#92—CHANGE YOUR DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

This is an excerpt from my book, “The Useful Musician”. Available on Amazon

WHY IT MAKES YOU MORE USEFUL:

You leave the pressure of perfectionism behind and focus on a real world goal, one that’s pretty easy to measure.

WHAT TO DO:

Aim at pleasing the people that it’s important to please. (Hint: it’s not you.)

When the audience is moved, when the people you play with onstage like what’s happening, then you’ve succeeded. Period. These things truly represent success, because this is what gets you asked to play again. This is what makes you useful.

Playing really fast, playing really loud, playing obscure songs nobody’s ever heard of, playing only songs you like, being the coolest person onstage, playing your part with no mistakes —all these things revolve around making YOU happy at the expense of everybody else. NOBODY likes players/singers like that. Nobody.

THOUGHTS:

I learned this late in life, and I wished I’d seen it earlier. Playing only to please yourself is a lonely road, full of frustration. I did a fair amount of it, even early on with my cover band (which I started in my 50’s). I wanted to do the songs I really liked, but to my frustration, the audience didn’t care what I liked. They cared what THEY liked. They dressed up, they left the house, they paid for food and drinks, and then expected something that pleased them. Such a simple thing, and so hard for me to embrace.

One night we played a medley I’d been DYING to play—Paul Revere & The Raiders ‘Kicks’ paired up with their song ‘Hungry’. Oh man, it was so much fun in rehearsal. But onstage…crickets—people using the bathroom, going outside for a smoke, not dancing. I was so disappointed. We tried it once or twice more, but the medley was a clunker. We played it GREAT—no doubt about that, but nobody cared. If our goal was to play something only weliked, we succeeded. But if we were there to please an audience, well, we failed with those two songs. I reluctantly cut them from the set lists.

Listen—if the audience likes it, you’ve succeeded. Period. That’s it—that’s the definition of success. Yeah, you can beat yourself up a little because you missed things during a couple of songs, but honestly, I’ve watched as we butchered songs onstage and had people shoving each other out of the way to dance.

Too many musicians walk off the stage thinking, “I didn’t play well. I need to practice more.” Instead, they should be asking themselves if the audience liked what they played or didn’t like what they played. If the audience loved it, figure out why and figure out how to do more of that.