Nita Strauss Discusses Pretending to Be Her Own Fake Manager in Early Days

No matter how seasoned or successful of a musician, nearly everyone’s got a story where they pretended to be their own manager (or booking agent, or publicist, etc.) at some point early on in their career. Fake email addresses and aliases are so easy to create, and it lends an air of authority to your band, so why not? It’s a victimless crime… usually. The difference, of course, is that at a certain point you just can’t keep the illusion up anymore or you get tired of it. Those things combined with a good old fashioned sense of ethics prevent most of us from reaching Threatin levels of absurdity.

In a recent chat with The Sessions Panel, Alice Cooper guitarist and solo artist Nita Strauss revealed that she, too, once pretended to be her own manager. She eventually linked up with Josh Villalta, who became not only her manager but her drummer and boyfriend, and it’s been gravy ever since.

She explained:

“I’m so lucky that Josh, aside from being a fantastic boyfriend and drummer, is a great manager.

“He’s been managing my career since 2015, and he handles a big portion of that workload, the business nuts and bolts of it.

“When I used to really do everything myself, I was my own fake manager, and I would send emails, and my manager was never available to talk on the phone because it was just me.

“I was constantly getting taken advantage of. So it is important to have good people around you as well.”

No shame, Nita! You did what you had to do, just as many aspiring musicians have before and others will no doubt continue to do. You likely even got landed yourself a few opportunities using that scheme you wouldn’t otherwise have gotten.

Strauss’s solo record, Controlled Chaos, came out in 2018 via Sumerian Records; order here.

[via Ultimate Guitar]