“I committed to poverty for that”: Whitesnake’s Joel Hoekstra says you have “a hole in your head” if you get into music for money
Getting into music with dreams of dollar signs dancing in your head? Well you might want to think again. Such is the advice of Whitesnake guitar hotshot Joel Hoekstra, who likens the music industry to the “Wild West” – chaotic, unpredictable, and with no guaranteed path to fame or fortune.
Now 55, Hoekstra – who also logs arena miles with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra – says he never imagined a life on the big stage. Raised in the blue-collar suburbs of Chicago, the odds weren’t exactly stacked in his favour.
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“We were poor, quite frankly. We had no money. We grew up in a blue-collar area, the suburbs of Chicago, where none of this was supposed to happen for me, like literally none,” he tells Guitar World [via Blabbermouth]. “So, for me to get to the point where, through hard work and, I guess, a bit of luck, you find yourself able to do some great things.”
“And then, in a way, I’m playing with house money, but in a way, I wanna see how far it can all go. So I just keep pushing and hope for the best. But that being said, I know my limitations as a guitar player and I know my fortes, I suppose. I just try to work at music every day and see where it all takes me.”
If there’s a master plan, it’s a simple one: making a living with his instrument.
“I’ve never really had any grand plan beyond being a professional guitar player,” Hoekstra admits. “As funny as that sounds, for the guy that ended up on stage with Whitesnake throwing shapes with the long hair and everything like that, the most important thing for me was to make a living with my guitar. That’s what I set out to do as a kid. And I committed to poverty for that. I went, like, ‘Okay, I’m probably gonna be poor the rest of my life.’”
That willingness to accept instability, Hoekstra stresses, is part of the job description.
“You have to have that ability, I think, to get into music,” says the guitarist. “If you’re getting into music to make money, man, you have a hole in your head, man, ‘cause you could get any other job and work much, much easier hours and have a nice, clear path to do so, where music is like the Wild West, I think. It’s, like, anything can happen at any point in time.”
Still, it’s not all caution tape and tumbleweeds. If the industry is unpredictable, it’s also more accessible than ever. Hoekstra points out that players today are armed with tools he could only dream of when he was starting out: affordable home studios, and direct access to audiences and collaborators across the globe at the click of a button.
“It’s possible through hard work. And I think that should definitely ring true for any younger players out there now,” he says. “Especially with the Internet, the world has shrunk. You can get your music out to anybody, and home recording has gotten to the point where you can make a professional record right there where you are.”
“So I don’t care where you are – if you’re located in a more rural area, if you still have the ambition to reach out to name players and try to expand your name, and obviously things being in the digital domain like they are, you never know where that can take you.”
The post “I committed to poverty for that”: Whitesnake’s Joel Hoekstra says you have “a hole in your head” if you get into music for money appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
