I recently interviewed Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Neil Giraldo on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:
Adam: Our guest today is a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and a five-time Grammy winner. Neil Giraldo has performed, written, and produced music that has sold more than 45 million records, most notably through his decades-long creative partnership with his wife and bandmate, Pat Benatar. Neil, thank you for joining us.
Neil: Thank you, Adam. Thanks for having me here.
Adam: You grew up in Cleveland, and you started playing the guitar at the age of six and started performing not that long thereafter. Can you take listeners back to those days, those early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?
Neil: Yeah, I started at six years old because I wanted to join the band at school. Unfortunately, the way my birthday fell, because it was right around Christmas, December 29, I was put a year ahead in school. So I was going to first grade when I was five, which really isn’t that great of an idea for a child because, being a guy, we stay like kids until we’re 21. That’s just where we are. I hear that all the time from my daughters and my wife. So it was a little difficult. I wanted to be in their band, and music just always seemed to feel like it was the right place to live. I wanted to join the band, and it was a Catholic elementary school. The sister said, “We don’t have room for you in the band.” I said, “I want to play flute.” Why flute? I have no idea, and it makes no sense here. She said, “No, we have no room for you.” So my father said, “Okay, that’s it. I want to get you a guitar because I want you to do duets with my sister Priscilla, who is three years older than me. She played accordion, and you could do duets and do Italian songs for our family and friends after church on Sundays.” So that was the idea, to play the Italian songs from the old country. So I just picked up the guitar, and I’ve got to tell you, it just felt real to me. When you find something that you really love, you feel a spiritual connection to it. It connected really hard physically and emotionally when you hold it, and it vibrates. The acoustic guitar had really bad strings, high off the neck. It was hard to play, but I really loved doing it. It was a lot of fun. That’s how it began. But also, Adam, as important as the trajectory of my career went, I heard “Heartbreak Hotel” by Elvis Presley on my parents’ hi-fi console system, and I sat in front of it. I kept playing the record over and over and over again. I remember sitting there. I was very, very young. I can’t remember how old I was, but probably around five or four or something like that. I played it over and over again, and I felt so connected with the sounds, the performances, Elvis’s voice, the reverb, the depth of it. I felt like I was walking down Lonely Street to the Heartbreak Hotel myself. At that moment, it stuck in me so hard that I almost felt as though not only music, but the idea of creating music and writing music and producing music, all came together. I know it’s crazy, but things happen at a young age that stick with you. So that’s the long-winded answer of how it all began.
Adam: I love it, and there’s a great lesson there, which is that, for all of us, it might come at different points in our lives, but there will ultimately be that moment where you feel the connection, the calling, the click, where you know, this is it. This is what I need to do with my life, and I just can’t do anything else. You were fortunate in that it came to you at such an early age, and when that moment comes, you never look back.
Neil: Never look back. And the point I like to make for a lot of people listening who have difficulties in their lives, or aren’t finding that moment, or aren’t paying attention to things when they happen, is that the reason that happened was because I had a lot of neuroses from being so young in school. First grade at five years old is really rough. My mother didn’t believe in kindergarten, and now they’ve got pre-K, TK, all these other things before they even go into first grade, and I was so behind. It was really, really difficult. So it almost was a negative. You know how negatives turn into positives, and that was a major one. I got so introverted, and music was just such a connection. It just felt normal and right and real. My father, the sweetest guy in the world, I loved him dearly. He passed away. He was probably 94. Sicilian, tough, tough, tough as nails, but with the heart of an angel. It was so great to have a father and a leader around me like that. He was just fantastic.
Adam: How do you go from knowing that this is it, this is what I want to do, to being exceptional at it?
