AUDIOJUNKIE: Never too late
Published Sep 29, 2025 09:54 am
Have you ever wondered what you’re meant to do in your life? The raison d’etre or reason for being why you were put on this earth, so to speak. If you’ve thought about this in some measure or form at some point, then congratulations, you’re a fully functioning human being capable of self-examination. The reason I’m writing about this is that I’ve recently met some interesting people in the course of my work. Currently, I’m spending most of my daytime work hours as a guitar technician at The Guitar Center. After spending 28 years in the music industry for a record company, starting as an A&R and three-quarters of it as a promotions and marketing head, you’d think that being a guitar tech doing repairs is akin to being on another planet.
The answer is: yes, it is, and no, it isn’t. Sure, I’m not developing or promoting a music artist who’s just about to launch his/her latest banger. But I am working on the tools to make the music. I may not be dealing with a pop artist who knows what he/she wants (read: with an attitude), but I’m also working with musicians who know what they want with their stringed instruments and can sometimes be as temperamental as the instruments they expect me to work on.
But here and there, I encounter the hopeful ones. Creatives who believe that by having their guitars in tip-top shape will get them closer to being better musicians. The newbie who finally picked up the instrument after years of wondering what it would be like to play an instrument. Or the one guy who spent decades in an entirely different industry, who finally made the leap to buying a guitar and is now taking guitar lessons in his mid-40s. Or that artist whose ambition of making music was hampered by some laryngeal dysfunction and is now picking up that special guitar as a means to sidestep the problem, and to pick up the pieces of her dreams again at the same time. Truth be told, they’re my favorite kind.
Because at some point, I was in the same boat as them. I too am a musician-creative working in the music industry, seeing all these artists being signed up to a career that I wanted. Ironically, I was among those tasked to make this a reality. I was at one of the key points of a multi-pronged approach to ensure these aspirations take off. A cog in a well-oiled music machinery, so to speak. Always an arm’s length away from the life I wanted.
"However, at some point I took the leap. I just got up and did it and went after the dream. It took me a big chunk of time before I got there, much more than I could care to admit, but I did it. Last year, with my long-time accomplice (and co-procrastinator singer-songwriter Neil Ramos) we recorded three of the songs we’ve written so many years ago. And you know what my realization was? It was easier to go after the dream than it was to skirt around it to find reasons not to do it. Simple as that.
If you know what you want, there are ways to get to it. And the simple act of picking up a guitar, or any instrument that speaks to you that only you can understand, is just the start.
Especially the moment you realize it’s a vocation and it’s your purpose for being.
It’s never too late.