An open letter to our heroes.
I don’t mean Superman and I don’t really mean our cops and first responders. I mean the people that we come to admire – probably first as kids and then people who inspire us to go on and do great things. Yeah – this is kind of a letter to the rockstars out there.
I believe in your right to die. I believe that that’s the last bastion of freedom some of us will ever have. But when you rocked a couple of little rooms in your home town you were doing it because you Loved it and you were inspired and maybe you knew you were on to a good thing and rode the wave. And when you saw the attention and the rewards, maybe you did it for the fame and the fortune in your high school and your old friends who never HAD realized just how cool you were…
But when you get big, and you sign the contracts, and you’re not just playing to a crowded bar room, but you’re selling millions of songs and you’re playing to millions of people, you don’t get to do it for yourself anymore. You didn’t just sign a contract with your label. You signed a contract with your fans.
I sincerely hope that your contract lets you keep that spirit of artistic integrity, and this isn’t a challenge to that at all. I hope you can create whatever it floats your boat to create and you fight the good fight and you don’t take any shit from your label and you let your fans know that you thank and respect them – but damn it if you want to make an album that doesn’t sound like what they’ve Loved in the past, you can fucking do what you damned well please with your music cause it’s yours…
But your LIFE is no longer yours. You can get sick and you can get old – and that’s part of our human experience. You can get sad and you can get depressed and you can shoot heroin and get spectacular venereal diseases from spectacular groupies. But you no longer get to do any of the above in a vacuum. At your lowest moment you may feel that no-one understands you and you’re all alone and no-one cares – but you have facts and figures and charts and sales reports that tell you that that’s not true – that at the very least millions of fans believe in you, want to know what you have to say – and care.
And so how you deal with Life, death, disease and age is no longer about you. It’s about what you want to say to the people who’ve supported you, Loved you, who admire you and who listen to what you have to say – whether you’re saying it with a song or a statement or a noose.
And so yes, I’m talking to Chris Cornell – because I’ve been playing your songs and listening to your music for thirty years. And I’m talking to Chester Bennington because I run an open mic and I’m watching people come in broken up, playing your songs and missing your music. And I’m talking to Kurt Cobain and I’m talking to Michael from INXS – Hell I’m talking to Sylvia Plath and Vincent Van Gogh – maybe you ARE thinking “perhaps they’ll listen now” – or maybe you thought we never really heard – or that you’ve got nothing left to say or no longer have the tools to say it…
And I respect that. But you no longer do any of it in a vacuum. Don’t leave us wondering. Don’t leave us guessing. Tell us what you meant. Because you no longer get to die for yourself either. Millions are listening – and you don’t get to NOT have a message, or at least a note.
