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Speaker 1: This episode was originally broadcast on May seventh, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: It's always hard to see people we love struggle to succeed,
Speaker 1: whether they be adolescents having trouble with their grades.
Speaker 3: What's wrong with you?
Speaker 4: What don't you like yourself?
Speaker 5: Sounds stupid?
Speaker 4: Gout?
Speaker 1: I'm failing shop twenty or thirty somethings trying to excel
Speaker 1: in their careers.
Speaker 6: Thank god, it's payday, Jules, you're advanced on your Salaryvite two.
Speaker 1: Or middle aged friends flailing after losing a job.
Speaker 4: You're fired these guys for all they contribute. You're fired too.
Speaker 1: Now I'll fire when those moments come when you see
Speaker 1: a loved one struggling to succeed, what can you do
Speaker 1: to help them find their way?
Speaker 2: I'm Patrick Carelci and I'm Adriana Cortes and.
Speaker 1: This is Red Pilled America, a storytelling show.
Speaker 2: This is not another talk show covering the day's news.
Speaker 2: We're all about telling stories.
Speaker 1: Stories. Hollywood doesn't want you to hear stories.
Speaker 2: The media mocks stories about everyday Americans that the globalist ignore.
Speaker 1: You can think of Red Pilled America as audio documentaries,
Speaker 1: and we promise only one thing, the truth. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Red Pilled America. There's nothing more important on this earth
Speaker 1: than family. So when you see someone dear to you
Speaker 1: struggling to find themselves in naturally worry. Maybe they're failing
Speaker 1: at school, or having troubles at work, or perhaps they've
Speaker 1: lost their job and are having problems locking in on
Speaker 1: a new one. When those moments come, when someone close
Speaker 1: to you is struggling to get by, how can you
Speaker 1: help them succeed? Define the answer. We're going to tell
Speaker 1: the story of a young man whose parents were worried
Speaker 1: about his failing grades until a family member came along
Speaker 1: to help convince them to let their son drop out
Speaker 1: of high school.
Speaker 2: Stephen is not someone you would peg as a high
Speaker 2: school dropout.
Speaker 4: And there's like sort of an artistic science to music
Speaker 4: that's Stephen. That is sort of I would say, reflective
Speaker 4: of esthetic realities that all humans perceive. Thing is either
Speaker 4: let's say, consonant or dissonant.
Speaker 2: After one conversation with this guy, it's easy to see
Speaker 2: that he has an intellectual approach to life. His unorthodox
Speaker 2: journey to become a talented music composer provides a lesson
Speaker 2: to all of us that have kids or a loved
Speaker 2: one struggling to find their way. Stephen comes from smack
Speaker 2: dab in the middle of America.
Speaker 4: I was born in Cape Gerardo, Missouri, which is a
Speaker 4: small river town in southeast Missouri right on the Mississippi River.
Speaker 4: From what I understand, they immigrated from Germany. My genealogy
Speaker 4: is a little hazy until about the Civil War.
Speaker 2: What he does know for certain is that his family
Speaker 2: eventually settled in Bolinger County, Missouri.
Speaker 4: Which is close to Cape Girarda where I was born.
Speaker 4: They were farmers, nineteenth century farmers, very very poor. Life
Speaker 4: was very spartan at that time. As one can imagine,
Speaker 4: they didn't have running water, electricity, all the things that
Speaker 4: we enjoy today. Of course, his.
Speaker 2: Great grandfather was born in the early eighteen nineties.
Speaker 4: He always showed growing up a penchant for learning, had
Speaker 4: an excellent memory, and.
Speaker 2: He became obsessed with Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 4: And you got to remember, he had relatives that he
Speaker 4: knew that fought in the Civil War for the Union,
Speaker 4: by the way, and he was fascinated with Lincoln. Lincoln,
Speaker 4: of course, was a lawyer and one of America's great orators,
Speaker 4: and this passion for one of the American heroes drove
Speaker 4: him into wanting to learn about law and become a
Speaker 4: lawyer himself. He was the one to first go to college.
