Back on Course

I was feeling a new clarity, a new sense of purpose, and a sense that I knew exactly what I needed to do next, and I recognized that I had gained an awareness of how things were "done" by the most successful bands in the world. It was first-hand knowledge, and it was the missing piece of a puzzle I had been trying to solve for well over ten years. I felt elated. And inspired. In my mind, I saw the "blueprint" I would need to follow, and I knew that if I didn't stray from it, and didn't cut any corners, that success in the music business would be a certainty, and an inevitability. I had never been more positive about anything in my whole life. And I was energized from the momentum I felt I had acquired from the entire audition process. The plan was clear and simple. I knew I had made over $1500.00 per week to support a heroin habit, less than a year earlier, and I knew I could still make that kind of money now, and probably more..since I was a lot clearer and a lot healthier than I had been then...only now, that money could be used to finance first class musicians, gear, crew, recording studio time, trucks, whatever was needed to be taken seriously by the music business and the public at large. And so I decided that it was time to do some very hard work, and make it happen...I also clearly saw that there was a sequence I would have to follow in order to make all the essential elements of my plan come to pass, and so I set out to accomplish those tasks, one at a time, knowing that if I did, a dream would appear before my eyes. Although what I was about to attempt was daunting, I never saw it that way...it was more like..."Ok, this is what I need to do first, and once I do, then this will become possible, and then when those two things are done, it will be easy to do that. It was crystal clear to me, so I started to do what I knew needed to be done...