You’re never going to get it.
If you wanted to know the real story of how someone’s career was made, at a minimum it would be boring. With factors and situations and details so nuanced and seemingly insignificant it would be a weeks long marathon for someone to tell the real story.
And more than that, there’s even more factors that are completely unknown to the teller. People and conversations and timing and coincidences that will forever go unrecognized.
The Netflix documentary version or the autobiography or the anthology series is about the closest we get…and yet we know there’s so much more to the story. There always is.
Here’s a little example…
I was in a band called The Kicks. Our very first song placement on TV was for a commercial for Lowes. We would get asked how this came to be and would reply with some version of ‘It just kinda happened. They liked the music and it all came together’.
By saying that answer I was saving people from the having to hear the stepped up version that spans about six years…
I met Adam from across the hall in my freshman dorm.
Then Adam and I moved in with Jeff.
Jeff interned at a label in town.
I met Jordan through a friend of a friend.
We put a group together.
Jeff brought his colleage Jeremy to a show.
Jeremy brought us to the people in charge at BMI.
BMI put us on their stage at Austin City Limits.
Whitaker was walking by the stage. He liked it.
He invited us to a day party at SXSW.
We met Lynn and sent her our music.
She liked it and also worked at a tv/film company.
Lynn’s company pitched our song and it was accepted by the ad agency.
Our song was on TV a lot.
And while this storyline is probably a bit hard to follow it only scratches the surface.
For any of us, the real story is almost impossible to tell or discover. It’s too much.
It’s helpful for us to realize that we’ll never really know how the greats got to be the greats. So while it’s important and stimulating and fun to hear about the process and journey that others have been on…there’s no need to try to uncover every last detail in hopes of being able to copy the path…because the teller doesn’t even have all the information.
And if they did it would be too boring to handle.
Might as well just go back to work.