Speaker 4: He went then afterwards to the University of Missouri for
Speaker 4: law school, and then started a family law firm in
Speaker 4: I think it was the nineteen teams or right after
Speaker 4: World War One, and from then on, pretty much everybody
Speaker 4: in the family went on to get a law degree
Speaker 4: of some sort. My brother, who's younger than me, was
Speaker 4: a lawyer there before becoming the Missouri Governor's chief legal counsel,
Speaker 4: and now he's a circuit judge in the state of Missouri.
Speaker 4: I mean, every single person. My dad was a Bush appointee.
Speaker 4: My grandfather was a Reagan appointee for the federal bench.
Speaker 2: So almost through genetics alone, Stephen was destined to enter
Speaker 2: the field of law. But as a young and he
Speaker 2: didn't necessarily display a loyally demeanor.
Speaker 4: My early childhood was mischievous. You know. I enjoyed doing
Speaker 4: things like blowing up ant hills with M eighty's and
Speaker 4: that sort of thing. I mean, this was playing with
Speaker 4: ninja turtles. I mean, that's what I wanted to do
Speaker 4: as a kid.
Speaker 2: But at a very young age he was introduced to
Speaker 2: a musical instrument.
Speaker 4: My dad tried to make me take piano lessons. The
Speaker 4: governing philosophy, I would say in the family for the
Speaker 4: boomers and greatest generation members was that an individual should
Speaker 4: be well rounded, so the study of music should absolutely
Speaker 4: be included in that.
Speaker 2: By choosing the piano, his father may have been trying
Speaker 2: to spare his ears and his nerves.
Speaker 4: At the very least, if you press a key, the
Speaker 4: sound is the sound more or less with other instruments,
Speaker 4: violin I mean the beginning stages of that. For parents,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's like a cat dying in the house
Speaker 4: because they can't. You got to keep the thing you
Speaker 4: know in tune and it's real scratchy and it sounds
Speaker 4: absolutely awful. Same thing if they got to learn, like
Speaker 4: clarinet or whatever. My dad is an amateur pianist, and
Speaker 4: I always had music around and I was always, I
Speaker 4: guess interested in it. I mean, what kid isn't affected
Speaker 4: by music, right? I mean, something comes on and kids
Speaker 4: want to dance around or they want to emulate it
Speaker 4: in some way.
Speaker 2: So when he was in kindergarten, Stephen followed his father's
Speaker 2: direction and took piano less.
Speaker 4: I maybe had nine months of suzuki or something like that,
Speaker 4: but I was kicked out of it. I was not
Speaker 4: well behaved. I didn't want to do it. I didn't
Speaker 4: like it, Honestly. I think the main turnof was just
Speaker 4: normal kid stuff. It's really hard to sit still and
Speaker 4: practice hot cross buns or peanut butter, jelly sandwich or whatever,
Speaker 4: any of those Twinkle twinkle, Little Star. It's hard to
Speaker 4: just sit down and do that, even if it's just
Speaker 4: for twenty minutes. Most kids that I was running around with,
Speaker 4: and I think most kids out there, they want to
Speaker 4: go outside and they want to go do stuff.
Speaker 2: But then around the end of his elementary school years,
Speaker 2: something kicked in a little masculine ego.
Speaker 4: I think it was about twelve and I saw a
Speaker 4: friend at one of my parents' dinner parties or whatever.
Speaker 4: He was playing some cheesy version of fan Of of the
Speaker 4: Opera on the piano, and I got jealous of the attention.
Speaker 4: From that jealousy, I want to I can do that.
Speaker 4: I can do that. Come on, And so by that,
Speaker 4: since I wanted to do it, I took to the
Speaker 4: instrument extremely quickly. By the end of the first year,
Speaker 4: I was playing Fantasy impromptu by Chopin. You can't be
Speaker 4: a slouch and handle that piece proficiently. And once I
Speaker 4: was doing that, I guess because it was something I
Speaker 4: was good at with little effort, I wanted to do
Speaker 4: more of it and put more effort into it.
Speaker 2: At the ripe old age of twelve, Stephen had found
Speaker 2: his calling.
Speaker 4: I would say that, you know, some artists want to
Speaker 4: do it because they have to be self expressive. I
Speaker 4: wouldn't say that being expressive was the thing that forced
Speaker 4: and compelled me into this life. It's instead this intellectual
Speaker 4: curiosity with the for lack of a better term the
Speaker 4: science and like the quote art of music that I
Speaker 4: find so fascinating and that I'm good at automatically.
