Tal Wilkenfeld: evaluation

Transcript context

…You and the world lost Jeff Beck a year ago. You told me you really miss him. How’s the pain of losing Jeff change you? Maybe deepen your sense of the world? It’s hard to accept that we won’t create something musically again in this lifetime. But in terms of the grief, grief was easier for me because I went through a major grief period in 2016 and 17, and that was the first time I’d really gone through the process of grief in a non-family situation with friends and mentors and people that I’d created with, which is different. It’s a different kind of connection. When my grandparents died, it’s like there was nothing left unsaid. And I was at peace with what was happening. With this, when Prince died out of the blue in mid 2016, and then Leonard Cohen died in November, that just tore me to shreds because Leonard Cohen was not just someone that profoundly inspired me musically and lyrically, but spiritually, we had a very deep connection. And that was the basis of a lot of our conversation was spirituality. And so at that time, I felt like a piece of me went missing. And that was a very long process where I just stayed in my place and didn’t want to play a note of music. I kind of wanted to just get rid of all my stuff. So I had a friend come over and he’s like, “You should just, why don’t you come to the Comedy Store?” I’m like, “Comedy Store? What am I going to go to some store and buy clown suits? What are you talking about? What’s a Comedy Store?” He’s like, “No, no, no. The Comedy Store, the place where comedians go.” I’m like, “Okay, well, I’ve never seen standup. I’ve seen Seinfeld on TV. That’s the extent of my standup experience.” So he took me to the Comedy Store and every single one of those comedians embraced me like I was family. It didn’t even take a day. I was part of the family and I made 25 best friends, and I ended up throwing all my stuff in storage and finding a little room to stay in where I rented my gear out and my rent paying was me loaning the gear. I didn’t want any responsibilities, financial, I just wanted to be completely free so that I could just process it and not feel like I had to commit to anything work-wise or creatively. I just wanted to unplug. And so this was a fun and very different way to unplug, because previously I may have just gone to a monastery and spent weeks at a monastery or months, but in this case I was like, “You know what? This is a different kind of experience. I’m going to just hang out with comedians and stay in this room.” With no responsibility, really.…

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