 Our
willingness to accept music under different names has provided new options for
bands that might previously have been torn apart by creative differences. Scars
on Broadway, the new group featuring Daron Malakian and John Dolmayan
of the Grammy-winning metal band System of a Down, is a case in point.
“We took a break before we broke up,” admits Dolmayan, the drummer. “After 12
years, it’s not so much that you get tired of the people you’re with, it’s more
that you don’t have an identity.
I think System will co-exist with Scars. They
will probably leapfrog each other.”
“I don’t know Jack White,” adds Malakian, the guitarist and songwriter, “but I
like what he does in the White Stripes. I’ve only heard a couple of songs from
the Raconteurs, but I liked that, too. As artists, we don’t want our music to be
a brand like Coca-Cola. You want to scratch those creative itches: things that
you couldn’t do in certain situations. There are things in Scars that aren’t in
System. I love metal, but I was taking a new direction. I wanted to express the
side of me that likes Roxy Music, the Beatles and the Grateful Dead.”
Now that having a second band is entirely acceptable, musicians are leaping on
the opportunity to explore new avenues with new, and old, friends. But it’s an
aside from Malakian that perhaps sheds the most light on this relatively new
phenomenon. With record companies under more pressure than ever before, if
profitable musicians want to release music under different names, labels are in
no position to dissuade them.
“Columbia wanted the record, but they let us go out and shop it anyway,”
Malakian explains. “And once we shopped it, we said, ‘Man, we don’t want to be
on Columbia any more.’ Columbia don’t want to burn that bridge for when System
returns, so they let us do what we want.”
by Robert Collins -
Timesonline
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