We recently talked about Joe Bonamassa's career trajectory, and how he pushed through with 20 years of hard work to get to where he is now. So Joe knows about what it takes, and when Creative Loafing Tampa Bay asked him to share what advice he wished he'd been given when starting out, his response was enlightening.
"There are no guarantees that any kind of success will happen by a certain time, OK?" said Joe. "The worst thing you can do is say, when you’re like 18—or in my case, 12—“Well if I'm not a success by 30. I'm just gonna quit and do something else.”
"Well, my biggest moment that launched my entire modern career for the last 15, 16 years was May 4, 2009, which was four days before my 32nd birthday," Joe said, referring to the moment Eric Clapton joined him onstage at the Albert Hall. "Now, we’d had some success when I was in my early-30s, but not to the point where we are now, [I was] still struggling to pay the bills."
There's a lot of soul-searching internally when it feels like nothing's transpiring, or nothing's going to transpire
Now, the rest of us can't call Slowhand in for a career boost but that's not Joe's point here. He had to get to that position in the first place for that opportunity to present itself, and instead of winding down his efforts in his 30s thinking his best years were behind him, Joe ramped up and pushed on. "If you put those time limits on things, you're never gonna get to where you want to be, especially if you bail too soon, because you're just gonna spend the rest of your life going 'What if?', he added.
"There's a lot of soul-searching internally when it feels like nothing's transpiring, or nothing's going to transpire, and you either get really, really down on yourself and never recover from that, or you go “Fuck it, I’m gonna make something that kills me,” and that’s kinda what I did."
Without an audience, I am relegated into the also-rans and whatevers
Becoming an excellent player often isn't enough to guarantee success, and Joe Bonamassa's focus on his stagecraft, the band sound him and generally giving people a live experience they'll want to return to has certainly been a key to his career. Back in 2021, he reflected with us on how much he is driven by performing onstage and even during the lockdown, he wasn't tempted to gravitate too far towards the realms of becoming a guitar influencer on Instagram – despite his playing videos proving consistently popular.
“I didn’t start playing guitar 40 years ago to go, ‘Hey, I hope I wake up one day and be an Instagram influencer!’ I didn’t start for that,” he told us.
“I started playing guitar because I saw people playing in front of people. My Dad was playing in front of an audience. And then I would go see James Cotton or Danny Gatton, or somebody. ‘Oh, God! This is cool! There’s a crowd.’ Then you go, ‘Well, okay, if I play this then people will cheer? Ah, okay, I’m starting to see how this thing works.’ But without an audience, I am relegated into the also-rans and whatevers.
“I am not a teacher. I am not really an influencer," Joe reiterated. "I don’t really do those kind of things. Nor am I interested in making that kind of content because that is just not who I am. It would be disingenuous of me to do so. It would be a pivot, an unnecessary pivot.”
Read the full interview with Joe Bonamassa at cltampa.com
