Fred: Putting a band together and making it work for any period of time… it's a miracle. When I formed Cowboy Mouth and John Thomas joined, we both had that understanding from experience. We had both been in bands that had had real, tangible success. We had also been in other bands that were good bands, but just didn't work for whatever reason. It's that intangible factor that Stewart Copeland called "the thing." We started playing together, the thing showed up, and we were great.
Glad you kept trying - my life is better for it :-)