Like I said before, Stevie Ray was one of my all time favorites.
I have been fortunate enough to have played beside some very, very good guitar players. I used to jam with a guy that was as good as Stevie Ray. This guy should have gone as far. But, unfortunately like a lot of other incredibly talented musicians, he let drugs & alcohol get the best of him. This guy was amazing. He could play Stevie Ray, Dire Straits, Steely Dan, you name it, note for note. He should have made it into the big time, but did not. Really sad!
I used to jam with a guy that was as good as Stevie Ray. This guy should have gone as far. But, unfortunately like a lot of other incredibly talented musicians, he let drugs & alcohol get the best of him.
Drugs and alcohol abuse has nothing to do with it. There is and never has been any shortage of drug addicts and drugs in the music industry.
The truth is that is probably the hardest industry in the world to be successful in because there must be 10,000 people that good competing with each other for the 1 open slot for a record deal.
When you consider how many people that seemingly have no talent at all make it big in the music world,it sometimes seem like being lucky enough to have the right connections is the most important factor.
You won't find many better singers than Alison Krauss,but the story I read about her was her whole success is based on accident and luck. She was studying to be a classical violinist,and decided on a whim to attend a nearby blue grass festival,where people are getting together in loose and evolving jam groups all over the place,and anybody might end up appearing on stage to play with the big names. Which is what I read happened to her. She brought her violin with her,started jamming with the other attendees that afternoon,and ended up playing and singing on stage with the big names. According to what I read,she hadn't even ever sang in public before that day. Classical violinists in orchestras don't even talk,never mind sing.
Evidently she enjoyed what she had done because she dropped her classiscal music career and joined a family Blue Grass group as a fiddle player and eventually the lead singer. If she hadn't decided to go to that festival to see what they were like that day,chances are she would be an anonymous face in a orchestra today.
I certainly agree with what you stated for the most part. But in my friends situation, I guess you could say he had some mental issues, besides his addiction to drugs & alcohol. It made him severely unreliable. For example, he had been playing in a local band with Billy Ray Cyrus, just a few months before he broke out with his "big hit". My friend just did not show up to a gig one night. Naturally, Cyrus let him go. If my friend had maintained, he would have been propelled. But he pissed away his opportunity.
The truth is that is probably the hardest industry in the world to be successful in because there must be 10,000 people that good competing with each other for the 1 open slot for a record deal.
When you consider how many people that seemingly have no talent at all make it big in the music world,it sometimes seem like being lucky enough to have the right connections is the most important factor.
When I was a teenager in the early 1960s I had a friend my age that was a world class jazz drummer. He was so good that he had access to the jam sessions of the best jazz musicans playing in NYC. He and I would often go the Birdland on Monday night where Symphony Sid used to broadcast live the open stage jam session there. On occasion I would go with him to the after hours jam sessions with the headliners at Birdland and many of the best studio musicians in NYC. Hardly any of them made much of a living. Most were druggies that seemed to only be alive when playing their instrument. It was very sad to see how these highly talent, almost unique, people had such a pitiful existence. I didn't have that level of talent but was good enough to sometimes make a couple of hundred dollars a week playing and teaching and even more with the occasional studio gig - almost always off the books. I could have practiced 24/7 for the rest of my life and never had the command of my instrument that these guys had of theirs. It purely is a gift. But as you noted, one in 10,000+ make it and when they do it was usually a young man's game.
