Creativity Quote by Michael Schenker

There is a kind of surprise baked into Michael Schenker's line that only makes sense coming from a career guitarist who’s spent decades being judged on precision, volume, and myth. “The other thing” is a tell: he’s already learned to love the mechanics of playing again, and now he’s admitting the real upgrade is human. That’s a quietly radical pivot for a musician whose reputation has often centered on virtuosity and volatility rather than warmth. The sentence doesn’t posture; it yields.

The intent is simple but strategic: to reframe live performance as reciprocal. Schenker isn’t selling a product so much as acknowledging a relationship, and that acknowledgement flatters fans without sounding like marketing copy because it’s phrased as personal discovery. “I never knew” casts him as late to his own party, which is disarming in a culture where rock narratives usually demand total confidence. It also hints at prior distance - years of being insulated by band politics, industry churn, or the emotional armor that comes with being a “guitar hero.”

The subtext is recovery: not necessarily from a specific event, but from the slow erosion that touring can bring when crowds blur into noise and the stage becomes a job. By calling the fans “heartfelt” and “loving,” he’s naming something beyond applause: validation that doesn’t depend on chart position, youth, or trend. In the current live-music economy - where legacy acts survive on community as much as catalog - this reads like gratitude and a recalibration of what success feels like.