Creativity Quote by Pat Mastelotto

There is a whole power dynamic tucked into Mastelotto's casual “basically”: the sound of a musician translating boardroom taste into a shrug. By contrasting “a Richard Page record” with “a Mr. Mister record,” he’s drawing a line between a label’s preferred product (the bankable, spotlight-friendly frontman) and the messier reality of a band (shared credit, shared control, shared risk). It’s not just semantics; it’s leverage. If the industry believes the brand is the singer, the rest of the group becomes interchangeable labor.

The phrasing “more interested” is doing quiet work, too. It suggests the label wasn’t outright hostile to the band, just strategically indifferent. That’s how executive pressure often arrives: not as a dramatic ultimatum, but as a steady gravitational pull toward the easiest narrative to sell. A “Richard Page record” promises a clean marketing hook and a predictable chain of command. A “Mr. Mister record” implies negotiation, competing visions, and a split pie.

Contextually, this is classic 1980s major-label logic, when radio formats and MTV visibility rewarded personality as much as songs. Mr. Mister had hits, but labels still chased the more controllable outcome: isolate the face, minimize the committee. Mastelotto’s intent reads less like bitterness than clarity about how art gets sorted into “brand” and “unit economics.” The subtext: success doesn’t protect you from being reduced; it just raises the stakes of who gets reduced first.