Any fool will tell you that from an economic standpoint, this deal was 100 percent risk on my end. It meant that for a full year, my family would subsist on crumbs, and then afterward there was a chance I’d be out of a job full stop. It also meant there was a lot of pressure on me to deliver popular albums, which are rare in the grand scheme. When I confessed to my poor wife what I wanted to do, she put on a brave face and said she’d support me no matter what. But one night early in that first year, when she thought I was asleep, I heard her crying on the line with her sister: “Oh, what has he
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