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to all intents and purposes this book has been written by Jimmy Hendrick but since it has been compiled after his death it seems only fair to offer an explanation as to how the final text was arrived at it evolved out of a film
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biography of him that I was working on not wishing to put words into Jimmy's mouth we began experimenting with dialogue cold from records of things he had actually said an enormous dossier was compiled from all the sources that could be definitively authenticated
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there was a super abundance of material since during his four years in the spotlight he was constantly giving interviews he was also a compulsive writer using Hotel stationery scraps of paper cigarette cartons napkins anything
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that came to hand funny Jay-Z did the exact same thing when he was young as well that's episode 238 if you haven't listened to uh the the podcast I made on jz's Autobiography on reading through all the available material it is clear that J Jimmy left behind his own
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remarkable and comprehensive account of himself we felt it imperative that Jimmy should be allowed to offer his own personal version of his life in music the fact that Jimmy's speech patterns are so rhythmic and his turns of phrase
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so visually Rich serve to enhance this approach in a remarkable and haunting way the book took on a life of its own he always claimed that for him life and music were inseparable as the book progresses it becomes less an account of external events and more an exploration
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of an internal Journey that is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today which is Jimmy Hendrick starting at zero his own story real quick before I jump back into the book I want to tell you what got me
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excited and interested in reading a book about a biography about jimmi Hendrick over the years I'd heard about his obsessive practice habits this has become a main theme that you and I talk about over and over again because you see it in every single life story of
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History's Greatest entrepreneurs or anybody that reach the top of their profession and you and I Define practice as all the things that you do to get better at your job and so in Jimmy's case he got paid to make albums so record albums in the studio and perform
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what made those events both the albums he made and the performances that he performed valuable was everything he did when he was not technically working and so people that played in the bands with Jimmy all said the same thing that he
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would always be playing his guitar he'd walk down the street playing the guitar he would fall asleep playing the guitar if he was in the back of the cab he would start playing his guitar and Jimmy's career from the time he became well known to the time he died of a drug
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overdose was only four years he had been trying to break through a few years before that but somebody that knew him during this entire time this guy named Billy says that he that Jimmy put in 25 years worth of guitar practice into 5
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years and so when I I hear stories like that I'm like okay that's a that's a person I can learn a lot from let me go find a book about him and that's how we arrived uh at this this with this book in my hand so I'm going to jump right
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into all of these words are Jimmy's words and so it starts very most of most of the highlights I have and most of the book is covers like his four-year career how he was thinking about it in a few years right before he breaks through uh
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but there is an overview of his early life that I think is extremely important uh to start with and so he says I was born in Seattle Washington on November 27th 19 42 at the age of zero that's why the book is called starting at zero dad
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he talks about his parents his his mom is going to die uh really early on unfortunately at an early age says Dad was very strict and level-headed but my mother used to like dressing up and having a good time she used to drink a lot and didn't take care of herself but
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she was a Gro groovy mother there were family trouble between my mother and father they used to break up all the time so I stayed mostly at my aunt's house and my grandmother's and the reason I'm reading the to because one main theme uh I'm going to tie it
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together uh with what we just learned last week with Peter te's book 0 to1 Jimmy and like being different he intentionally uh was different part of that that what led him to be different is he had a unique up breaking and he
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says I used to spend a lot of time on her reservation in Vancouver British Columbia it is just a really bad scene now this is going to be interesting because he talks about uh the drug abuse the alcohol abuse that he was seeing as
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a as a young person and what what makes me sad about reading this book is the fact that knows he's part of the 27 Club these a collection of these young talented people that through alcohol and drugs died decades decades before they should have and as a result the world
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was robbed of they were robbed of their you know their 40 or 50 years into the future the the life that that was taken from them that they took from themselves really is the way you think about that but the world was also robbed of their
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gifts and he see what what's heartbreaking to me is he sees this he knows this behavior is is not beneficial and as the the book progresses and you get closer to his death it gets more and more hectic which we'll go into as well
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but he sees this as a young person he's like they're you know he says it's a really bad scene half of them are down on Skid Row they're drinking they're completely out of their minds and they're not doing anything and yet he was unable to learn from that experience
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and realize hey I should stay away from drugs and alcohol so then he goes back to uh the influence that his grandmother had and that she gave him a little uh Mexican jacket with tassels and I wore it to school every day in spite of what
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people might have thought because I liked it I liked to be different and that is another main theme of the book so I'm going to talk about a few things here so back on episode 259 I covered the autobiography of Bob Dylan if you have not listened to that episode highly
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recommend you listen to it I thought it was absolutely fantastic it's one of the greatest books that I've ever read Because of just his Mastery of language the reason I tie this into this is because Jimmy talks about he mentions a
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lot of people in the book he doesn't mention any anybody else as much as he mentions Bob Dylan they knew each other he says like he was inspired by Bob Dylan and what Bob and Jimmy have in in um in common is they practice all the time right but also they created Music
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there was nobody else in their genre that put out the same product as them so reading from Bob Dylan's autobiography uh Billy asked me who I saw myself like in today's music team I told him nobody I really didn't see myself like anybody
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another quote from Bob Dylan autobiography what really set me apart in those days was my repertoire it was more formidable than the rest of the players that is a goal you and I should be shooting for isn't it there was a lot
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better musicians around but there wasn't anybody close in nature to what I was doing and so how does that relate to what you and I have been talking about Bob Dylan intentionally set out to build he did not want to build an undifferentiated commodity business
