Tal Wilkenfeld: evaluation

Transcript context

…The following is a conversation with Tal Wilkenfeld, a singer-songwriter, bassist, guitarist, and a true musician who has recorded and performed with many legendary artists, including Jeff Beck, Prince, Eric Clapton, Incubus, Herbie Hancock, Mick Jagger, Jackson Brown, Rod Stewart, David Gilmore, Pharrell, Hans Zimmer, and many, many more. This was a fun and fascinating conversation. This is the Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear, dear friends, here’s Tal Wilkenfeld. There’s a legendary video of you playing with Jeff Beck. We’re actually watching it in the background now. So for people who don’t know, Jeff is one of the greatest guitarists ever. So you’re playing with him at the 2007 Crossroads Festival, and people should definitely watch that video. You were killing it on the bass. Look at that face. Were you scared? What was that experience like? Were you nervous? You don’t look nervous. Confident? Yeah, I wasn’t nervous. I think that you can get an adrenaline rush before a stage, which is natural, but I think as soon as you bring fear to a bandstand, you’re limiting yourself. You’re walling yourself off from everyone else. If you’re afraid, what is there to be afraid of? You must be afraid of making a mistake, and therefore you’re coming at it as a perfectionist and you can’t come at music that way, or it’s not going to be as expansive and vulnerable and true. So no, I was excited and passionate and having the best time. And also the fact that he gave me this solo, the context of this performance is that this was a guitar festival. It’s one of the biggest guitar festivals in the world because it’s Eric Clapton’s festival, and there’s 400 guitarists that are all playing solos all night. And we were towards the end of the night, and I could tell Jeff got a kick out of, I’m not going to solo on one of my most well-known songs, Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers. Well, Stevie Wonder wrote it, but people know Jeff for that song and his solo on it. It’s like, “I’m going to give it to my bass player.” And he did, and like- You took it.…

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