When I was in high school, I saw the glam-rock revivalists The Darkness in concert twice. They were the best. Lead singer and guitarist Justin Hawkins wore flamboyant outfits, crowdsurfed while soloing, hit really high falsetto notes and cursed a bunch in a British accent. It was pure lightning in a bottle and I guzzled it down whole.
But nowadays, what I remember about those shows is how despondent the other members of the band were. Hawkins' brother, Dan, would only stay on stage so much as his guitar cable made him, and never went more than a key change without a lit cigarette in his mouth. Many touring bands these days hire guitar technicians to tune their guitars between songs, but Dan Hawkins literally had someone prepare cigarettes for him to smoke.
I imagine that's why Justin Hawkins—the one in sequins, in case you lost track—was the only one with a wireless guitar cable and a mic stand at the edge of the stage. The Darkness was strictly a one-man show; the rest were filler.
This is nothing new, of course. Pre-Beatlemania, most everything was this way. In the '50s, guys like Ricky Nelson, Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley would hire a band to improve their sound, but it wasn't until the next decade when bands like The Zombies and The Kinks would make the idea of a band a more collaborative process.
The conventional singer-up-front-drummer-in-back lineup was created to showcase an individual, but what happens when the individual doesn't fit the mold of Ricky Nelson? Tommy Lee used to drum while spinning upside-down or floating around, but I tend to think his appeal was less about what he did with his drumsticks than what he did with his, um, other stick.
But there are numerous times when a band's artistic merit outdoes that of its individual members. The group most people put in this category is Grizzly Bear. The quartet play pretty conventional instrumental arrangements, but they feel the need to align themselves in a straight line across the front of the stage. The message: All these dudes are important, they all helped write these songs. Also, none of them are particularly ugly.
Sometimes I think about this band alignment in other contexts too, and one of my favorite examples is the Muppets. Kermit is strumming the guitar and croaking heartfelt love songs. Ms. Piggy is swooning harmonies somewhere over to the side in a sequin dress. Then there's Animal, banging wildly and probably off-tempo on his drum set. Do you really stick a performance as captivating as Animal's behind such a dull acoustic guitar? Yes, because it makes no sense to put the Muppets' most recognizable face anywhere but front and center. It's like a mullet—business up front, party in the back.
The more thought you put into this, the more convoluted it gets. My band in middle school didn't have a singer. Well, we had two singers but neither one of them was any good. One was a better singer, but he had a big wart on his elbow and didn't have many cute lady friends. The other was a worse singer, but he had more cute lady friends. The decision was pretty simple, and the latter served as our singer until we got so bad that eventually not even his cute lady friends wanted to hear us play. We made the switch to the uglier, better singer, but we still didn't sell all the two-song EPs we were handing out for free.
You see, it actually kind of matters. When Dan Bejar tours with The New Pornographers, he's either at the front of the stage or off of it. There is no alternative so long as people's attention has no alternative. The Darkness only wanted you to hear one person, and they set it up that way. Grizzly Bear wants you to hear everyone, and you do. My band didn't want you to hear much of anyone, and barely anyone did. Thank goodness.
