Myles Kennedy has reflected on his fledgling days as a musician, whilst cutting his teeth on the rock circuit with band The Mayfield Four.
The stalwart rocker recently sat down on the Knotfest podcast, in an interview that saw him delve into his comeuppance as a musician and a crucial, albeit unorthodox, bit of wisdom he was bestowed with.
Mayfield Four had just signed their first record deal at a major label. It was a time where a young and impressionable Kennedy was still searching for his sound. A period that, Kennedy admits, was plagued by some form of “identity crisis.”
Kennedy reflected that during this period, he was profoundly inspired by his adoration for Jeff Buckley. An inspiration that seeped through to early-Mayfield Four material.
“I discovered Jeff Buckley a few years prior and you can hear on some of those songs there was a heavy dose of that, and I was really into Radiohead.”
Around this time, Radiohead dropped their landmark opus OK Computer. Wary that Kennedy’s music consumption habits had a tendency to infiltrate his songwriting craft, producer Jerry Harrison encouraged the rocker to avoid listening to the album.
“In fact, right before we were about to make that record – the first Mayfield record [1998’s Fallout], Jerry Harrison, before we went in the studio, he said – because the new Radiohead was coming out, [1997’s] OK Computer,” he recalled.
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“He’s like, ‘Do not listen to it!’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ He goes, “Because you’ll end up absorbing it, and that’ll become part of the DNA for the record. You want to be your own thing.’
At the time, the request must have sounded bizarre, but Kennedy has emphasised that it was ultimately “a really great piece of advice.”
The proof is in the pudding. Kennedy took Harrison’s advice on board and, eventually, discovered his own, singular sound.
“What I learned as a writer was the idea of not being afraid to rock,” Kennedy added. “If you’re gonna go out there and get in front of people, what gets people moving, what brings the overall energy of the room up… And I became less afraid of the riff.”
Check out ‘The Great Beyond’ by Myles Kennedy:
