[70's rockstar name]'s popularity is about the same as [00's rockstar] today

haha, i r funi

Actually (and I'm only about ten years older than you, so my perceptions could be off), rock stardom meant very different things thirty years ago and now. There was no 24 hour entertainment channel, there was barely cable tv. Media ownership was much less concentrated, and radio was much more diverse (although this was starting to change to what we have now.) Fame (except for a few) was a lot less global: regional and local scenes were more important.

I'm trying this with Nick Drake, Big Star, etc., and am having a little trouble coming up good analogs. I wonder if it's harder to be genuinely obscure in the internet age.

In the early 70s I knew exactly nothing of Nick Drake; I started listening to his music in the mid-80s. With that in mind, his 00s analog may remain unknown (to me, at least) for another decade.

But what do I know, really? I never him.

I sometimes think about this stuff too. Like, was Yes as big as System of a Down? DMB? Mars Volta? Outkast? Did Genesis sell like Wilco? Like Phish? Was the Velvet Underground the size of Fugazi?

Actually, this is much more true today than in 1975, but was also more true in
1965 than 1975. I'd say that local scenes were very relevant up until the very
end of the 1970's, and nosedived in importance until local punk scenes started
springing up in the late 1970's for some cities (SF, LA, NY, Boston) and the
early 1980's for others. In some cities, such as Chicago, the local scene is
probably as strong as it's ever been (at least for many people) since the heyday
of early 70's soul or '60s garage rock.

Fame was pretty global for anyone making a good living in music in 1975, and
cult stars were few - there weren't any real indie labels or indie "circuits" as
such.

Was VU the size of Fugazi? It's an apples and oranges comparison. Fugazi can
function as an "underground" band without major label support. That
opportunity wasn't there for the Velvets . . . in reality you should probably consider them an unfortunately failed major label band, which (despite their godliness) is what they were.

And Sundar, to answer your question, Nick Drake was pretty damned obscure. None of those people you name in connection with him - Joe Boyd, Richard Thompson and John Cale - were (back then) anything like the quasi-icons they are today, and all three of them have worked with people you've never heard of. And the UK has always had a little more "depth" in its approach to music than the US (what with three widely-read weekly music papers and whatnot), so more esoteric artists could get a little farther there than in the US. I'm told (with some reliability) that Nick Drake could reasonably have expected to sell 2000 copies of a record during his lifetime. That's not much!

> [How popular] David Bowie or Marc Bolan actually were, or perhaps Harry Nilsson,
> Big Star... This is just what I've been thinking for a while, after I recently got really
> into 70's music this past summer.

The field was much more widely open back then - only a small fraction of the number of albums released by major labels today were released back then, and virtually NO independent rock labels existed. T Rex in America was very popular for about two albums - with top 10 hits and all that. They started later here and faded faster. Bowie one might compare to someone like Björk, but with the odd FM hit - so slightly more popular (probably due, however, to much less competition in any sense.) Big Star was pretty obscure - a few fervent fans but almost no mainstream recognition.
Nilsson was a big name who sold well (some records in the millions) across a wide span of ages and had plenty of hits. The only reason he might seem obscure today is that he didn't tour at all, and despite a very consistent "Nilssonness" to his music, he did not operate within a strict formula, the result being today that big hits such as "Me And My Arrow" or "Jump Into The Fire" or "Spaceman" are considered a little too odd for oldies play - while other hits do get play either because they are considered overt novelties ("Coconut") or because they adhere more readily to the demands of Big Pop ("Without You," "Everybody's Talkin'.")

great post indeed, dee, but i take issue with your placement of bowie. he was huge in the '70s. he wasn't a zillion-selling idol like elton john or fleetwood mac or the bee gees or zeppelin, but he was a major staple of fm radio, an A-list album artist, and for crying out loud he had ziggy stardust and the spiders from mars. he had a lot more than odd fm hits. he had "changes."and "space oddity." and "suffragette city." and "rebel rebel." and "jean genie." and "young americans." and "fame." and "golden years." and... he was a ROCK STAR. bjork doesn't come close to that.

"Changes" seems like a huge hit, but it didn't crack the Top 40 in the US. "Space Oddity" missed the charts until a later reissue. The "Ziggy Stardust" album only hit #75. He had more hits than Björk, who probably be said to have any . . . but it kind of goes to the VU / Fugazi thing - Björk doesn't need "hits", Bowie did (in order to maintain a contract that is) - the difference is the times.

Bowie was probably a bigger star because (as I said) there was less out there competition-wise and because he showed more desire to garner fame overtly than Björk does, and the circumstances were that there was not any Björk-like niche for artists 30 years ago really. I've no problem admitting that Bowie seems somehow "bigger" than Björk (he does to me too), but in measurable terms (and in Björk's case, without as many decades hindsight), it's tough to say that an FM radio hit that results in 500,000 sales is much different than a club hit that results in 500,000 sales or that Bowie's A-list albums are much different in a quantifiable way than Björk's A-list albums when personal preference is removed (and I do prefer Bowie myself, though I like Björk quite a lot.)

Wonderful music aside, Bowie's biggest achievement is probably helping to create a situation where artists such as Björk can exist comfortably today without the career hassles Bowie endured. I don't know how Björk could ever match that, it's a matter of timing more than anything else.

Probably the most accurate way to measure relative popularity across times (which was the real question here) would be to measure simple name recognition - I doubt there'd be that much difference between Bowie in 1975 and Björk in 2005. How much it matters aside from that is a totally different argument.

but since you brought it up, bowie had a string of top-40 hits in the mid-70s including a #1 ("fame"), and though the ziggy stardust album only made it to #75, it was followed not long after by a long string of top-10 albums. and in those pre-soundscan days, when the charts weren't really based on sales, albums had a completely different chart arc than they do now: you didn't hit the top 10 of the album charts without having a sustained, long-term hit. it took weeks, even months, of climbing to get there.

i like both bjork and bowie a lot, but she remains very much a cult star, whereas he was a pop star.