Speaker 2: But this new passion caused a problem. Just as he
Speaker 2: became obsessed with tinkering with an instrument, his grades began
Speaker 2: to take a nose dive.
Speaker 4: My mom's a stockbroker, for example, talk about dollars and cents.
Speaker 4: You know, portfolio is in the red or the black.
Speaker 4: I mean these are very clear, black and white things
Speaker 4: for a stockbroker. I mean it's your grade is either
Speaker 4: a good grade or is it a bad grade? And
Speaker 4: if you want to get into college, you must have
Speaker 4: good grades. But I hated school. I didn't want to
Speaker 4: do it. I despised it. I didn't like the teachers.
Speaker 2: This, of course, created a big issue. Stephen's family was
Speaker 2: made up of lawyers and judges. Careers have a proven
Speaker 2: track record of success and security. The path of music
Speaker 2: did not have that reputation, not even close, and that
Speaker 2: worried his parents.
Speaker 4: The profession of music overall was something that was I
Speaker 4: guess you could say it was seen as something that
Speaker 4: is so incredibly difficult to become sixs cessful in that
Speaker 4: you can still do great things with your life and
Speaker 4: make something of yourself without having to suffer through the
Speaker 4: difficulties of being an artist struggling financially, which all artists
Speaker 4: at some point will unless they grow up really wealthy
Speaker 4: or whatever. And so I would say that, while it
Speaker 4: wasn't outright discouraged, there were constantly conversations to have a
Speaker 4: backup plan. So I was scolded for not having very
Speaker 4: good grades, for example, because if the music thing doesn't
Speaker 4: work out, I have to be able to go do
Speaker 4: something with my life. For me, though there was only
Speaker 4: one option. Music was going to be the only thing
Speaker 4: I was going to do with my life professionally, and
Speaker 4: I didn't care if I never made any money at it.
Speaker 4: And so I had to make an appeal to somebody
Speaker 4: I knew who had a similar life path, and that
Speaker 4: was my cousin rush.
Speaker 7: I know that I am so good at this that
Speaker 7: I make it look easy. Many of you sitting at
Speaker 7: home think that you could do this too. You can't.
Speaker 2: Stephen turned to his cousin Rush Limbaugh. By his own
Speaker 2: family standards, at the time that Stephen Limbaugh was born,
Speaker 2: Rush Limbaugh looked like a slacker. The famed radio entertainer
Speaker 2: took a different path than the rest of the family.
Speaker 7: I've been a broadcast veteran for started in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 7: My father ot a radio station came Gerada, Missouri, a little
Speaker 7: town about a hundred miles south of Saint Louis, and
Speaker 7: I worked there for four years through high school.
Speaker 4: He didn't graduate from college. I think he had like
Speaker 4: a total of sixteen total credit hours or something like
Speaker 4: that before he quit and then went to Pittsburgh.
Speaker 7: I got an offer from ABC in Pittsburgh, and I went.
Speaker 7: I quit college after one year to take it.
Speaker 2: Rush became a radio DJ, a job that wasn't pulling
Speaker 2: in a lawyer salary.
Speaker 4: I mean he was making nothing, maybe eighteen thousand dollars
Speaker 4: a year or something like that in Pittsburgh to do
Speaker 4: weather and a couple of shock jock radio prank type
Speaker 4: things in the morning. But I mean that was I mean,
Speaker 4: that's scratching by even in the even in the seventies.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're not you're not moving to the burbs,
Speaker 4: you don't have a nice car. It's not the best life,
Speaker 4: but for him, it's what he wanted to do. He
Speaker 4: just wanted to be on the radio.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy five, the Pittsburgh station Rush worked out,
Speaker 2: was sold, and the new owners fired all of the DJs.
Speaker 2: L Rushbo was out of a job, so he picked
Speaker 2: up and.
Speaker 7: Moved Kansas City in seventy five. I was at a
Speaker 7: radio station there for three to four years and got
Speaker 7: tired of it. I was tired of being in a DJ.
Speaker 7: I was tired of not being and seriously, I was
Speaker 7: tired of being considered a dope, smoking pothead who knew
Speaker 7: nothing other than Donnie Osmond records.
