Living fast and dying young – a tribute to Peter Kinski

By Neil Patrick

I have a dream
To move in a forward motion
'Till I see the shape of my life
Start turning

(Lyric from 'Something to Live and Breathe By'. By James Maker and Peter Kinski. EMI Records, 1991)


Every now and then something happens in our lives which causes us to reflect, to take stock, to be grateful for what we have. This post is a requiem for one of my oldest friends. A story of how our career choices kept us apart but our love of music always brought us back together. It’s about friendship, fate, choices, commitment and rock and roll. It’s also a series of musical snapshots between 1975 and 2016. Forty years of my memories of how music made me feel.

There’s a lot of talk about the merits of following your passion, vs. doing what we are told. And you don’t get much greater opposites than banking and rock and roll. It's easy to be passionate about music. It's almost impossible to be passionate about banking.

My friend was a great artist, musician and a rebel to the end. I was mostly an obedient servant of whatever master dominated my life at the time. I doubt he ever envied me. But I often looked at him with admiration.


1975: School Daze

31 October 1975: Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" is released. It goes to No.1 for 9 weeks becoming the biggest-selling non-Charity single in UK history. I am furiously banging my head to the outro years before this same act becomes the most memorable clip from the movie, Wayne’s World.

I used the money from my Saturday job working on a fruit and veg stall in the local market to buy Queen’s fourth album, A Night at the Opera. I had been a fan since buying their first album in 1973. I absolutely loved Brian May’s storming rock tracks, but felt a bit queasy listening to the delicate and artsy musings of Freddie Mercury.

At the same time, I met Pete when his family moved to my town and he turned up at my school.

Pete was pale, thin and had straggly blond hair. His blue eyes had a gaze which was deep and knowing. He had a quiet voice and a sharp, acerbic wit. We got talking and it soon became apparent that we were both serious about our rock music. He loved The Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Frank Zappa. I loved Thin Lizzy, Genesis and Queen. Lots of heated debates ensued about the merits of this artist or that album. These discussions bonded us in the way that men do by arguing about shared passions.

But we were also different. Pete was not one to compromise. He was quite definite and unnegotiable about everything he cared about. I was pragmatic and flexible. This difference would soon manifest itself in how our lives played out.

This was the age of the LP if you were serious about music. Poseurs and popsters bought little 7 inch singles of chart topping songs. To my pubescent binary mind, real men bought albums – 12 inch slabs of electric noise wrapped in some of the most evocative imagery to be seen anywhere at the time.

Today, the LP is an almost forgotten music medium. Back then, billions were sold. But they were more than just a music medium. They had a physical form which allowed teens to badge themselves and your choice of 12 inch heraldry determined who your friends would be. It was a form of personal branding long before the term had ever been coined. Carrying around a Jimi Hendrix or Deep Purple LP at school was pretty cool. Abba was absolutely not. Owning a Simon and Garfunkel LP risked getting a kicking.

Pete and I shared cigarettes, LPs and copies of Sounds magazine. Pete had started learning to play guitar and even though he could only bash out some simple chords, I was in awe. I wanted a guitar too and I badgered my parents for one to absolutely deaf ears. They thought it was waste of my time and their money. So I gave up asking.


1976: Music on the brink of anarchy

3 April 1976: Brotherhood of Man win the Eurovision Song Contest for the UK with the song "Save Your Kisses For Me”. I absolutely hate it and fear that rock music will die if this trite and pathetic pop junk gets any more airplay. Hearing it really does make me feel I want to strangle someone. Fortunately on August 25th,  Boston’s first album is released. Pete and I agree, it’s absolutely epic and will save the world with the power of its rock.

Punk rock is nascent and Pete is enthusiastic about The Ramones’ first album. I buy Anarchy In The UK, by the Sex Pistols but find it a bit ratty for my taste.

Whilst I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, Pete had a simple if ambitious plan for his. He was going to be a rock star.

Pete had already started and set up his first band. It was called Sticky Fingers - an homage to the Rolling Stones album of the same name. They weren't very good. But thanks to a couple of Marshall stacks, they were loud. And proud.

In the 1970’s, this was a form of cool that the footballers couldn’t begin to emulate. I hung out with Sticky Fingers’ at rehearsals and gigs, lugging drums and amps in and out of village halls and offering uninformed 'advice' about their songs and sound mix. Being part of this band of brothers meant something to me and gave me some much needed confidence that I was somehow more attractive to girls.