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right what did Peter teal say tell us last last week if you want to create and capture lasting value you cannot build an undifferentiated commodity business he repeats that over and over again in another part of the book he says
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Monopoly businesses unique businesses capture more value than millions of undifferentiated competitors there's another example on how this applies to Jimi Hendricks it actually came from uh I was I've told you before I was a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain when he was
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alive even after he he died unfortunately I've watched a bunch of his stuff I've read his books uh that's episode I did his biography on episode 219 if you haven't listened to that either but in one of the episodes where Tony Bain goes to Tokyo he and this is
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what makes Tony such a such a unique interesting person and why I think a lot of people love the content that he produced over the years is he's in Tokyo and he Compares his experience to go to Tokyo for the first time to what it must
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have been like if you were alive in in England in the late 1960s and you encountered Jimmy Hendricks I'm going to read from the transcript of this episode and this is Tony speaking he says I often compare the experience of going to
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Japan for the first time going to Tokyo for the first time to what Eric Clapton and Pete Townson must have gone so these are you know other people in in Jimmy's industry per se and yet you have this guy who is who he just says from a very
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early age I like to be different I want to be different I do not want to build he's not saying these words but you and I are going to imply the meeting for uh for us I do not want to build a commodity un undifferentiated commodity
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business right and so he says hey I went to Tokyo for the first time to what Eric Clapton and Peter toson must have thought we were the reigning Guitar Gods of England at the time this is still Tony talking what they must have gone through the week that Jimmy Hendrick
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came to town you hear about it you go see it a whole new window opens up into a whole new thing and you think what does this mean what do I have left to say what do I do now and even if Jimmy's goal was not to make the most money right he intuitively understood Peter
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Teal's idea that the Monopoly profits or the value in his case of just a stronger fan base and really just getting as many as many his goal was getting as many people uh like to feel something in his music to he Compares it to like a
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religious experience Church a lot we'll talk about that uh that was his goal like maximize how many people have this experience have this feeling through the music that I'm producing but he intuitively understood that the idea that Monopoly profits come from
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differentiated businesses only you and I are talking about Jimmy Hendricks 50 years half a century after he died that doesn't happen if you're just putting out the same product as everybody else okay so then we go to the early death of
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his mother unfortunately it says his parents were divorced in December of 1950 Jimmy and his younger brother uh remained with their father why is that Jimmy saw his mother for the last time in January of 1958 she died the following month this is Jimmy talking
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there's a dream I had when I was real little about my mother being carried away on these camels it was a big Caravan and you could see the Shadows of the leaf patterns across her face you know how the Sun shines through a tree
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well there were these green and yellow Shadows see what they were talking about it's like he's very speaks very rhythmically almost poetically you're going to see the same thing if you've read the Bob Dylan autobiography as well
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and she's saying to me well I he's still talking about the dream think about this well I won't be seeing you too much anymore you know so I'll see you about two years after that she died I will always remember that one I never did forget there are some dreams that you
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never forget and then he talks about how strict uh and Rel like he was he was raised in like a strict and religious upbringing and he wanted to Rebel from that he wanted to be different he did not want to fit in mostly my dad took care of me
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he was religious he Tau me that I must respect my elders and that I couldn't speak unless I was spoken to first by a grown-up so I've always been very quiet but I saw a lot of things a fish this is something a lesson from his dad a fish
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wouldn't get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut and it does not sound like an environment that Jimmy wanted to be in and you know that through his actions cuz later on once he leaves Seattle he doesn't want up he winds up having like
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a a half sister uh he doesn't come back home for like seven years and his half sister is like 6 years old the first time he meets her and I don't think he ever goes back to Seattle after that so you can read through his actions whether
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you know what he thought of his home life uh Jimmy D not that he didn't you know love his dad there's a lot of letters a lot of the book is letters he wrote to his dad but you know he he chose not to to visit and stay in his own town Jimmy dropped out of high
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school at the age of 17 lots of kids have it tough Jesus I couldn't stand at home I ran away a couple times because I was so miserable I don't think my dad ever thought I was going to make it I was the kid who didn't do the right
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thing and so his life changes just like when Bob Dylan has that almost religious experience when he hears the the words of witty guty just like Jeff Bezos ran around with Sam Walton's book and gave it and had gave highlighted copies to
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all the people in Amazon at the very beginning just like just like Steve Jobs talked about visiting Edwin L was like a Shrine we see that happening again in this case it's this guy named Muddy Waters who changes Jimmy's life forever listen to how he describes this this is
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wild the first guitarist I was aware of was Muddy Waters I heard one of his records when I was a little boy and it scared me to death that's a crazy response right wow what is this all about and so he just starts playing a bunch of different instruments my first
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instrument was a harmonica next it was a violin I always dug string instruments and I like to piano but I wanted something I could take home or anywhere and I couldn't take home a piano so think about that something that he can
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always travels with him he car carries it all the time that's going to Fe fuel his practice habits you know sitting there waiting for the plane to take off I'm playing the guitar I'm in bed playing the guitar I'm walking on the
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street to get coffee I'm playing the guitar and so he says so then I started digging guitars so he could take it everywhere one night my Dad's friend was stoned and he told me or excuse me he sold me his guitar for $5 I was about 14 or 15 when I started
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playing I learned all the riffs I could he's completely selftaught completely self-taught how many entrepreneurs have you and I spoke talked about about like the P like if you take a an ambitious driven intelligent person especially