Speaker 2: So in the late seventies, one of the most successful
Speaker 2: radio broadcasters of all time took a detour.
Speaker 7: I went to work for the Kansas City Royals for
Speaker 7: five years in sales and marketing, and that was the
Speaker 7: best thing I ever did, because I met people I
Speaker 7: would have never met. I saw the real world function.
Speaker 7: You cannot you cannot possibly imagine what life's really like
Speaker 7: if you do it from behind a camera, if you
Speaker 7: do it from behind the microphone, and you never get
Speaker 7: out amongst the real world. I never learned any business.
Speaker 7: You don't learn any business as talent. So after those
Speaker 7: five years I grew tired of it. Wasn't an ego
Speaker 7: satisfaction type thing.
Speaker 2: He left the sales job and never looked back.
Speaker 7: And I went into spoken word format radio.
Speaker 2: At that point, Kansas City was the home of Rush
Speaker 2: Limbaugh's first radio talk show. Then a year later he
Speaker 2: moved it to Sacramento again Stephen.
Speaker 4: But even then he was making you know, forty grand
Speaker 4: a year. I guess in the mid eighties, you know
Speaker 4: that's not a bad salary. I mean, you're middle class
Speaker 4: that point right.
Speaker 2: Rush wasn't making much, but he was constantly working on
Speaker 2: and honing his craft.
Speaker 4: He always wanted to be better and be bigger. I
Speaker 4: mean he loved a guy like Paul Harvey. For example, Hello.
Speaker 3: Americans, I'm Paul Harvey, and this is the testing time.
Speaker 4: He looked at those people and saw that's where I
Speaker 4: want to be.
Speaker 2: Unlike many of the talk radio personalities of today, Rush
Speaker 2: Limbaugh was working towards becoming a true entertainer. He wanted
Speaker 2: to put on a show in the Hollywood sense of
Speaker 2: the word.
Speaker 7: I believe people turn on radio to be entertained, to
Speaker 7: be entertained, to be entertained, and no matter what they're
Speaker 7: turning it on for what kind of programming, it has
Speaker 7: to entertain him.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty eight, the Rush Limbaugh Show was nationally syndicated.
Speaker 2: After twenty one years of sweat, frustration and low wages,
Speaker 2: Rush Limbaugh became an overnight success.
Speaker 4: Most of his life he was kind of broke, to
Speaker 4: be honest, but it didn't matter because he was doing
Speaker 4: what he wanted to do and he'd like literally made
Speaker 4: it and transformed everything. But getting there it was a
Speaker 4: very circuitous route and it took a very very long time.
Speaker 2: At around the time Stephen Limbaugh discovered music was his passion,
Speaker 2: he began to notice the success of his cousin and
Speaker 2: he was drawn to him.
Speaker 4: At family gatherings, he then sort of comes in as
Speaker 4: like a I don't know, like a godfather type, one
Speaker 4: of these types that I would say that, you know,
Speaker 4: kids won't listen to their dad, but they'll like listen
Speaker 4: to their favorite uncle kind of thing. You would come
Speaker 4: in for Thanksgiving or Christmas or something like that. I
Speaker 4: was always trying to ensconce myself at the adult table.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to sit at the card table and
Speaker 4: with all the kids, I wanted to sit and I
Speaker 4: wanted to hear what the adults were talking about. I
Speaker 4: would listen to anything Rush would say, because I saw
Speaker 4: what his passion was and how far it took him,
Speaker 4: despite even what I knew whenever I was young, how
Speaker 4: difficult it was for that guy to actually make it.
Speaker 4: And from then, whenever I could had a chance to
Speaker 4: listen to him, I would so, especially by the time
Speaker 4: I was driving. He was on noon to three Eastern,
Speaker 4: and that's you know, that's during the lunch hour we had,
Speaker 4: like in our high school, we had off campus lunch,
Speaker 4: and so I just flip him on. I tried to
Speaker 4: stay in the car as long as possible before I
Speaker 4: had to go to class next, just to listen to
Speaker 4: as much as I could, and figured, this is a
Speaker 4: career or a person to emulate, because it's so unorthodox
Speaker 4: compared to everybody else.
