Alex Clare: The Whole Story - Project Inspire Convention 2017

my name is Alex CL I'm from London and England I was born in southeast London um probably the dullest place on Earth possibly um 31 years ago uh yeah two two very very lovely parents um I was born in a part of London which was famous for William Shakespeare's Globe Theater and uh you know has a has a long musical Legacy which is always for me a big inspiration and a big incentive growing up to to sort of pursue a career in the music industry um when I was 7 years old they were giving out three lessons in my music lessons in my school and for some reason my parents decided that it'd be good that I learned but I got to pick the instrument so I thought what was the most noisy and antisocial instrument I could possibly learn and that was the trumpet so I got a trumpet at 7 years old and I started playing it making a lot of noise and uh so much noise that my parents used to lock me in the bathroom to practice to sort of stop disturbing people and if that wasn't antisocial Enough by the time I got to 11 um I decided I wanted to play the drums so I became a drummer I started playing percussion and drums I started taking lessons at school and all through Elementary School all through Junior High we don't call it that in England but whatever um all through Junior High I started playing music with bands all types of music all types of people I was mixing with to learn how to play music and um it was fantastic really really fantastic I high recommend you know for me I was a very clumsy kid I was a very clumsy kid and um I think really the incentive of my parents was to give me some coordination you know to like actually be able to get some motor development and you know just fantastic and it really worked loved music my good parents have a very big record collection lots of Blues and Soul music and I got very very into this music I actually learned to sing from listening to American Soul records a lot of Americans when they hear me sing they're very surprised U they're very surprised because I sing with an American accent they're even more surprised when I sing Jewish music and have a that that freaks them out even more they're like what's going on here man seriously anyway I didn't have a very religious upbringing um that's why I haven't mentioned it yet because I really had no um formal Jewish Education as a kid nothing literally nothing at all um strong of identity and I would occasionally unlike the rest of my family I would occasionally go to the local reform Shore which was not so far from my house um because I felt like was an important thing to do for some reason um but gradually as I was growing through my teenage years music really became the main focus in my life um so much so but the time it came to think about leaving school and going to college I decided that uh I really wanted to be a drum so I told my parents you can imagine what they said they like really going to be a drummer maybe maybe try to do something that has a little bit more uh you know durability a little bit more longevity so I I enrolled in a in a in a in a culinary school to learn how to be a chef now I went to Chef school but the band I was playing were doing quite well we were getting quite a lot of notice quite a lot of uh Renown as these young boys from South London playing in London England and uh in my second year of college I didn't tell my parents but I dropped out and I went on tour um which is great we're still working it out you know um 15 years later but it's okay they forgiven me um I went on tour with this band and things started snowboarding and then the band broke up however I made connections I networked I got around the sort of London music scene which is really one of the most prominent in the world you know there's so many great musicians come out of London and there's such a a good support network for musicians in London um be it a little bit off and ready that I moved at the age of 19 from my home in South London to Northwest London now when people say Northwest London they usually assume gold as green but I moved to a place called camam toown camam toown was the Hub and in many ways there is the Hub of media of music of Television of art of the S more avanguard creative sectors in the UK and uh I was living there 18 19 years old complete Freedom living in a house full of musicians and it was amazing you know as a young as a teenager everything I and as a kid all I aspired to be was a professional musician I was actually doing it now I got a job for a music publisher called P of music and from that publishing deal I played as much as I possibly could all the time shows almost every single night of the week um Studio sessions working in studios working in music venues working in bars where there was music played that I could play gigs there when I wasn't you know serving beers and uh before too long I made and assembled a collection of work a collection of songs that I'd written and a lot of record companies heard about me and they started making very big offers to sign me now when you're a musician it's not a conventional job in as much as you know if you go to college or you pursue a career you can get like a internship or you can get a college loan you can't get that if you're going to be a musician