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today imagine how hard it was to get information and we know this again I'm going to tie down the tie back to the Bob Dylan um to the Bob Dylan podcast because it was so just so impactful on me if you've listened to it I almost like may have even started crying on
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that podcast because I was having like a religious experience while I was reading it I was in um I think it's called the Central Library in Austin Texas visiting family um and I'd go there every day and read that book and I'm surrounded by
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quotes of hel pacful reading and and and books the technology of you know books have been to the human species and I'm going through that exact same experience while I'm reading about Bob Dylan who's going through that exact same experience
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in New York trying to make it and going through his friend's library and just reading biography after biography after biography one thing talks about just how difficult it was for him to get access to other music he'd had he'd have to go
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to like a record store and they let you hang out there all day but you're supposed to like sample the music before you buy it and he would just sit in the booth all day he'd make friends and then go through their entire like go to their house and go through their entire record
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collection uh just a complete sponge of information again he's applying it to music other people apply it to building businesses Jimmy's doing the exact same thing but he's doing an environment where it's just information like there
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is a scarcity ofation where you and I have the exact opposite problem right now it's just an abundance so you take some driven intelligent person and you give them access to the internet you give them access to all the world's knowledge through all the books and
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whatever you want it's like you that that person is going to be unstoppable and you know this because you see that same personality type throughout history and what they would do when it was so hard to get the information what they would go the the lengths they' go
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through to get it is just remarkable so he says I learned all the Rifts I could I never had any lessons I learned guitar from records and the radio I loved my music man love soul in the game Church religion these are the main themes when
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I like I'm going to compare it I think I have notes later on the book I I've said this to you before it's just like if you go back and actually read you know the longest single book that I've ever read for the podcast was a biography on Enzo
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Ferrari I think it's like episode 98 or 99 something like that that's like a thousand pages and Enzo Ferrari described his product which are cars the way you describe your lover that's how Jimmy thinks about his music he loves it
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uh so he says I love my music man that's the first time I'm still really are in the book we're in trouble cuz I got a bunch of highlights he's going to repeat that over and over again uh you see I wasn't ever interested in other things
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just music I was trying to play like Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters I was trying this I I didn't even see this highlight from what I was just saying to you before but this is exactly the point I was trying to make I was trying to learn everything and anything now keep
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in mind this guy is going to eventually play in front front of he's going to have number one records he's going to be one of the most famous people in the world he's going to play in front of 500,000 people what is his first gig my
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first gig was at an Armory which is a National Guard place and we earned 35 cents a piece and three hamburgers that's incredible it was I think Bob Dylan was there was a similar story of Bob Dylan uh where he was playing at an Armory too and I don't think he was
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making much money uh so then this is uh Jimmy talking about this it was so hard for me at first I knew about three songs and when it when was time for us to play on stage I was all shaky you get so very discouraged you hear different bands
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playing around you in the GU guitar players always seem like he's so much better than you are and this is so important I put a gigantic exclamation point on this paragraph most people give up at this point but it's best not to just keep on just keep on sometimes
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you're going to be so frustrated that you'll hate the guitar but all this is just part of learning I'm going to read that again just keep on uh most people give up at this point but it's best not to just keep on just keep on sometimes
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you're going to be so frustrated you hate the guitar but all of this is just part of learning if you stick with it you are going to be rewarded if you're very stubborn you can make it and imagine the self-confidence like this is not a cocky person in fact later in the
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book which which you what you find uh most interesting is he's got a quote on how he deals with everybody suddenly tell him hey you're the best guitarist in the world you're the best you're the best and he says I don't consider myself
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to be the best and I like compliments they distract me his whole thing is like I just want to play a guitar I want to get paid like obviously I want to make money but if I can just play the guitar as a living for the rest of my life I
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will be happy but we see an insight into his mindset when he's playing gigs for 35 cents and three hamburgers belief comes before ability when you talk to normal people right not people non-founder mentalities people that maybe have a hard time understanding how
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entrepreneurs think they think it's the reverse they think you're able to do something and then you have now you believe you can do it because you just proved you could do it it's like no no no there is no reason on Earth that
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Jimmy believed what he's about to tell us he believed when he's playing gigs for 35 cents in three hamburgers I had very strange feelings that I was here for something and I was going to get a chance to be heard I got the guitar
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together because that was all I had Oh Daddy one of these days I'm going to be big and famous I'm going to make it man I think at that point he's a 17-year-old High broke High School Dropout think about that that's incredible and now that's the future the
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future what's going to take place in the future of uh your life and my life is unpredictable he's like I'm going to make it but first he's going to get arrested and then he's going to have to go serve in the Army so it says Jimmy
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was arrested for writing a stolen car he was given a two-year suspended sentence after the public defender told the judge that Jimmy is going to list in the armed forces this is 1961 he says I was 18 and I didn't have a scent in my pocket pocket so then this
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part of the book is a lot of the letters that Jimmy is writing home to his dad while he's serving in the armed forces and he talks about like the the the intense training how difficult it was how a lot of people are quitting and I just I'm just going to skip over a bunch
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of that I want to just pull out one line here because it gives you an Insight what he just sold us he like man this is the point a lot lot of people quit I'm telling you don't quit keep going it's part of learning process you're going to
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be rewarded if you don't quit you and I talk about this over and over again time carries most of the weight what does Jimmy say here I made up he's talking about all these people dropping out all these people crying next to him during
