Defining Success

I remember seeing an interview with Brent Spiner from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" many years ago. He was asked something about his success as an actor, and his response has stuck with me all of these years. He said (paraphrasing), "There are MANY levels of success, not just one or two.". I took that to mean that there is more than just nowhere/somewhere, failure/success, Madison Square Bedroom/Madison Square Garden. Many of us, as young performers, wished for rock stardom (or whatever kind of stardom you happen to wish for). There was only one level of success, in our minds, and that's full-on rock star. Well, I don't need to tell any of you good people that "full-on rock star" doesn't work out for most of us. Despite that, there are...wait for it...many levels of success, if you're willing to accept/embrace them.

The talent pool at my age is really more of a talent puddle. 

As a guy in my 40's, I've watched many of my peers drop out and quit over time. Some were players that might have been able to do something had they stuck it out. But their idea of success was pass/fail, all-or-nothing -- and they never bothered to see the other opportunities that were there, or that ones could be created or cultivated. There are a billion guitar players that are 20. A fraction of those are still out there at 40. The reasons are often legitimate, don't get me wrong -- mortgages, families, car payments, etc. -- and it takes a special kind of determination (or is that stupidity?) to still be out there when you're not a kid anymore.

I'm not ashamed to call myself a rock guitarist -- in fact, I'm proud of it. It cuts a surprisingly wide swath when it comes to playing styles. Think about all of the players that could fall under the "rock" banner: Chuck Berry, Steve Cropper, Eric Clapton, Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Andy Summers, Tom Morello, Steve Vai...and on and on. If you're interested in learning enough of those styles, you can get a wider variety of gigs.

A few of my better gigs these days require the knowledge and ability to cover a lot of different types of guitar playing -- everything and anything from vaudeville, Sinatra, 60's girl groups, classic rock, soul/R&B, disco, and hard rock/metal. Many of my friends ask, "Ugh -- how can you play that?!?!". It's not necessarily the playing that's difficult, it's the having to play certain things that you don't like.

I remember the first gig I had where I really didn't like the material. It was a good situation that paid well, but the material was not what I would have preferred, to put it nicely. How do you deal with that? For me, it was fairly simple (in concept, at least):

Find something you like about whatever it is that you're playing.

I've had to play lots of disco over the years...[pauses for the reader's hysterical laughter to subside]....ok, you good now? Got yourself together? May I continue? Thanks.

...yeah, that's right -- disco. "Ok, I gotta find something I like about this stuff...."

It turns out that a lot of the session cats that played that stuff were bad-ass players. I've been lucky to work with a few of them, and they viewed these sessions as merely another day's work. Get past your opinions about the genre as a whole and listen to what some of these guys were doing. There's some great playing there. In other words, "Hey -- there IS something I can like about this stuff!"

Once you can apply that to anything you don't particularly like, your options for gigs can break wide open, if you're willing to embrace that.

So, am I the rock star I dreamed of being as a kid? Nope. Am I discovering that there are many levels of success along the way, particularly ones that keep me playing?  Hell, yeah. They're out there, if you're willing.