Cut-Throat: How to get started in the music business – and survive!
Published by Skill June 2025
New imprint Skill are back in the arena with a handsome reworking/re-presentation of Nash the Slash’s unpublished 1997 book, Cut-Throat: How to get started in the music business and survive!.
It’s a fascinating time capsule and a thought-provoking insight into how the music scene has changed. From the title, I was expecting something along the lines of KLF’s 1988 uber-cool The Manual: How to make a number one the easy way, but it’s a different, much more grounded work.
Nash was born Jeff Plewman in 1948, fronted Prog rockers FM for a couple of albums before going solo as Nash the Slash in 1978, where he went on to record more albums, notably Dreams and Nightmares (1979) and Children of the Night (1981). His profile was enhanced considerably by touring the UK, US and Europe at the invitation of huge fan Gary Numan. Before coming to the UK, he’d supported major acts like Iggy Pop, the Tubes, the Who and Devo. There were also collaborations with the surrealist Robert Vanderhorst, before his death from a suspected heart attack in 2014.
I first became aware of Nash the Slash when he always seemed to feature heavily in the Sounds and NME live ads in the post-punk years, usually replete with an image of the man himself in his trademark tattered Egyptian mummy style surgical bandages/top hat/tuxedo and shades ensemble. This chimed well with the whole 70’s Rocky Horror/Phantom of the Opera/Dr Phibes vibe. The music was a kind of mash-up of Prog, Classical, Rock and Punk, dominated by Nash’s violin as part of his fight against the then dominant electric guitar – even to the point of turning down Dave Gilmour’s offer to add guitar parts to one of his albums. He was also an early exponent of electronica and ahead of the game in devising and making his own tape loops.
The main part of the book is made up of twelve chapters, detailing what a musical wannabe is likely to encounter and need to know about – labels, contracts and so on – with subdivisions in each chapter and some well chosen photos, fliers and cuttings. For example, the Copyright section looks at various alleged cases of plagiarism and some of the court cases that followed. I never knew that John Denver successfully sued New Order for allegedly cribbing some of Leaving on a Jet Plane for their song Run 2.
The chapters cover the following subjects: You and Your Music, Protecting Your Music, The Name Game, Publicity, Band Dynamics, Agents and Managers, Recording the Product, Manufacture and Distribution, the Importance of Playing Live, Websites and Cyberspace. A contemporary Postscript examines the many ways things have changed since 1997, some anticipated by Slash, but also wild cards few had foreseen, like the Smartphone becoming the main music source for a large part of the market, or the artist’s battle to get financial justice from certain streaming agents.
Each section is prefaced with a pithy quote from Slash, typical of the dry humour and blunt realism that informs most of the book, for example – “Your career isn’t worth anything if your product has no value. Create value. Be in control. “Inner conflict can destroy a band – relationships within the band are more important than the musicianship. “The power of pop music to generate income is staggering. A manager who believes in you can make you rich or rob you blind”. In addition to the original Slash scripted chapters, there are also four new interviews. Former Gong pothead pixie Steve Hillage – producer of Children of the Night – clearly enjoyed working with Slash. His astute comments on the tension between trying to reconcile the demands of the label – a return on their investment – and artistic self expression.
Gary Numan’s interview emphasises what a strong live act Slash must have been and his admiration for his uncompromising approach to his music. Photographer Paul Till was a friend and associate for many years and worked a lot on devising the powerful trademark imagery of tuxedo, hat and bandages. Bill Nelson also talks about his work with Slash. In a final section, film producer Colin Brunton talks about making an independent film of Nash’s life and music, feature length documentary “Nash the Slash Rides Again”.
It takes us back to a golden age for the music biz, where cheap-as-chips to make CDs looked like they were going to form an endless revenue stream, especially in the repackaging and marketing of “heritage” acts. It all seemed like a peak yuppie era moment, trade in those scruffy, worn out, space consuming LPs for neat, shiny little CDs. As we know now, the balloon was burst by the arrival of MP3s and the way digital music was to revolutionise the basic concept of how music was bought and sold. It was enough to see off Nash, who announced his retirement in 2012, stating that “streaming was killing him.” Even so, he’d managed to sustain himself in the business for forty years by then. One of the book’s recurring themes is to provide a survival manual for the independent musician, and shows that although the media and presentation might have changed, the basic issues – artistic integrity, not getting ripped off or selling out remain the same.
Available at all good bookshops.
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All words by Den Browne, you can read more on his author profile here:
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