it doesn't work no one's going to give you a a university loan on a tuition when you're a musician so between the age of 18 and you know 22 when I really first signed my first major major deal um I was very very hard up I lived in a terrible accommodation I atat terrible food and by the time I was offered my first major record deal um it was tremendously lifechanging changing from having no money they suddenly gave me £150,000 which for you kid in his early 20s you know kid in his 30s £50,000 is a lot of money and it you know changed my life not only that but when I signed him to ID records you know one of the biggest record companies in the world they sent me from you know London they sent me to Jamaica to record music in Jamaica with Jamaican musicians they sent me to New Orleans and Louisiana to record a jazz musicians and record on Sample live the sounds of the New Orleans Street and then they sent me to Los Angeles California where I was there for for quite a few months and I was really living the dream as a musician okay let's go back a bit when I was a a kid I always felt a sense of presence of a in my life I always had a so to speak I always felt that there was some level of going on in the world it wasn't a New Concept to me and it wasn't something that uh you know I was in a sheer once in in a biva and they were asking questions to B Chas you know why did you become a religious person why did you become from you know and uh lots of reasons very intellectual and very lofty and some quite pretentious and someone asked me why yeah and I just said well I have a bit of a tyer for shabas I really like shabas and that's for me something that really brought me close to Yiddish kite um anyway my music career is taking off I'm about to sign my major record deal my first sorry my first publishing deal and I was living in a in a house in candom town in London with a bunch of other musicians some very successful now and on their way to being very successful then and I was watching a TV show on a Thursday night with a friend of mine um who was you know much more advanced in terms of where he wanted to be in the music industry where he was in terms of you know life goals um in a very successful band I we watching a TV show I think it was even a sport show and it wasn't his it wasn't his team who were playing in the sports show but suddenly he started crying 28-year-old guy a big mental to me a big friend he just started crying for no reason whatsoever and I looked at him a little bit freaked out I like you right there man how's it going and he was like I don't know and it's very strange you know when you're 21 years old and you have a friend who's a an older mentor and suddenly they just break down and have this little emotional episode it doesn't really make sense and I really wanted to know like what's happening why do you feel so sad and he said well I don't feel very fulfilled I don't feel very fulfilled like what am I doing in my life you know we go out every night we go to all the parties go to all the clubs go to all the bars everything is free everything's laid out for us we have a great time I'm doing exactly what I do what I want to do but I'm just not a happy person I'm not happy yeah okay he said he he my friend said he wasn't happy he was just he was just unhappy and I started thinking about my life and what I was really what I really held to be important and what I really held to be true and what I really wanted to get out of life and um and I started thinking I I realized that really in all truth I wasn't particularly happy either like what am I doing like what what's the point going out every night going to bars going to parties you know chating after tiers and impulses and everything you want and that's just the norm that's the the standard you know bare minimum of most musicians that's the lifestyle and I realized that really wasn't very fulfilling now I um started asking a big questions about myself about what I was doing in the world and I started building up a relationship with you know my more traditional friends always had a lot of Jewish friends you know a lot of them were more traditional myself and I would always like you know go for Friday night and shabas lunch whenever I had an opportunity y Etc but after this conversation I had an urge to go to to to amers fully to really to really take it to the next level and I got a bus on a Friday morning or Friday afternoon early to stord Hill it's part of the story last night and I walked into a sh in Stamper Hill and I asked as I said last night a gentleman if there was a this evening and he told me yes sure there is there's shabas and as well if you're interested and he's called Dr naali Lal and he invited me for a meal I became quite close to him and his family and the community in sta till and eventually from growing in stamp till going to shirim learning about shabas learning about kashus eventually I realized that living in Camden Town wasn't really Kai and I had uh moved to a more harisha neighborhood so I moved from camam town in my leather jacket and my skinny jeans to Stanford Hill um which is a trip very very interesting and uh beautiful part of my life um and before too long I was totally shash shabas totally shash shabas totally shakhas smzs learning toyra now this is all