Aging & Wisdom Quote by Thurston Moore

There is a deflating honesty in Moore's warning: the band myth is built on endurance, but endurance rarely builds a life. He's not romanticizing the garage-to-glory arc; he's puncturing it. Bands fall apart less from dramatic betrayals than from slow, mundane gravity: rent, partners, health, changing tastes, the creeping sense that your twenties aren't a renewable resource.

The line "it never really pays off" lands with extra bite coming from Thurston Moore, a figure associated with one of indie rock's most durable success stories. That contrast is the point. Even for the people who "make it", the math often doesn't. The payoff most outsiders imagine - stable money, status, a clean narrative of arrival - is the exception, and the culture industry's long tail is crowded with talented lifers who are still one broken van away from quitting. Moore is also pushing back against the transactional mindset that capitalism trains into art: invest time, receive reward. He insists the exchange rate is terrible.

Subtextually, it's a plea for clarity. If you're staying in a band, do it for the daily, unglamorous reasons: the shared language, the experiment, the friction that turns into sound. If you're waiting for external validation to justify the sacrifices, you'll burn out fast. It's the sort of hard-earned counsel that doubles as a quiet manifesto for underground music: the work isn't a ladder. It's a practice.