Speaker 2: By his junior year in high school, with his grades
Speaker 2: in the basement, Stephen decided he wanted to take a
Speaker 2: drastic step. He wanted to drop out of school and
Speaker 2: focus entirely on music, but his family, with their long
Speaker 2: history of high education, weren't too happy. Steven had to
Speaker 2: figure out a way to convince them, so he turned
Speaker 2: to his cousin for help, and what Rush Limbaugh told
Speaker 2: them was the kind of wisdom every parent should embrace.
Speaker 2: More after the break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back by his junior year in high school, with
Speaker 1: his grades in the basement, Stephen decided he wanted to
Speaker 1: take a drastic step. He wanted to drop out of
Speaker 1: school and focus entirely on music. But his family, with
Speaker 1: their long history of high education, wasn't too happy. Stephen
Speaker 1: had to figure out a way to convince them, so
Speaker 1: he turned to his cousin for help, and what Rush
Speaker 1: Limbaugh told them was the kind of wisdom every parent
Speaker 1: should embrace. Stephen hated school, and his grades reflected it.
Speaker 1: His parents were justifiably concerned, and Stephen recalls their words, Hey,
Speaker 1: you know you have a D minus in history. I
Speaker 1: know you know history. Why are you doing this to yourself?
Speaker 4: I mean, this is kind of what boys do if
Speaker 4: they don't have their attention held with something that they're
Speaker 4: actually interested in. And that was the main point of contention,
Speaker 4: was that because I wasn't well behaved in class, because
Speaker 4: my grades were slipping.
Speaker 1: Stephen's idea was to enter a music conservatory, which is
Speaker 1: a fancy word for a music school. But the problem
Speaker 1: was he was at a geographic disadvantage.
Speaker 4: Remember we're in Cape Gerarda, Missouri. There's not a youth
Speaker 4: symphony there.
Speaker 1: The nearest city where he could get proper training was
Speaker 1: Saint Louis.
Speaker 4: And you can't travel up to Saint Louis, which is
Speaker 4: two hours away. If you're in high school five days
Speaker 4: a week, you can't do it. The only way he
Speaker 4: could swing it is if he dropped out of high school.
Speaker 4: It was a major step seeing his cousin take such
Speaker 4: an unorthodox path to success. Sixteen year old Stephen reached
Speaker 4: out to Rush for help, convincing his parents, but Rush
Speaker 4: didn't sign on immediately. He probed the young man first
Speaker 4: to figure out his intentions. In talking with me, he
Speaker 4: was able to identify that I'm actually serious about it.
Speaker 4: I don't want to do art because I don't want
Speaker 4: to do school. I want to do art because I
Speaker 4: want to do art. Most of the time, the artists
Speaker 4: are doing it for the wrong reasons. I will say,
Speaker 4: especially at that age, it's because they want to be
Speaker 4: in the drug scene. Very often that there's a lot
Speaker 4: of that, Or it's because they are just doing it
Speaker 4: because they want to be a rocker and pickup chicks
Speaker 4: or whatever it is. I always wanted to be the
Speaker 4: best I could at music. I didn't want to do
Speaker 4: it for all the superficial reasons. Once Rush understood that
Speaker 4: Steven's intentions were pure, he went to Stephen's dad to
Speaker 4: give his advice. I mean, Russia essentially told him, He's like, look,
Speaker 4: he's going to do this whether you like it or not.
Speaker 4: So the best thing you can do is support him
Speaker 4: and trust me. If he's got the passion for this,
Speaker 4: he's not just going to be some drug addict artist
Speaker 4: that's going to live in a loft and be a
Speaker 4: loser his whole life.
Speaker 1: Once this piece of wisdom was imparted, tension in the
Speaker 1: house was lifted. Steven's parents agreed that their son could
Speaker 1: focus on music full time. But now Stephen had to deliver.
Speaker 1: He had to make his way in music.
Speaker 4: So I got a GED, which was I could have
Speaker 4: passed whenever I was in fifth grade. I mean, this
Speaker 4: was the dumbest test I've ever taken in my life.
Speaker 4: And passed the GED. And then it was a matter
Speaker 4: of preparing for auditions at music conservatories. Now that takes
Speaker 4: a serious, serious amount of effort.
