A Good Record!

"The important thing is to make a good record, because if you make a good record, it doesn't matter what happens. It's going to sell from then on to some degree, even though it doesn't sell anything when it comes out and is a big disappointment to everybody. If it's really good, people are going to want it from then on, and that's the important thing. It might take five or ten years for it to pay off - or it might take twenty years, and you might be dead when it pays off. If it's good, it's going to pay off for somebody, sometime." - Alex Chilton

And this may be true no matter the circumstances of the record's creation. The band might implode after one record, the members might all have bad tempers, and there might be lots of blood, broken glass and stitches. Members of the band might fight often and destroy each other's instruments. They might be sort of snobby, spoiled rich kids who don't really like to tour. They all may be going to psychiatrists and taking drugs, both legal and illegal. They may go into major depressions, and try to commit suicide, and try to erase the master tapes of their first record, but then again, they may go on to make another record as a trio, and if the tapes survive, and the years go by, maybe others will start to recognize that the records are good, the band was actually one of the greats, and other bands will try to emulate their sound. Bands like REM and the Replacments will consider them seminal. Maybe that's sort of the story if you want to be something like a Big Star!