happening at the same time that the major labels in the UK were taking an interest in me oh man so uh the time came that there was a bit of a bidding war between pone Emi and and Island Records Universal and eventually I made a deal with universal music for some of £150,000 myself to make an album now when I signed with them I said to them there's something you have to know about me that you might just just so you know I don't work on Friday nights and I don't work on Saturday days so I looked me like I was a bit crazy and said what do you mean and I said well this thing called shabas and I'm a Jewish person as a Jew like I can't work on on The Jewish Sabbath on chabas now the only reference they ever had to shabas was a kohen Brothers film called the big Labowski um there's a character in that movie called Walter who's also sha shabas and when I said shabas they just started quoting this movie at me from from the early 90s um what they thought it meant was I just need a day off to take it easy they didn't realize the the the the Ser the severity of keeping shabas and they thought as a Young musician or if certain opportunities came my way I would take them because most people who just signed a major record deal take whatever opportunities they can to get to the next level okay so they sent me as I said to Los Angeles they sent me to New Orleans they sent me to Kingston Jamaica and it was amazing it was a fantastic time of my life creating the music I wanted to create and more importantly getting paid to do it you know it was beautiful thing you know it's it's a very hard opportunity to get in the music industry and not everyone is uh merits it but I had and I was pursuing the dream so when I made my album obviously when you make an album it costs quite a lot of money to make a record especially if you're flying all over the world and a record company wants to recoup some of that money pretty quickly so um towards the end of 2010 the beginning of 2011 it came time for me to release my first single I released My First Single it was a song called up all night and it didn't do very well it didn't do well at all actually no one really bought it or really cared about this song which made my record company sit up in alarm and concern um but then we released the second single the second single we released that and it actually did okay in Romania and in the Netherlands you did really well there so I was traveling you know almost every mon shabas I was flying off to either Romania or to uh to to to Holland to to to um Amsterdam to play shows to do promo whatever but it wasn't quite bringing in the cash that the Recco company wanted then came to release my album and I released my album and it got some critical Acclaim actually some critics really liked it some critics absolutely panned it and um yeah my record company were a little bit frustrated now this is where the story really starts getting interesting um because of the personal nus that I I I went through and Bash also the the huge that came out of it so in Spring of 2011 I was asked to go on tour with a with a tour a musical tour supporting being the warm-up act for a young lady called Adele who just won a bunch of Grammys and back then she'd also just won a bunch of Grammys she was huge you know selling millions and millions of Records a UK artist from the same part of London as I was um who was really selling a lot of a lot of records and becoming very very popular all over the world and they asked me to be the axe before she played amazing opportunity and I looked in the calendar and Springtime Springtime tour and I realized that over a 3 We Tour bang in the middle of the tour was pesak so I said to my record company guys there something I have to tell you I said you know that shabas thing and they were like yeah and I said well basically I've got a week of shabas just uh in the middle of this tour and I don't think I'm going to be able to do it so I we spoke to adell's people and uh they were very understanding very very nice about it my record company however were very concerned they were like you know we struggling to get the opportunities that you need to take your to Career to the next level to really get you out there um and this is this was a tremendous opportunity that you're willing to pass by and I said I have no choice it's it's p I can't work on two days of Y even if I was permitted to learn to work on there's a shabas bang in the middle so it's not you know that's 5 days 5 days in total out of you know a two and a bit week tour it's not you know just under three We Tour it's not really it's not really going to work out so I got called in for a meeting with the managing director of Universal Music in Island records and they sat down and they said Alex and you you said you needed a holiday every now and then we assumed that it meant you were going to go inter railing around Europe or sit on a beach and my bether we didn't quite realize that for you a holiday is a religious obligation I was like yeah it's a kicker huh they were like yes this is okay but we have to work with it you know people are very politically correct nowadays we don't live in the previous generations where you know if someone didn't come into work on on on shabas they lost their job it's not like that anymore it can't be