Speaker 1: So he secured a tutor in Saint Louis.
Speaker 4: And so dropping out of high school allowed me to
Speaker 4: take the car up twice a week for private lessons
Speaker 4: with one of the Saint Louis Symphony members.
Speaker 1: Now, the competition for piano is and was extremely high,
Speaker 1: and spots and music programs are limited, so Stephen decided
Speaker 1: to switch focuses to.
Speaker 4: A different instrument. The original goal was to play trumpet
Speaker 4: in a symphony orchestra. You know, I was really into that.
Speaker 4: So I was playing trumpet taking lessons with the Saint
Speaker 4: Louis Symphony assistant principal. I was able to play in
Speaker 4: the youth symphony up there, and then I was able
Speaker 4: to get into the Interlock and Arts Camp.
Speaker 1: That's a prestigious arts camp in Michigan. They only accept
Speaker 1: a very few trumpet players from the entire country each year.
Speaker 4: And so that was the place to where I could
Speaker 4: compare myself to the other musicians that were my age
Speaker 4: across the country who were going to go to Juilliard,
Speaker 4: who were already some of them were already accepted into
Speaker 4: Eastman School of Music at that point.
Speaker 1: Juilliard and Eastman are both very prestigious music institutions. Now,
Speaker 1: many of these kids had been studying music with the
Speaker 1: best of the best since they were ten years old.
Speaker 4: I mean, these are serious advantages. However, whenever I got there,
Speaker 4: because I practiced so much and I was obsessed with
Speaker 4: it and I had some talent, I was competitive at least,
Speaker 4: so it wasn't like I got there and I was
Speaker 4: freaked out. I was like, you know what, I don't
Speaker 4: stand a chance. I saw it as an opportunity not
Speaker 4: just to learn, but also to compare myself to the others,
Speaker 4: so I would know what it takes to get into
Speaker 4: one of these conservatories.
Speaker 1: He mentioned a well with the other students enough to
Speaker 1: be accepted into a coveted conservatory position, and.
Speaker 4: Then went to school in universit of Missouri Kansas City
Speaker 4: Conservatory for three years.
Speaker 1: What he was learning about music fascinated him that there
Speaker 1: is an attribute to some musical compositions that we all
Speaker 1: instinctively recognize as beautiful.
Speaker 5: For lack of a.
Speaker 4: Better time, there's like sort of an artistic science to
Speaker 4: music that is sort of I would say, reflective of
Speaker 4: esthetic realities that all humans perceive or we recognize as
Speaker 4: something something that's ugly or something that we see is beautiful.
Speaker 4: I'm fascinated by those dualities because with music it is
Speaker 4: so so abstract. I mean, we're talking about these are
Speaker 4: a series of sound waves that hit your ears. There's
Speaker 4: no visual it's only one sensory perception. Unlike a movie.
Speaker 4: With music, you get one sense that gets to perceive
Speaker 4: the whole thing. And so it's an extremely abstract and
Speaker 4: subjective art. But great musical composition is music that is
Speaker 4: resistant to a person's subjectivity and subjective opinion. It's when
Speaker 4: so many people can all point to a work and say,
Speaker 4: you know what, that's great, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1: He was learning about the art of sound. But then
Speaker 1: the reality of the symphony world began to settle in.
Speaker 1: It was stuffy, and it was suffering from an unexpected obstacle, communism.
Speaker 4: And I also had noticed that there had been a
Speaker 4: crisis a composition for the last fifty years, essentially since
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty nineteen sixty. You had half of the world
Speaker 4: under communism at that point, and Russia, before World War One,
Speaker 4: had dozens and dozens of top artists in every art form,
Speaker 4: whether it's poets, musicians, novelists. I mean Stanislavsky, who's basically
Speaker 4: the Bible whenever it comes to knowing how to act.
Speaker 4: Every single school of thought and acting comes from this
Speaker 4: Russian guide that was born, you know, in the belly
Speaker 4: Poc Russia or whatever, Czarist Russia. And then Communism hits
Speaker 4: and they go down to basically like two composers Prokofievn's Trustkovich.
