I see the shadows as their music, the essence of them, their imprint on the world, spreading out to the listeners. It is what will make them first adored, and will be ever there and remembered and unspoilt. However, when you look back up at them you will find them much changed: all egocentric and tour-wizened; riddled with poisons and world-weary; smug with in-jokes and over-inflated notions of the quality and worth of their music. They will be like parodies of themselves – not beautiful and heroic any more but ridiculous and conceited. Fame and excess has sucked out their real selves, so the only trace of what was once there is in the shadows they cast. You wonder what they would have been, how different their characters if they hadn’t made it big, if they could always only stay in this w