Neil: Here’s where the crossroads in the road changes. My uncle Timmy was four years older than me. He was the mistake in the family, so obviously the spread of age between my mother and him was huge. My grandmother had him when she was 42 or 43 years old. In that period of time, to have a child that late in life was pretty amazing, right? So he was known as the mistake, but it was like having an older brother because my grandfather passed away at an early age. So he essentially just came to live with us, practically. He was around as my older brother, but my older brother wasn’t listening to Italian songs. He was listening to the Kinks and the Yardbirds and all the early, early rock coming from Britain, and also from America, too. That was a whole revelation to me. To add to that, when my sister and I would go to Woolworth’s, the five-and-dime stores, my mother would give us each one dollar to buy whatever we wanted. I’m talking about seven or eight years old, and I would buy records. I didn’t know they were cutouts then. Once you’re in the music business, you understand what a cutout is. But they were 45s, and they came in a package about five inches tall, and there were about 12 records in there. You knew what the front one was, but you didn’t know what was on the inside because it was wrapped in cellophane. I always wanted them, and I would take the cellophane off, put them on my record player, a little tiny turntable, and play all the way through them. Then I’d flip them over and play them all the way through, over and over again. So what do you think was in there? There was Frank Sinatra, John Lee Hooker, Chess Records, Chuck Berry, Bull Moose Jackson. There was a wide range of all these different people. So there I am with the guitar. I’m thinking, well, let me just listen to these people. Let me play along. That’s how I started playing. My uncle was my mentor. He would just say, “No, that doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t sound good. You’ve got to try doing it differently.” It was him. He was the major source of inspiration.
Adam: Neil, you bring up something really interesting, which is that when we think about mentors, we typically think about mentors the way that you describe your uncle, a person who is there for you in your life, present. But there are all other kinds of mentorship, including forms of mentorship that you benefited from. I’ve done interviews with many guests who have described their mentors as people who they have never met, but who they have admired from afar and consumed as much of their content as possible. When you talk about the great artists who you grew up admiring, idolizing, wanting to be like, wanting to learn from, listening to their music, that is a source of mentorship. That is a form of learning. That is a way to help you become great.
Neil: Yes, blessings come in a lot of different ways. I’m going to give you a paraphrase of a quote that I live by. It comes out of a book written by Katherine Dunn. It was called Geek Love. It’s one of my favorite books. I remember seeing it in a New York Times thing, seeing the books that you should be reading. I said, “Geek Love, that’s kind of an interesting title.” I can’t remember how old I was, say in my 30s or 40s. I can’t remember now, but I just thought it was interesting. Well, I read the book about five times. I’ve written songs inspired by chapters in the book, but I’m going to make this quick and easy because I don’t want to dive too deep into it. But you’re going to really understand what this is, and this is how I try to tell people to keep their eyes open for things. So it’s like this. They’re a carnival family, and what they did was they were a traveling carnival, and they would take pesticides. It’s obviously fictional. They would take pesticides to make freaks to be in the freak show. That’s how they were making a living. But now they were all called Papa’s Roses. All my children call me Papa. My grandchildren call me Papa. I’m Papa all the time. So I wrote a song called “Papa’s Roses,” not based on that, but on the sensibility of what this meant. No matter how much of a freak that child could have been, whether it was Arturo, who had just flippers and didn’t have arms and legs, or the one person who operated on herself, it’s all these crazy characters. So the thing that was really cool about this was that a boy was born. He was normal, and they couldn’t believe it. They tried to give him away, and they put him on the doorstep, and nobody would take this normal child. All of a sudden, one day he’s in the room, and all these things start moving. One of the children, he’s with one or two of them, and they’re going, “Why are they moving? Are you doing that?” They call him Fortunato. He says, “They move by themselves. I just let them.” That was his power. So he could make things move, but he wasn’t making them move. They were moving on their own. He just let them. So if you really dig into the philosophy of what that says, think about that. There are all these things that are out there that can be helpful to you, but if you don’t see them and you don’t know they exist, how could they help you? I live by that. My eyes are open. That’s all I tell people. Keep your eyes open. Something that could be a terrible negative could actually turn out to be the most positive thing in your life. You’ve just got to let things happen.
Adam: Were there other key steps that you took, other things that you did, that you reflect on and say, these were critical in allowing me to attain greatness?
Neil: Yeah, one of the happiest days of my life was when I was in many bands in Cleveland, and I thought that I wasn’t going to become a successful player. I was just going to get married, have three or four children, live in Cleveland, and maybe do piano gigs because I play a lot of piano. I started playing piano when I was 13, and I studied a lot of jazz and stuff like that. So I thought, well, maybe I’ll just give up the guitar and thoughts of becoming this writer and just do weekend gigs. Then I joined this band, and the idea with this band, great players, was that we were going to play these terrible gigs. But what it was was that we were not going to have to work during the day doing regular jobs. We’d make enough money playing these songs we didn’t really want to play so we could write our own songs and give it a go. Well, somebody saw me playing in that band and asked me if I wanted to go to New York to audition for Rick Derringer, who was looking for a guitar player. Well, I went, and I got the gig. There were over 200 guitar players who auditioned, which I can’t believe anybody would be crazy enough to do. I mean, that’s insane. What I think he was probably implying is that he probably auditioned and played with them, but maybe he had recommendations from people, because I can’t see him bringing in 200 people. But that’s his story. So I couldn’t believe I got the gig. The day I got the gig, my whole life changed. It just changed completely. I actually was on my way. It gave me purpose, right? Prior to me getting that gig, I went up there auditioning. He said, “Well, I want you to come back.” So I went home, and then I came back again. But I learned every song that I could learn that he had. So when he said, “What do you want to play?” I said, “Anything you want. You’re the boss. You tell me. I know it.” It’s about being ready. If you’ve got an opportunity that’s available to you, you really have to be ready. And I wanted a one-way ticket. I didn’t want to go home. I had a stake.
