Education Quote by Vivian Campbell

Campbell’s throwaway candor is doing a lot of work. “I never had a real job” sounds like a confession, but it’s also a quiet jab at the way we police legitimacy. The word “real” carries the whole culture war: wage labor as virtue, art as indulgence, and success as something you’re supposed to justify with a respectable origin story. By leading with “either,” he frames it as a reply to an accusation or comparison, as if he’s shrugging off the implied moral hierarchy between the straight-line career and the messy, luck-laced creative path.

“I sort of fell out of school” is an anti-myth. Rock history loves the dramatic dropout narrative, the rebellious genius who storms out. Campbell softens it: not a heroic exit, more like gravity. That phrasing makes failure feel ordinary, even accidental, which is exactly why it lands. It hints at drift, economic uncertainty, and the unglamorous reality that many musicians don’t choose the road so much as they run out of other roads.

Then the pivot: “ended up playing guitar.” Not “became a musician,” not “followed my dream.” “Ended up” strips the story of aspiration and replaces it with outcome. The subtext is survival disguised as spontaneity: when the conventional route collapses, skill becomes a lifeline. In an era that packages creativity as a lifestyle brand, Campbell’s line insists on the older, less tidy truth: plenty of art careers begin as a pragmatic accident, and get treated as unreal until they can’t be ignored.