How to Be a Musician Who Actually MAKES It | The Brutal Truth You Won’t Hear in School

Good morning, Believe Nation. Today I thought I'd try something a little bit different with a brand new series on my channel called Making It, where we look at how to make it in a particular field as a particular kind of artist, as a particular kind of entrepreneur, and take lessons from people who've already gone out and accomplished that. They've already made it. So today we're gonna talk about making it as a musician. And as usual, as you guys watch this video, if there's something that you really love, you're really learning, something that somebody said that really resonates with you, Leave it in the comments and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well.

I wanna tell you the most important piece of information that applies not only to your musical career, but your entire life. And I've seen it work and I've seen it not work. And it's 100% true. Number one thing you have to do before you set out on any other goal or any other course is to define your expectations. Number 1 thing on the outset of every single project, record, tour, define your expectations. Everyone in this room wants to make it, but I question how you would recognize making it. What is making it? Well, what do you want to be? Who in here wants a record deal? Would it be nice to have a record deal, right? We want a record deal. Okay, well, what does a record deal look like? What does making it look like? You want to sell a million copies, 2 million copies? Well, okay, let's say selling 2 million copies is like selling 10 million copies 10 years ago. So let's say you say to yourself, my expectation is that I want to be an artist and I want to put records out and I want to sell millions of copies. If that's your expectation, great. Then you sort of skip straight to another questionnaire. You know, okay, if you answered yes to do I want to be a pop star, do I want to make music for as many people as possible, Now you have to sort of change your game to fit the expectation. You now have to wonder about, is your song shorter than 4 minutes? Do you get to your chorus fast enough? These are things you have to absolutely do. And you also have to compromise. And you also have to play the game, you know. Who in here thinks that the public is mostly dumb? You think the public is mostly dumb. Let me tell you something. The public is about 300 million times smarter than you. The public is not dumb. For those of you who said, "Yes, I want to be a pop star," and, "Yes, I would like to have a record deal," and, "Yes, I'd like to make this happen," the first thing you should know is that the public is always smarter than you. If you put a song out and you go, "Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk," That's it. That's it. Watch it go. Light fuse. Stand back. Everybody stand back. It's going to be a hit. It's going to be a hit. It's going to be a hit. And it goes like this. Who is smarter than who? Your big smart pop song went nowhere. The public just told you, eh, they're smarter than you on that one. Because you said you had it, and they said, I don't think so. And you didn't have it. So they're smarter than you. That's what you have to deal with. They're smarter. And by defining your expectations, if you decide that you want to be a pop star— that's not a dirty word, it just means— pop just means popular. Frank Sinatra was a pop star. Jimi Hendrix was a pop star. Lots of people were pop stars. What kind of pop star? Lots of people are jazz musicians. What kind of jazz musician?

You can be—

you can define the genre any way you want. So if you said you want to be a pop star, then you have to look at your songs. There's also people here who are a little dishonest about what they really want to be. And I think if you want to be famous, if you want to make music for as many people as possible, just come out and say it. Don't say, "I want to be indie. I'm just going to be an independent artist," and really secretly wish that you wanted to be a pop star. Because from the very beginning, it's disingenuous. There's nothing wrong with saying, "I want to play music for as many people as possible," without compromising the things that I have to be as an artist. And that's what I've done. Sony Music doesn't come into the studio when I'm making a record, but I also know what's going to be a hit, or what stands the chance of being a hit, and what just doesn't. And it's a level of honesty with yourself that you have to have before you hand your music out to anybody else. So that's sort of what I want to say about expectations. If you only recognize success as a record deal and a big fat Publishers Clearing House oversized Tiger Woods check and a dinner and then going to the top of the roof and screaming, "I made it!" Most of you will be stunning failures. I'll tell you right now, most of you— I didn't do it that way. But if you define success by putting out your first record and selling 5,000 copies and going to have sushi when you say, "Yeah, I got 5,000 cop—" "When I sell 5,000 copies, I'm going to consider this a success." That's the difference between people who walk this earth happy and people who walk the earth constantly unfulfilled, because they've never defined the finish line. I know artists who sold 2 million records. It's not enough, because they never said what making it was going to be. They just had this feeling like it was their life, they were just going to know. It's not going to work like that. It's just not gonna work like that. What would you tell 4 guys in a garage that had a good batch of songs? What would you tell them to do today?

