Very close...but no cigar...

The next week felt like an eternity, and I didn't want to get my hopes up... but I felt my chances were really good. The one thing that I kept hearing in my head was what the leader of the band had said to me as I left the audition.."you're a really good player". It was probably the first time in a very long time that I thought that might be true.. because my self-doubt, which speaks loudly to me in my own voice, had been trying to convince me for a long time that it wasn't true, and never would be true..but this guy, who I considered as legendary, had just told me otherwise..and that had a huge impact on me. When the call finally did come, Rick called personally to let me know what was happening. He told me that it had come down to a short list of five guys, but since the audition, something had come up... It seems they had gotten the call to be the opening act for Led Zeppelin's  tour of California... in two weeks. I was told that although I was musically the style they were looking for, a big part of their concerns were about the stage show that these guys did. It consisted of a lot of high-energy moves, during specific songs, because on the level this band was at, visuals were very important, and although they believed I could learn that stuff, they didn't believe that I could learn it in 10 days. The guy they decided to go with  had been working as a member of their crew for two years, and  already knew the stage show, and so the the choice was clear, and that was that. Rick thanked me for my interest, and encouraged me to keep playing. I found out later the guy who beat me out was a guy named Neil Geraldo, an excellent guitarist, who, a few years later, had his own band with his new wife, Pat Benetar, and that band became one of the biggest acts of the 1980's. I was disappointed with the news, but I also realized just how well I had done..out of 400 candidates from New York, I had made it to the short list of five. For the first time in a long time, I felt really good about my skills as a musician..this was the real break I had been looking for..the gift of being able to recognize my own potential..and so I made up my mind not to waste the momentum I was feeling. I had almost gotten into a band that was about to share stages with Led Zeppelin, the best hard-rock band in the world.. and my dreams seemed much closer than I had ever imagined.