The title of this month’s blog is taken, in a slightly modified form, from a 1957 zany comedy film. The answer to the question of the movie’s title, “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter,” is an emphatic—it depends how you define success!
What is true for Rock Hunter is true for musicians. Success can come in many forms. And sustaining success, however defined, will depend entirely on the strategies musicians use to prolong long-term accomplishment.
In the film, the protagonist, Rock Hunter, achieves success in the eyes of the world. Elevated from his humble job as an advertising writer to the company’s presidency, he receives all the perks that go along with such a position, including the admiration of scores of young women. Yet he finds himself miserable and ultimately achieves what it turns out he wanted all along… to become a chicken farmer with his one-time fiancée and true love. Success, it seems, is in the eyes of the beholder.
The film lays out the conventional marks of success for a business person and it is a simple matter to come up with comparable measures of success in music. Achieving that success is difficult enough; maintaining it without ruining one’s life, is even harder. The title of a recent article in the Los Angeles Review of Books, “And Then What? The Road After ‘Success’ in the Arts” sums up the dilemma. The minute you are “successful,” the greater the expectations for your continued accomplishments and triumphs and the harder it can be to live up to them. How many carcasses of one-time wonders are strewn in the history of every art form?
For classical music performers, the challenge is particularly acute. Unlike creators, a performer does not have the benefit of a personal product (or several) that persist over time like a symphony or novel or painting. (Recordings don’t count since they can be doctored and are not a reliable guide.[1]) If you have written a great novel or symphony, even centuries later it remains as a testament to what you have achieved and people can return to it again and again. How many performers from those times had comparable enduring success?