it's called discrimination and there's laws and things in place to startop that happening so my record company had to respect it as much as they possibly could the summer was great I toured all over Europe um toured all over the UK and by the end of the summer from beginning of the summer I was playing to 120 people by the end of the summer I was playing to like 500 400 uh 500 600 700 people and I was building up a very strong live following the uh the CDs weren't selling but I was selling tickets for live shows which is good for me but not for the record company because they make their revenue off of CDs okay so at the end of the summer coming up toward tishay and I said to my record label remember that week of shabas I basically got a month of chabas and they were like what I was like yeah you know R sh y suus like it's not I just you know I'll probably do a few things in between the days but uh just you know if anything comes in don't don't tell me cuz what's the point okay poor poor record label he was just dealing with this crazy person you know they thought I was actually insane and they're probably right anyway so um yeah they were so frustrated because for some reason they have been offered lots of amazing proma opportunities lots of fantastic shows but for some reason they were always booked in for Friday nights and I had to turn down opportunity after opportunity after opportunity after opportunity radio shows TV shows um live performances um and it was very frustrating for them I mean to be honest it was a little bit frustrating for me that they couldn't find another day of the week um so rash Shana that year fantastic ding D in London by a man called do toen it's a big sadic a special person he's been a huge M on me and a lot of other young men and women in London um truly remarkable and you know tremendous and my personal R I learned in a in in a k of of a PO and still want to have a sh phone not RAB tuft in London very special person to me DED in his minion um on Ros very nice ding sh cha reflective I'm trying to fix all the the the problems I've created and then yam happens and to be honest it was a little bit long and schleppy but you know I had some good books to read and uh anyway MTI yapur MTI yapur in 2011 I uh I come home I turn on my cell phone I break my fast in that order that's the way it goes nowadays and I'm breaking my fast and seeing my cell phone I have a text message from my record label which is very unusual because yam kipur that year was on a shabas now the music industry as such isn't sha shabas people don't keep shabas and most of them aren't Jewish but Saturday is kind of like an off day for the music industry because Friday night is such a big night it's sort of the all the preparations for the week build up in music industry for Friday night performances TV shows radio shows whatever that people are usually a little bit exhausted on on on shabas on Saturday so it's very unusual that someone from record label would call you on a Saturday what's more is even though there's not a lot of yiden working in the music industry there's enough to people that people should know that yam Kapur is a big deal so it's very very strange that I had a a text message from my record label and it said call a straight away what's the y k what could what could it be and uh I call him my anr man the an anr man is the the leason between the record label and the artist and I call him up and I say what's up Nick and he says well we've got an amazing opportunity for you and the best thing is it's not on a Friday night I'm like amazing fantastic what a great opportunity he said yeah it's to play on a BBC 1 BBC Radio 1's live Lounge now if you are from the UK you'll know what radio one is it's it's the main radio station in the UK If you want to get music into the charts in the UK into the hot 100 you have to have radio play on radio one no radio play on radio one you're not going to get a song anywhere near the top 10 even the top 40 now they wouldn't play my music because I was fusing a type of music that was uh very avanguard very electronic with soul music you know something very melodic and harmonious and very nice and smushing the two together and they didn't really get it like they it was a bit a bit ahead of the curve so to speak and Radio 1 hadn't played any of my music apart from on the new music shows and the sort of dance music shows which are late at night you know on the graveyard shift and now they wanted to give me an opportunity to play live on radio to millions of listeners in the UK and millions of listeners all over the world and the best thing was it was on a Thursday night fantastic so I said to that's amazing guys can I ask you which Thursday and they said well it's next Thursday was and I made the in my head and I realized it was the second night of suus and I said is there any way is there any way possible at all that they can move move the the the show and they said no and I was like can you tell them I'm Jewish I'm like I can't work on Thursday night and they were like no we we thought about that but to be honest Alex we have to give you an ultimatum he says you have a choice to make we can't pursue this relationship we can't throw good money off the bad if you're going to turn down all these opportunities and um if you