Success Quote by Ronnie Montrose

Montrose draws a bright line between two kinds of professionalism: the kind that turns music into product, and the kind that treats craft as a living, moral choice. The opening admission, "very aware now that music is a business", is the weary wisdom of someone who has seen the machinery up close - labels, radio formats, tour economics, the subtle pressure to repeat what already sold. That "now" matters. It signals a conversion story, or at least a hard-earned clarity: he is no longer naive about the marketplace, but he refuses to let that knowledge become surrender.

The sentence keeps pivoting on "but", insisting on a second path. Montrose isn't pretending commerce disappears; he's arguing for agency inside it. "True to yourself" is easy to dismiss as rock cliche, yet he frames it pragmatically: there is "a way to go about making music" that preserves integrity. It's less about purity than process - how decisions get made, what compromises are negotiable, what kind of work you can stand behind when the fad passes.

His most revealing phrase is the throwaway "you know", followed by "going through the motions". That's the sound of someone describing a familiar trap without glamorizing it. He can almost hear the deadness: competent riffs, calculated choruses, songs assembled to satisfy a market brief. The subtext is a critique of an industry that rewards repetition and punishes risk, especially for guitar-forward rock as tastes shift.

Coming from a musician associated with the classic rock era's rise and its later commodification, the quote reads like a late-career manifesto: survive the business, but don't let it write your songs.