Beth Hart—Lessons from Life for Leadership
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The personal work of writing personal stories.
Writing Rising from Ground Zero: 9/11 and the FDNY’s Path through Crisis to Transformation took my co-authors, Paul Brown (FDNY Captain, ret) and Andre Kotze (executive coach and veteran) consistently much deeper and more personally into the terrain of the 40 interviews than even the conduct of the interviews themselves. Writing like this does that. The subject matter rattles around your brain and seeps into your emotional life.
To do this work fully, as a respectful guest being afforded a personal tour of individual and organizational life shaping events, requires, for me, more than empathy. I can’t just empathize or ‘get’ their experience. I need openness to sympathy as well, to an emotional connection, not just an understanding. Finally, I accepted movement to compassion, the movement to action based on the empathy and the sympathy.
We shared. We learned. We acted. In the book, we pass along the stories. We offer learnings to readers based on interviewee lived experiences. We pass them along out respect and out of hope that others will learn, that others will experience and put interviewee experience to good effect. We also dedicate 51% of author profits to FDNY related charities. https://www.risingfromgroundzero.org/
Each author lays out in the Afterword what the work of this project meant to him. For example, Paul went back to seeing a therapist. As for me, I connected with people and lives previously unknown to me, sometimes after not just being given an interview but being invited into their homes or their firehouses. Files from my multiple myeloma experience spilled open--a collapsing spine and 11 months of dedicated treatments up to and including stem cell transplant. I adopted a rule when writing to take a break whenever I started to cry. Paul cautioned one potential collaborator about signing on to our book writing, ‘Be careful about joining us or you will end up crying like Greg.’ All that combined with the zeitgeist and led me to the music of Beth Hart.
Beth Hart
Briefly, Hart rose to national notoriety in 1993. At 20, she won Star Search, a sort of precursor to American Idol but controversial at best within the recording industry. Characteristically, in the live shoot, she included a line from the song that the producers had prohibited. She says she did the show for the money despite misgivings about TV, possible negative impact on her career (which it had), The Machine, and notoriety. She ran through the $125,000 prize money in about 6 months and took to busking. ‘Discovered’ again, a hit (‘LA Song’) dropped in the summer of 1999.
Four trips to rehab and five to psych wards later and, also as she said, about 7000 attempts to get clean by her late 20s led to a trilogy of songs and an all but non-existent career.
A career and life reboot followed-- ‘music is like a really good friend holding your hand.’ She called her manager and asked, ‘Can we try this again?’ A bipolar diagnosis, an extended stay in a mental health facility in her mid-30s, ongoing mood medication today along with gardening, long daily Yoga session, continuing voice/technique coaching undergird a powerful and evolving musician, songwriter, and singer wide in range and style, highly polished in technique, and relentlessly passionately heartfelt.
Now in her mid-50s, Beth Hart says, echoing sentiments from Sinead O’Connor, that she is ‘lucky as an artist. I never became a star.’ Yet, Hart has been all over the blues awards and nominations since her 40s. Many, including me, would argue that she makes some of her best music, today.
Hart’s 2024 song ‘Savior with a Razor’ brought me through her musical door. It’s in that blues/blues-rock genre that I hold dear. It blends the voices that most shaped her, particularly the soul-filled nuance of Etta James (Blues Hall of Famer who along the way sang at Grateful Dead concerts and covered the Rolling Stones’ ‘Miss You’) and the power of Janis Joplin. One hears a dash of rap (Too Short is a favorite of Hart’s) and a trace of Led Zeppelin whom Hart often covers. Tom Waits (a particular favorite of mine) seemingly waves a poetic hand of a kindred spirit over inspired, visceral, lyrics of cherished pain—yes, she’s performed his material. The song’s arc evidences her “#1”, namely Beethoven, in its passionate sweep, impending darkness and ending freeing burst.
Hart’s song parallels and complements Springsteen’s ‘Into the Fire’, which voices the humbling dedication to ‘fight on’…and its costs. Into the Fire (Patti Scialfa, a fellow multiple myeloma combatant, introduces the song vocally and makes this an exceptional rendition.) Springsteen writes his song specifically about FDNY firefighters on 9/11. The song looks in at their fight, their climb into the fire and the power it both manifests and offers. Hart’s ‘Savior with a Razor’ looks out from the fight to carry on, demons and all, regardless of their source or current location. Rising from Ground Zero project carried me first to Springsteen and then, now to Hart.
Lessons along the way
Travel with people who discern and honor your talent. At four, and from a ‘family of music’, Hart heard Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and the same day starting working out pieces of it on a piano. She asked to study to sing opera and her mother started Beth’s lessons at 13. She attended the Los Angeles High School for the Performing Arts (vocal and cello). Hart struggled because of all the night gigs and the school asked that she leave. She gave up on academics completely and concentrated on music. She knew what she has always loved and what she did best…she still does.
Find a way to identify good mentors and then listen to them. Her opera coach told Hart to quit, according to Hart, not because she didn’t have the voice (when young teenager Hart characteristically asked ‘why?’), but because of who she was--someone wanted to do the song her way, to make it her own. Her coach informed her that wasn’t how opera worked. ‘You’re a song writer,’ the coach told her. Her coach saw the talent and the person. Great mentoring.
