Be Who You Be

So who are you, anyway?

I don't mean your name-rank-serial number or what you do for a living.  I don't mean where you live or how much you make.  I don't even mean who everyone else thinks you are.  I am asking who you are to YOURSELF deep down inside.   In your own mind and your own soul.  Don't really know?  Hey, don't feel alone!

There are some fortunate (or gifted or lucky) people who have known from a very early age just who they are and why they're here, but I would wager that they're in the minority on this earth.  I believe that most of us go through the agony and confusion of wanting to be this for awhile, then that for a time, until we hopefully settle into a self-image that really fits.  Some poor souls never seem to be able to decide who they are.  I thought that was gonna be me for a lot of years.

Since music has been my guiding force, I always had heroes in the music scene that I wanted to be like.  When I was in third grade, I really hoped and prayed that someday I would be a Beatle.  I didn't know how this was going to come to pass, as I was a nine-year-old American kid and they were twenty-something Englishmen.  But I was practicing up in case they asked.

When I discovered Jimi Hendrix later on, it was like a light shining on me from above.  His was the first concert I ever attended, back in Memphis in early 1969.  I thought about being Jimi, heck we even had the same first name practically.  But his talent was of such magnitude that it was intimidating.  And besides, it would have probably been way easier faking my way into English-ness than black-ness!

Then for the next couple of years, Jimmy Page was my man.  Hell I didn't want to be LIKE him, I wanted to actually BE him.  I wanted that castle by Loch Ness and that endless stream of gold and groupies.  I even did the thing with the bow and echoplex on my guitar pretty well, and had a double-neck so Stairway to Heaven and The Song Remains the Same would sound as much like Pagey as possible.  Never could get used to those Les Pauls, though.  Had a few, but the Strat kept it's place as my main guitar.  It's funny how I used to seize on any pic of Jimmy Page with a Fender in the studio as proof that I was on the right track.  Was I sick or what??

I don't think 'sick' was the word, but can just about guarantee that 'insecure' pretty much nails it.  I had this creeping suspicion in the back of my brain that I, little Jimmy Rusidoff, was really no fucking good at all.  I tried to cover up for it by being really outrageous in stage act, dress, and attitude.  I lived in Memphis by then, which was a hot-bed of great guitarists.  I felt I was practically the worst one.  Well, not the worst, but the ones who I felt I was better than were not even worth mentioning.  I got in this band named Creed as co-lead guitarist with a guy named Steve Ingle, who is to this day one of the best I have ever heard.  I always felt in my heart that Steve was THE MAN and I was just some little gnat that made inept distorted squanking sounds in between his brilliant solos.

After Creed came Lord Tracy.  Now I was in a band with Terry who had just come from playing with Dimebag (it was then actually 'Diamond') Darrell in Pantera, and Chris and Barney who had grown up playing with one of the most amazing guitarists to ever walk the planet, Shawn Lane. (You have to hear him!  Here's a link.  He'll melt your brain!) So you're now talking about one scared guy who is walking around barefoot on broken glass every day.  I was the embodiment of the expression 'in fear.'

We landed a record deal and went off to L.A. to record the album.  From the deepest blackest recesses of my mind that gnawing fear that I would be replaced by someone who could actually play once the album was underway reared up again and again.  But my two true friends Chris and Barney believed in me much more than I did.  While I was in there trying to be what I thought the world would want, and falling on my face all the time, they sat me down and gave me The Talk.  I remember Barney telling me how much they knew I could do it if I would only be true to myself.  Quit trying to be Yngwie, Page, whomever.  Just be (gasp!) Jimmy Rusidoff.  To quote Barney, "Let that fuckin' ARKANSAS come out!!!"  May God bless them and light their paths forever more!  Somehow, that's just what I did.  It was a defining moment in my life.

So, I had been playing gigs since, when?  About 1969?  This was in '89 before I finally let it all out and found some way to believe in myself.  The result is my guitar stuff on the Lord Tracy album.  It may not be a universe-altering experience to the guitarists of today and tomorrow, but it was for me.  Even Terry, who could be a harsh critic, was impressed.  I was getting respect from my friends and bandmates and other musicians, but more importantly I was getting respect from myself.  I finally believed in me like others had all along.  Many had tried to tell me, but I didn't want to believe.

After Lord Tracy, I had the confidence to front my own band.  It was (and is) a great experience, not without frustrations.  Because even when you know who you are inside it doesn't mean that everyone else will see what you see.  Case in point:  In Dallas I found that I was "too rock" for the blues clubs and "too blues" for the rock clubs!  I could neither pretend I was a seventy-year-old black blues man nor could I cop the tuned-down-to-A death metal stance.  That problem continues to this day in Huntsville.  A certain club in town said they'd never have 'that blues band' play on their stage.  Have you seen my band?  We're a fucking rock band!  I just don't try to hide my roots. I am gonna be me no matter what.  Love me or hate me or don't care one way or another.  Life is much simpler this way.  I even wrote a song about it that's on my old CD called I Am.  It 's the truth of my life.  Listen to the words when we play it.

You have to stop trying to be something you're not, or something other people expect you to be.  You have to reach down inside yourself and pull out what it is that makes you tick, that makes you different from all the other humans on this earth.  You have to find out, you have to know!  That is the only way you can live peacefully with yourself.  That doesn't mean you have to be satisfied, oh no!  I never am.

Life now finds me not only a guitar player, but a husband and father and systems admin for a small company.  I am my Mother's last remaining son. I have many duties and I have to wear many hats in the course of my day.  But deep down inside you have to be what you be.  So what am I?

I'm a fucking rock star.

JimmyR  8/2002