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all the the the training he's doing in the military he says I made up my mind that whatever happens I'm not quitting and what was he doing when he was when he had any downtime in the army army right he says in the Army I had started to play guitar very seriously so I
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thought all I can do is try to earn money playing guitar that is his he has one goal he's like I just want to earn enough money so I can play guitar there's no way he could have predicted when he was at this point in his life that he's going to be one of the most
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famous you know some people say he's the greatest guitar player of all time whatever the case is like but he's no doubt one of the most famous guitar players to ever live so he winds up like breaking his ankle and I think he either
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hurt his back or he like he faked a back injury to get out of uh the Army and so now he's completely broke he's homeless this is this is Bob Dylan all over again right same story here completely broke homeless just doing any kind of gig that
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he could possibly do and so we're going to see another giant EX point on this paragraph I went down south I played in cafes clubs and on the streets it was pretty tough at first I lived in very miserable circumstances I slept where I
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could and when I needed to eat I had to steal it I started a group called the king casuals with a fellow named Billy Cox who played funky funky bass Billy is that guy I quoted earlier that said Jimmy put in 25 years of guitar practice
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into 5 years and so now he's traveling all over the South again he is homeless that is not an exaggeration he goes I went to Nashville I lived in a big housing estate that they were building so in a like you know travel in the neighborhood you live in or whatever
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there's a house that's under construction you're not no one's supposed to be in there you're going to find Jimmy Hendrick sleeping in there in the 1960s they hadn't put in the floor yet and there was no roof we so we had to sleep under the stars this was wild
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we used to go downtown to watch the race riots he talks about uh in the background of this this book obviously it's all the this is 1960s America it's crazy even though he blows up he gets really famous in England first actually
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uh we would take a b a picnic basket because they wouldn't serve Us in the restaurants so obviously being African-American in the South couldn't even go into a lot of the restaurants unfortunately uh one group would stand on one side of the street and the rest
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on the other they'd shout names and talk to about each other's mothers and every once in a while they would stab each other that would go on for a couple hours and then we go to the same club and we would get stoned and so people
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were like why aren't you involved in all this and he says I had more important things to do like playing guitar so we see the singer or Focus he doesn't like obviously agree what's going on but he's like I'm only focused on what I can
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actually control and it's going to be playing the guitar I want to make money playing the guitar and he felt it was beneficial to be where he was at this time because so many guitar players were in Nashville he says in Nashville everybody knows how to play guitar this
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is where I really learned how to play and so he's going to list a bunch of people that when he's not playing he's studying the people that came before him that that created great work that he admired to see if there's ideas he names
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them elore James H howand wolf Muddy Waters again Robert Johnson Albert King Albert Collins you see this with with Bob Dylan I mean you really see with every entrepreneur but specifically Bob Dylan was doing the exact same thing most of the guitars
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come from the south down south at some funky Club one cat there starving to death might be the best guitar player you ever heard and you might not even know his name I started traveling all around playing around the South it was one of the hard it was one of the
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hardest audiences guys must play really good because for these people you can't play less and so he becomes famous later in life for playing guitar with his teeth there's videos on YouTube of this I don't even understand how that's
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possible but he learned that idea you know a decade before playing these gigs he says the idea of playing guitar with my teeth came to me in a town in Tennessee down there you have to play with your teeth or else you get shot there's a trail of broken teeth all over
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the stage I traveled all over the states playing in different groups oh God I can't even remember all their names bad pay lousy living and getting burned that was those days and so what he means by getting burned is that a lot of the
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promoters would fail to pay you or they'd say hey we're going to pay you you know 15 bucks for this gig and he'd get like two bucks or no money at all and so I spent a lot of time in this book or in in this part of his life in this part of the book as well because
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just note after note after note on on these next few pages is like how bad do you want it you could say that you want X to happen in your life Jimmy did everything he possibly could to allow to like prepare himself to have a lucky
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break I lived in very miserable circumstances sleeping among the garbage cans between all the tenaments was hell rats would run across your chest at night I ate orange peel and tomato paste people would say if you don't get a job
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you're just going to starve to death but I didn't want to take a job outside of music then one of the eely brothers this this is one first Big Break isy brothers are obviously well-known musicians heard me playing at a club and said he had a
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job open and so the very beginning for he's got a few years before he makes it on his own where he's got to play backup to more famous people and in that case he's told what to do and what to play he's like I there's no no part of my
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personality eventually just like I can't do this anymore I have to I have something inside of me that the world has to it has to get out I want the world to see and so he he gets to play he's making a little bit money but he's still homeless I had to sleep in the
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clubs where we were playing and there were a lot of cockroaches and rats those bastard animals were all over you during the night but as a result of going on tour and being around people that were already successful in the music business
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Jay I I referenced the AO biography of Jay-Z at the very beginning he he said the exact same thing he learned so much by other rappers or other people in the music industry just by being around them some of them gave them opportunity to go
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on tour and so he obviously we try to to repay that um once he got famous and successful to to people up uh to more people up and coming but we see this in Jimmy's life too after a couple months there was a soul package coming into
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town with Sam Cook Solomon Burke Jackie Wilson Hank Balor PB King he's just listing name after name so I think you get the point and he says I got a little job uh playing in in their backup band I learned an awful lot of guitar picking behind all those names every night I
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then met Little Richard so Little Richard winds up being a bastard to him I met Little Richard so I started playing with him for a while he wouldn't let me wear frilly shirts on stage so you know maybe you don't know this but if you Google jimmi Hendricks and you