Hart said in a documentary, ‘I don’t trust people. I play cards with them to see who they are.’ (Not unlike Michelle Obama’s brother insisting on playing basketball with this guy named Barak who she was seriously dating…in order to find out who he was.) Dave Wolff (who managed Cyndy Lauper among others) went to hear Hart busking in her 20s and offered to manage her. Three and a half hours of cards later (during which Hart reported that she ‘kicked his ass’) she took him on as her manager. They work together to this day. Values play a big part as to why: ‘it’s about the music, not making the most money.’
The best mentors recognize and honor who the mentee is. The best mentees select their mentors, knowingly.
Don’t just collaborate, partner… in a shared mission. Hart loves good guitar playing. (Some of her stage antics with guitarists in her youth would likely have given even Madonna or Jim Morrison pause.) She partnered over years with Jeff Beck, John Bonamassa (who opened for B.B. King at 12!), and Slash—the best of the best, each very different guitarists. Notably, these great guitarists don’t just appear onstage with Hart. They make music together. How did THAT happen, over and over? Well, they saw her talent AND, as Slash said, ‘…with Beth, the music comes first.’ And, as Hart says of singing, ‘it’s about honesty.’ As good a summary of where to start and to maintain a true partnership as one can find—share purpose, personally and honestly.
Lead the team, words and deeds. Watch Hart lead her group and her long-time production team. It’s definitely her group and, still,… Onstage, she evidences respect and affection for each band member (e.g., note how often she calls each of them out, verbally and physically). See the shared dedication to and appreciation of the exceptional music they have joined to play. See the same in her interaction with ‘roadies’. And as for the audience? More of the same with them. Her words and intonations voiced offstage what her actions clearly and repeatedly evidence onstage—respect, appreciation, and connection.
Center yourself—personally and professionally. Hart loves the rhythm of touring. It apparently centers her. The enforced routine and the connections. The enforced day on/day off, the community, the touring group familial like connection and, of course, the audience connection. Getting centered also includes, as she has said, starting her days with classical music. She began with Beethoven at 4, after all. She knows what not to change, the place from which to meet a changing and demanding world.
Find your voice. Take your time. Sample freely. Shop around for ingredients. Blend them, don’t just combine them. Make it a soup not a stew. Collectively, people have lived over 100 billion lives. At least some of them just might have something to contribute to yours. Who you choose to listen to and how you listen to/blend them (as well as how you listen to yourself) will shape how you live. Etta and Janis live on…with Ludwig Von…
The music: a few recommended listens
Warning: this music is NOT for everyone. Here’s a quick checklist to preview your fit.
First, Beth Hart often is, shall we say, earthy.
Second, regarding the blues, you should
agree with Taj Mahal, "Jazz will give you back your mind, reggae will give you back your body, but the blues will give you back your soul. That's why they ain't goin' nowhere."
feel the underpinning of the blues, namely that the blues make feeling bad feel good—mainly because you’ve got lots of company on the trail, as B.B. King said variously, "The blues was bleeding the same blood as me," and, elsewhere, "As a little kid, blues meant hope, excitement, pure emotion." Or, back to Taj Mahal, ‘It’s about the healing spirit.’
Third, you need to cherish lionesses, in full range of sound and emotion and at full power.
‘Savior with a Razor’ starts with Hart’s own drug use and mental health. It works its way to naming broader manifestations of disorder unto sickness, current and timeless, in and around us all today.
Or, in a Jungian spirit, it’s all symbolic, living at all levels. Struggle for health and well-being is struggle for health and well-being. Illness is illness. Fighting on, fighting back. Focusing on defeating the demonic, in whatever form. Individually or collectively—the core of the reality of the struggle, the battle for health remains and warrants naming and summoning forth…powerfully. As Hart belts out late in the song, ‘Keep the fight on.’
The music:
The official music video of Savior with a Razor: Note the deep musical partnering between Hart and Slash, THE Slash himself
To take the song in pieces with appreciative commentary and analysis from a voice coach:
For Hart performing a straight-up blues song—Etta James’ ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’ performed by Beth Hart with acclaimed blues guitar master Joe Bonamassa. You can feel the fusion of Joplin and James inside Hart’s crucible…and her musical partnership with Bonamassa. I'd Rather Go Blind
A different voice coach provides analysis and commentary—including the musical interplay and partnering of Hart and Bonamassa.
Same song but this time with the recently deceased and universally acclaimed guitar master Jeff Beck in honor of a clearly appreciative Buddy Guy at the Kennedy Center—a performance that pulled the Obamas out of their seats.
Personally, I prefer Hart’s Bonamassa performance of James’ song with Bonamassa over that with Beck, but who cares? Greatness is greatness—the rankings are but individual preference.
Her anthem for the abused, live at Royal Albert Hall Leave the Light On
Looking for something soft? Try Hart’s ode to her mother, ‘Momma, This One’s for You’
Let me know what you think about any of the above.