RKZ: On Failure
Recording artist and all-round creative, Rikesh Chauhan (aka RKZ), lets us in on his experience with failure and disappointment, where it took him, and what he learned from it
words by Rikesh CHAUHAN
In a social climate that practically forces us to present ourselves as high flying and perpetually motivated, it pays to be honest and open about our failures and how they affect us. It’s important to understand that failure doesn’t define us, but that it’s often a necessary part of a longer process, and almost always a learning experience. EJ
There’s no feeling quite like the one of being backstage, knowing that you’ll soon be in front of a room full of people who are there to hear you sing your songs. You feel the adrenaline and butterflies coursing through you, you’re bouncing around with an unrelenting energy; you’re excited and petrified that you might forget your words. The same words you’ve written and rehearsed a million times over. You feed off the energy in the room, the muffled sound of the crowd growing bigger, getting closer. It’s claustrophobic. It’s exhilarating. You feel like a rockstar. Partly because, well, you are one.
The band—or rather, the group of individually brilliant solo musicians—and I had been rehearsing, recording, rehearsing and re-recording for a couple months’ in build-up to the gig. In addition to this, my guitarist and I were doing acoustic sets around the city to keep our sound fresh. Having a five-piece group-of-individually-brilliant-solo-musicians is quite an expensive thing to upkeep. As I was the ‘billed artist’, sans label, I was paying for the rehearsal space, studio time, their individual fees, as well as project managing the whole thing. But it was entirely worth it as soon as we stepped on stage and the crowd began shifting in their seats to see us a little better. The rise and fall of the room continually rising, people beginning to groove and to drink, singing themselves into merriment that stretches into the early hours of the morning. You’ve utterly charmed them, they’re hanging on to your every word. You crescendo into folklore (or so it feels in that moment) and the night ends, and into the cool air everyone hazily disperses. You’ve done it. Everything you’ve ever dreamed of.
Now imagine, playing the exact same set – perhaps an even tighter, more refined version which you knew would absolutely kill – a few weeks later, in a dingy basement club to all of ten people. The outgoings were the same: band, rehearsal space, time. But with only a handful of tickets sold; we didn’t get enough people through the door to take a cut of the ticket sales. For a set that we absolutely loved playing, we found ourselves trying to get through it as quickly as possible. The drunk woman that heckled me mid-set for coming across too cocky, telling me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t that great, didn’t help much. The band were forlorn, as if they’d just been suckerpunched in the first round of the biggest fight of their lives. And it was all my fault.
The thought of quitting music entirely had never rang in my head as loudly as it did that evening. I went into hiding for a little while, which ended up being a couple of years. In that time, I kept recording music but I stopped performing. I spent more time doing other things – taking photos, creating content, and generally trying to keep myself occupied (read: distracted). My photography, to my pleasant surprise, picked up and I found myself creating content for small brands in London. I then, sort of, fell into the world of menswear and I’ve managed to forge myself a career that I now feel like I was destined to pursue.
And the brilliance of it all? By giving myself another focus, I became more and more inspired to write and record new music. Slowly, silently, without any time restrictions or external pressure, I recorded and recorded and found a sound that changed my entire perspective of music, of creating and of art itself. The music I was making a few years back, it now seemed, wasn’t really true to me. The new stuff made me feel wholesome. It was MY sound. It wasn’t a sound I was taking, nor conforming to. It was mine. It is mine. It’s now an album – my first, which I’m releasing this summer.
By stepping away from my first love, I grew up and somehow managed to rediscover it in a whole new light. It’s like seeing a childhood best friend after years and realising the love is still there, just as strong as it used to be. I guess, it’s really a case of the unexpectedness of it all. You never really know where life will take you and what it’ll throw your way. It made me learn to trust the journey, for that’s always the best part, anyway. And who knows. Maybe soon, I’ll find myself backstage again, waiting to reintroduce myself to a room full of people who are there to hear me sing my songs.
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