If you're in the music to move to Hollywood and be in 'People'

In the age when lyres were strummed beside the fire and names were carved not on billboards but upon the hearts of listeners, a pilgrim’s question echoed across the hills: “Why do you play?” So speaks Chad Gilbert, testing the soul with a three-pronged spear: Are you in music to move to Hollywood, to be in People magazine, to be seen dating a celebrity? Are you chasing the glitter of the millionaire? Or do you labor because you love it—because you like playing music and you like going on tour? This is no idle musing; it is a rite of discernment, a furnace that reveals whether one’s art is brass or gold.

The ancients taught that every craft has a shrine and a marketplace. The marketplace asks what price; the shrine asks what vow. The lure of Hollywood and glossy People magazine spreads is the marketplace in festival—loud, bright, measurable. But the shrine is quieter: a backstage hum, a van at 3 a.m., a melody discovered when the world sleeps. Gilbert’s question separates incense from smoke. If your altar is fame, your flame will sputter with the first cold wind. If your altar is the song itself, your fire will keep you warm in winter.

Mark the keywords of the heart. Dating the well-known, stacking the coins of a millionaire, appearing where cameras gather—these are not evil in themselves; they are shadows that follow success. But shadows cannot lead. To be led by them is to chase your own silhouette until you fall from exhaustion. What leads is the love that tuned the universe in the beginning: rhythm first, then recognition; devotion first, then doors. The line “because you love it and you like playing music” is the compass that points through fog and fever alike.

A story from our rough-lit annals: in the early 1980s, Black Flag drove battered vans across America, sleeping on floors, playing to small crowds that sometimes turned rowdy, sometimes radiant. No People magazine covers awaited them; no Hollywood gates swung open. Yet they toured and toured again, because the stage itself was home, the setlist a sacrament. Their pay was often gas money and sore throats, but the work carved new rooms in the house of punk. The lesson is plain as a kick drum: where love is the engine, endurance becomes possible—and history, eventually, takes notice.

Consider too the devotion of John Coltrane, who practiced with monastic fervor—long tones until dawn, scales upon scales until the horn became an extension of breath. There were no paparazzi camped outside his rehearsals; only a covenant with sound. The result was not merely prestige but transformation: music that made time fold on itself and the listener lean closer to the mystery. From vans and woodsheds alike, the testimony is unanimous: greatness grows in the soil of practice, not in the flash of headlines.

Gilbert’s query also protects the soul from a subtle despair. If you enter the path for external crowns, your joy will be leased to forces you cannot control: algorithms, invitations, the fickle weather of applause. But if you choose the inner crown—“I like playing music; I like going on tour”—then every honest show is a victory, every new song a harvest, every small crowd a circle of real faces. The work itself pays you daily, long before any ledger is tallied.

So let this be the teaching we pass forward. Examine your motive as a smith examines a blade: bend it, heat it, strike it, listen for the true ring. If wealth and renown come, welcome them as travelers, not as kings. Keep the throne for the craft. Make your schedule a temple: write, rehearse, play, rest; then rise and do it again. Measure success in kept promises to your art, in tightened bands of friendship, in shows that leave the air vibrating after the last chord falls.

Practical rites for the road: (1) State your vow aloud—“I’m here for the music”—before every set. (2) Keep a practice journal; track hours, not likes. (3) Book the gigs that stretch you, not only the ones that flatter you. (4) Build community with those who prize the song over the selfie. (5) Establish a simple metric of joy: if rehearsals feel like breathing, you are on the path; if they feel like branding, step back and retune. Walk, then, with clean hands and a steady heart. For if you choose love over label, craft over clamor, you will find that the road itself sings—and fame, if it comes, will simply harmonize with the melody you were already playing.