There's a plaque on our wall that says we've sold over 65 million albums, and I don't feel I've accomplished anything. I feel like I'm just getting started.
Interpretation
Despite significant achievements, a person can still feel unfulfilled and eager for more.
In this quote, Eddie Van Halen expresses a sentiment common among highly driven individuals: the feeling that milestones, such as selling 65 million albums, are just stepping stones on a much larger journey. This reflects a mindset of continuous growth and ambition, emphasizing that true accomplishment is not merely about numbers or accolades, but about the ongoing pursuit of one's passions and creativity.
In practice
In a motivational speech about persistence in the music industry.
When I'm home on a break, I lock myself in my room and play guitar. After two or three hours, I start getting into this total meditation. It's a feeling few people experience, and that's usually when I come up with weird stuff. It just flows. I can't force myself. I don't sit down and say I've got to practice.
Music is for people. The word 'pop' is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I'm just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I'm cool.
And if I would have taken lessons I probably wouldn't have done it, and what forced me to do all this weird stuff on the guitar was I couldn't afford effects pedals, I didn't have all this stuff when I was a kid so I just tried to squeeze all the weird noises I could out of the guitar, which brings me to building guitars.
If you want to be a rock star or just be famous, then run down the street naked, you'll make the news or something. But if you want music to be your livelihood, then play, play, play and play! And eventually you'll get to where you want to be.
Music kept me off the streets and out of trouble and gave me something that was mine that no one could take away from me.
It's always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you're the same, and they hate you if you're different.
All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the base of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
I'll drop something for a while, a year or maybe several years, and then pick it up again. I think that's the way successful innovators work. They keep juggling ideas, keeping them in the air, in the back of their mind, to inspire them or enable new recombinations.
If your aspirations are not greater than your resources, youβre not an entrepreneur.
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.
What if getting bigger isn't the point? What if you merely got better?
I want to be remembered as the guy who gave his all whenever he was on the field.
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