Go play live. Just play live. Honestly, if you're good at what you do, people will recognize that. I really believe it. I really believe that going out and playing good songs live as a great live band will make you successful. I really think it will, and it doesn't matter if you're at the shithole down the street, or you're on the side stage at Bonnaroo, or you're headlining Lollapalooza. If you're a great band with great songs, people will notice it. That's it. That's all it is. It's that simple. Fuck product placement and labels and A&R people and all that bullshit, it doesn't fucking matter. I swear to God, it doesn't matter. And if you back that up with the idea that just playing those great songs in your great live band is enough reward for you, then you're fucking set. But you gotta be badass. You just have to be really good. It's the other things that make up for your musical inability. I mean, as a drummer, I never felt like I'm gonna be on the COVID of Modern Drummer magazine because I'm the best fucking drummer in the world. I just knew that if you put me on stage without a fucking PA or floor monitors in a small club, that I would beat the fucking shit out of my drums so much that people would go, goddamn, did you see that fucking guy? Drummer, right? Whoa. And I'd walk away from every show like, there you go, I just beat the piss out of those things. And people saw it. People took notice for sure. And that was great. So at the end of the show, I was a successful musician because I had achieved what I wanted to achieve. So I honestly believe— I mean, I know lots of musicians that went down to South by Southwest and said, well, it's easy for you to say I'm like, man, I was in the same fucking position you are in 24 years ago. That was it. I worked in a fucking furniture warehouse and I wanted people to like my music, so I played out as much as I could, you know? And if you really honestly, like I said, if you're passionate and driven and focused in what you do, if you're really fucking good at it, people will take notice. That's basically it. I mean, I don't understand the industry. I don't understand I don't understand where music is headed. I don't really understand technology. I just know that when you walk into a club and you see a band that blows you away, you are gonna follow that band. You're gonna either buy their CD or you're gonna find them online or you're gonna see them the next time they come to play. And it takes, that's what it takes. You don't have to stand in line at the song contest on TV to become a fucking fan. Popular musician, you know, to stand in front of some judge that doesn't even fucking play an instrument on their own goddamn records, tell you, "No, you're not good enough." Right. Fuck that. You know, go blow people away in front, in their face. And so it's kind of, you know, it's, it's, I honestly believe it's that simple.

What I've learned about music today is no one has to buy your record anymore. Like, No one has to. Usually they buy your record if you're a likable person. Adele's incredibly likable, Taylor's incredibly likable, Bruno Mars is incredibly likable, Sam Smith's likable, I'd like to think I was likable. You have to be a likable person. You mentioned Hitler just now. Yeah, but for people to be likable persons, you have to get to know them. And on Twitter it's very much instant thoughts, and Snapchat's very much instant thoughts, Facebook's instant, instant, instant, and it's all like your personality coming out through something. You'd find kids, instead of being like, "Oh, well, I'm gonna illegally download the album 'cause I wanna hear it," they'll be like, "Oh, I think they're a nice person. I'm gonna support that." And then they'll go and buy the album. And I think that's a really important thing nowadays. And I've never been disproven, 'cause anyone that comes across as a dick does not sell that many records.

Do you think somehow that aspect of your personality will come out and turn off people? I honestly do.

I honestly do. I think, um— You know, it's a lot different than back in the day. If I was a successful musician in the '70s and there was a newspaper article about me, it could be true, it could not be true. Like, if there's TMZ footage now online on YouTube and you watch it, like, it's there, it definitely happened. So, like, it's, yeah, I think it's very important to be a good person nowadays in music. And I found that everyone at a certain level, they're all nice, everyone's nice. And everyone who's mid-tier, who's very, uh, what's the word, very, um, self-conscious about themselves and their talent. They're the ones who get a bit nasty.

I just think that people— it's pointless for people to get into a creative arena and say, "I want to be the best." I mean, you know, there are— everyone has what they have. They say what they say, and you could never compare, you know, Picasso with Léger. I mean, you have to— everybody has something different to say. And it's silly to get in there and say my brushstroke is better than another person's. You know, it's better to say, am I being true to myself? And is this what I want to say? And have I expressed myself, you know, the way I want to express myself? Yeah, I mean, that's what it's all about.

I think like this: the management or Newport Club wouldn't want me if they I couldn't have people that wanted to see me. So I try my best to let the audience know that I appreciate them and their appearance here with me, or their support if you will, by letting them know that I love them too. I've been around some artists, been around some places even, once the audience I'll never forget once I was in Chicago, I won't mention the club, but I was in Chicago and the management had been advertising to get people to come, get people to come, so people were there. So when the show was over, some guy got up and said, "Well, you don't have to go home, but you got to leave here." That made me angry. I get very angry, very angry. I said that he could say, you know, folks, we got to close. That old stuff about you don't have to go home but you got to leave here, he didn't say that when he was trying to get them to come in. So I wasn't happy about that at all. So you don't get that here. Sure, there are curfews in some places, some places you have to close at a particular time. The audience understands that, so if you tell them, you're going to have a few that may grumble, but the majority of the people are right with you and they're sensible. They know that if you don't close down, maybe lose your license. So if you say, folks, sorry, the time is now, we have to cut it off, it's a curfew time, and most of the majority of the people will walk out, they will go.

I'm competitive really with myself, right? Honestly, like, I— every time I start an album, I go and watch all of my performances and I try to figure out, okay, What is it that I could have done better, or what worked? And really, my references, I go back to myself and try to better myself. So I'm really tough on me, more so than anyone else. I'm not a competitive person that walks in thinking about other people and how I can compete with them, or especially not my husband.