Adam: Being prepared for the moment, not being afraid of the moment, embracing the moment. There are so many people who would look at an opportunity like that not as an opportunity, but as a hassle. There are 200 other people competing for this. Why am I doing this? This is a waste of my time. I’m better off doing something else. You didn’t think that way at all. You went all in and were completely ready when that moment came, and that was it.
Neil: Now that you said it like that, it reminds me that I say, can you count five people who gave you a dramatic moment in your life that changed your life forever? One of those people was this girl named Terry Bruno. She goes by Tara. Sweet, beautiful, sweet human being. We were friends in Cleveland. I think I was 15. I can’t remember, 15 years old or something. She said she was going to California. “Oh, great. I’ll see you when you get back.” Okay, she comes back. She goes, “Guess what? I found these two amazing things in California.” I go, “What is it?” One is an avocado and Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on a rye toast sandwich. I went, “Wow, what’s an avocado? This sounds amazing.” She goes, “And the other thing is this book called the I Ching.” She handed me the book, and she goes, “This will predict your future.” I went, “Really?” So I remember we lay down on a blanket, looked at the stars, and did it. She still has the thing from the very first time we threw the coins for the reading from the I Ching. Without that book, and without studying that, and without her, that opportunity would have never come. That’s the spirituality of my life. That’s what that book did. That book was so powerful that it put me in such a place that the universe was opening for me. You have to accept this with modesty. You want to go get this gig, but you’re not going there saying, “I don’t care about those other people. I’m going to kick their butt. I’m going to be great.” None of that. It’s like, I’m going. I’m going to do what I do. I’m going to be well prepared, with honor, and have modesty. That’s really, I think, why I got the gig. I was really spiritually prepared, and it was because of her and because of that book.
Adam: I love that, and that’s a beautiful way to approach competition in general. When you view your competitors as your enemies, you’re going to be approaching not only your work, but your life, from a really negative place. When you view your competition as yourself, that’s when you can get to your best place.
Neil: Absolutely. It’s like the game of golf, such a cerebral game. But you’re not playing against the other players. You’re competing. You’re trying to be the best you can be and be gracious. Modesty goes a long way. If you have modesty in your heart, things change for you. Things change. And I tell you, that book saved me so many times in my life, so many times. Here’s another thing that’s odd. When I met Patricia, and we put the band together in 1979, the very first song I wrote for us became a hit. Now, I was writing songs before. I was writing songs with Rick Derringer, too, but none of it ever worked. It was just meant to be, again. It’s that Fortunato thing. Things move by themselves. I just let them. That’s how it goes.
Adam: You’ve written a lot of hits. What makes a hit?
Neil: A hit has to have a common thread that connects you to the audience. That’s number one. Even when I didn’t write a song and it was a hit, what I would do is take a song and completely dismember it, tear it to pieces, then put it back together again. I’d add elements to turn whatever that was into something else, because just because you write a hit song doesn’t mean it’s going to be a hit. It’s not a premeditated thing. You either do it or you don’t. It has to have a ghost in the song. I’ll tell you one thing about what makes a hit. When you go at it, you have to be brave. You can’t be afraid. You’ve got to believe in it. If you write something and you say, “That’s really good. That’s really great. That’s amazing.” You know what works? “Oh, hell yeah.” Warren Buffett said that when you’ve got something that makes you say, “Oh, hell yeah,” then you know it’s a hit. And you can’t pretend. You can’t pretend that you think it. Many times I’d have something, we’d work on it, and I’d say, “I don’t know. I think it’s a hit.” It isn’t. It’s just something that has to connect. That’s a common thread. Everything matters. Every detail matters in that song. You’re the listener. Everything matters.
Adam: How are you able to get to a place where you are at your most creative, and how can anyone unlock their creativity?
