Education Quote by Neal Schon

There is a hard-earned sobriety in Neal Schon's framing: the "business side" isn't a buzzkill, it's survival training. Coming from a veteran guitarist who’s lived through rock’s most lucrative and most predatory eras, the line reads less like advice and more like a scar. The phrasing "at a certain point" quietly admits what younger artists tend to deny: talent doesn’t insulate you from contracts, managers, and middlemen. Time, and a few bruises, does.

"Getting ripped off a couple of times" is doing a lot of work. He doesn’t dramatize it; he underplays it, which makes it hit harder. The casual tone suggests the exploitation was common enough to be almost routine, a rite of passage in an industry built on asymmetry: artists bring the magic, other people bring the paperwork, and the paperwork usually wins. Schon's subtext is that the romantic myth of rock - the idea that the music is the pure thing and everything else is noise - is exactly what makes musicians easy targets.

"You need to get a grip on it" lands like a self-intervention. It's not "learn the business" in an MBA sense; it's reclaiming agency. In the streaming era, that message has only gotten sharper: revenue is fragmented, rights are everything, and the "business side" is often the only side that remembers you exist after the tour ends. Schon's intent is pragmatic, almost parental: if you don’t respect the machinery, it will happily run you over.