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look at pictures of him you're going to see him dressed has only Jimmy Hendricks with dress so that was really important to him goes back to that that um that memory he has from childhood his grandmother giving him you know this
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some Native American clothes or some some clothes made in Mexico and he's wearing in Seattle Washington people like what the hell's wrong with you kid he just love to stay out or stand out he says Little Richard said Brothers we've
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got to have a meeting I am Little Richard and I the king of rock and Rhythm and I'm the only one who's going to look pretty on stage so he's like Jimmy you cannot look pretty on stage he had another meeting over my hairstyle imagine working for somebody like this
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come on man he had another meeting over my hairstyle I said I wasn't going to cut my hair for nobody that'll be a $5 fine for you Little Richard said if one if our shoelaces were two different types we'd get fine $5 everybody on that
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tour was brainwashed and so then he he quits the BR band but he doesn't have anything to fall back on and all he has to fall back on is a wish sandwich this is what he says I had nothing but a wish sandwich two pieces of bread wishing I had some meat
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between moving a few pages ahead we see the theme how bad do you want it it go it continues on and on and on and it comes from this idea it's like I don't want to play back up on somebody else's team I have my own ideas that I have to
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bring to life and I'm willing to sacrifice my comfort to do so so he's writing a letter home I just want you to let you know that I'm still here in New York trying to make it although I didn't although I don't eat every day everything's going all right for me I
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still have my guitar and as long as I have that no fool can keep me from living and he's trying to put things into perspective he says it could be worse than this but I'm going to keep hustling and scuffling until get things to happening like they're supposed to be
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there's that that Relentless self-belief right belief comes before ability he's homeless he's not eating every day and he's like that's fine I'm just it could be worse I'm going to keep hustling and things will be how they're supposed to
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be and so he talks about now he's telling us like why' you quit you had a gig like you you were getting paid you may have to deal with this you know this jerk or whatever and he says I just got tired man I can't stand it anymore I
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can't tell you the number of times it hurt me to play the same notes the same song it was just kind of a shadowy I was just kind of a Shad gy fig figure up there out of sight of the real meaning I wanted my own scene making my own music
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I had these ideas and sounds in my brain so I just went down to the Village this is in Manhattan and started playing like I wanted that's exactly where Bob Dylan went and we see that here because this is the first mention of Bob Dylan first
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of many times he's going to talk about Bob Dylan throughout the entire book when I was down in the village Bob Dylan was also starving down there I saw him one time both of us were stoned out of our minds we were both Stone and just hung around laughing yeah we just
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laughed and then he knew like everybody else knew he was like oh this this cat is different like Bob Dylan is on his what did Bob Dylan say he's like listen there's a lot of other musicians they made a bit better me but no one was doing what I was doing Bob Dylan was
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building an undifferentiated career right I used to get bored so quickly by anybody and everything that's why I went towards Dylan because he offered me something completely new he used to have a pad with him all the time to put down
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what he saw around him and so Jimmy uses that idea later on on where it's just like where do your songs come from he's like it comes from everything I experience like the world is my classroom I just write down the stuff I see and then over time that stuff turns
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into songs and so this is where he gets his his uh biggest break he gets invited to go play in England he says my Big Slice of luck came when this little English friend uh persuaded some guy named Chaz Chandler who was a bass
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player of this this successful group called The Animals uh to come down and see where where we were gigging and give me an ear so that's his way of saying hey my friend told him come down and watch this Jimmy Chaz asked if I would
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come over to England and start a group there and then listen how Jimmy makes his decision I'd never been to England before I said it might as well go because that's the way I live my life so he gets to England writes his dad I'm in England dad I met some people they're
29:42
going to make me a big star this is where his career goes parabolic is that I think that's the right word just completely a straight line all the way up uh so he says we don't want to be classed in any category my music isn't
29:55
pop it's me we're trying to create our own personal sound so then he talks about again I wrote this on this page as well Bob Dyan Peter teal unique product the English people hear Jimmy they're like what the hell is this and so he says the first time we played
30:10
there they sat openmouth and didn't know how to accept us but they still listened the club managers think that we were in a bob bob this is so important too man why you can't listen how many times have you and I talked about critics don't
30:22
know [ __ ] right and the reason I use terminology like that so it sticks in your brain it's like it doesn't matter whether you're good or you're bad that's that's irrelevant you're going to be if you're doing anything you're going to be
30:31
criticized and in story after story after Story in these biographies hundreds of them now we're almost up to 300 right you see this over and over again and all that matters is not that people that don't like what you're doing just focus on the customers that love
30:44
what you're doing or they get value out of what you're doing or that find your work solve some kind of problem for them that's the only I love um what uh the way Jeff puts this Jeff Bezos puts this and the most like the the most uh I
30:59
guess the least words possible saying most I mean the least words possible obsess over customers that's it and we see this with Jimmy was like the club Owners and the critics they don't like us but guess who loves us the listeners
31:10
that's all that matters the club managers thought we were an Abomination but the public thinks it's awesome meaning the work we're doing is awesome and so then he starts meeting other super famous people he says the Beatles used to come and see me sometimes the
31:22
Beatles and the stones are all such beautiful cats off record but it's a family thing that sometimes it begins to sound alike sometime remember the very first page I think the second page of the book is I like to be different Jimmy
31:34
uses that theme throughout his entire life uh that sometimes it all begins to sound alike sometimes you don't want to be part of the family I believe soon all the English records will all sound alike just like mtown all sounds alike that's
31:44
nice in a way but what happens if you have your own thing going and so this difference going back to what Tony Bourdain said right what must what what must have they thought the week that jimmi Hendrick came to town you hear about you go see it a whole new window
31:58
opens up to this whole new thing and you think what does this mean what do I have left to say what do I do now and as a result if you're doing that right you're getting people's attention there's going to be people that hate it but people
32:08
