Rob Thomas' Eyeliner

In 1995 I had the honor of being asked to join a band with a major label record deal. I really had no idea what that meant. It being 1995, there wasn’t really an easy to access online reference explaining the mechanics of record deals. I’d consider myself a reasonably intelligent person, and at the time I was still in an English PhD program at UC, Irvine, yet still I had only the most limited, lizard brain notion of a what record deal was that I think I had subconsciously derived from being exposed to too many Mötley Crüe videos in junior high. So basically a record deal was what made functioning jacuzzis in the backs of limousines possible. I was just a dumb kid from Georgia with a lot of indie band experience, but no real business experience. I think I thought on some level that I had made it.

In retrospect, a more accurate description of what happened to me in 1995 was that I formally made myself creatively responsible for paying back a loan provided to a band by a large corporation. At the time, though, things seemed pretty cool. I got a (small) monthly stipend. I got an equipment bonus. The label paid for the rehearsal studio, and the label paid for recordings. All we had to do at that point was sell records.

Right, that.

The band was good. Their first album was good. It’s just that it didn’t really sell very well. Considering the definition of a record deal as a loan, this leads to a situation where now the label is going to actively try to protect its investment. In other words, there will be meetings. There will be meetings with insufferable middle-aged men who cannot dance. There will be meetings with these same men where the sole focus of the meeting will be how to make the thing you do for art and fun less creatively satisfying and more profitable. You also learn rather quickly that, for reasons probably dating back to the 70s, that 84% of these meetings will happen at El Coyote on Beverly Boulevard.

My very first band meeting was one of these meetings. I was still a little dazzled by the fact that I was even going to one of these meetings. There was also food and beer that I wasn’t paying for, so in my small-time brain, this still seemed like winning. Apparently the label wanted us to consider a manager, or something like a manager — someone who was going to shape our vibe. I honestly don’t know who this person was supposed to be, but there he was, looking very earnest, in a Mexican restaurant, in a flannel shirt and a some kind of fur hat, that was either very slavic or very frontiersman. I think I saw that hat a few times walking around LA in the 90's. Someone was really trying to make that a viable grunge accessory at some point. I say he looked earnest, but it was easily also the face of someone who had just been doing cocaine for four days and they couldn’t unclench their jaw at this point.

Anyway, it was still a bit early for me to be super skeptical, so I was there, ready to listen to this person's strategic plan. I mean, I wanted us to be successful, and this person was clearly prepared to comprehend who were as a band and to amplify and enhance our good parts into extreme college rock fame. He asked us if we knew who Rob Thomas was. Sure, that Matchbox 20 guy. Well, this guy sitting in front of us in this absurd hat was the one who convinced Rob Thomas to wear eyeliner in the video for whatever that ubiquitous single was at the time. Yes, the pinnacle of this person's bona fides was apparently a last-minute, game-changing recommendation to give Rob Thomas some kind of superficial edge as a market differentiator to keep Matchbox 20 from being steamrolled by Hootie and the Blowfish.

I guess it would have been one thing to meet this guy at a party and have him use the phrase, "the eyeliner was my idea" as a fun icebreaker, but in the context of this meeting, it was met with a super long and awkward silence. Then other people in the band laughed. I felt bad for the guy, since he seemed like he was already having a rough week, what with the lockjaw and all. I kept quiet, but really wanted to tell him he stole that idea from Mike Ness anyway. He didn’t take it well. He walked out and left a perfectly good burrito sitting there.

So, I guess remember that if you don’t sell yourself short and insist on asking more of yourself and of the people around you, at a minimum, you might get a free El Coyote burrito out of it.