To nail the spirit of “Bravado,” Neil had in mind the line “going for it regardless of the outcome” from John Barth’s Tidewater Tales,* but seldom have I sung a line from any song that rings so true to me in my own personal experience as “We will pay the price / But we will not count the cost.” Being so determined to be a musician and breaking my mother’s heart in the process; the damage I’d done to my family life and my most important relationships . . . In all these instances I naïvely thought I was prepared to pay the price, but I didn’t really know what that was until it was tallied up and
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