Neil: Be brave and don’t be afraid. Fear and being afraid stop people in their tracks all day long. You just can’t. You cannot be afraid. Then it comes down to spirituality again. You have to find some form of spirituality, whatever it is. For me, the I Ching was there, but it wasn’t that I read the book every day and read it for eight hours a day. That’s not it. You live by the rules. You open it. “Oh, I’m going to read the I Ching this morning.” Then you feel good, and it settles in you. But unlocking the creativity in yourself and in a person really comes down to just don’t be afraid. I also think, if you consider yourself a vessel or conduit for where it comes from, because I don’t believe I’m doing it. Again, it’s Fortunato. I just let things move by themselves. I am just a conduit. It’s coming from some source that I can’t describe. I just know that when I hear it, it seems to make sense to me. But again, it’s not me doing it. I’m not doing it. It’s happening. I’m just the conduit.
Adam: And Neil, what I’m hearing from you is that it’s a combination of not being afraid. Not being afraid of being embarrassed. Not being afraid of looking bad. Not being afraid of failing. Not being afraid of your output not coming out to the level that you want it to be. Not every hit is going to be a hit, but you’re never going to have any hits if you’re too afraid to fail, if you’re too afraid to try.
Neil: You have to open up. You can’t sit down and say, I mean, it’s a nice aspiration to have, “I’m going to write ‘Let It Be’ today,” or “‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’ Oh, I’m going to write that today.” And you’re only going to be happy if you write that. It’s possible that’s not what you do. I mean, I don’t know where it comes from. Honest to God, I don’t know, other than I know that there’s a conduit there, and I try to keep it open as much as I can. When I keep it open, good things happen. It’s not from me. It’s from some other source.
Adam: The other piece of the equation that you’re describing is trusting your instincts, understanding that you might not exactly know where it’s coming from, but if you feel it, trust it.
Neil: Yeah, it’s patterns, too. It’s intuition. Even when I was really, really young, my intuition was incredible. Very strange, almost to levels where people thought, “Wow, what’s the matter with your son? He has some weird thing going on.” But intuition is pretty remarkable. Then you learn to find out when you get older, it’s not that. It’s just patterns that you’re learning. You’re studying patterns of these things, and then you just sort of remember them. This is a terrible thing, well, not terrible, but I’ve had many houses. I walked into houses, looking for houses to buy, a house to live in, and I would walk in and feel or sense if someone had died there, if there was sadness there, or any of these types of things. I would go in, and I would walk out sometimes, and the realtor, one realtor who’s a really nice guy, he’s a good friend, said, “Why are you walking out?” I said, “Because that woman who just came in, I think her husband must have died. There’s a lot of sadness, and it lives in this hallway of this house coming in. I can’t live in this house like that.” We found out that’s what happened. So he wanted to hire me to go into these houses to see if I could clear them or to find out what’s going on. But I mean, Adam, there are a lot of stories. You don’t have enough time to do that. But I’ve gone into hotels where I said, “I can’t be here. I can’t be here. There’s something damaging here.” Then I found out, yeah, they built this hotel over the 30 people who died in the construction of it in New Zealand. Just stuff like that. But intuition is sort of patterns you feel or something. It’s kind of weird.
Adam: You’re describing that sixth sense, and you had that sixth sense the moment that you met your wife, your bandmate, your creative partner, Pat Benatar. Can you describe that moment, and can you describe how you’ve been able to sustain such a successful partnership over so many years?
