Skillet’s John Cooper has a good sense of humor about some of the hard lessons he’s learned about the music business in nearly three decades as a musician. The candid, outgoing singer is fresh off the release of a new album (Revolution) and a European tour, laughs heartily when asked what lessons he wishes he had learned early in his career.
“I would go back to my younger self and say, ‘They call it the music business for a reason,'” he says. BillboardS ‘ After Setlist podcast. “That part – ‘business’ – actually matters. Because when you first start – I mean, I don’t know if everyone is like that, but I’ve certainly been like, ‘No, no, it’s not a business, it’s art. It’s not about business. It’s just what I want to sing about. It’s all about me and my feelings and my artwork, and I will never let anyone bastardize my art.’ And you just end up making a bunch of stupid decisions because you don’t realize that, yes, it’s about art, but you still have to pay the bills. And you’re in the van in the middle of the night – if anyone’s in a band there, they’ll know what I’m talking about – you’re driving the van and suddenly you feel something. You look to the side while you’re driving and see one of the wheels from the trailer go past you [and] fly in the middle of the night. And I’m sitting there going, ‘I don’t care. It’s all about my art.’ This is not true! You gotta pay for it, man!”
It took Cooper a few years to realize that he needed to be more hands-on and not expect others to handle his business the way he wanted. “If you want it done right, you have to get involved,” he insists. “That doesn’t mean [my manager and business manager] didn’t do their job, but they’ll never do it the way you want it done. And it’s easy to complain about it, but just get your hands dirty.”
The need to be more involved in the business side of his career “really hit him” early in Cooper’s career when his tax preparer asked to see his taxes for the band’s first four years . “And I said, ‘Well, we lost money for the first four years, so I didn’t turn it in,'” Cooper recalled. “He says, ‘Well, you’re going to pay it now.’ You have to pay a fee for not doing it right.’ And so I would come back and just say [to my younger self]’Hey, yes, it’s about art, but you can’t be stupid. You have to grow up.”
Over time, Cooper has learned the business side of music from a variety of people, including a manager who reached six years into his career and his business manager. He also drew inspiration from Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx, who Cooper says “realized it’s about art, but you have to mind your own business. Want to be around 30 years? Better gear up, son!”
The lessons learned from Cooper will help now that Skillet is independent and self-releasing his music. After nearly two decades with Atlantic Records — 99% of which were positive, Cooper says — the band was released Revolution separate Hear It Loud track. While Atlantic Records helped Skillet find mainstream success (“Awake and Alive” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Active Rock chart in 2011), there was more red tape than Cooper would have preferred. “A lot of red tape,” he says. “A lot of people have to approve of the songs.” Now, Skillet now has greater creative control and can release music more often.
“We wrote 11 songs for this album and I loved it,” he says. “I enjoyed doing the project. It was a lot of fun. We wrote, recorded and released this album in 13 months. And I’ll tell you what, it was a lot of fun, and I love music.”
Listen to the entire interview with Skillet’s John Cooper using Spotify’s embedded player below, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Amazon Music, Podbean, or Everand.
