Neil Giraldo is a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and a five-time Grammy winner who has performed, written, and produced music that has sold more than 45 million records. Neil joins Adam to share his journey and his best lessons and advice. Neil and Adam discuss a wide range of topics: the road to greatness, leadership, creativity, ego, evolution, and much more.
Join Adam and the best network of mentors – Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders – for intimate half-hour conversations each week.
Thirty Minute Mentors is available wherever you listen to podcasts. If you enjoy the episode, visit your favorite podcasting app and subscribe, rate, and leave a review, and spread the word by sharing on your social media channels and sharing directly with your friends and colleagues.
Read the full transcript of Adam’s conversation with Neil Giraldo.
Episode Summary
Neil Giraldo, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist and producer, got his first guitar because a nun at his Catholic elementary school told him there was no room for him in the school band. His father bought him a guitar instead, hoping Neil could play duets with Neil’s older sister, Priscilla, who played accordion, so the two of them could perform Italian songs for family after church on Sundays. Even earlier, at four or five, Neil became fixated on Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel,” playing it on his parents’ hi-fi over and over until, as he describes it, the idea of writing and producing music took hold in him alongside the idea of playing it. His mother’s much younger brother, an uncle only a handful of years older than Neil himself, introduced him to the Kinks, the Yardbirds, and the British Invasion sound that pulled him away from the Italian songs and toward rock.
Neil nearly gave up on becoming a successful guitarist. He was playing covers with a Cleveland band, making enough money that the band could skip day jobs and write its own songs, when someone who saw him play asked if he wanted to audition for an open guitarist spot with Rick Derringer in New York. Asked to come back for a second audition, he learned every Derringer song he could, wanted, as he puts it, a one-way ticket, and got the job. He calls that day the one that changed the direction of his entire life.
It was through that same period working with Derringer that an A&R contact introduced him to Pat Benatar. Neil says that when they met, it was as if he had known her before, and the two formed a band in 1979 and have been together for 47 years. He credits part of that longevity to a strict separation of roles: in the studio, he is the demanding, assertive producer, and outside it, he deliberately avoids confrontation.
Neil’s approach to staying relevant across decades has been to actively avoid repeating himself, constantly changing and mixing genres on purpose so that songs like “We Belong,” “Love Is a Battlefield,” and “Heartbreaker” don’t sound like each other, let alone like whatever else was on the radio that year. At Steel Bending Spirits, the company behind Three Chord Bourbon, which he founded in 2017, decisions go to group consensus rather than his own preference, because, as he puts it, ego is a business killer.
What You’ll Learn
- Keep your eyes open: Neil lives by a lesson from Katherine Dunn’s novel Geek Love, that things move by themselves if you let them, so you have to notice the opportunities around you, even ones that start as negatives.
- Be fully prepared and approach competition with modesty: before his callback audition for Rick Derringer, Neil learned every Derringer song he could, and he thinks being prepared and going in with modesty rather than trying to beat everyone else is why he got the gig.
- Trust the oh, hell yeah test: Neil says that if a song only makes you think it is really good, it is not a hit, a test he attributes to Warren Buffett.
- Leave ego at the door: at Three Chord Bourbon, everyone in the company tastes the whiskey, and if the group prefers a different choice than Neil does, the group’s choice wins.
- Keep evolving: Neil never wanted to make the same record twice, so he mixed genres on purpose rather than chasing what was on the radio, since a song would not come out until months later anyway.
- Coach each person differently, Neil says: some people need gentle support to try again, and others need to hear bluntly that they are not putting in enough time.
About Neil Giraldo
Neil Giraldo is a guitarist, songwriter, and producer who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Pat Benatar in 2022. He grew up in Cleveland and began playing guitar at six, later joining Rick Derringer’s band in New York in the late 1970s before meeting his future wife and longtime creative partner, Pat Benatar, in 1979; the two married in 1982. Together they have recorded hits including “Love Is a Battlefield,” “We Belong,” and “Heartbreaker” across 47 years together, and Neil co-produced “Love Is a Battlefield” and “We Belong.” He founded Steel Bending Spirits, the company behind Three Chord Bourbon, in 2017.
Related Episodes
- Episode 149: Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Stevie Van Zandt
For more on a long career in rock and roll, Stevie discusses his career as a founding member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, an actor on The Sopranos, a bestselling author, and an entrepreneur. - Episode 129: Incubus Guitarist Michael Einziger
For more on songwriting and collaboration, Mike discusses writing and playing guitar for Incubus and collaborating with artists including Pharrell Williams, Hans Zimmer, and Avicii. - Episode 82: Grammy Award Winning Producer Tricky Stewart
For more on producing hit records, Tricky, a five-time Grammy Award-winning producer, discusses working with artists including Britney Spears, Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, and Beyoncé. - Episode 46: Music Producer Randy Jackson
For more on mentoring musicians, Randy discusses more than 40 years in the music industry as a Grammy Award-winning producer and the longest-tenured judge on American Idol. - Episode 24: OneRepublic Lead Singer Ryan Tedder
For more on succeeding in the music business, Ryan discusses managing rejection and feedback, performing under pressure, and his beverage company Mad Tasty.