Speaker 4: And that's because they essentially killed everybody else off cultural
Speaker 4: revolution in China, I mean, you have a crisis at
Speaker 4: this point. These countries and these peoples who have a rich,
Speaker 4: rich cultural traditions are essentially smashed out. And then in
Speaker 4: the West you've got the rise of postmodernism, which is
Speaker 4: a bunch of noise music that tried to reject everything
Speaker 4: that had to do with beauty and truth. And so
Speaker 4: I saw that there was only a couple places to
Speaker 4: where you could do music that even in an elevated form,
Speaker 4: let's say that also was sort of budding in this
Speaker 4: new indigenous music that was popping up, whether it was
Speaker 4: hip hop or even rock. You know, the generation before
Speaker 4: there was an opportunity there to still do good stuff.
Speaker 4: There's like a system of theory that basically was figured
Speaker 4: out two hundred years prior about how to organize music
Speaker 4: in an effective way that could do something aesthetically nice. Well,
Speaker 4: the moderns and then the postmoderns throw all this stuff out,
Speaker 4: and I was like, look, if I want to do
Speaker 4: the kind of music that I want to do and
Speaker 4: actually be successful in it, I've got to go into
Speaker 4: one or two routes, the rock band route or the
Speaker 4: film route.
Speaker 1: Getting into the film scoring business is really tough. So
Speaker 1: he moved to Los Angeles and started a rock band. Now,
Speaker 1: at the time, the music industry was in a weird state.
Speaker 1: If you ever wondered why the music from decades ago
Speaker 1: is so much better than today's crap, the late Frank
Speaker 1: Zeppa had an interesting theory.
Speaker 3: One thing that did happen during the sixties was some
Speaker 3: music of an un new, usual or experimental nature did
Speaker 3: get recorded or did get released. Now, look at who
Speaker 3: the executives were in those companies.
Speaker 5: At those times.
Speaker 3: Not hip young guys. These are cigar chomping old guys
Speaker 3: who looked at the product that came and said, I
Speaker 3: don't know who knows what it is, record it, stick
Speaker 3: it out of it solves all right.
Speaker 1: Frank argued that those executives were better than what came
Speaker 1: after them. The young know nothings.
Speaker 3: And you know how these young guys got in there.
Speaker 3: The old guy with a cigar. One day, he goes, well,
Speaker 3: I took a chance. It went out and we sold
Speaker 3: a few million units. All right, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: don't know what it is. Well, we got to do
Speaker 3: more of it. I need some advice. Let's get a
Speaker 3: hippie in here. So they hire a hippie, bringing the
Speaker 3: guy with the long hair. Now that I'm not going
Speaker 3: to trust him to do anything except carry coffee and
Speaker 3: bring the mail in and out. He starts in there
Speaker 3: carry the coffee. Well, we can trust him. We brought
Speaker 3: the coffee four times on time. Let's give him a
Speaker 3: real job.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 3: It becomes an A and R man from there, you know,
Speaker 3: moving up and up and up. Next thing, you know,
Speaker 3: he's got his feet on the desk and he's saying, well,
Speaker 3: we can't take it. Founds on this because it's just
Speaker 3: simply that's not what the kids really want.
Speaker 1: And I know by the time Stephen Limbaugh came to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles to start a rock band, the finances of
Speaker 1: the music industry were in disarray. Digital downloads collapsed the market,
Speaker 1: and these former hippie record label executives had an even
Speaker 1: smaller appetite for risk, so instead of experimenting to find
Speaker 1: the next Pink Floyd, they turned to artists with big
Speaker 1: social media followings as a kind of insurance policy against failure.
Speaker 4: And then they go onto MySpace and they look, oh wow,
Speaker 4: this unknown artist has seventy eight million plays.
Speaker 1: The problem was that many of those artists were faking
Speaker 1: their popularity.
Speaker 4: Now in retrospect, we're all like, there's no way that
Speaker 4: was real. But they thought it was real. So they
Speaker 4: started signing all these idiots, all of these idiots, and
Speaker 4: guess what, hardly any of them popped.
Speaker 1: That practice made it hard for creative artists like Stephen,
Speaker 1: so he turned to Rush, and the radio legend gave
Speaker 1: him some advice that could be adopted by anyone looking
Speaker 1: to succeed, regardless of their profession.
