The Leader Of The Pack

Leading bands, Saturday morning rituals, and following in dad's footsteps.

(Pic - dad on drums in his first band, The Nusonics)

When I was little I would get up early on a Saturday morning, sit directly in front of my dad’s stereo with his giant headphones on and listen to Leader Of The Pack by The Shangri-Las on an old mixtape he had.

I’d wrap the curly black headphone cable around my index finger until the fingertip went purple and get swept away with the dramatic love story.

Enamored with the macabre ever since I was little, my favorite part of the tale was when the guy wrecked his bike:

“As he drove away on that rainy night
I begged him to go slow, whether he heard
I'll never know - look out, look out, look out!”

As soon as the song finished I would maniacally rewind, playing it again and again until my dad eventually got up.

On Saturday mornings dad was usually sleeping in because he’d been up late the night before playing a gig. Dad has been a working musician for as long as I can remember, playing drums and singing lead vocals in multiple rock and country bands. He worked a day job as well as gigging 6 nights a week, so a Saturday morning sleep-in was well deserved.

One of my earliest memories is sitting on top of his giant fuzzy black PA speakers with the bass vibrating up my spine as his band rehearsed.

Another is him dedicating “I just called to say I love you” by Stevie Wonder to me at the wedding of some family friends. I distinctly remember the venue as a large school hall with those horrible wooden bench seats that always snagged the flesh of your legs, and the dedication coming when I was already delirious with fatigue from being up so late.

He taught me how to take care of valuable music equipment and had me wrapping cables into a neat circle long before I had any need to wrap cables of my own.

Without maybe even realizing it himself, he was also teaching me that being a gigging musician was not a passive act.

Dad was usually the leader of the bands he played in. He owned the PA system, booked the gigs, wrote the contracts, paid the other players, dealt with the venue owners, and packed everything up at the end of the night.

In every band he formed or joined, he always strove to make it as professional as possible. Taking time to think about the stage outfits, song list, and overall entertainment value the band was providing to the audience.

He demonstrated to me that playing music for a living wasn’t about sitting by the phone waiting to get hired. It was about leadership, being proactive, attention to detail, and doing whatever it took to make the show exceptional and worth watching.

The first gig I was ever paid to play was a jazz gig for a race car event in downtown Auckland when I was 17. The organizers called our school music teacher and asked if he had some students who wanted a job. He came to me and I defaulted into bandleader, organizing the event, negotiating the details, and writing a contract.

The gig went well, but I did discover the first of many, many hard-learned lessons that day about negotiating the finer details of bookings when we finished performing, packed up to leave, and discovered the only exit was blocked by a procession of rally cars that were not finishing for another two hours.

Since that prophetic immersion into music event administration, I’ve organized literally 1000’s of corporate events, wedding gigs, original music shows, album release tours, and been the administrator in most of the groups I’ve played in.

Being the bandleader wasn’t something I ever consciously chose, and I guess the old saying can most simply explain it, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Mine is the kind of proactive music life that dad modeled for me.

When you’re the person in charge and you’re working your butt off to make something good happen, it can be easy to become an autocrat.

Dad and I often joke about the McGowan control-freak tendency many of this side of the family seems to have. My susceptibility to falling into what my bandmate Cy (only half-jokingly) calls my “tyrant state” is something I’ve battled a lot during the last two decades of my career.

When you’re naturally a proactive and passionate person with a vision for how you think something should happen it’s easy to forget that other people need to feel like their opinions and needs matter too.

Wanting to control everything often comes from a place of just wanting things to go well, but the fact is no one likes being controlled and it very rarely results in creating anything wonderful. People need to feel supported and valued to do good work, not bossed around.

Good leadership isn’t telling everyone what to do to achieve what YOU want, it’s helping them become part of a shared vision for success.

My dad taught me to be proactive, live with passion, coil a perfect guitar cable, and not just sit around and wait for the phone to ring.

Now we’re both learning how to wield the “McGowan” inherent in us in a more gentle way. To achieve our dreams through a kinder style of leadership.