don't do the show we're going to have to let you go now for a young man who' invested everything from the age of seven you know creatively my whole Focus had been been on making music and creating music and I'd had amazing opportunities and suddenly they were about to be uh the rug was about to be pulled out from underneath my feet you know a major label major record label gives you the logistical infrastructure to uh to release music to sell songs they take care of press they take care of tour expenses they take care of everything you need to get out there and to get your music out there and that was all about to disappear I thought for a second and I remembered something I saw that yam Kiper now the art SC makur is a fantastic fantastic thing which whoever put it together is a very special person or the the team of people who put it together and in the Arts has parishan on you know on nearly all of the of the of the of the songs in the all the all of the zirus or Theus whatever's in there it's it's it's it's all spoken about and discussed broadly in the very nice now there's a a p from y rash onf now I'm a big music fan obviously and um I grew up listening to the music of leard Cohen shom and uh I realized when we were sing un I realized that it was actually Leonard Cohen song song called who by fire I was reading the words and I was like w wow lonard Cohen WR a p that's amazing and then I that's like no no there was once a yam Kap where he was sitting in sh and he was just reading through the max was like oh this is interesting wow discussing rash discussing what happens in the Bas dinal Mila that every living thing is taken into account and counted and valued that every living thing will be judged for life or the opposite who will live who will die how people are going to die you know it goes into great gory detail you know kex Rafa skila all the good stuff it's all in there and it's you know just what an amazing amazing piece of uh liturgy just blew my mind and I started reading about Nan to and it's and it's its author it was a man called Amon of Ms amnon main was a uh one of the early ashkanazi Rabon we don't know much about him we know he lived in between the years 1000 and 1100 somewhere around there and we know that he wrote on aan to but don't know much else and there may be a few other lurgical songs ptin that are attributed to him so I was reading the story of amnon and uh gosh a little bit heavy and a little bit gory amnon made friends with a local bishop and this local Bishop gave him an ultimatum he said Amon convert Christianity or I'm going to kill you so Amon famously asked reflecting theug malus for three days he asked for three days to think about it to see what he should do and after 3 days he came to the bishop and he said to the bishop I'm sorry I'm a Jew I'm a Jew I'm not going to be anything else over than a Jew even if I take on your narish kite I'm still going to be a Jew and I have to live as a Jew and if I can't live as a Jew then I'll have to die as one and amnon died the bishop for wasting The Bishop's time the bishop killed him in the most creatively cruel fashion possible removing amon's limbs one by one toring as he went so that he would B to death and as he was dying Rabon he uh he wrote the song on and he was famous he brought into the sh and he sung it he returned in a dream a year a little so later to uh to one of his and since then became part of the the and eventually for many suffed them as well this story blew my mind and it's very harrowing account of how a piece of music you know every piece of music music has a story as we learned from rosi yesterday and uh it just blew my mind and I realized byus why I had to read it why it was to me on that y k to read the story of Rabon now Rabon had three days I had four days I had four days but I realized there was no decision to be made and I told my record company you'll have to let me go and uh I didn't actually think they would do it I was like no way they not going to let me go like me seriously and no no they let me go they uh they they terminated my contract and um you know £150,000 is a lot of money but when you make a record that money reduces very quickly touring expenses touring is extremely expensive especially when you're not if you're playing to venues under a th000 people um you're not really going to make a lot of money and the overheads are so high that a record company actually takes care of a lot of the expenses of touring so not only had I just lost my infrastructure logistically for promo and for getting music out there but also for touring um there's something called tour support that a record company is obligated to pay to the Musicians asso with associated with a a signed act called it's called tour support and they owed my band £1,000 now my contract worked out in such a way that if my my contract was terminated the responsibility to pay whatever was owed to people I worked with fell on on me so I owed three people I was very close to from being a since since being a kid I owed them between them 11,000 now it's a lot of money and when you have no money it's even more it's very expensive and what's more is you don't want to have a debt with people you care about it's just not something you even people you don't care about it's not something you