Leadership Quote by John Sebastian

There is a quietly devastating realism in the way John Sebastian shrugs at the idea of ownership: "To the extent that '60s guys own things". The hedging is the point. It’s the sound of an artist recognizing that the mythology of the era - freedom, creativity, communal idealism - often ran on contracts designed by people who believed in none of that.

Sebastian isn’t just talking about paperwork. Publishing is the long tail of a song’s life: the part that keeps paying when the touring slows, the catalogs get licensed, the nostalgia machine spins up. By admitting he “doesn’t have the publishing,” he’s naming a structural loss that many musicians only understood after the fact. The subtext is an indictment delivered without rage: the industry didn’t have to steal in dramatic ways; it simply had to make sure the fine print favored whoever understood the game first.

The line “that was an error” lands like a confession and a critique at once. It’s not self-pity so much as a hard lesson about what the 1960s sold artists: the idea that authenticity could substitute for leverage. Then he twists the knife with “when real businessmen started to manage artists.” “Real” functions as a cynical punchline - as if earlier managers were hobbyists, hustlers, or fellow dreamers until capital professionalized the relationship.

Contextually, it’s a post-60s reckoning: the moment when rock stopped being a cultural uprising and became an asset class. Sebastian’s tone stays conversational, but the message is blunt: the revolution was profitable, just not for everyone who wrote the songs.