BigThink

Well my advice to other musicians first and foremost would be to make music that they love. Because if you spend your life working on something that you love and you never have success with it, well . . . at least you spent your life doing something that you love. And by doing something that you love, you vastly improve the chances that you will have success with it. Because the worst case scenario is to give up your entire life to work on something that you don’t love and end up having no success with it. So then at the end of your life you look back and you say, “Oh. I compromised and had no success.” So basically make music that you love, and be open-minded in your approach to other people’s music. Because I think a lot of people . . . A lot of musicians – a lot of artists in general – tend to be very rigid when evaluating other . . . you know . . . other people’s music or other people’s art. And then simple things like word hard and be diligent. And don’t drink too much and don’t take too many drugs. And allow yourself to be influenced by interesting other . . . you know . . . other interesting musicians. And study the history of music, ‘cause I think a lot of contemporary musicians, their understanding of music goes back 20 years or 30 years. And that’s just sort of a shame because, you know, I think musicians do their best work . . . When you think of George Gershwin and “Rhapsody in Blue”, the inspiration for that and the influences for that are so diverse going back 50 to 100 years before he was actually writing it. And that’s one of the reasons that’s such a powerful piece of music.