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Speaker 2: today and help us save America one story at a time.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Red Pilled America. So, by the time
Speaker 1: Stephen Limbaugh moved to Los Angeles record labels were signing
Speaker 1: musicians not on their talent, but on whether they had
Speaker 1: a large social media following. That practice made it hard
Speaker 1: for creative artists like Steven, so he turned to Rush
Speaker 1: Limbaugh for some advice.
Speaker 4: Once I got to Los Angeles, I was constantly able
Speaker 4: to bounce things off of him, and I did learn
Speaker 4: a couple lessons through him before I made the mistakes
Speaker 4: that so many artists will fall into, and one of
Speaker 4: them was don't try to market yourself into success. You
Speaker 4: need to be good first. There are a couple times
Speaker 4: where I flirted with that, where I really did try.
Speaker 4: I was like, Okay, well everybody's cheating their MySpace plays.
Speaker 4: I'm going to as well, and so it looks like
Speaker 4: you're succeeding. You were not succeeding. You need to get better.
Speaker 4: You need to practice more, you need to go back
Speaker 4: to fundamentals. You need to write three hundred horrible choruses
Speaker 4: until you get a hit. Rush was really, really, really
Speaker 4: insistent on making sure that I take care of being
Speaker 4: good first. He said, don't worry about all this marketing junk.
Speaker 4: Don't worry about just trying to be famous. That's the
Speaker 4: wrong reasons.
Speaker 1: So, with the rock scene falling victim to the social
Speaker 1: media scam, Stephen turned to the last avenue of music
Speaker 1: where creativity had a home, film scoring, and that's where
Speaker 1: he's found himself flourishing. He's become a real force in
Speaker 1: the music scoring business. He's composed music for Dinesh to Suze,
Speaker 1: his films, for Mike Cernovich's Hoaxed and many other films,
Speaker 1: and it all may not have happened if it weren't
Speaker 1: for Rush Limbaugh's timely which leads us back to the
Speaker 1: question how do you help loved ones succeed? The answer
Speaker 1: is you help them find something that they're good at
Speaker 1: and are willing to do whatever that is for free
Speaker 1: radio is widely thought to be near the bottom of
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry totem pole, but Rush Limbaugh had both
Speaker 1: a skill and passion for it, and after years of
Speaker 1: plugging away, he turned his talent and passion into a fortune.
Speaker 1: Stephen Limbaugh was flailing in high school, but thanks to
Speaker 1: his cousin's intervention and the wisdom of his parents, they
Speaker 1: helped him focus on a passion for which he also
Speaker 1: had a natural gift, and he's on his way to
Speaker 1: major success. If you can combine a skill with passion
Speaker 1: and persistence, it's hard to go wrong. And that goes
Speaker 1: for any field you name the industry, from janitorial services
Speaker 1: to space exploration. Someone is making a fortune in it
Speaker 1: and you don't necessarily need to take the traditional path
Speaker 1: to make it happen. Some of the most successful people
Speaker 1: in the world don't even think you need a higher
Speaker 1: education to reach your dreams anymore, including Elon Musk.
Speaker 6: You don't need college learn stuff. Okay, you can learn
Speaker 6: anything you want for free. It is not a question
Speaker 6: of learning. So I think colleges are basically for fun
Speaker 6: and to prove you can do your chores, but they're
Speaker 6: not for learning.
Speaker 1: So if you or someone you know who is struggling
Speaker 1: to find success, take a step back and try to
Speaker 1: identify what they're both good at and passionate about. Then
Speaker 1: encourage them to put everything they have into it and
Speaker 1: to never stop until they reach the mountaintop.
Speaker 5: Nobody just gives you anything, American people. Rogan He's Lucky
Speaker 5: No Man his full podcast a week. He works out
Speaker 5: five days a week. He writes, he didn't just become
Speaker 5: the UFC announcement. You know that he was a fan.
Speaker 5: He picked the performance, and he called Dana White and
Speaker 5: you offered to do it for free. How many people
Speaker 5: willing to do that? Are you?
Speaker 2: America's an iHeartRadio original podcast. It's produced by me Adrianna
Speaker 2: Cortez and Patrick Carrelci for Informed Ventures. Now, our entire
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Speaker 2: in the topmenu. Thanks for listening.