Waging Heavy Peace Read Online Free PDF Page B

forgotten. None of these things would have happened if I hadn’t done them myself. No one believes in my ideas until I actually do them. I am never able to get backing for anything I want to do other than records because I am the only one with money who believes in them—and I don’t do them to make money. I am entrepreneurial. I do them because I can see it before it happens. That is the good, the bad, and the ugly, all rolled up into one big ball.
    Mostly now, though, Elliot is able to save me from myself. As I said, he is a true friend, and also one of the funniest people on the planet. We have at least one disagreement a day. Whatever deal he gets, I ask him for more. And mostly he gets more. I have learned that taking less is not that good. It’s not the money; it’s the respect. And the money.
    We have to have control. We fight for it tooth and nail. My father-in-law, T. A. Morton, Pegi’s dad, lived by the fifty-one percent rule. You need that much for control. I have tried to be true to that, but some ideas are just too big for me to carry by myself. I hate the fact that the PureTone idea is probably going to get out of my absolute control one day. I hate waiting for other people to okay what I want to do. Ideas are the driver. There is nothing worse than having a great idea and losing it because you can’t control the process. Working with me must be hell under those circumstances. I don’t feel bad about it, though. I know I work well with people who want to get things done.
    —
    I dislike firing people. Since my first high school garage band, I have had to make those decisions and have those conversations. Although I always was the leader, there were times when I have been a wimp and had others do my dirty work, but I have learned that is not the way. No one can do that and feel good. Honesty is the only thing that works. It hurts to be honest, but the muse has no conscience. If you do it for the music, you do it for the music, and everything else is secondary. Although that has been hard for me to learn, it is the best and really the only way to live through a life dedicated to the muse.
    Sometimes I am in a groove and everything is going great with the band—and then I wake up one morning and its over. I can’t say why, but it is definitely time for change. This change is not arbitrary or capricious. It is spawned from an underlying sense of what is needed to keep the creative process alive and thriving. Sometimes a smooth process heralds the approach of atrophy or death. So the change must be made, disruptive as it may be. Then the hard stuff starts. People have families, need money, have obligations, need security. Or everyone thought it was cool, and it was, but now it isn’t. The muse says, “If it isn’t totally great, then don’t do it. Change.”
    “Be great or be gone.” Thanks, David Briggs.
    “Quality whether you want it or not.” Thanks, Larry Johnson.
    “How can I help you?” Thanks, Elliot.
    These are my guys. Whether they are still breathing or not, they are in me, in my music, in everything I do. But there is a lot of damage. A lot of times, spontaneous change is seen as irresponsible, uncaring, and self-serving.
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    S o what do I do now that I’m sixty-five? Retire? Nope. I can’t stop moving long enough to do that. I am going to go to Hawaii tomorrow and will keep writing this. I love it there and I kind of decompress. Pegi is going to Hawaii, too, in a few days, but I can’t wait that long to get over there. She has just made a great record and wants to finish up all the business around it before she joins me. But it won’t be long and we’ll be together again. I love that. She is my life partner. My confidante. I can tell her anything. After all these years together, I am still getting to know her. I would be an island without my ocean if we were not together in our hearts. I am the luckiest man on the planet to be able to go to Hawaii and rest for a while and wait