No Longer Heavy

Greetings,

I have three tracks left on my third album, and for the next five days I'm going to take a break from practicing my banjo for one of those tracks. I decided to book a short trip to Vegas for my 34th birthday tomorrow (can't believe I'm this fucking old), where I will be losing money in poker at a physical table instead of online like I usually do.

My flight departs in five hours, and I woke up early this morning because I was thinking about the kind of music that initially made me want to become a musician, and how far away I am from actually making that kind of music now.

The first band that really made me realize what music meant to me was Black Sabbath. For some, it was the Beatles, or Pink Floyd—and those bands did define my tastes in the years to come. But it was really Black Sabbath's Paranoid album that made me hear music as more than just tunes to sing along to.

Before that, I was just a regular kid who listened to all the stuff that everyone listened to: NSYNC, Britney, Eminem, Limp Bizkit... You know, the kind of acts that defined music for a lot of '90s kids.

But when I first heard Iron Man and asked my mom to order the album from which that song came, that was a true life-changer for me. To this day, I listened to that album more than any album I can remember listening to.

Usually, there are certain musicians that define your journey for the rest of your life, and among all the members of Black Sabbath, it was clear that I gravitated the most toward Ozzy. Everything from his voice to his attitude to his wild antics on stage defined how I wanted to present myself if I ever became a famous musician.

Of course, I also wanted to play guitar and shred like Tony Iommi, but there was something about being a frontman of a heavy metal band that spoke to me more than anything else in the world.

So how did things develop the way they did, to the point where I am now a multi-instrumentalist who can play guitar, piano, banjo, bongos, and the flute, yet carry so little of that heavy metal inspiration that invigorated me as a preadolescent?

Well, reality always has a way of smacking you in the face. Who you envision yourself versus who you actually are is always a stark contrast that has baffled me for decades now. When I was 13, I thought I'd be awesome at guitar as soon as I picked it up, and instead I found myself practicing for 15 minutes a week and only being able to play Yankee Doodle. As a singer, I wanted to sound like Johnny Cash, but when I started recording my first album, I realized I'm just too far off from having that resonant bass-baritone voice to even fake it.

And all those dreams of being in a heavy metal band dissipated the moment I realized that no one around me actually knew how to play instruments, and the people who did were doing the kind of music that I didn't want to help make.

But for a long time, it was all about rock and roll for me. To this day, I've only actually been to about two concerts (both of which featured shitty bands that no one heard of), and all those dreams I had of headbanging, crowdsurfing, or being in a mosh pit actually turned into nightmares once I saw those activities being attempted by a bunch of middle-aged dudes who had nothing better to do on a weekend.

But for a while? It was all about rock and roll. I was the kind of guy who thought I'd be getting neck injuries from headbanging in so many concerts, shredding guitar and bass on stage in front of hundreds of metalheads, and scoring with the occasional groupie while doing heroin in the back of my tour bus.

Instead, I'm playing acoustic guitar by myself in my parents' laundry room, and listening to Elliot Smith's self-titled album for the fiftieth time after a long week of writing code for Rutgers University.

The evolution from aspiring metalhead to an introspective folk musician is not atypical, because even Elliot was in a hard rock band before he ventured into his greater, more memorable efforts. For me, I guess it was just about growing up, getting a college education, and gravitating more toward music that began sounding more honest to me in my late twenties and early thirties. I still listen to Black Sabbath or Metallica from time to time, and I'm going to get an electric guitar soon so that I can begin practicing solos from the rock legends. But now, there's just something about listening to Bob Dylan and hearing his personal thoughts transferred into my ear that's more real to me than hearing Ozzy singing about Satan with Iommi shredding in the background.

Will I ever get back to my heavier roots? It's possible. I wrote a few songs that aren't exactly heavy metal, but still have some of that hard rock aesthetic that I usuallly don't go for. But I guess we just become who we are and we should accept it. If I started off just listening to Dylan as a kid, I know I would have missed that fundamental journey of immersing myself in an attitude that did define my teenage years in many ways. But I'm about to be 34 tomorrow, and I'm kind of glad I didn't go the route of Ozzy, because my body can barely process a smoothie now, much less bat rabies.

erasererhead

03/07/2025