Stones, Jagger is just another wanna be British pop star.
Stevie Wonder had one of the greatest runs of musical excellence in history. From 1972 to ’76 Wonder released five albums (‘Music of My Mind’, ‘Talking Book’, ‘Innervisions’, ‘Fullfillingness First Finale’, ‘Songs in the Key of Life’) filled with classic songs, great singing, innovative arrangements and new sounds. At the start of this incredible run many those new sounds were created with the input of Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, who were pioneers in the develop of the Moog synthesizer and co-producers on all the albums except ‘Songs’. There’s no question of Wonder’s musical mastery. He made music in a variety of styles, absorbing influences from soul, rock, jazz, folk and funneling it through his fertile imagination. Most of the tracks on these albums, from drums to bass to keys, were played by Wonder himself. But Cecil and Margouleff were the technical wizards who allowed Wonder to find sounds that expanded the sonic landscape, not just of his albums, but all pop music.
The artist at the center of any project has to know how to value the contribution of others. People who don’t give credit, either publicly or through financial renumeration, will eventually alienate key members of their squad. The self-centered artist will destroy a vibrant creative eco- system through ego. Now all collaborations have an expiration date. The supporting talent helping the main talent on any given project have their own dreams and will eventually want to create their own body of work. That’s how it should be. Nasty endings are usually because of bad business dealings that end with beautiful creative teams in a hail of lawsuits and hard feelings.
So, if you are working with folks and what you create his good, please ask yourself a question: Is it me or is it us?