want on your shoulders so I was really stuffed and uh I really didn't know what to do I just lost my record deal and I ow my band £1,000 and I was a bit I was a little bit concerned because I didn't have enough money to pay my rent now my landlord a very special person called R Bob Hill lives in Gold of green in London and um very sweetly he said to me no it's okay like you know we've paid off our mortgage and uh it's okay like you can stay here until you get back on your feet and you know we'll take care of it I went to my Rob went to RAB D RAB D took a TFT s and I said to him Rabbi I don't get it I don't get it I know this whole thing and I know the whole thing whatever but Rabbi I've lost everything really I've lost everything I have like you know three months ago two months ago the world was you know at my feet the future was amazing and now I have nothing left I have no money I have no job I have no means of paying my musicians I have no means of supporting like touring into the future and I don't get it I became sh mitz came shabas I did everything I could to grow as an individual to have care of aim to really feel close to Bar you know that's all I really wanted and it has backfired in the most spectacular way so uh my he was incredible at if ever you were ever feeling a bit down give me your number and I I'll send it I'll get him to give you a call it's amazing person and he said he said wow Alex he says don't you see it don't you see he says you're Ackle Abraham ainu abrahamu young B like what more do you want to hear then you know the guy who found like one more you what more do you want to be called a little bit like Abu like tell me more Rabbi and he said um says you know Abraham ainu lived in a time where people didn't understand what kadush was people had no concept of alus they'd been so wrapped up in their own lives in their own narish kites pursuing things made of wood and stone that they forgot about the actors of Hashem people had no idea that hasem existed and Abraham ainu by process of you know logic he understood that baru was a thing not only that but this thing h baru hem he was so benevolent and so kind that ultimately everything wanted to do in the world was from was from kindness and abrah decided to personify that to teach the world that there is an abish and that this is at all times says not only that but abrah ainu waited 99 years to have a son 99 years to find someone who was suitable to teach the world and to continue this message that there was Hashem 99 years his whole life and then he was benched and was born a few years later a few decades later Abraham ainu says please take your son take your son take the one thing that's more precious to you than anything else in the world and if you would I want a Corona abrah ainu doesn't hesitate Abu because of his connection withus is willing the next morning to wake up as early as possible take his son his grown son who he's already invested so much into and he's willing to sacrifice him now you understand explain one of the things he was told by to tell the was don't sacrifice your kids it's it's not a thing baru wants people to do now suddenly everything had been flipped on its head and just with a few words from baru abrah ainu was willing to forget all of that and sacrific the one thing that meant more to him than anything else and he was completely willing to do it he says Alex as a result of that decision we all here he says every single Jewish person that's alive today is around because of Abraham ain's willingness to be Mish his willingness to give up the one thing that meant more than anything to him is why every single Jewish person in life today every boobby every s every child everybody is around because of that decision gave that his children should be as numerous as the stars of the sky and the sand of the shore he says Alex I promise you if you're willing to be if you're willing to give out the one thing that's more important you for for your relationship with is I promise you you'll have I promise you so I said Rabbi that's very nice that's beautiful thank you very much I still owe my band £1,000 I still can't pay my rent and I still don't have you know when you get dropped from a record label you're blacklisted no radio station wants to play your music no one wants to promote you one wants to take a punt because you're that guy who got drops the future was not looking particularly bright so this is where the story gets really strange in the first big click of SEI kicks in the next morning Mish the next morning I went for a coffee with a friend of mine to discuss my woes to like vent about my frustrations and while sitting having coffee in the Gold's green little cafe there I got a phone call from a promoter in uh in in Germany who was running a design Symposium um in the templehof airport um that evening now he said to me he said Alex can you come to Germany tonight I was like no I don't think that's possible I'm in London right now and he said no is it possible I mean we'll give you £1,000 I was like who he said yeah we give you £1,000 there was a band who was supposed to play at this event and they pulled out and we looked you know we looked in you know what's what's hot and new in terms of English music and your name came up and we want to uh we want to