Chicago’s Robert Lamm – HuffPost 6.18.14

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?

Robert Lamm: My opinion is that when your muse leads you to doing music it needs to be something that you would do no matter what. You need to realize that aside from practicing and aside from playing it really is a lifetime exploration. An important component to being a musician that some people don’t understand, aside from practicing and playing, is listening. You need to listen to music, you need to listen also to the other guys in your band when you’re playing music. I think that component gets lost. Nowadays I would say don’t expect to be famous next year, or even two years from now. There are all these alternate ways that people are accessing music now and alternate ways that people are beginning their careers whether it’s The Voice or American Idol or anything like that. The other day I just happened to be looking at my Shazam app and I decided to click on it and I looked at the top hundred Shazsammed artists or the week or the month and there were some artists on there I had never heard of, I never would’ve ever found them, I never would have found them on the radio, they wouldn’t have been on television but interestingly enough there was some good music on there I really want to explore further. Having said that, you’ve still got to go out and play, you’ve still got to do live gigs and as they say, “you never know how people are going to find your music, but the only way you can be sure they won’t find your music is to quit.” So don’t quit. Keep it going.