I maintain the position that I would be willing to bet that most rock people don’t truly give a damn about the personality of musicians, they just care about music put out by the artist

If this were true, there wouldn’t be so much talk about rock cred., or rock stars having certain types of personalities.  People might not be consciously aware of it, but there are certain things that they pay attention to.  For example, if people learn that James’ songs come from his experiences, then they are going to be more receptive to his music.  That is part of marketing.  The handlers of rock stars have always made sure that we know certain things about their lives, even if those things were highly exaggerated.  That want to build a picture, and either get us to relate to the artists, or see them as larger than life.  There are very few discussions about rockers that just center around their music, at some point people will start talking about the artists history with women, drinking, drugs, or how they like to live hard and party.

The music has to be good too, but the backstory helps get people’s attention.

For example, if people learn that James’ songs come from his
experiences, then they are going to be more receptive to his music.

I think we are going in circles. Knowing the background of Justin Bieber’s songs and the relationship they have to his experiences is not going to make me any more receptive to his music. Can’t see how it’ll work for James.

Question for anyone…..

There was another musician on the same episode of NYInk that spoke about her tatoo. Was anyone who
watched the full NY Ink episode interested enough in her story to actively research her music? I know I didn’t give her a second thought after her spot was over.

The music has to be good too, but the backstory helps get people’s attention.

See the above example. I can not think of even one example in my life where I became interested in someone’s music just because their back story grabbed my attention. Again, this is such an Idol mentality that just can’t accurately be projected onto the average rock listener, even possibly the average music listener of any genre outside the Idol bubble. In the Idol world, music may be secondary and incidental (the discrepancy between # of people voting for certain Idols and those that actually purchase their music post-Idol says it all) but you can’t say this for those outside of it.

And, btw, the term rock credibilty is used when speaking about the music an artist puts out and has absolutely nothing to do with personalities. Musicians are said to have lost their rock cred when their music no longer fits their “projected” genre. (for example, Kiss losing their supposed cred doing disco with “I was made for loving you” and Metallica choosing to go more mainstream with “The Black Album”) I can not think of one example of an artist losing ‘rock credibility” over a particular personality or lifestyle choice.