I like reading the autobiographies of rock stars.
I can’t entirely place my finger on why, but I really enjoy the stories.
Their lives are entertaining. There are lots of crazy stories, but things are usually pretty exaggerated.
A few of the stories of read in the last year or so include Sammy Hagar, Ace Frehley, Rod Stewart, Gregg Allman and Duff McKagan. I guess you could throw John Daly in there since he’s kind of the rock star golfer.
They’re all good and worth reading.
Right now I’m reading Steven Tyler’s bio. He’s a bit quirky. Okay, he’s nuts. The book gets off to a slow start, but once he gets into the forming of Aerosmith things get interesting.
That’s always the most interesting part for me. The stories of sex and drugs are entertaining, but the story of the rock and roll is what interests me. I want to read about the struggles the guys had when they were coming from nothing to make it big.
They all have dreams and they all did whatever it took to make it work.
I would say that all of them have been near bankruptcy in their life, but in most cases they just started out with nothing and worked past the point when everyone was telling them to give up.
That’s the interesting part because in a way these guys are like entrepreneurs. They have a dream to do something and they do whatever they have to do for as long as they have to in order to make it work.
There was a passage in the Steve Tyler book that really hit me when I read it and I think it works well for blogging or for life in general:
This is gonna either be great or suck. Those are the only two possible choices you got!
…..
Own your mistakes!
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Write something…as bad or as good as it gets – that no one has come up with.
I love those lines.
Steven Tyler was talking about his songwriting method. He was talking about sitting with other artists – usually Joe Perry – and putting together something that would be different, something that would either suck or would be great.
The idea is that if you stick in the middle you’ll always be…just okay. It’s the safe play. You can do things that are good, but you’ll never become the biggest band in the world or the biggest business in the world.
Songwriting is a creative process and so is blogging.
Steven Tyler understands that he has to let go of the fear of failure. I honestly don’t think he cares what people think of all his songs. He just wants to give his songs a chance to be great because he knows when he nails it that he’ll win people over forever.
If you look at successful people, even the people you know in every day life, chances are they’ve had a bunch of failures. Maybe it’s just one thing they’ve done right in life like start a successful company.
The interesting thing about people is we generally only remember each other for their successes.
There are a few cases when that’s not the case like poor Bill Buckner, but for the most part we remember the good.
Nobody cares about the horrible songs Steven Tyler has written. They remember the great ones.
I think that’s the way to write blog posts. I myself realize I need to do it more.
It’s not easy. It’s not easy to let go and dare yourself to either be great or to suck.
But that seems to be the goal for success.