Add Rock Managers to the Endangered Species List

Music business watchers were shocked when Beck fired longtime manager John Silva a few weeks ago, surprised when hard-rockers Tool left manager Ted Gardner last week and stunned that Steely Dan split with Craig Fruin. Then they were downright floored to learn that Sting was parting ways with Miles Copeland, who had handled his career since the earliest days of the Police 23 years ago.

The first three have not landed with new managers yet, and Sting is reportedly turning over those duties to his longtime publicist, Kathy Schenker. (Her office declined to comment on the report.) Add to all that the questions about the Wallflowers, Macy Gray and Fiona Apple if their manager Andy Slater becomes president of Capitol Records, and you’ve got an epidemic of management uncertainty.

“We are living in faster times,” says music business attorney Matthew Burrows. “People seem to have less loyalty and a greater willingness to jump ship and try to find something better.”

That sense of uncertainty also extends to the record companies, where mergers and executive changes have been occurring at a rapid pace. That makes managerial steadiness even more valuable, says Bill Leopold, who has managed Melissa Etheridge since the start of her career in the late ‘80s.

“On this record that she’s making, we’re going to have the same team running the record company for two consecutive records,” he says. “That’s only happened once before in Melissa’s career. . . . And that previous time we sold more than 8 million albums. There’s got to be consistency somewhere, and it’s not in the record companies these days.”

As in all things business, the core of the matter is money. Tool, in shopping for a new manager, is said to have been proposing to pay a commission of 7.5%--half of the standard 15%. (Band attorney Danny Hayes says that no actual proposals have been made to manager candidates yet.)

Several managers who did not want to be named or quoted said that there is a perception among artists that with the consolidation of the record companies, radio broadcasters and especially concert promotion firms, the job of the manager is now easier. In addition, the Internet affords new opportunities to control their own business.

“Artists may be waking up to the idea that they really aren’t making much off their record deals and are making more elsewhere, such as touring and endorsements,” says Burrows. “For these areas, they use agents and to lesser extent the manager. The big picture here is autonomy. It’s all about artists asserting more control over themselves and giving less to others--including managers.”

Jim Guerinot, who manages No Doubt and the Offspring and has been mentioned as a candidate to handle Beck and Tool, says the belief that there’s less for a manager to do these days is an illusion.

“I know how much goes into it when a band plays a concert,” he says. “If it were truly one phone call to do a whole tour, great. But it’s not. It’s 30 calls per show.

“If you want a cut-rate manager, you’ll get cut-rate management.”

MOVE TO BEVERLY: Matt Serletic, the Grammy-nominated producer behind Matchbox Twenty’s two albums and the Santana-Rob Thomas collaboration “Smooth,” compares the recent move of his Arista-distributed Melisma record label and production outfit from Atlanta to Los Angeles to that of the Beverly Hillbillies. But he’s convinced that he and his staff--which moved with him lock, stock and barrel into the BMG building on Beverly Boulevard, will not be fish out of water.

Or to mix other Piscean metaphors, he didn’t make the move from being a big fish in a small pond with any intention of getting eaten by sharks.

“I think we can make better records here, better career positioning for our artists,” says Serletic, 30. “Here we allow ourselves to play on the grandest playing field.

“I was talking with [Arista President] L.A. Reid about this, and he made a move from Cleveland early in his career. He had gone back and forth in his mind about making the move, and someone told him that more can happen by accident in L.A. than can happen on purpose in Cleveland.”

Case in point: Serletic has spent recent days producing a new album for Willie Nelson for Island Records. Thomas wrote three songs for the set and Bernie Taupin contributed lyrics to another. Then, with the album nearly finished after a whirlwind four-day recording schedule, he was handed a demo tape by a songwriter named Kevin Kadish that he says included just the right song to cap the album.

“That’s the kind of thing I expect to happen out here,” Serletic says.

For his label, he’s now setting up releases by Austin-based anthemic-rock band Color and another by L.A. band the Exies, as well as continuing to work the 2000 debut from Angie Aparo, the label’s first release.

SYSTEM STATUS: Preparing to record System of a Down’s second album with producer Rick Rubin, the group’s singer-songwriter, Daron Malakian, says the new music will expand on the hard-edged sounds of its debut. And he hopes it will put an end to some common misconceptions.

“The fact that people put us in the category of rap-metal bothers me,” he says. “That’s not what we do and never has been. I don’t rap. We got compared to Korn and Limp Bizkit before, but where’s the similarities?”

The goal, he says, is to make it impossible to put System into any category.

“Don’t expect to hear the same record as before,” he says. “You’ll be disappointed. So many bands keep re-creating their sound over and over and people seem to expect that. But then the band becomes a business, not art. The Beatles, from one album to the next it was night and day.”

Sessions will start in early February in L.A., with release expected in June or July on Rubin’s Columbia-distributed American Recordings.