that love it and this is the end result I don't know how this happened so suddenly but our records began to sell at an incredible rate we never thought it would be this big and so that's great he's getting to play his records are
32:21
selling he's making money but there's also headaches uh you know now he becomes world famous we're going to talk about later on about how you would isolate self-isolate in hotel rooms just like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant talk about in their biographies there's
32:33
people trying to like steal your sound you're G to get sued but what I liked you know I'm going to skip over a lot of that because I I liked his perspective this is Jimmy Hendrick on gratitude Jimmy if you think about it Jimmy found
32:45
what he loved to do you and I just spent how many weeks going over Paul Grahams essays right uh I did three separate podcasts on them and one thing that sticks out in Paul grams essay is like really trying to help you think through like how do you find work that you
32:58
actually love and Paul says a line that those those essays are just fantastic he's like you know this is obvious you know it's hard because you're talking about out of billions of people that live a few hundred thousand actually
33:11
achieve that goal finding work that they love to do Jimmy was one of those people and so his whole point is just like I don't give a damn so long as I have enough to eat and to play what I want to play that's enough for me I consider ourselves to be some of the luckiest
33:26
cats alive because we're playing just what we want to play and people seem to like that you know how hard it is to and you know this is still like maybe a year into two years into massive success that sense of gratitude has got to be
33:42
unbelievably difficult and you know counter to human nature to maintain that sense of gratitude as your success increases and you see this is like people get richer and richer and it's like okay yeah I got maybe I have $100 million do now or whatever it is but I
33:56
got to get to a billion or now I got to a billion now I got to get to two billion and you know I I think like uh Bill Walsh's perspective on this was like the score takes care of itself as long like if you make that much money
34:07
that's fantastic but you've lost the thread somewhere in life if you start out just wanting to start a business get successful build a business people love you get wealthy as a result of that which is which is you know as it should be but then you you're somehow
34:19
discontent or unhappy because there's not some kind of number it's just like no let's center it's like I get to choose I get to build my own business build my own world I get to choose who I spend my time with I have complete autonomy and control you know how rare
34:32
that is in life and in Jimmy's case it's just like I just wanted to get paid to to play the guitar and now I've I've overshot that goal so much that you know I'm building making millions and millions of dollars he says later in the
34:44
book he's like I could just buy if I really wanted to I just buy a a house in Beverly Hills and chill and do nothing but he's like I don't want to do that I want to continue what did I start out as like I started just wanting to be able
34:55
to play the guitar and get paid for it so I'm just going to keep doing that and I think key of him like centering himself on that a few pages later he talks like what am I doing like what am I making and this is going to relate to another thing that Paul Graham said that
35:07
you need to build a product that you would use uh it made me think of also with Stephen King when I read his autobiography what he said he's like I'm the first reader right which means that yeah I'm I'm the writer but I'm the first reader if I wrote something and
35:19
I'm reading and I don't like it that means I shouldn't publish that book Steve Jobs used the same exact idea that Jimmy's about to say here so that's Paul Graham Stephen King Steve Jobs like listen we made the iPod and all the all
35:29
the devices we're making because like we made it for us and so Jimmy's saying that exact same thing listen this is self-satisfaction Jimmy says we're playing for the audience but I have to entertain myself too and that just reminds me that when I get to that
35:41
section it's like man this is why and I think you learn from Charlie Monger if you go and listen to him he's like listen like you gota just the the his idea of inversion is just genius and its simplicities like go and identify the
35:55
the the bad things that happen to people and you'll find he talks about a bunch of his friends that he grew up with I think they were childhood friends if I remember correctly and he's like you know most uh there was like three or
36:04
four guys I can't remember the exact number but it's like hey you know they all had problems with alcohol two of them are dead one of them's like you know bankrupt or you know not doing well so what did Charlie's like okay well I'll just not have not become an
36:15
alcoholic and the reason that's important here is because Jimmy didn't learn that lesson right so as a like that attitude where it's like I'm playing I have to entertain myself too I'm building the product that I want to see it's like that is part of the key to
36:26
longevity and so we just went over the fact that he's doing it he's building something he wants to see in the world he's grateful for the opportunity these are traits that that people have that can do that do great work for decade
36:37
after decade which is you know our end goal and yet that's not enough because you can get caught up in uh you know in his case he was taking pills he he gets caught with Heroin he says it's not his he swears up and down in the book he's
36:49
like I I'm scared of needles I would never inject uh but he did he he does talk about you know he had a problem with alcohol he would get violent with alcohol I'm pretty sure there's a lot of alcohol in system in his system when he
37:00
also took those pills and unfortunately died and so I look at Jimmy's example there's a ton of other examples you know up and down my family tree I've talked to you about this before it's just you know uh pills and alcoholism and cocaine
37:12
and I don't have problems with any of that stuff because I take it as an anti-model I was like that person's an idiot and what does that idiot do all day that idiot wakes up and starts drinking that idiot wakes up drinks and takes pills so I'm just not going to do
37:23
that and I think that's part of one of the gifts that Charlie Monger gives to the world because he tells he's great with aphorisms and he's great with stories and that's how these ideas really get lodged into your brain so then you can use them and take them with
37:34
you just like look at the behavior of people you dislike or you don't respect and do the opposite so then he talks about the pace and this is what really start in my reading of the book I'm like man you gota you really should try to
37:46
optimize for consistency over intensity because this guy really worked himself to death and I think how tired and mentally he also has to be disoriented going from being completely unknown sleeping in clubs that you're playing in
37:57
with rats and cockroaches over uh crawling over you to to 3 years later two years later being one of the most famous people in the world can't go anywhere you know who knows what what um that that experience is like and so that's why you see uh Rick Rubin talked
38:11
about this a lot where um you know he's worked with um a ton of artists and musicians for decade after decade and he's like they they don't know how to deal they feel the same they're the same person they're the the external world is
38:25
treating them completely different and a lot of people you know medicate and a lot of those people that medicate they use substances that kill them he talked about working with MC Miller uh which is the the rapper who uh died of an
38:36
overdose as well and I think he was I don't know if he was 27 but he was in his 20s and so this is where he's Jimmy's pace and intensity just skyrockets um he says we just we've played about 10 place 10 places the gigs happen like every day too which is crazy
38:51
uh we played just about 10 places here I guess I'm not sure because I don't keep up with that I just play we're working very very very very hard now once you've made a name for yourself this is actually important once You' made a name
39:00
for yourself you're all the more determined to keep it up and so I was listening to a I might have been in the defiant ones documentary on HBO but it was a it was either that documentary or an interview with Eminem right and he said you know he gets in he had years of
39:16
