Don't Be Nervous, Son.

I Never Published This Interview

On 26 March 2023, I interviewed Terry Draper.

I was nervous. It was the first time I'd ever interviewed anyone, and this wasn't exactly a small name to me. Terry was one of the members of Klaatu, a band I'd been listening to for years, and whose music I'd spent an unreasonable amount of time obsessing over. I'd done my homework, but knowing the answers and actually sitting across from someone you've admired for years are two very different things.

Somewhere near the beginning of the call, I stumbled over a question and apologized for being nervous.

Terry told me, "Don't be nervous, son."

I didn't think much of that word at the time.

Three years later, I can't stop thinking about it.

I never published this interview. I'm not entirely sure why. I had the recording, I had notes, and I had more than enough material for several articles. We talked for a long time about Klaatu, music, science fiction, recording technology, learning, creativity, touring, and what it means to spend your life making things. Then life happened, as it does, and the interview sat around while 2023 became 2024, which became 2025.

Eventually, I had an interview with Terry Draper sitting on my computer that I had never written.

So I'm finally publishing it.

On his birthday.

I had done my homework

I was very much a fanboy going into this interview. At one point, Terry told me, "You've done your homework, Anindo," and I was ridiculously pleased with myself.

I'd listened to Klaatu's albums repeatedly. I knew about the infamous rumor that they were secretly the Beatles. I knew 3:47 EST, Hope, Sir Army Suit, Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft, and most of the strange mythology that had grown around the band.

But Terry's version of the story was much more interesting to me than the mythology.

Klaatu had deliberately chosen anonymity. They didn't put their pictures or names on their records because they wanted the music to speak for itself, and they'd watched what fame had done to other musicians around them. The irony, of course, was that this anonymity helped create one of the strangest rumors in rock history: that Klaatu was actually the Beatles recording under another name.

When I asked Terry about it, he seemed almost amused by the whole thing. He told me that when the rumor broke, the band was in England recording the orchestra for Hope. They saw the article claiming they were the Beatles and, essentially, thought it was funny before getting back to work.

That attitude seemed to come up again and again throughout our conversation. Terry was interested in the music itself. The mythology around it was secondary.

Learning to learn

One of my favorite parts of the interview had almost nothing to do with Klaatu.

We started talking about learning. I told Terry that I'd always enjoyed teaching myself things, and that most of what I'd done up to that point had come from figuring things out on my own. He told me something that has stuck with me ever since:

"That's why we go to school, we don't go to school to study algebra. We go to school to learn to learn."

I remember agreeing with him immediately.

That conversation eventually turned to the guitar sitting behind me. I'd told him that I used to play a lot more, but had stopped, and that I wanted to start learning again.

"Pick up that guitar," he said.

"You want me to? Sure."

"Not now. Not now. When we're done."

I still smile when I think about that exchange.

Later, Terry talked about continuing to learn and never really being finished. At one point he described life as being a work in progress that never ends until the end. At the time, I thought it was simply a nice observation. Three years later, it feels like one of those ideas that becomes more meaningful the longer you live with it.

Following ideas wherever they go

What struck me most about Terry wasn't simply how much music he'd made. It was how curious he seemed to be about everything around him.

He told me about watching a documentary about Magellan and discovering that Magellan wasn't actually the person who completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth. That was Sebastiano Elcano. The discovery became the starting point for a song.

Another song, Gwendolyn, came from finding out that an old friend he'd known as Lynn was actually named Gwendolyn. He liked the sound of the name so much that he went to the piano and wrote a song about it. He talked about watching a program about Queen Victoria and being inspired to write The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire.

His inspiration could come from history, television, a name, a book, or some strange idea he'd stumbled across. He told me, "You never know where inspiration's gonna come from. It can come from the strangest places."

That might be the most useful thing I took away from the interview.

You don't always have to know what you're looking for. You just have to remain interested enough to notice when something finds you.

The music was never really the point

Terry told me that he thought of himself more as a poet than a musician. Music was the medium through which he could get his ideas out into the world.

