He and his fellow musicians including Green
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Rock and roll is full of cautionary tales - of excess, break-ups and missed opportunities.
British indie band Ultrasound, touted as the "next big thing" in the 1990s only to sink without trace following bitter bust-ups, reports of in-band infidelity and "creative differences", fits the bill neatly.
But in the case of the quintet led by the imposing Andrew "Tiny" Wood, the tale may yet have a happy ending.
Ultrasound has just released a second album "Play for Today" 13 years after its ambitious yet poorly received double-CD debut "Everything Picture" proved the beginning louis vuitton bags and the end of an act that record labels had fought each other to sign.
This time around there are no six-figure sums, no flights to the United States to be wined and dined, none of the hype generated by record company A&R departments whose influence has waned with the arrival of the internet.
Instead there is a 10-song, single-CD album which failed to trouble the charts in Britain on its release last month, a series of small gigs and decidedly modest hopes for the future.
"It would be nice if we could earn enough so that we could do this," Wood said during a recent interview in Durham, northern England, close to where he louis vuitton sunglasses now lives.
"Tiny", who is anything but small, has been singing in other bands and to help make ends meet spends two days a week washing dishes in nearby Newcastle, while principal songwriter Richard Green is a delivery man working "ridiculous hours.
"If we could earn enough so that each of us could be comfortable then that would be great. I don't think you should have any more," Wood added.
Ultrasound's manager Andy Macleod said he too, was not getting carried away.
"We can't compete with the squillion-pound cheap nfl jerseys marketing spend of the majors (labels) so we are taking one step at a time and seeing how far it can take us," he said ahead of the band's biggest comeback gig to date in front of 600 people in London.
"So hopefully it's a slow-burn to world domination ... around 2021. Pink Floyd meets The Who - Punk Floyd!"
BRITPOP'S DECLINE
Even in the late 1990s, when Ultrasound signed with Nude Records for 250,000 pounds ($400,000) and were on the covers of music magazines, Wood did not get ahead of himself.
"I was in my mid-30s then," he explained. "I wasn't in some kind of bubble or anything ... I've seen bands come and go, I know how it works."
Wood, who is "48 or 49" - he says he can't remember which - recalled the heady days of bidding wars and big contracts which the music industry is still recovering from.
"There was still that sense of take a band, throw a lot of money at it and you've got another Oasis," he explained, referring to the industry's search for someone to fill the void left by Britpop's decline at the end of the 1990s.
"It doesn't work that way, really. You've got to take bands that you believe in and build them up."
In the case of Ultrasound, he blames the band for being naive and the label for failing to offer enough guidance when Everything Picture came out.
He and his fellow musicians, including Green and Vanessa Best on bass guitar, could have negotiated a significantly bigger contract, but wanted "artistic freedom" coach bags above all else.
What they created was an album that baffled the music press at the time and flickered briefly in the British album charts where it rose to no. 23 in 1999, but which has since come to be regarded as a "lost" classic of progressive rock.
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