Creativity Quote by Noel Redding

There is a whole coming-of-age myth compressed into that casual “about.” “I’d gone professional when I was about seventeen” sounds like a flex, but it’s also a shrug of self-defense: the age is precise enough to impress, vague enough to dodge interrogation. Redding isn’t selling the romance of prodigy as much as naming a fact of life in 1960s British music culture, where “professional” often meant you stopped being a kid the moment someone paid you to be useful.

The line’s intent is partly credentialing. In rock history, legitimacy gets argued like court evidence, and starting young is a stamp: I was in the game early, I learned it the hard way, I didn’t just stumble into the spotlight alongside Hendrix. But the subtext is more complicated. “Professional” can mean competence, sure; it can also mean compromise. At seventeen, you’re not choosing a vocation so much as getting drafted into it. The word carries the weight of gigs in bad rooms, long van rides, being dependable on command, and discovering that art becomes labor the second money changes hands.

Redding’s timing matters. Born in 1945, he hits seventeen in 1962: pre-Beatles explosion, when the infrastructure of pop was still being built in clubs, dancehalls, and apprenticeship-style bands. He’s signaling that he came up before the mythology ossified, when survival was the curriculum. The understated delivery is the tell: not a triumphal origin story, but a musician’s quiet claim that his education started early, and it cost him something.