I recently read an interview with the bassist Les Claypool about his failed audition for Metallica in 1986. In the interview he acknowledged that he was not a good match for that band, saying “I just didn’t fit in”. Less than a decade later, his band Primus played at the 1994 Woodstock Festival and continues to enjoy international success thirty years later. His advice, at the end of the interview, was for bassists and musicians to “play with as many different people as possible” because “until you’re dead, you’re always learning.”
The article reminded me of one of the most important things I’ve learned as a musician, which I now share with all my students: be the most authentic version of You that you can be, trust that this authentic version of You is valuable and needed somewhere (even if it’s not where you are now), and keep searching for the place where you belong with your full being.
