After Rock Dreams, people write to me and ask what instrument I play. Whether I was in a band. How long I’ve been in the scene. The answer surprises them: I never learned an instrument.
What did I do instead? Talked to bands for hours. Not about technology or equipment. About everyday life. How it feels to come back to the hotel after a shitty gig. What you can’t say to each other anymore. When you realize that the band is falling apart, long before anyone says the word.
And I listened to what musicians were saying on social media. The stories from the tour bus, the candid posts about burnout, the supposedly authentic insights. That’s not a lie. But it is a story—filtered, with a focus, with a narrative. I don’t take that as ” ” facts. I understand what they mean, the emotion behind them.
Then I had a friend as my first reader. Someone who has played in bands himself, who knows the scene. For every scene, I asked: Is this possible in the context of a band? His answer was usually: This is much more harmless than reality. The moments when I thought I had gone too far were everyday occurrences for him. That showed me that my concern was not that I was being too dramatic—but often too tame.
In the end, I wrote my own story. Not his. Tom’s story is not that of a real musician I interviewed. It is the essence of all of that—but filtered through the question: What feels true, not: What is technically correct?
That’s the frustrating thing about research: it gives you material, but not a story. You can explain to me how to wire an amp, how booking works, and which in-ear systems which bands use. All important. But the scene where Tom is standing on stage with a collar and he can’t open it doesn’t need the details of the soundcheck. It needs the feeling of being at the mercy of others. And I understand that not because I’m a musician, but because I understand how vulnerability works.
Readers don’t believe me about the music scene because I’m technically accurate. They believe me because the emotional mechanics are right. Because Tom reacts like a real person, not like a researched character.
The boundary is still there. I didn’t write about tour technology. I wrote about a person who happens to be a musician. The difference is crucial. If I had tried to write a book about the music business, I would have failed. But a book about power, failure, and longing in the music scene—that works. Because the scene is only the setting, not the subject.
Is that honest? I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like impostor syndrome. Then I read an email from someone who has been playing in bands for twenty years and says I got it right. Maybe that’s the real lesson: true credibility doesn’t come from expertise. It comes from a willingness to listen—and then build something of your own that feels truer than any accurate reproduction.