Neil: Yeah, so with that situation, again, that was a negative situation that turned into a real positive. I was with Rick Derringer, and I had just finished making a record with him, and I was on my way to Cleveland. Then I got this phone call as I was walking out of the studio door, and I thought they were kidding. They said, “No, there’s this person. They want you to meet this person, and there’s a possibility that, if you get along with this singer, you can maybe put a band together, and maybe this thing will work out.” I thought it was a joke. It wasn’t a joke. I met Patricia, and I walked into the room. Sorry, she looked at me, then she turned her back to me as I was walking in. I’m looking around and seeing people, and I turn around, look, and I think to myself, “Where have you been?” It’s almost as if I’d known her before. Where have you been? She had a similar type of feeling as well, like, “What? Where did you come from?” It’s like a welcome home. The other thing that was pretty universal and cool about it is that the A&R person who put us together told me about five years ago or something like that that, when he stood between her and me, he could actually feel electricity pulsing from either side of him. I said, “Why didn’t you tell me that, like, 40 years ago? Come on.” But that goes with the thing about starting to write songs. The first song you write is a hit. Where were they before? So it was just a special moment. I mean, at the time, I had a girlfriend. She was married. But it was just that moment where it’s just, hmm, and it was inevitable. I mean, really, we’re like the same person split in half. It’s very weird. It’s hard to describe, and it’s crazy. You also asked, how do you sustain that? I used to believe that, to make relationships work, one person has to be passive, the other one assertive. I disagree with that. You both have to be passive in your ways, and both have to be assertive in your ways. But the way that this worked in the very beginning, and continues, is that when it’s time for the studio, and I’m walking into that studio, and I close that door behind me, and that person’s in the studio, I lock that door. It’s my time. I’m Mr. Assertive because I’m ready to go. Then, when I unlock the door and walk out and go into family life, I’m passive. I’m a person who doesn’t like to get agitated. I don’t like aggravation. I don’t look for negative stuff. I don’t look to fight unless it’s something I truly, truly believe in. I will, but I’m not that guy. I’m easygoing about that. Patricia has a lot of energy and stuff like that. It’s easy. It’s just easy. It’s not perfect. I mean, there are a lot of reasons for people to be mad at us for being together for 47 years. I’d be mad at them, too. It’s hard enough being with Ed, my PR guy, for two years or something like that. Just kidding. But there’s no mystery to that, other than I just don’t look for confrontation. That’s not me. But if you come into my studio, Adam, I’m going to work you hard, man. Work you hard.
Adam: That’s a really important part of it. Knowing when to step up. Knowing when to step back. Understanding, where am I going to be best taking charge? Where am I going to be best letting someone else take charge? Not needing to take ownership of everything.
Neil: And keep your ears open and listen to what other people say, feel, and what they’re trying to do. I’m not a dictator in the studio. I don’t walk in and say, “You’re going to do this, do this, do this now.” But what I am going to do is try to get the best out of everybody. I do have a vision of what a song will sound like after it’s written to when it’s complete. I actually can hear it, landscaped in some ways, completed. It’s just a matter of trying to find different buildings in the landscape that all fit together. People come up with great ideas. Somebody comes up with a bad idea, including my own; they try it, and we don’t use it. So it’s just a process. You kind of know when it works.
Adam: How, as a leader, are you able to take your vision and turn it into reality, and how are you able to get the most out of the people who you’re leading in that process?
Neil: It depends. Some people need real positive support, like, “No, it’s okay. Try it again.” Other people need you to be that person who says, say you’re an NBA player and you didn’t make the All-Star Game, you didn’t make the team to be an All-Star, and the coach says to you, “You know what? If you played better, you’d get there. You’re not putting in enough time.” Be a little hard with them, right? It depends. You have to either support them gently, if that’s what it takes, or sort of say, “You wasted my time. Why did you waste my time?” Now, there’s something in the studio. It was out of this book. Sam Phillips wrote a great memoir. He was responsible for Sun Records early on, with Elvis and Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, all those people. He said that, as a producer, you have to have the people who are performing please you. Now, try to get this into your head, right, so it doesn’t sound narcissistic, because that’s not what it means. You have to create this platform where they’re playing and singing, and they want to sing really well, but they want to sing well for you because you are listening. If you follow what I’m saying, it’s not narcissistic, but there is something to that. What he was trying to say is that they have to feel as though they’re pleasing you. Then, when you get it right, you say, “Oh, that was really great.” An endorphin rush happens. The dopamine goes crazy. Cortisol gets crushed. If you want to be creative, if you want to lead a group of people, you don’t want cortisol getting into your life. You want that out of there because that’ll just crush you to pieces. You want to create endorphins. That’s why people write songs. That’s why people play instruments. That’s why people write books. Writers, you talk to a writer, when they start writing, and they get something great, their endorphins fly, and it feels good. Athletes, when they’re working out and they make a great play, the endorphins, bam. You have to surround yourself with people who have the same intensity of attainment toward the goal, which will probably lead me to the spirits company, Three Chord Bourbon, because that company was started nine years ago, and I wanted to create a company much like a band, which is like a family, where everybody’s position is very important. It’s a complete democracy, not in the political sense, but in the sense that everybody has an opinion and those opinions matter. Especially when you’re making a spirit, and you’re making a bourbon or some kind of whiskey, and your whiskey maker is trying all these different things, everybody tries it. If there are 10 people in the company, they all try it. It’s not me saying that; if I like A and everybody else likes B, we’re using A. We’re going to use B because you prove to me that B is great, and okay, no ego. Ego is a killer. It’s a business killer. When somebody wants it to be too much about them, narcissism, that’s very bad. Very bad. And you can smell it. You can sense it. It turns people off without them even knowing it.
