How to Protect Your Creative Fire in a Sea of Mediocrity

Two of my favo­rite artist heroes are Brian Eno and Frank Zappa, two musi­cians who first hit the big time about forty years ago. I was first tur­ned onto them in my late teens.

Both became tra­di­tio­nal rock stars around the same time, Eno pla­ying with Roxy Music, Zappa with The Mothers Of Invention.

They could have done what most rock stars do: Make a cou­ple of records, get a cou­ple of hits on the radio, spend the next X decades tou­ring, living on a tour bus, pla­ying the same songs night after night to ado­ring fans in towns in Cle­ve­land, Chi­cago, Des Moi­nes, Little Rock …