give you a gig so I was like one second you need to give me 5 minutes so I phoned each member of my band and I said guys um I can't pay you for a gig that we're going to do tonight if you can do it that's great if you can't we've got problems but if you're willing to do it I promise you I can pay you back everything I owe you up until this point and of course being good friends they were like absolutely and we got tickets very very quickly and we threw from London to the tole airport in Berlin and a few hours later we were playing a show at the the the temple Huff which is amazing amazing amazing that my friends uh were willing to do it and amazing that b would obviously uh yeah so first huge piece of Shay second piece I uh I didn't know what to do at my time my career was in TAS I really needed to like recoup and really understand like what was what was going on I decided to go to Yeshiva I wanted to go to Yeshiva anyway eventually and um you know take a year out whatever and I decided you know this is probably the perfect time however I don't have any money so there's an organization called Masa and I got a grant from Masa and I got ready to go to Yeshiva to fly to go Le toyra now just before I left for yiva I got an email from a guy called Keith Keith Keith Keith Rivers Keith FRS is a uh is a a lovely person and uh someone who really helped change my life in a big way Keith works for a small advertising company based in Seattle Washington Now Keith had a friend who lived in a l called Blake Blake was a aspiring musician and Blake loves English music like a lot of musicians in America they look to England as like oh so that's an interesting place where people are making interesting stuff and uh he was an angile and he loved English engl music and as a result whenever a new musician would come out of England he would make it his uh his duty to find out everything about them and buy all their music up to date so of like the five people in North America who bought my album Keith was one of them because his friend Blake was playing the music in his house Keith heard it I was like oh this is good I like this what is this anyway Keith's company had just been commissioned by Microsoft to make a commercial now the funny thing was is that you know I'd been dropped for a couple of months already and he'd been trying to email is records my record label to ask them if they he could have permission to use a piece of my music and because I was blacklisted from the label I was you know personata they weren't really interested in who I was or cons continue anything to do with me they just been ignoring the emails ridiculous now I was a songwriter of a certain piece of music and as a songwriter he went through a music publisher to find out who I was and get my contact details to ask me for permission to use the piece of music and he sent me an email saying Alex we really like your song Too Close and um we'd love to use it for our commercial I said okay sure now I'd had pieces of music used in commercials in the past little like 10c 15c Clips whatever in the background very low just to add a bit of background noise so I assumed this deal was going to be the same until he replied back to that email said great we want to give you 7 $5,000 okay yeah sure why not that's the average salary of an outbreak for about 50 years in am so I was like yeah I could I could learn for a long time $75,000 then I realized that uh I Ed my record label you know $1 15,000 plus all the other money that i' invested behind the scenes on on my music and I realized that of was £75,000 I wasn't going to see a penny but I was like hey you know what at least it's you know a Big Slice of the pie taken off of my shoulders and eventually that money will recoup I hope but I didn't think much more about it I'm Ina in and uh I get a phone call from my management company in the UK not my record company but the people who handled my day-to-day like touring Etc and I said Alex we have a call to connect you to in Frankfurt Germany okay now I mean sitting in re in I have a phone call from a guy in frankt Germany who says to me Alex can you come to Germany tomorrow I'm like okay this is weird yeah what what's what's happening and they said well we want you to just just just come here to do some promo and I said to be honest I don't really have money for the ticket I don't know how I'm going to afford to get to Frankfurt and the guy laughed and he said don't worry we we'll pay for it we'll pay for everything and I said can I ask why why do you want me to come to Frankfurt and he said well you're going to be number one there in the charts tomorrow I said what do you mean I'm going to be number one he says yeah your song's been being played on the radio here for the last few weeks and um you're going to be number one here now what had happened was that the song that was used for Microsoft was put on a on on a TV commercial and that TV commercial had been played on every single commercial TV station in the world everywhere from Los Angeles to kalala lumur people were hearing my music not only that but the whole advert commercial was built around my song full volume verse and chorus people there's an app an app for smartphones called Shazam now people were taking out their smartphones when they heard this piece of