The band got better rapidly. Aged 16, we left school and went to the same college sixth form. We chain smoked during our breaks in the student common room. All the other band members were at the same college with us and we adopted a ‘cooler than thou’ attitude, which in hindsight must have made us look like complete pricks.

The discussions about music went on for hours. We’d travel to watch bands such as AC/DC, Hawkwind and Long Island, New York’s greatest rock prodigy, Blue Öyster Cult. The following days would be spent recovering from minor tinnitus and debating the details of every performance we had seen.

1980: Departures

4 December 1980: Led Zeppelin disbands following the death of drummer John Bonham. I am disappointed rather than distraught. Conspicuous compassion won’t be invented until 4 days later when, on 8 December 1980, John Lennon is shot dead outside his apartment building in New York City. I am completely bemused at the media circus and weeping fans. Lennon never even rocked a chair in my opinion.

The time came to go to university. Pete went to Middlesex Poly. I went to Brighton Poly. It seems odd today, but then there were just two ways to keep in touch – the telephone (more or less impossible when you have an itinerant student lifestyle) or letters (which were slow and tedious to write). Pete and I lost touch for what turned out to be the next nine years.

The dice were cast. Pete was staying true to his artistic temperament and studying at art college. I had decided I didn’t want to participate in that life lottery and would go after the money in business and chose to study business and marketing.

1989: Crises of confidence

9 April 1989: The Rolling Stones' Bill Wyman (53) announces that he will marry 19-year-old Mandy Smith, his girlfriend for six years. It doesn’t occur to me that this is immoral and possibly illegal. It seems rockstardom confers sexual super-powers. Confined to corporate conventionalism, I start to doubt the wisdom of my career choice. Only a very large home stereo, gigs and my growing guitar collection keeps me remotely connected to my rock and roll mistress.

By 1989 I had graduated and was in the early stages of my marketing career. I was doing okay I thought. I had been appointed as a marketing manager for a big UK bank and was always the youngest person at every management meeting I attended.

One day I had flu. I took a couple of days off work and lay in bed with a temperature and lots of paracetamol. My girlfriend went out and brought me back some medicines, the Financial Times and a copy of Kerrang! magazine.

From June 1981 right up to the present day, Kerrang! has been the bible of hard rock and heavy metal. I picked it up and looked at the cover. I almost choked. Staring back at me from the cover photo was Pete and the other guys from Sticky Fingers, now going under the moniker of RPLA. The article inside posed the question, “Is this the next Led Zeppelin?”

A three or four page article by editor Geoff Barton told the story of how Pete and the guys had spent the last six years slogging their way round pubs and clubs in London, playing to whoever was there. A talent scout from EMI had spotted them and they had signed a record deal shortly thereafter.

Whilst I was overjoyed at my old school mates’ success, I also had a feeling of remorse. Pete had stuck to his guns, believing in himself and his art. I had chickened out and gone after the security and safety of a conventional career.

I somehow got hold of a postal address for Pete and sent him a congratulatory letter. To my delight he replied and sent me a copy of the band’s new single:

I thought it was great and wrote back to tell him so. He wrote back and said he'd just got back from LA after shooting videos for their forthcoming EMI album. And he was not exaggerating:





Our worlds were now both geographically and occupationally about as far apart as you can get while still living in the same country. We lost touch again for the next 26 years.

2015: The final countdown

Adele's third album, 25 becomes the fastest-selling UK album of all time, beating a record previously held by Oasis' album Be Here Now in 1997. I am forced to buy a copy for my step-daughter although I know it isn’t good for her. Fortunately, I don’t have to listen to it.

In April I spotted on Linkedin that Pete had looked at my LinkedIn profile even though we'd been out of touch for a quarter of a century. I connected with him and asked where he was. He replied he had left London 10 years ago and moved to Wales. “Where in Wales?" I asked. It turned out he was living just 5 miles away.

So last year we renewed our old friendship with mutual enthusiasm. I discovered that in 1991, RPLA had gone very quickly from being media favourites and EMI recording artists, to being dumped in the trash can when internal politics at EMI, band squabbles and fickle media opinions about them killed their career almost as fast as it had begun.

Pete’s achievement had been the result of his total commitment. And in his world, that’s what it takes. In my world, there are few such one shot gambles. Some things go well. Others don’t. We learn our lessons and move on. But I couldn’t help but admire how he’d never compromised and never quit. And for a short moment in time, he had been vindicated.

