This month we are delighted to introduce Terry McLean from our talented team of associates. I hope you enjoy one of his many incredible stories.
September 1991 – I have just landed in Barcelona after a hitting rock bottom in Italy…the day my academic career ended in June (no more financing my PhD from the University of Rome, I came home to my girlfriend for consolation and she said the immortal words “It’s not the only thing that’s finished”
So I went back to London for the summer, back to my parents at the age of 26 after 5 years abroad living the life of a travelling academic, with no career and no real future!
So I decided to teach English in London to foreign students to get some money and then travel the globe until my luck or my money ran out. I stuck a pin in the map to see where I would start and it landed on Moscow, so I said…“I am going to Barcelona…”
I had enough money saved up to last for at least 3 months before my role as Assistant Director at a big Language School began in November 1991
I spent it in two weeks partying in Barcelona, got kicked out of my hotel and was sleeping on the street.
As you can tell my work ethic in those days was not great and I really thought I was a) very lazy and b) unemployable and I lived with my Dad’s idea of WORK as a four-letter word.
I was also hungry and asking for money from Mum and Dad was out of the question so I thought about how to get some food and I saw all the human statues on the Ramblas and thought “well I am not doing that but…”
So I found myself in front of the Café de la Opera on Sept 26th 1991 and I started to sing, a capella, two songs from The Jungle Book and to my huge surprise, 3 things happened
A crowd formed to watch and hear me
I made enough money for Lunch and Dinner
I realised I could do this, loved doing this and could live doing this!So I met up, as you do with some fellow musicians and we formed a band and lived, very well from music for 4 years, in the street, where I learnt so much, in bars, in clubs, in theatres at events etc…and I discovered that my WORK ETHIC had changed COMPLETELY. There were not enough hours in the day and I worked ceaselessly, composing, recording, playing, singing, marketing, selling, rehearsing….
I learned that when you love what you do, it just doesn’t feel like WORK – So maybe that’s what Dad was trying to say all along.