music never heard before a very interesting new sound that wasn't really being played on the radio at the time now curiosity they were shazaming using this app to find out what this piece of music was and millions of people all over the world were hearing it and downloading it buying on iTunes as a result record St radio stations all over the world were putting my music on their playlists you know 6 months before my music was too ahead of the curve and they wouldn't play it on radio now it was on all the a-lists being played on every single radio commercial radio station so the man in Germany said to me you're number one in Germany and we need you to come here to do some promos so I spoke to my rashash Shiva and I said Riva I have a few things to take care of and he was like yes you do I like I'm going to have to take a few weeks off well I actually said a few days and it was a few few days that trip was just literally 2 days I flew from uh benorian to Frankfurt and I got off the plane at the airport and sure enough my song Too Close was number one in Germany um which was really weird you know it was aaka in Yeshiva with a huge red beard and a gray shirt I'd like to say a white shirt but I wasn't married at the time and I'm a BAL cha so I didn't really know about making shirts crispy white so um so as a result I turned off in my you know off-white eggshell gray shirts my huge Red Beard at the time time and uh there I was number one in Germany I got a phone call while I was in Germany from London from the radio station that wouldn't let me play on a night that wasn't sukus to tell me that I was now on their a list I they were playing my music on heavy rotation unbelievable now I did something that we're not really supposed to do but I made some onone him I said I don't really want to leave your Shiva like I I just got here I don't really want to leave your Shiva so I said this some on him I said look if there certain things happen then I should probably think about it and one was that um my music will go to the top 10 in the UK a very hard Market to get into as a musician and uh if I got into the top 10 in the music in in in the charts in the UK I think about leaving Yesa but I said that's not really enough because it's doing really really well so there was a producer in America I won't say his name a very very big producer and I said you know what there was once talk that maybe I would work with him and I said if he gives me a call I'll l to think about leaving Yeshiva shortly after that both those things happened I told my Riva and he said what have you done what have you done I said well you know and he said yeah you should go you have to go take care of this so uh I left yiva and from having nothing I was suddenly a top 10 Billboard artist in almost every country in the world my song that song to close went to number one in the billboard AirPlay charts in the US for a few months um you are more likely to hear Too Close on the radio in 2013 2014 than any other song it went to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 charts it went to number one on the billboard Indie charts in the US he went to number four in the UK number one in Germany and sold just over 6 million copies worldwide the album it was on the lanus of the hour accumulatively sold just under 2 million copies worldwide so from being Yesa B letting in I was now a platinum selling artist I went on tour for next year and a half subsequently I married my wife in that time moved to AR Ro for a while went back on tour made another album and now to commit to to the words of I've come back to Yesa and I've been there now for the last 18 months learning inesh so uh and what's more important is that I'm one of the only people in my supports himself 100% because because because I have a very rich sty and he's given me lots of and he's giv me big bras and I'm so grateful such you know we say that um to really understand what or is to understand what biker is the morning you understand as Yen that our calendar starts by night our day starts at night when the sun sets there a little to be made to say that is it possible that to really understand what but is to really understand what the a of the morning is light of the morning you have to really understand what is have to understand what the H upon Him is and when you can see what the him really is that it's really just an opportunity that is giving you to grow that he can just give you so much he says that what does it mean it's because is so much and he just wants to fill the world with but isn't enough because if you give too much it can be destructive so we D that we should have that it should be that's good should be that it comes through Mercy I with and IM balance that we should be able to have a that we can actually deal with the sheer that gives us if I hadn't have had these opportunities I don't know I know I've known a lot of musicians a lot of people in the music industry who've taken very destructive and very negative past because they've been given so much in such a short period of time and I understand that when he gives us something and he gives us his shef we have to be Ro for it and to be Roy for it we have to go through a a shaping and a forming that makes us Roy we should all see in abundance and uh from thank you very much