Pete had spent the next 10 years or so in London attempting without success to rekindle his music career, but all the while lapsing into the underground scene of drugs and clubs. He had found odd jobs as a graphic designer, doing design work for top shelf magazines and the odd bits of session work.

But I was so overjoyed to have my old friend back. We’d chat on the phone, have dinner together, go to the pub. All the while enthusiastically discussing music, guitars and reminiscing.

This went on until last autumn. My summer had been busy and I’d had little contact with Pete. I dropped him an email. The reply that came back paralyzed me. It said he was in a hospice with a rare form of cancer and had been given a few months to live.

I would never see him again. A few emails went back and forth. But he couldn’t easily write anymore and he didn’t want me to visit him in his fast deteriorating condition.

Pete died early this year with no media attention at all, and this is partly why I wrote this. I want him to be remembered. To me he’ll always be the swaggering guitar hero I knew and admired. Rest in peace my old mate. You lived the dream without ever compromising your ideals. You achieved greatness even if it was momentary and fleeting.

You did something everyone should do, but rarely does. You understood your deepest talents and used them to live a life which had meaning to you and those around you. You built your City of Angels.

And this is how I’ll always remember you:

If you’re highly qualified, how come you can’t get a job?

By Neil Patrick

How can it be that so many highly skilled people are unemployed, while employers claim they cannot find people with the right skills?

Over the weekend I was reading The Third Industrial Revolution by Jeremy Rifkin. Although this book is about the economic, environmental, technological and social issues we face today, within its covers there is an explanation of this apparent contradiction.

And understanding this is of critical importance to anyone who wishes to prosper in their career over the long term.

We’re on the cusp of a new industrial era

Jeremy Rifkin has identified that industrial epochs are characterized by two determining factors. These are the dominant energy source and communication media.

So, the first industrial era was powered by coal and the prevailing communication medium was the printed word. Society organised itself around these…coal powered transport and industry and provided heat and light to homes and businesses. Print communicated everything from newspapers and novels to instruction manuals and bibles. All were committed to print.

The second industrial era is now in its death throes. This was driven by oil and the dominant communication mediums were radio, television and the telephone. In case you've not noticed, the oil is running out fast and TV and radio have ceased to be the dominant media they were in the last 60 or 70 years. Oh and it seems telephone landlines are becoming less and less popular too.

Rifkin believes that the third industrial era will be based on green energy and the internet. This change will have massive implications for the types of jobs we all do. The effects of the transformation will impact every one of us, not just those working in energy, communications and media. And there is clear evidence in many of the events that have unfolded over the last few years that he is right.

Rifkin even argues convincingly that the current financial crisis was a symptom of the end of the second industrial era, rather than the cause of it.

We’re all potential victims of accelerated obsolescence

So not only are we currently undergoing a transformation of society itself, the technologies which will define our society in the 21st century are undergoing a revolution too.

And because the pace of technological change is accelerating, very few people can assume that their skills will be current for much more than 10 years or so.

Google didn’t exist in 1995. Back then I would search the internet using a long forgotten search engine called Dogpile. Today, if a business doesn’t rank high on Google searches, it’s increasingly invisible and rightly or wrongly judged as second rate.

The credit industry was dominated by credit cards until 2008 and the financial collapse. Try finding a job today if you’re a credit card professional. Despite the credit crunch starting almost 6 years ago, one of the biggest UK credit card issuers, MBNA has been contracting now for years. It currently employs around 3,000 staff, down from 4,224 in 2011.

Yellow Pages was a huge global business for decades. But despite trying to shift its business online, it’s facing an inexorable decline in its relevancy. Not only that, it fails on environmental grounds too. The Product Stewardship Institute claims local governments spend $54 million a year to dispose of unwanted phone books and $9 million to recycle them. Phone books use low grade glues and are therefore difficult to recycle, and they often clog recycling machinery.

There’s no job security in established businesses either

Of course the decline in the fortunes of businesses is nothing new. What is new is that the speed at which a firm can move from established business and secure employer to contraction or even obsolescence. And if your career is tied up with one of them, your skills can become worthless very quickly.

The U.S. Postal Service suffered 30,000 layoffs in March 2010. Sears/K-Mart layed off 50,000 in January 1993. IBM layed off 60,000 in July 1993. And General Motors layed off 47,000 in February 2009. And these are just some of the biggest. For every one like this, there are hundreds of smaller less well reported downsizings and closures.