How do I write a song? Well, you don't have a pen in your hand and you don't try. What would happen if I sat here and played some chords, whatever, and say, I'm going to write the best song ever written? Nothing happens. Something in the heavens has to say, look, this is the time that this is going to be laid on you, and this is when I want you to have it. Now, I remember when I, when I wrote Billie Jean, I was riding in my car down Ventura Boulevard All I said to myself beforehand, I want to write a song with a great bass hook, you know, and I just let it go really. And then several days later, you know, um, you know, where did that come from?

From above. So, okay, you, you were singing the bass line.

Sing that again, and then what happened?

How did you get the other instrumentation?

And the composition? How did it work?

It— see, the thing is, in— artists seem to get in the way of the music. Get out of the way of the music, you know. Don't write the music, let the music write itself.

I try to stay pretty open to inspiration every single day, all day, and if I come up with— if I come up with some line that I feel that I feel like sounds like it should be a highlighted line or it sounds like it's an interesting observation, I'll write it down in this kind of notepad that I have in my phone. And when it comes time to finish a song, I'll just go through all the lines and look at them and go, "Okay, this works for this, this works for that." Mm. It's really fun. It's fun to continue to stay open to inspiration all the time and always be looking.

You have bad days. And from the outside, people may look at my life and think that everything's good all the time, and it's really just not the case. You can have dark days. It doesn't matter how well your career is doing. There's all kinds of things that happen in life. But as far as creative dreams go, I remember we had released the first song off our second album and it bombed. It did terribly. It was called "Attack." And— [SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE] Yeah, well, you should have requested it on the radio more, buddy, because nobody else thought so. And maybe there were other forces working at that time against us, but I thought it was a decent song as well for the time. But it bombed. The record company wanted to drop us. They actually did. They called our management and said, "We're dropping the band." Somehow, they convinced the head of the record company, Jason Flom, the guy was in there, to come and see us one more time at Madison Square Garden. We were opening for Audioslave. And the crowd hated us, right? They hated us. It was just a— crowd was largely there, it was made up of Soundgarden and Rage fans, a lot of older people, and they just were like, "Who are these weirdos?" "Will they get outta here?" But anyway, we played that show and the president of the record company who had wanted to drop us, he decided to give us one more shot. But that time was really brutal, you know? It's our second album. We knew if we got dropped, it would be very difficult to ever find a way to make music and share it again. This was way before iTunes. It was way before Facebook, and it was way before YouTube. It was way before it was so easy to make and distribute music and share your work online. So, it was a challenging time and really dark, but I decided to direct the video myself. It was for a song called "The Kill." They released it, and it changed our lives. So, and that story has kind of happened more than a few times in our careers. And it's happened to me as an actor. It's happened to me as a director. I've looked at things so many times, videos that you guys see now and think, "Oh, that's pretty good," and just wanted to rip my eyeballs out, it was so bad. So, I think the thing that we don't teach each other or remind each other enough of is that failure is oftentimes more important than success, and success is is the thing that can actually make us fail. It's really important to note what the lessons are to learn in failure. And it happens a lot. It doesn't feel good, but it's a necessity.

How many times have you guys, you know, in a situation of need, a moment of need, you go, you know what I need? I need da da da da da da da, right? And then you blow it off. And then 3 years later there's a guy, you know, on an infomercial describing exactly your idea, and he's showing you how great your product works. You have to be unafraid to listen and unafraid to think that something that you have is a good idea. Now, you also can't believe in it so much that you, that you have deaf ears toward it. Like reason and reality. Because you can have the most brilliant idea in the world, but you gotta bet on yourself. You can't think that, like, that one idea and the way that you think it's supposed to happen is the only way that it can happen. You know, don't wait for the stars to align. Reach up and rearrange them the way you want. Create your own constellation. I say that all the time. You just have to be smart enough to know that, like, you know, there's so many ways that, like, things can turn out, you know, and there's so many people in their lives that, man, if I would have just made that left turn, or if I would have just stayed in the house 5 more minutes, or whatever, like, woulda, coulda, shoulda. If we would bet on ourselves, but at the same time taking consideration What this moment will mean to us 10 years from now, it could be different. But listen, I haven't made all the best decisions in the world either. I definitely fell on my ass a million times, but I learned on my way down, and I definitely taken a stride getting back up.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what you think of this new series. Did you like it? Should we continue it? Is there another group group that you want us to profile instead of musicians, let me know. Should we kill the series? Was it not valuable to you? Let me know, leave in the comments, put your thoughts down there. I'm going to join in the discussion. I also want to give a quick shout out to Daniel Valenzuela from dvalenzuela.com. Daniel, thank you so much for buying my book. It really means a lot to me. For those of you watching, if you want a chance at a shout out in a future video, make sure to pick up a copy of the book. It's really good, I promise. And also email in the so that we can keep track and send you the free bonuses. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.