Adam: You mentioned cortisol is a killer. Ego is just as big a killer.
Neil: Totally. Ego destroys bands. Look at how many bands. Take it easy, the Beatles. McCartney and Lennon couldn’t get along. You’re both writing great songs. You’re both great. It’s crazy. Look at how many bands won’t even talk to their other members, and they last for five years, six years. It’s crazy what happens.
Adam: What have been the keys to being able to be relevant for so long, for so many years, for so many decades? How have you been able to do it? How can anyone stay relevant over time?
Neil: It’s a process of reinventing yourself all the time, to evolve. I’m a believer in that evolution process. It all goes down to music because that’s the only thing I really know. If you go back to the beginning of 1980, 1981, and the music business, this is how I’ll explain relevance and evolution to you. I never wanted to make the same record twice, so I would constantly change genres and mix genres intentionally, to where you may hear a song and go, “What is that? Is that like a folk song? Is it blues?” I really mixed them all up. So I made things that sounded a little different from what radio was doing, because the thing with music is, if you’re in a studio and you make a song, it doesn’t come out until nine months later. That’s how it was, like a pregnancy: nine months later. If you’re trying to make a sound that’s relevant at that moment, nine months from now it’s not going to be the same. You have already missed the boat. So what I always did with Patricia, and other people I worked with, too, John Waite and various others, is that I would try to create some sort of different type of sound, not stick with what was going on at the time. That’s why a lot of our songs are different. They sound different, whether it’s “We Belong,” “Love Is a Battlefield,” “All Fired Up,” “We Live for Love,” or “Heartbreaker.” They’re all different. They’re not like the ’80s, with the drum sound and the same sound over and over again. That’s not what we did. And that comes with being brave and saying, “No, I don’t want to stick with what works. I want to try other things.” Evolve with any business. I’m just using music, but it’s with any company. You have to evolve. I was just reading this thing about Barnes & Noble, how everybody’s closing stores and they’re looking like they’re going down. Next thing you know, they started this book pyramid, which I don’t exactly know what they were talking about. It’s not a pyramid scam. It’s a pyramid of books, and it totally turned the whole thing around. It’s free thinking. Being brave. Not afraid to try something different. Who cares? Does it really matter? No, give it a shot. Try it. So people are saying, “When are you going to do some more music?” Well, soon, soon. I’ve got a couple of projects I’m doing on my own with some other people and stuff, and with Patricia. I said, “You get ready for this because it’s nothing like anything you’ve even tried to do before that we’ve done.” I said, “It’s going to be shocking, and you may think at times that I don’t know what I’m thinking about. I’m way outside of what I should be doing. Just trust me. Trust me.” We did this with the spirits company, too. We were going along and thought, wait, we need to evolve. We need to change. So now we start incorporating this different type of feel, bringing music back into the whiskey, into the juice itself, bringing back old photos, like a photo where you feel those very powerful moments. There’s one of Guitar Shorty, and he’s on his head playing his guitar upside down. Even Bob Dylan said, “I don’t think there’s a thing on him that could keep him from playing the guitar. He can play with his fingers, toes, anything.” So, just moments, creating moments.
Adam: Neil, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful, personally and professionally?
Neil: Find a spirituality that works. That’s key, because you have to take all these emotions and put them into play. Modesty is very, very important. Humility is important. Empathy is important. If you’re a songwriter, why would you want to write a song that makes people angry or doesn’t connect with the person you’re trying to bring in? A song like “Hell Is for Children” that we wrote, there’s not a day that people don’t come backstage and say, “If it wasn’t for that song, I would still be abused.” It breaks your heart when you hear that stuff. So I just think spirituality, and it could be exercise, yoga, it could be Kundalini, it could be the Tao, it could be anything. It could be Christianity, Judaism, whatever it is. But find something that centers you. I really believe in that. So you’ve got to find that. It’s very, very, very important.
Adam: Neil, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.
Neil: I don’t know if it’s great advice. It’s just from a small person. I wouldn’t put the word great on it, or “hell yeah.” That isn’t going on it either. But I appreciate it. I appreciate you. Thank you.
