"In the beginning, everybody that gets to work with me, thinks I'm nice. But three weeks later, they hear a bell ringing. Then they realise I meant everything I said during that first week. It's not my fault people are not taking me serious from the first moment"
About this Quote
Eldritch delivers this like a stage monologue: the genial frontman who turns out to be the strictest person in the room. The setup is almost sitcom-simple (Week 1: nice; Week 3: bell ringing), but the punchline lands because it’s really about power and misrecognition. He’s not confessing to being difficult; he’s accusing other people of mistaking politeness for softness, charisma for compliance.
The “bell” does a lot of work. It’s a cheap sound effect that evokes alarm, boxing rounds, Pavlovian conditioning, even a school bell that signals time’s up. Translation: deadlines arrive, standards snap into focus, and suddenly the charming guy is the guy enforcing reality. That time delay is key to the subtext: he’s been consistent all along. The mismatch isn’t in his behavior but in their listening.
There’s a musician’s-world context baked in: collaborators, producers, label people, touring crews. Creative industries are full of coded speech and vague optimism, so someone who speaks plainly can be misread as “nice” when they’re actually laying down non-negotiables. Eldritch frames his bluntness as an ethical stance, not a mood swing.
The final line is the tell: “It’s not my fault…” That’s defensiveness with a smirk. He wants the authority of being taken seriously without having to perform hardness from the start. The irony is that he’s describing the very mythmaking he benefits from: the pleasant artist revealed, on schedule, as uncompromising.
The “bell” does a lot of work. It’s a cheap sound effect that evokes alarm, boxing rounds, Pavlovian conditioning, even a school bell that signals time’s up. Translation: deadlines arrive, standards snap into focus, and suddenly the charming guy is the guy enforcing reality. That time delay is key to the subtext: he’s been consistent all along. The mismatch isn’t in his behavior but in their listening.
There’s a musician’s-world context baked in: collaborators, producers, label people, touring crews. Creative industries are full of coded speech and vague optimism, so someone who speaks plainly can be misread as “nice” when they’re actually laying down non-negotiables. Eldritch frames his bluntness as an ethical stance, not a mood swing.
The final line is the tell: “It’s not my fault…” That’s defensiveness with a smirk. He wants the authority of being taken seriously without having to perform hardness from the start. The irony is that he’s describing the very mythmaking he benefits from: the pleasant artist revealed, on schedule, as uncompromising.
Quote Details
| Topic | Leadership |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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