Each year, more and more artists are establishing themselves, signing record contracts, touring, growing in fame and popularity. This website, and countless others like it, exist to support and share this music with the world.
Yet for each success, there are a thousand failures. There are bands who never took off, that broke up too soon, that simply weren’t in the right place at the right time. Indeed, it’s far more likely that many of us can relate to the story of a band’s failure than a band’s success. Guest writer August Gable shares his own story – one that will no doubt resonate with many.
I’m going bald. I look in the mirror, and when the light hits my hair in just the right way, I can see where it is thinning out, exposing the early stages of a bald patch. The other day, my girlfriend told me that I’m beginning to look like I’m in my thirties, pointing out that the crows feet around my eyes are becoming more noticeable. I’ve passed my used by date when it comes to being a musician. I wouldn’t be able to succeed now. I’m just too old.
I remember waking up one morning, some time ago, with the sudden idea of starting a band. I was twenty-one, and since my high school graduation I had been bumming around, not doing anything of note, just passing the time until I had found something worth doing. But now, for the first time in my life, I took something seriously. I was alone at first, just writing songs in my bedroom, waiting for musicians to come around who wanted the same thing I wanted.
Aaron was my best friend, and he played bass. We teamed up, and soon enough we found a drummer, and then we found two guitarists. This line-up was not the final one, as members would come and go – as is the stock-standard story for most bands.
We would rehearse at JMC Academy in Sydney, because the guitarist was a student there. And when I kicked him out of the band, we kept rehearsing there anyway. No one there seemed to think twice about it.
Members came and went, and eventually, the final line-up was settled. With this format we gigged in the few remaining venues in Sydney, and we undertook the recording of our debut, and only, album.
Back then, I was obsessed. And I was arrogant. But I wasn’t worried yet. At this point in time, being about twenty-two years old, I was absolutely certain that I was going to make it. I would sit in my bedroom, with my eyes closed, visualising myself playing to a packed stadium. Success seemed like a guarantee, and I had no doubt.
As I got older, and I turned twenty-three, things started to change. We had spent thousands of dollars on an album, and the songs were great. But the band had become divided. The drummer, Eli, and the guitarist, Tony, were on one side, and Aaron and I were on the other. Eli and Tony felt that I was too controlling, and never let them have any input. On the other hand, Aaron and I thought that they weren’t putting enough time and effort into the band.
Both sides were right.
In the studio, recording the album, I would micromanage everything that Tony and Eli did. If I didn’t like Tony’s guitar parts, I would transform them into something that sounded better to me. I would direct the recordings like a dictator directs a small country. To me, this behaviour felt justified. This band was my baby. I was there from the get-go. It was everything to me. But how can a musician feel enjoyment when their own creative input is dismissed by an obsessive front man? Only now, in hindsight, can I see how my actions made the situation in the band worse.
Eventually, tensions reached a peak, and I kicked Tony out of the band. Eli quit shortly after. Aaron and I were all that was left. We had an album finished, but no drummer to drive the songs, and no guitarist to play the solos. I wasn’t upset that they were gone. In fact, at that point in time, I almost loathed their guts. They had made my music career really difficult. It seems to be a story as old as time in the music industry: sometimes guys just can’t be relied upon when it comes down to the crunch. And Tony and Eli just weren’t giving it their all. So the band split in half and we went our separate ways.
Aaron and I continued to gig acoustically, and we started to release music videos on Youtube. The success we had, if any, was barely a blip on the radar of the music universe. When you get this sort of response to your art, it wears you out. I was emotionally exhausted, and I was over it. Music just wasn’t fun anymore. I was too concerned with trying to get people to like the band, to like me. The gigs lacked the vibe that they used to have when Tony and Eli were there. Although I was in denial at the time, they were an integral part of the band. They had given their own flavour to the songs, and this flavour coloured the album from start to finish. They couldn’t be replaced.
Around this time, I remember sitting down with my girlfriend, expressing concern about my age, and my fear of the future. What if I was thirty years old, and the band hadn’t succeeded? What would I have to show for myself? The pressure of society and its expectations weighed heavily upon me. I didn’t want to be that guy who was still playing music well into his thirties, incapable of letting go of his intangible hopes and dreams; the kind of guy you see playing a gig, and you know deep in your soul, that he just isn’t going to make it. The obsessive dreams of musical success had been replaced with the ominous fears of musical failure. It took a toll on me mentally and emotionally, and my ability to function normally had greatly diminished.
When I told Aaron that I was stopping the band, I knew that I had broken his heart. He really wanted it. After all the shit we had been through, he could still see us making it. He was the strongest of us. But I couldn’t do it any more. I was beaten.
I don’t know if I made the right decision to stop the band. It’s been almost two years now, and I think about it often. I think about whether I quit because I was too weak, and I simply wasn’t cut out to be a success. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a musician at all, and moving on from music was the right thing to do. I felt like a loser for stopping. A part of me felt like I had simply given up, and that I was failure. But another part of me felt relieved, that a weight had been lifted off of me. I felt free.
For a while, after I had stopped playing music, I had nothing going on in my life, and for lack of anything better to do I enrolled at university as a mature age student. I was completely unsure if it was the right thing to do, but I needed something new to focus on, to obsess over, something to quench my unending thirst to achieve. I am now a science student, and I know that I could never take this journey back. I have fallen in love with science, knowledge, and learning. But still, a part of me is frozen in time, sitting with my guitar, writing songs in my bedroom.
I haven’t listened to music for a long time, at least not at length.
Music was my life, but now it isn’t a passion like it once was.
It was partly beaten out of me by the relationship I shared with my fellow band members. But more so, the fear of failure, of being poor, of having no certain form of income, shattered my courage. And perhaps, I was simply unable to take a deep breathe and step forward into the unknown, come what may. I was not able to take the big chance of becoming a famous musician, because the ever-present reality of becoming a nobody, of becoming someone who was unable to earn a decent living, was in the forefront of my mind, and this scared the shit out of me.
I don’t have this fear of failure anymore, because I have chosen a ‘normal’ life. You might think this is pathetic, and a part of me agrees with you. But I am happy. I can become someone that my partner can be proud of, that she can depend upon, both economically and emotionally. I will be able to support a family, and build a life of security and prosperity.
I do miss music. I miss how good I was at it. I miss that feeling you get when you finish writing a great song. I miss being up on stage, and getting completely lost in the moment. I miss the nonchalant attitude that the boys in the band had, drinking vodka and popping pills every weekend. Because that’s what rock ‘n’ roll is all about, right? Good times.
A part of me will always love music. But I have chosen a different road now, the road more travelled. A part of me is dead because of this. Because when you choose to live a ‘normal’ life, in order to have certainty and security, the kid in you dies, and you can fall into the trap of taking life too seriously. But maybe that is a part of the maturation process. Maybe we can’t be kids forever, no matter how hard some of us try.
I’m not like the great poet, Robert Frost, who, in his famous poem chose to walk the road less travelled. I chose to walk the path more travelled, and I awoke a different part of me because of this. This is a part of me that I never knew existed, and I cannot, and do not, ever want to take it back.