Walter Egan – HuffPost 5.5.14

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

Walter Egan: Well, “artist” is a broad term, I suppose. In anything creative, you’ve got to have a pretty tough skin first of all, to be able to continue to hold that flame of your intense desire to create and shield it from all the people who don’t appreciate you. I think perseverance is a big part of it. Really loving what you do has a lot to do with it, too. Then it’s just getting the most pleasure. In every step of the way as a songwriter, when I’m writing a song it’s a great feeling, to feel like you’re grabbing something and going with it, and then when that song is finished usually it’s another great moment and then of course you record it and it sounds pretty good and somebody else says, “Oh, that’s pretty good,” that’s a great moment, too. There’s all these levels of getting your satisfaction out of what you’re doing. This is kind of obvious, I suppose, but you’ve got to love what you’re doing. You have to really feel it. I’ve lived what I consider to be as much of a creative life as possible. When I was in high school I was captain of the baseball team and also the editor of the literary magazine and that continued on until college to a certain degree except I let my baseball career go. But my parents were both in advertising, I grew up in sort of the Mad Men world. My mother was the copy director, my stepfather was the art director and they would often drink lots of martinis, but they encouraged my creativity and supported it. As an only child I suppose I got a lot more than others do as far as parental support. So through the years I try everything I can. In college I did metal sculpture and painting and print making and continued to write songs. I’ve never stopped writing songs, I started when I was sixteen and never stopped. My ex-wife is always like, “how come you don’t need therapy?” I think my therapy is my creativity. I think you’re able to process and deal with at least some of what goes on in your life by objectifying it and making it into either a song or a book or a story. I’ve started writing screenplays over the last ten years or so.

MR: Cool. Life is good.

WE: It certainly is when you’re doing what you want to do. That goes back to the advice for young artists. Do what you love to do and people will pick up on that. And of course work at it. You have to believe in yourself and work at it.