Letters

I don`t know if you`ll see this Mr. Stanley. But if you do, please accept my deepest thank you for sharing your awesome life experience and your wisdom with the world! What this picture hanging on my office wall shows, is actually a brand new record deal. So what? Well, at least in Norway these days, for a hard rock band, that is almost unheard of. This deal is for five years and I have to say I don`t think I have seen another hard rock band, in Norway that is, get a deal like this for decades here now! And it`s a good old fashion "we pay-you play"-deal too! Not this shitty 360 deals they keep throwing at bands and artists these days! I have followed you guys for 35 years now and everything we do (I play drums and manage Norwegian classic rock band Humbucker) is more or less a replica of what you guys have done. In a much smaller scale of course but it`s still the same way of working: Being focused, having goals, dreams and never giving up on those. In this particular case, I remembered this thing that you said some time ago: "The only one who fail is the one who says it can`t be done"! I don`t think I have heard a better saying in my life! That says it all! I keep that in my head all the time and I used that to the full in this case as I called the label-manager four times in a month. Ones a week for a month I let him know that we were no quitters and that we would really like to have a talk and that we were convinced that he could do a great job for and with us. In the end he checked out our music and agreed to a meeting and I met him, had a 3,5 hrs very nice meeting with him, and the result was this incredible deal! And even though I knew about him a great deal, it turned out that he is much more well connected in the business and have even more experience that I knew of. We could NOT get a better man in Norway to work for us and the whole band is stunned and feel unbelievably lucky! In fact, he told me he wanted to sign us because of the quality of our work AND because we would not give up on him and "take no for an answer"! Not many bands today had that attitude he said. Which of course is a great honor coming from a guy like that! But really it`s honoring you and what you stand for so I don`t take credit for that at all! I have experienced many dreams coming true because of the way you work and the inspiration it gives me, but this is probably the biggest! Thank you so very much again and please keep sharing your wisdom! I wish you the best of luck for the future Sir and to the band too! If you would like to, you are welcome of course to check out Humbucker at www.humbucker-rocks.com And of course, if you check out the video for the song `The Way I Am` on our page, you will probably also understand, from the lyrics, what I`m saying... Cheers from Norway Sir! Best Regards Geir Arne Dale Norway, May 20th 2014