All You Need is Love (why some performers are engaging and others are not)

I wrote this several months ago and for some reason took it down, thinking it wasn’t particularly well-written. However, now I think that despite that, it has some useful content.

Nobody seemed to care about the show, least of all you. You go home, crack open a beer, and plop yourself on the couch mindlessly flipping channels. “Where was the love?” you think to yourself (trying not to conjure up the sappy Roberta Flack song). John Lennon had it right, you think, (relieved to find yourself elevating your musical references): Love is the answer.  You sigh. You didn’t get any.

“Where was the love?”

That’s the right question, just the wrong way of looking at it. 

I see musicians at various levels of technical ability, but the ultimate measure for me is what I feel. I will choose the live music of a less technically-competent musician with heart over a young hotshot without it any day of the week. Some people call this ingredient “soul” and others (well, maybe just me) call it “love”.

If you listen with your heart and are attuned to the energy in the room, you can feel it. Sometimes the energy is flat and doesn’t leave the stage, sometimes it is in two dimensions and comes off a few feet from the stage, sometimes it is in three dimensions and fills the room, and, occasionally, it will knock you into another realm of existence entirely. A truly great band can yank people away from their discussions and lift them up into the hurricane of the music and the love they are making (Lennon again).

I see it in my mind, and I feel it in my body. My body responds, and I just let it do its thing to join the love/energy/soul and mirror it back. Maybe that’s why so many musicians are thankful for dancers, and say that it energizes them and/or that that’s when they play their best. This exchange of energy, and especially when the other audience joins in, is what it’s all about.

The good news is that this path is open to anybody. Here are some tips for creating this kind of magic. 

1.     Start with yourself. We all experience pain. We can become addicts or harden our hearts to keep it at bay. But these things will block love energy. You have to suffer to sing the blues, someone said, and I would extend it to just about any music. You have to let yourself feel the pain and turn it into empathy for others. There is no way around this. To create is to feel pain. It is a difficult path you were called to.

2.     Love begins at home (on the stage). Your band needs to play with love for each other. Your band should be about the dynamic between you, not some of the guys just supporting the “star”. I can think of two bands in particular where the love between them is palpable: Frankly Scarlet and Nick and the Knacks. They love each other, and it adds to the energy they give to the audience. Love begets love.

 3. This is the hardest one. Lose the ego, the idea that it’s all about you – I don’t mean just for the show, but in everything. Yes, we feel individual pain, but, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca: what does the heartbreak of a few people matter in a whole world that is heartbroken? This is why it is rare to hear a high level of soul in younger people’s music. The more life experience you have, the more you realize that broken hearts are all around and that the earth and universe itself has a broken heart. Love is our only hope. You must love your heart-broken audience and let love guide your hands or voice. 

Of course, as in any relationship, just because you love with your whole heart, doesn’t always mean that your audience will always love you back. Some will, some won’t, some can’t. That’s just how the way it is. Have the courage to love anyway.

I come back to the great philosopher, John Lennon. Love is all you need.

God is love, and your unique purpose in your short stay on earth is to help heal this messed-up world with your music. Go forth in love, and I promise you that your audience will follow. At least I will.