That made a lot of sense when I listened to him talk. He could spend the same amount of enthusiasm talking about a song inspired by a Viking warrior, a lighthouse keeper, the British Empire, an old friend's name, or some completely absurd idea. He didn't seem particularly interested in making things that fit neatly into a category.

After Klaatu broke up, Terry left the music business. But he didn't stop making music. He simply stopped caring very much about the business around it.

"I'm free," he told me.

That freedom seemed important to him. He could make whatever he wanted, experiment with whatever interested him, and follow an idea without worrying about whether somebody in a record company office thought it made sense.

I found that especially interesting because I'd spent most of my life thinking about creativity in terms of the thing being produced. Terry seemed much more interested in the act of making itself.

"I built that shed. I did that."

At one point, I told Terry that I was a software engineer and that I understood the feeling of creating something from nothing.

He immediately connected with the idea, but his analogy wasn't about software. It was about building a shed.

He'd spent part of his life doing construction, and he described the satisfaction of taking a pile of lumber, some nails, screws and tools and turning it into something that wasn't there before. He'd also installed a maple floor in his own house, a project that had taken him most of the summer because he wasn't in any particular hurry.

What mattered was the feeling at the end: standing back and being able to say, "I just put a brand new floor in the house."

He saw the same thing in music.

You have a pile of paper and some pens and pencils. What are you going to make? You have some pieces of wood and some tools. What are you going to build?

The medium changes, but the satisfaction is remarkably similar.

I've thought about that a lot since then. A song, a floor, a shed, a piece of software — they are obviously very different things, but there is something universal about taking a blank space and putting something into it that didn't exist before.

Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's terrible. Sometimes you throw it away and start again. But every once in a while, you can stand back and think: I made that.

There's something wonderful about that.

The part I remember most

There is one part of the interview that isn't really captured in the transcript.

Before we properly got going, I told Terry that this was my first interview and that I was nervous. He told me not to be nervous and called me "son."

At the time, it was just a kind thing an older musician said to a nervous kid on a video call. I moved on. I asked my questions, tried not to sound like an idiot, and Terry answered them.

But looking back now, that moment means much more to me.

He didn't make me feel like some kid who had somehow gotten lucky enough to get fifteen minutes with a musician he admired. He just talked to me. He asked about the guitar behind me. He told me to keep learning. He told me to pick up the guitar when we were finished. He told me I'd done my homework. He joked with me and called me by my name.

And at the end, when I asked if he had any advice for me, he said:

"Follow your heart. Do the things that make you happy and inspire you. And you will be successful."

I told him I'd try not to let him down.

He said, "Good."

I'm glad I waited

I wish I'd published this in 2023.

But I'm also glad I didn't, because I don't think I would have understood the conversation in quite the same way.

Back then, I was mostly excited that I'd somehow managed to interview someone from a band I loved. Now, reading through the conversation again, I see something else. I see two people who happened to be in very different places in their lives talking about the same fundamental thing: making things, staying curious, and continuing to learn.

Terry spent much of his life making music because he was always looking for the next idea. I build software for much the same reason. There is something deeply satisfying about taking an idea that exists only in your head and gradually giving it a shape that someone else can experience.

Maybe that's why this interview stayed with me even though I didn't publish it.

I thought I was interviewing Terry Draper to write about Klaatu.

Instead, I ended up with a conversation about learning how to make things, why we keep making them, and how much of a life can be spent simply following whatever makes you curious.

Terry Draper was born on September 23. I was born on the 24th.

So this year, on his birthday, I'm finally writing about the interview I should have written three years ago.

I'm glad I still have it.

I'm glad I got to talk to him.

And I'm especially glad that, somewhere near the beginning of that conversation, when I was a nervous kid trying to figure out how to interview someone I'd admired for years, Terry Draper looked past all of that and simply said:

"Don't be nervous, son."

I'm trying, Terry. Trying not to be nervous.

Happy Birthday.