struggle Dr Dre was already very very successful discovers Eminem and and completely catapults Eminem's career and at the very one of the very first things Dr Dre said to Eminem when they were working on the first album was once you
39:30
get it you have to work twice as hard to keep it and Eminem was smart because he listened to that here you have Dr Dre right this guy I I should see if there's a book on him because maybe a lot of people don't know like his career like
39:43
Dr Dre has been in his industry for four decades he starts off selling Beats with a beeper this is decades before there was such thing as a cell phone right he literally sold Beats using a beeper starts off selling Beats with a beeper
40:00
30 years later sells beets to Apple for billions and his advice once you get it you have to work twice as hard to keep it then he goes back to his process he's like listen when you're first starting out you're going to it's normal to copy
40:11
other people uh that are doing the same thing you're doing but then eventually you take their their ideas combine them with yourself I listen to everybody but I don't try to copy anybody if you try to copy them note fornote your mind starts wandering you therefore you
40:23
should dig them and then do your own thing music is very serious to me it is my way of saying what I want to say I hear sounds and if I don't get them together nobody else will so that's another theme throughout the book he repeats very V different variations of
40:39
this he's like there's something inside of me that has to come out I have to bring this to the world and then he does interviews throughout the book and a lot of the transcripts are are printed in this book and it was very interesting
40:51
that he talks about like the importance of he starts out with hey I just want to get paid to play the guitar and really it's a he's he's Yearning For Freedom this is something you and I have talked about over and over again the main motivators of entrepreneurs is
41:02
independence and control and Jimmy says freedom is the key word to this whole thing everybody has their own ways they can do exactly what they want when it's time for you to die you've got to do that all by yourself nobody is going to
41:16
help you and so as I go through this book or any book rather I I don't I try not to think it's just like all Instinct it's like okay that part seems interesting to me I'm going to highlight it and then I'm immediately going to write down what comes to mind and I
41:27
can't necessarily explain why two quotes came to mind when I read that so I'm going to read that to you again freedom is the key to the whole thing everybody has their own ways they can do exactly what they want when it's time for you to
41:37
die you've got to do it by yourself no one's going to help you the first quote that that popped in my mind was from Nal racon and he says the reality is life is a single player game you're born alone you're going to die alone all of your
41:49
interpretations are alone all of your memories are alone you're gone in three generations and nobody cares before you showed up nobody cared it's all single player and so to me the way I interpret what why of all is saying that is that
42:00
it's importance of having an inner scorecard as opposed to an outer scorecard just do what you feel is right what you truly believe in your souls what you should be doing as opposed to worrying about oh what will this person think or what will that person think and
42:12
then the second was a quote from George Lucas's biography which I covered all the way back on Founders 35 I got I I'm shocked that I have not reread I need to re reread that book it's one of my favorite books I've ever read and where
42:22
Jimmy's like hey everybody has their own ways they can do exactly what they want there's a quote in George Lucas's biography that just gives me chills it's like he's talking about this way before he's successful I'm pretty sure he's
42:34
saying this when he was struggling and so it says uh it was the importance of self and being able to step out of whatever you're in and move forward rather than being stuck in your little rut Lucas said in 1971 people would give anything to quit their jobs all they
42:48
have to do is do it they are people in cages with open doors so on the very next page this jumps out to me he's asked a question by a reporter why do you carry two dimes in your shoe Jimmy's answer that was all I had when I landed
43:05
in this country what do you do in your spare time if I'm not working I rarely leave the flat mostly I sit at home playing uh Records I don't like having to dress up and go to social parties me I'm just trying to get my music together
43:19
another question has money-making changed you I don't give a damn so long as I have enough to eat and to play what I want to play where do your songs come from from the people from the traffic from everything out there the whole world influences me
43:34
and then this is one of the first times that he's going to mention just not being able to handle what's happening to him think about this guy's becoming so world famous there's a lot of like um not only he the money rolling in the
43:44
records are doing well he's selling out shows he's talking about all the like the women like are obviously flocking all over him and everything else and yet he's like man like I'm envious of the people that get to dig ditch think about how crazy that is right how
43:59
it's so hard sometimes for us to see things as it's happening to us you got to be able to step out of yourself this business music business is so much harder than people think it's nerve-wracking and mindbending the people who dig ditches for a living
44:12
don't know how lucky they are we are constantly under pressure and the work day is 24 hours a day I often get depressed I need to slow down and then he's looking at some of the records like once he cuts a record it's out there he
44:25
can't go back change it and James Dyson talks about this I think it's in his second autobiography but he talks about like uh just being there's like a constant like some percentage of him I can't remember what percentage maybe 10 or 15% always a little discontent that
44:40
everything can always be a little better and we're seeing Jimmy say that too this is the first time he mentions it but he mentions it many many times in the book that as he goes back and and looks at his past work he's always like
44:50
disappointed himself above all our records will become better purely from the point of viewing our uh from The View of our recording Technique we have not been happy with a single one keep in mind he's selling tons of them everybody
45:02
loves them and Jimmy's like ah I'm not they're not good enough uh we're cutting we're now cutting a new record between our tours there'll be maybe two tracks from the new Bob Dylan album on it Dylan goes his own way he is just getting more
45:12
and more of a songwriter he mentions Bob Dylan like I've said a lot he's really admired Bob Dylan and then there's also these weird um like almost like premonitions of his death uh at the very end of the book he talks so I was like I don't think I'm going to make to
45:27
28 um and this is the first example where he's like yeah Seattle's beautiful but the next time I see it I'm going to be in a pinebox uh no City I've ever seen is this pretty Seattle all the water and the mountains it's beautiful but I couldn't live there you get
45:40
Restless he his whole point is like he didn't want to live anywhere he just wanted to like roome the Earth you get restless and before you know it you're too old and you haven't seen any of the world you've got to get this great big
45:50
fat old world here or excuse me you've got this great big fat old world here so who wants to live in the same place for forever the next time I go to Seattle it will be in a pine box let me go to the next page and this is redlining life
46:02
main theme here it's just slow down consistency over intensity tomorrow we end our Italian tour then I fly to New York for a day to sign a contract in four days four days later I'll be in Switzerland then I'll have a vacation in Spain we really need one we are simply
46:16
over tired we cannot continue at this pace for this long and he talks about again that mentions just how difficult the business is they squeeze something until it is completely dry he will be dead two years later he brings up the
46:30
fact that a lot of his promoters and these Partners wind up stiffing him something that uh you know you and I have spent a few weeks talking about I think Peter teal talked about the importance of having the co-founders having some kind of prehistory together
46:41
uh Paul Graham talks about hey on the Y commentator application we ask about the prehistory of co-founders more than any other single thing Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett I can't remember which one says you can't do a good deal with a
