MEETING DUG: When my hero turned out perfectly…human.
They say never to meet your heroes, and I’ve always understood the wisdom in that advice. Heroes are supposed to stay safely mythical, larger than life, untouchable in their perfection. Meeting them risks discovering they’re just regular, flawed people who may even think loading the toilet paper with the open end in the back is actually correct. But when the opportunity arose to interview Dug, a musician who even other famous and esteemed musicians consider a rock god, and whose work has been the soundtrack to my most unlikely emotions for decades, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I could only hope that some heroes are worth the risk.
Dug’s labyrinthine path through life has been the kind of beautiful disaster that makes for great music and sleep terrors. He’s survived everything that should have killed him, literally and figuratively, and somehow emerged in his seventies with something I’ve rarely seen in people half his age: genuine self-love. Not pride. Not the manufactured confidence of someone trying to convince themselves they matter, but the quiet appreciation of someone who’s finally figured out that maybe, just maybe, he’s accomplished something worth celebrating.
What struck me most wasn’t his humility, though that was so refreshing in a world where revered musicians often treat their own mythology like religious doctrine. It was his willingness to be vulnerable and share the same struggles that plague all of us ordinary mortals: doubt, fear, and the persistent voice that whispers you’re not good enough while everyone else seems to have figured out some secret you’ve missed. Here was someone whose music had moved mountains in my emotional landscape and inspires how I write my own music to this very day, admitting he still sometimes wakes up wondering if he’s fooling everyone, including himself.
I walked into that interview prepared to meet a legend and walked out having met something rarer: a human being who’d earned his mythology the hard way and was still surprised to find himself on the other side of it. I appreciate his music even more now. Not because it’s perfect, but because I understand it comes from the same place all the best art comes from: the stubborn refusal to let life break you, even when it comes damn close.
Dug didn’t just meet my expectations; he obliterated them. He was more than I could have hoped and nothing like what I’d feared. Some heroes, it turns out, become more heroic when you meet them. Dug is human, and thankfully, never gave up trying to become the person he was supposed to be… A source of inspiration for the rest of us.
Tegan Broadwater is an entrepreneur, author, musician, former undercover officer, podcast host, and positive change-maker. His popular book, “Life in the Fishbowl,” details his two-year, deep undercover operation that took down 51 violent Crip gang members. All profits benefit children of incarcerated parents.
Learn more about his latest projects at TeganBroadwater.com