Heartland

“In a way it is freeing – and I do think, with the very modest and sparse experience I’ve had as to what it is to be famous; the glimpse I’ve had, the mercifully small glimpse, it is actually quite unpleasant. The shift goes very quickly from the music to other factors, plus you very quickly lose control of how you are presented to the public. And for someone who has quite a high level of anxiety and an over developed sense of responsibility, I find that quite debilitating and quite unsettling. I was playing with a band once, and my association with this band brought some of their, let’s say, more fanatical followers and somebody had created this fake Facebook page of me, of which I, “I” was updating this page with all these bizarre statements, completely at odds with my core belief system and it was horrifying. It went up and disappeared within a couple of days but imagine that on a larger scale with these huge artists and why you can understand that these icons were lead to alcohol and drug abuse and in extreme conditions, even suicide. Because of the mental impact that you don’t sign up for”. Because its selling the rock star persona, the culturally fed dream of being a rock star, they don’t speak of the negatives, the impacts, how cut throat the industry is, how much you have to sell your soul to get a record deal, the sacrifices, the compromises. “You’ve summed it up pretty well – the idea that the only path to success is for everybody to know who you are, where did that come from? Surely, all you need in order to be successful is to have a core group of people who really respect and are passionate about the thing you are passionate about and are willing to allow you to sustain your career to do it”.