46:50
bad person and so these people are just chewing Jimmy up and spitting him out they don't really care about him as a person they only care about what money they can make the money he can make them the these promoters think that you're a money-making machine and they have no
47:04
faith in you it's a dog it's doggy dog world constantly I can always tell the artificial people from the real music people the ones who care about the music and what the musicians are doing the trouble is in this business there are so
47:15
many artificial people this is a tale as old as time they see a fast buck and they keep you at it until you're exhausted and so is the public and then they move on to other things I am so tired I could drop but I find the relaxation comes from thinking about
47:30
music nothing else moves me I hear music in my head all the time few pages later he picks up that same idea I get a little deep at times and I don't talk but that's because I'm thinking about my music I've got notes in my mind so I
47:43
can't kill them but I can't kill them by talking I guess I could do without people in fact sometimes I'd rather be alone I like to think I can really get lost thinking about my music but then I think so much I have to to get out among people again few pages later more soul
47:59
in the game I care so much about my work I record stuff I believe is great so on some of his shows he would just he's really big into improvisation and so he started having this idea he's like man I I want to sacrifice he goes to this like
48:13
church religious thing he's like you have to sacrifice things you love I love my guitar so he starts at the end of the show starts burning guitars the problem is he realized that that got so like the Press started talking about it people
48:24
would start coming to his show show is not for the music but for the theatrics and he's like oh I can't do this anymore and so he's got this idea that you can't prostitute your own thing and I told you last week that I've been re uh reading a
48:36
lot of my highlights from Andrew Carnegie I'm glad I was doing that at the same time I was reading this book because this made me think of something that Andrew Carnegie said and he says this is this is Andrew Carnegie you know
48:45
speaking what maybe 150 years ago maybe even longer the judge within sits in the Supreme Court and can never be cheated he's talking about himself like how you view about yourself right hence the grand rule of Life your own reproach
48:59
alone doe fear this motto adopted early adopted by me early in life has meant more to me than all sermons I ever heard and so that's what popped into my mind when I read this paragraph by jimmi Hendricks we haven't burned any guitars lately those little things were just
49:16
added on like frosting but the crowd started to want them more than the music the more the Press would play it up the more the audience would want it the more we would shy away from it do you see where all of that fits you can't prostitute your own thing you can't do
49:31
that and I really like this part because he's saying you know the way my music is described the way other people talk about it's like that's not how I feel about it at all they call it like pop music at the time and so it says uh he's
49:42
asked a question how do you see the future of pop music I don't know I'm not a Critic and I don't like the word pop so the follow-up is like okay well how how do you like your music to be described then and he says we're trying
49:52
to play real music we call our music Electric church music because it's like a religion to us and then we see it goes back to like having a good sense of gratitude understanding that this is like you're he's doing things for the right reason
50:06
and so at this point he's at essentially the Apex of his career and there he's asked a question like how has success changed you and he says it depends on what you think is success I don't consider myself even started yet I'm always just trying to get better and
50:20
better this is where he gets arrested trying to get into Canada with this is a year and a half before he dies uh on May 3rd 1969 Jimmy and the experience arrived in Canada for a performance everyone had been warned to take extra
50:33
care because of Toronto's reputation for strict Customs checks a jar containing packets of heroin and a metal tube with hash resin were found in Jimmy's flight back and so he's going to eventually get acquitted of that um they said you know
50:47
a fan gave it to him put him in his bag and he swears that he he never used heroin because he's afraid of needles this is just one of many problems towards the end of 1969 numerous problems were building up in Jimmy's life a lawsuit over an old contract
51:00
failure to deliver a new album to Warner Brothers for over a year financial problems due to building his Electric Lady Studios and pressure from his management to keep on touring and then not left myself is too much too fast and again if management actually cared about
51:14
him it's like you clearly this guy's got too much going on taking a year off six months off not like just stop cuz that pressure has to be released somehow and unfortunately he chose to release it through you know drug and alcohol abuse
51:27
and so he talks about this this is a year before he dies and well let me read it to you and then I'll read the note I left myself I don't know what's happening I'm so exhausted I have no time for my music I just want to relax and think about myself and my music for
51:38
a while I want to bring my guitar walk on stage play and then vanish I want to get away from questions and people I am very tired not physically I'm mentally I'm mentally tired my head's in a position now where I have to take a rest
51:51
or else I'll completely crack up pretty soon nervous breakdowns I've had three of them them since I've been in this business I can't help but isolate myself from the world sometimes I just want to be left alone this is what I mentioned
52:05
earlier in both their biographies Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan talked about that like the fame and the pressure and everything wearing so so much on them that they spend most of their time when they're not practicing and playing uh just alone in hotel rooms and so when I
52:18
get to this point it's like this is very shortsighted by you know Jimmy's team and trying to push him because it's like if you push him you could break and and to me it's like the important thing in my life is like I need to avoid anything
52:29
that interrupts the compounding it is survival at all costs and this is where the book gets darker and darker and you it's in chronological ORD he's giving these uh these interviews and so like this is just one example of that we all
52:43
want to be respected after we're dead who doesn't want to be remembered in history another um interview this is this is the year he dies uh there are certain things that I would like to do and it's very possible that I will destroy myself in my attempt to achieve
53:00
these things and then this is 12 days before he dies I'm so tired of everything I lose myself I can't play anymore I've been working very hard for 3 years I sacrifice part of my soul every time I play direction is the hardest thing for
53:16
me to find now I can't even try and think about how this life has affected me somehow I must have changed but I can't know how though moment I feel I don't have anything more to give musically that's when I won't be found on this planet I'm not sure I will live
53:32
to be 28 years old the world owes me nothing I tell you when I die I'm going to have a jam session it's funny the way people love the dead you have to die before they think you were worth anything when I die just keep on playing
53:46
the records the story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye and then on the last page it says LUN London September 18th Jimmy hendris the American rock star whose passionate intense guitar playing stirred Millions died here today
54:05
of unknown causes he was 27 years old and that is where I'll leave it I also in addition to reading the book I also rented a documentary that look that is very similar to this book it's called Jimmy Hendrick's Voodoo Child and that's
54:18
available on Apple it's almost like watching the book but if you want the full story and the book if you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time if you want to use the same app that I use to store all of my
54:31
highlights for all my books and all of my notes I use readwise they'll give you 60 days free to see if you like the readwise app as much as I do readwise doio founders that is 280 books down 1,000 to go and I'll talk to you again soon