Organisations are very good at disguising their difficulties right up until the last moment. Are you really tuned in to the real situation at your employer? You need to be.

So if you are planning to work until you are 65 or beyond, you can fully expect that you’ll need to completely reinvent yourself at least 4 or 5 times over during your career. Note that I say ‘reinvent yourself’ not just change jobs…

Peter Weddle makes this comment on the ASQ blog. This is his take on it:

"Today’s turbulent economic environment has changed the way employers fill their vacant positions. Instead of using their traditional approach — hiring a person who is qualified for a job -they have turned to a new strategy that is best described as “talent staffing.” As a result, tens of millions of decent, dedicated and capable people — men and women who have successfully worked their entire lives — are now unemployed, unsuccessful in their search for a new job and unable to figure out why. No one has told them that the rules of the game have changed".

Do not confuse this with the economic downturn

It’s tempting to think that our recent woes are because of the recession. And that if and when things recover, we’ll all be much more secure in our jobs. Think again.

This isn’t a temporary state of affairs, it’s a paradigm shift which will continue to accelerate over the coming years and decades. It is this speed of change which means that often, skills which were cutting edge as recently as four or five years ago, can be obsolete today.

So you need to keep not just your skills but your TALENT up to date. And that’s the crux. If you are employed, you can fully expect that your employer isn’t going to react very enthusiastically to a request for a couple of weeks off work.  You're asking them to pay for you to learn some new stuff that may very well not be relevant to the job you are doing today, but which may be critical to the job you’ll need in say three or four years’ time…

If you are looking for work, you need to understand that employers will only hire individuals who have all of the skills to do a job and the state-of-the-art knowledge required to use those skills effectively on-the-job. They seek better-than-qualified persons to do a job, and they expect superior performance from them and from their first day of work.

This means they expect you to be the custodian of your talent value. That’s down to you not them.

What is talent?

Ironically, even though millions of people in Europe and the US are now unemployed and looking for work, a large percentage of employers believe there is a shortage of individuals with talent. They are quite wrong to think this of course. But perception is reality whether it is right or wrong.

Peter Weddle defines talent thus:

In practice, employers have defined a person of talent to be someone who has one or both of two attributes:

They have a skill that is critical to organizational success and a track record which demonstrates their ability to use that skill effectively on-the-job.

and/or

They perform at a superior level on-the-job which sets a standard that encourages their co-workers to upgrade the calibre of their work, as well.

The tragic irony is that employers do little or nothing to help their employees develop and hone their skills and talents for the future. So the moment you get hired is the moment your talent value starts to slowly but inexorably erode. You can be sure that your employers will only invest in you if they perceive a more or less immediate return on that investment.

What can you do about this?

Employers want to hire all-stars. Not just people who are good at what they do, but people who are clearly the best at that task. And the only way you can be such an all-star is if you are working with your talent.

First, make sure you know where your talent lies. Talent is not skill. Talent is an inherent capability, a natural capacity for excellence at a particular type of work. Talent is as individual as you are. But it cannot be universally used. No talent is compatible with all work, but every talent can be expressed in more than one career field. It can be developed to perform in one environment today and another tomorrow. But before you can do that, you have to understand precisely what you are talented at.

Second, make sure you are working in a career field and for an employer that enables you to express your talent. Employers aren’t hiring your skill, they’re hiring what they think will be your total contribution to their organisation. And right now if you have a job and your work isn’t allowing you to demonstrate your true talent, then it’s time to be looking elsewhere, even if you think your current job is OK.

Thirdly if you’ve identified your talent then you must do everything possible to nurture it, especially if you are not able to do this in your normal job. Because this isn’t something you can achieve in a few weeks or months, doing this while you are employed is vital.

Finally, you must step back and take the long view. The prospects for your firm and industry affect you. Directly. Whilst it’s easy to think that when Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, it was an unpredictable event, the truth is that there were signs at least one year earlier that the firm was in financial difficulties. Moreover, five years earlier, in 2003, it had suffered an $80 million penalty from the SEC for using its researchers to unduly influence market prices.

Yes, it’s unfair that the rules of the game have changed. And yes, it’s even more unfair that employers never bothered to tell anyone about it. But if you step back and understand what is going on, you’ll be better equipped to deal with the reality. And if you fully embrace the reality, you’ll seek and find and the work you really love and build a sustainable career with it.