On Genius, Hard Work and the Beatles, by Randy Rendfeld

I was thinking about genius tonight. It starts with some talent; then these wunderkinds go off and work hard to hone it, like the Beatles did in Hamburg. Genius doesn’t just happen, it takes work. It took a lot of time to get these voices to blend so well (above).

More on the subject of genius — a really interesting discussion here:

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2010/jul/26/secrets-of-success/

One more from The Beatles:

When Paul has a catalogue that includes a song like this, why was his performance so lackluster on Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago?

I watched an ELO clip tonight on YouTube — ELO’s version of “Day Tripper.” And I thought it was great. They had cellos and a violin. But ELO’s vocals didn’t quite come together.

The Beatles spent hundreds of hours in a strip joint in Hamburg playing 6, 7, 8 hours a day fine-tuning their sound. They worked hard at it. The result was a band with vocals that sounded like genetic brothers singing. My point is that genius is the result of hard work. It’s the result of obsessive love and dedication to an occupation. You can see a similar trajectory in Mozart, Newton, and other so-called geniuses — including the Beatles.

My friend and I were talking about the same thing happening with Robert Johnson, king of the Delta bluesmen. He went away for awhile and reemerged as possibly the best ever. He was somehow driven to improve. It happened so fast with Robert those legends about him making a deal with the devil resulted. I think Robert simply had his own type of immersion into hard work and application of his craft.

Consider Bob Dylan. At some point he made a gigantic leap from folkie to transcendence, and arguably the artist of the century. In the Scorcese documentary, No Direction Home, there are stories about how he would beg, borrow and steal albums from friends in Minneapolis.

Bob told a story on his website about how he and Jerry Garcia would sneak into a woman’s apartment in Greenwich Village through the window when she was away at work and listen to her collection of American folk music. Genius takes time, effort, and occasionally, the willingness to climb through a friend’s window for the sake of art.

– Randy Rendfeld

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