Want to Be a Rock Star? Take a Class at UCLA on the Subject

The Los Angeles rock club scene, most longtime survivors would agree, is not a place for casual career moves. It is a scene filled with much tension and confusion for the uncountable hundreds of young rock bands that flow through the Sunset Strip and elsewhere each year hoping some record company might notice them.

Doug Fieger knows this well, after more than a decade of experience at every level of success and hardship that the local music industry has to offer. As leader of the late-1970s power-pop quartet the Knack, Fieger and his band-mates were launched from Hollywood club gigs to sudden national popularity with a debut album and single that topped the sales charts for several weeks. More success soon followed, but within just a few years it was all over.

The band split up in 1981, and its individual members were left again to find audiences and record-label interest on the same scene that had treated them so well before.

“You’re expected to happen full-blown here,” Fieger said recently. “There’s not a lot of time to develop. You’re under a microscope, and that’s one of the problems. But if you are really good, the record companies are down the block and they don’t have to fly out to see you.”

Fieger will offer this sort of commentary and advice as one of the guest speakers at a new UCLA Extension class beginning Tuesday on how to survive on the local music scene. The 10-week course--titled “On the Cutting Edge of the Contemporary Music Scene: Succeeding as a Musician in Los Angeles”--is being taught by Kenny Kerner, senior editor of Music Connection magazine and a 20-year veteran of the music business.

With a career that began in the New York offices of Cashbox magazine, Kerner has produced albums for the pop acts Kiss and Gladys Knight, later working within the industry in public relations and management before returning to music journalism. In the course of his work, he said, he often spends time on the phone with would-be rock stars desperate for advice on what to do next. The new course, for which the fee is $295, evolved from what Kerner said was a desire to put all this information into an organized format.

“The aim is basically to help these kids survive as musicians in Los Angeles, to save them years of futility and hardship and mental anguish and red tape,” Kerner said. “There are a lot of bad people in the business, a lot of people who are in it only for themselves. I just want to share some of the right things for a change with these kids.”

The UCLA Extension catalogue lists members of such popular rock groups as Kiss and Poison as possible guest speakers during the course. Kerner said such appearances depend entirely on the availability of these performers, who might well be busy recording or away on tour on a given night. But he said his intention is to welcome at least one noteworthy guest at every class meeting.

Besides any recognizable pop stars, industry experts in performance, management, publicity, and concert promotion will speak and answer questions. Kerner said in-class role-playing will play a large part in the curriculum.

“I wish somebody had given me some pointers,” Fieger said of his own early days. “I really had to stumble around in the dark here.”

The Knack has been together and working toward winning back its earlier popularity since reuniting for a benefit gig at the Roxy in 1987. And on Jan. 28 the band will release “Serious Fun,” its first album in a decade, on Charisma Records.

In the interim, Fieger said, he’s watched as the Los Angeles rock scene has transformed itself over and again. When the Knack, with its black suits and skinny ties, was the subject of a bidding war among a dozen record labels, punk rock ruled the Strip. Several clubs since have opened and closed, catering to a variety of tastes and styles, with the trend in recent years pointed more toward commercial hard rock.

In spite of all that, he added, “I think the formula for generating excitement is the same.”

Before Kerner’s course, Fieger had already spoken to another UCLA class focused on the crucial details of contracts and deals in the music industry. And the singer-songwriter spoke with some amusement of how rock, once a pointedly rebellious musical form, is now part of a major university’s extension schedule.

“It’s become formalized, part of the culture,” Fieger said. “When I started, it was this fringe thing that people said wasn’t going to last. Now it’s the music of Saturday morning cartoons.”

That absorption by the mainstream, and the inevitable commercialization that accompanied it, is something that Kerner said has sidetracked many new bands battling in local clubs. Instead of developing a distinct sound that reflects their own personalities, bands now, perhaps more than ever, aim their music in whatever direction is rumored to be popular with record companies, he said.

“Bands today get together a set of songs, go out and after two months they’ve got the record company coming down, and they’re not nearly ready,” Kerner said. “They’re getting lawyers, they’re getting managers and they’re taking care of every part of the business except the part they are in control of: their songs and stage presentation.

“Nobody owes you a record deal just because you’ve been around a year or two. This is something you’ve got to earn. And they don’t want to earn it, they want it yesterday.”

Kerner said he hopes to get this and many other points across to the hopeful musicians expected to enroll in his class.

Leading this course is not necessarily something Kerner would have predicted. He abandoned his own English major at New York’s Hunter College after almost four years, leaving the school before graduating. But the information he has gathered in more than 20 years of studying the industry from several angles could be invaluable to a young, struggling musician.

“Somebody’s got to do it, man,” Kerner said. “These guys could be the next super-groups. That’s the reason I do it, for that kind of satisfaction.”

“On the Cutting Edge of the Contemporary Music Scene: Succeeding as a Musician in Los Angeles,” a 10-week course taught by Kenny Kerner, is offered Jan. 15 through March 19 by the UCLA Extension. The cost is $295. For more information, call (213) 825-9971.