Frankenstein’s Monster
The first time I saw the band Van Halen was on MTV.
That makes sense because MTV used to once broadcast music videos.
I was too young to remember the song “Jump” when it first debuted on the album 1984, but its music video lived on throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
I don’t know much about music but it doesn’t take long to realize that Eddie Van Halen knows how to play the guitar.
Eddie’s Frankenstein guitar is on display at The Met in New York alongside other musical artifacts as part of the museum’s Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll exhibit:
One of my favorite takeaways from reading about music history is learning who influenced an artist and then who those artists went on to influence.
For example, Eddie Van Halen said in a Q&A once about how he saw Jimmy Page in concert and how Page’s ‘tapping’ on the guitar inspired Eddie’s solo performance in “Eruption,” one of the band’s best song.
Years later, Kurt Cobain while playing with Nirvana one night spotted Eddie Van Halen in the crowd and went on to smash his own guitar at the concert’s end as a tribute to one of his idols.
Michael Batnick wrote on his blog how it’s only natural to one day learn to outgrow your mentors regardless of the predecessor’s greatness:
“Ted Seides recently sat down with David Zorub to chat about all things investing. One of the things David said really resonated with me:
‘At some point, as you go through your career you’ll outgrow your mentors and that’s okay. You have to seek new ones.’
This is a fantastic observation. There’s nothing wrong with learning from Buffett and Munger and Marks, but at some point, you have to move out of that cozy, warm sleeping bag.
The only way to learn is by continuing to expand your circle of competence because first-level thinkers wonder where the edge of the circle is, while second-level thinkers realize that people calculate too much and think too little.”
Disney was once devoid of creativity three decades ago and technologically out of sync at the turn of the century before it went on to make smart acquisitions (21st Century Fox), partnerships (Hulu), and investments (Steamboat Ventures).
Today, Disney is a behemoth that can compete with every single tech giant in the world.
Here is everything that’s part of Disney ($DIS), which is too long to write out:
Meanwhile, Facebook ($FB) may soon pay billions for violating privacy:
With Avengers: Endgame (2019) debuting this week, Disney has a strong hand.
