Keep Polishing That Turd Up, It Has Potential

In 1977 Fleetwood Mac released what would become one of the biggest selling rock albums of all time.  Depending on which list you believe and how it calculates sales, their classic Rumours has sold over 40 million copies and is solidly in the all time top ten best selling records.  Over a 45 year period since its release it has been on the charts for almost 18 years!

The fist single from the record is “Go Your Own Way”, a song that I suspect virtually everyone knows, even folks who don’t like rock music.  It’s one of those songs that’s been played on the radio trillions of times.  As of this writing it has over 606,000,000 streams on Spotify.  Six hundred and six million.

You’ve likely heard it in the past week in a grocery store or elevator.  The song has been rated one of the top 100 songs of all time by numerous rock magazines.  It’s a juggernaut. 

But just in case you’re super young and only into EDM, have a listen.

 

 

This Is Not A Hit Song

“Go Your Own Way” is an amazing rock song.  But what was the first draft like? 

Well here’s an early version of how it got started. 

 

Yikes.  I mean, it’s not horrible, but compared to the polished classic we all know and love it’s rough.  Lyndsey Buckingham’s voice cracks out of tune on the first chorus and at other times during the song. 

He doesn’t have the lyrics flushed out yet.  There’s no second verse, he just sings the first one twice.   And in the chorus he sings “you can roll like thunder” which was eventually changed to “you can call it another day”.  I kind of like the ‘roll like thunder’ line to be honest. 

The guitar solo at the end is just a simple filler repeated three times, it’s obvious he doesn’t have that either. 

But here’s the thing, Buckingham undoubtedly knew he was on to something.  I’m even guessing he knew he had a hit here, it just needed a lot of polishing up.

 

Progress

As the band worked on the song, they got to a version that’s much closer to what we know now. 

 

Close huh?  But it’s still missing some of those great guitar fills after the second verse.  And this version is about 40 seconds shorter than the final because there’s no guitar solo at the end, they just fade it out after the second chorus. 

The Wikipedia page for the song details that they had a hard time with the solo, and the one that finally made the grade was actually pieced together from numerous Lyndsey Buckingham solos by their producer.

 

Who Cares?

If you’re still reading, you might be thinking “Dave this isn’t a music blog, who cares?”  As a guy who made his career in a technical field and who’s semi-retired and trying to reinvent himself as a creative who sells “art” online, this matters to me a lot. 

Actually it should matter to you too no matter where you are in your career or side hustle.  It matters because with these early versions of “Go Your Own Way” we get a look at imperfection and progress.  Seeing what eventually became a best selling masterpiece in it’s rough and imperfect stages gives me hope.  Because almost everything I try creatively starts as an unpolished turd.

I suspect the majority of bloggers don’t just write a post perfectly the first time and hit publish, I know I don’t. 

Most of us probably go through numerous drafts of papers or reports in our day jobs before turning them in.  We add a proverbial guitar fill here or a harmony vocal there to make them better.

Coders start out with ugly code that doesn’t work, and then debug, consolidate, and refine to get it right. 

In other words, we all start with turds that we have to polish up.  You may think I’m stating the obvious here, and in a way I am. 

But how many people let this unfortunate reality stop them in their tracks?  How many give up when they see how ugly the turd they just produced is?  

 

Get Out The Polish And Get To Work

If I showed you the first versions of some of my graphic designs that are now big sellers you’d probably say “Dave that sucks.  It’s horribly ugly”  And you’d be right.  I look at some of them now and wince.  But it turns out I’m pretty good at polishing, and I’ve just accepted the fact that I’m not Monet and that’s okay. 

The main thing I’ve learned is to keep working on an idea when my gut feeling tells me it’s right.  Sometimes I know simply by the idea of a design that it’ll sell because the idea is that good.  But I have to get through the stage of creating the initial turd first, and doing the hard work of polishing it up. 

Most importantly I can’t let the fact that I’m usually going to produce a turd on the first try get me down or scare me away from trying harder. 

So if you’re thinking of starting a side hustle, new project, or even making a career change, don’t let the turds you might start out with scare you away.  Push through them.  Go with your gut.  Get out the polish and start shining them up. 

You just might be surprised by the gem that results.