Wealth & Money Quote by Robby Krieger

Krieger’s line punctures the myth that rock stardom is always destiny. He frames his career less as a calling than as a series of pragmatic pivots: the original ambition is jazz (discipline, lineage, chops), but the available scene is rock-n-roll with jazz seeped into it (fusion as social network as opportunity). The key move is how casually he admits the motivator everyone pretends isn’t there: money. Not fame, not revolution, not “changing the world” - just getting paid to play.

That plainspoken candor carries subtext about the 1960s music economy. Jazz, by the mid-60s, had cultural prestige but shrinking commercial oxygen; rock was the new mass language, the place where a young player could actually work. Krieger’s phrasing suggests he didn’t abandon jazz so much as smuggle it into a more lucrative container, following people rather than ideals. “Got to know some people” is doing a lot of work: scenes are built on proximity, not purity. Careers happen through bands, clubs, friendships, and the accidents of who’s in the room.

There’s also a quiet reframe of authenticity. Instead of presenting rock as a sacred identity, he presents it as a job you can do well - even if you arrived there by accident. That demystification is almost punk in spirit, except it’s coming from a musician associated with virtuosity and polish: the craft is serious, the narrative is not.