Michael mclean what is real

He seems to have a dozen projects going at once, and twice that many ideas. That keeps him on the road. There is an upcoming trip to Italy to seek funding for a movie project. There is his annual nationwide tour during the Christmas season. There is a gig at Disneyland. There is a trip to L. He has never lacked ambition or determination. After all, we're talking about a man who began making a list of goals when he was 8 years old. He wrote his first song at 11 — about the mashed potatoes and gravy on his Sunday dinner plate, which he still plays for laughs at his concerts.

As a teen, he made a list of things he needed to improve about himself. When he was finished it was six pages long. As a high school student in the Chicago area, he was student body president, the lead role in the "Music Man," an Eagle Scout, an A student second in his graduating class , state qualifier for the varsity tennis team and runner-up in the state speech contest for original monologue — and that was just his junior year.

Even then, he was sensitive enough for others' needs that he arranged for football players and "cool" kids in the school to devote the first hour of school dances to making sure every girl was danced with before they could dance with their dates.

As the lone Mormon in his school, he made a conscious effort to build goodwill for his church and win a few converts, handing out copies of the Book of Mormon and holding monthly firesides at his house. McLean's father, Hugh, was a business consultant whose job required frequent moves. His mother, Marty, was a homemaker who probably contributed to her son's penchant for telling stories. After watching movies at the local theater, she would act out the entire show the next morning for her two children, performing all the parts and even singing the songs if there were any.

McLean began studying classical piano when he was His role model became his piano instructor, a strong, masculine paratrooper with the National Guard who played piano like a master, at least in the boy's eyes. At their first lesson, he made his mark on McLean with a series of rhetorical questions. Really happy? It's stuck in your heart and brain. You've got the music in you the same as I do. The reason we practice is so we can let it out. They started with Rachmaninoff. They spent six weeks just working on the left hand of the first page, then six more weeks on the right hand, and then three more weeks putting them together.

It was eight months before he could play the entire three-minute piece from memory. The next song took almost a year. By the end of his second year of lessons, he had learned a grand total of three songs.

His teacher created another significant moment for McLean when he took him to a classical piano concert. McLean was moved by the performance, but then his year-old mind was struck with a thought on the drive home: The memory of the musician's performance would fade over the years, but the song itself would go on and affect people forever.

If he wanted to have a lasting impact, he would have to write songs. He wrote songs for his Boy Scout troop. He wrote them for trick-or-treating. He wrote about loneliness, anger, unrequited teen crushes.

He liked to lock the downstairs bathroom and sing his songs in front of the mirror. What my teacher had said was true. I could get these emotions out now. The real trick, he discovered, was earning a living with it. He served an LDS Church mission in South Africa, where, as part of his missionary work, McLean and his companions formed a musical group as a way to reach people and promote families.

After their missions were completed, the band regrouped and began playing the Utah music scene, which was mostly bars, clubs and dances. McLean dropped out of school to pursue his music, but the band couldn't get a record deal, and the clubs they played frequently stiffed them for their fee. Eventually the band disbanded. McLean's music ambitions were getting little encouragement. He had taken a music theory class at BYU "to see if my passion for music might be worth pursuing professionally.

He took the advice and transferred to the University of Utah to study business with plans to work with his father. In a last-ditch attempt to see if he had what it took, he drove to BYU weekly to take a music composition class from the highly respected Merrill Bradshaw. The other students were producing symphonies; McLean was writing pop songs about the death of a friend's baby and a humor piece about applause.

Bradshaw gave him little feedback, and at the end of the term McLean asked him if he should continue his musical pursuits. After a long pause, Bradshaw said he didn't know what to make of his talents, "but if you quit I would consider it a personal loss. Whatever it is that you do affects me. By now, McLean was married and had a daughter. Noting their empty bank account, Lynne suggested that he try writing commercial jingles. McLean became a one-man ad agency, writing countless jingles, some of which won Clio Awards.

Years later he was watching the news, surfing the three local TV news programs, when he realized he had written every local commercial on the air that night. Deseret Book "When you open a book from Deseret Book, you open a wonderful door" ; Zions Bank "People really do mean everything at Zions" ; milk "Cola darkness covered me til the Refresher set me free" ; Motorsportsland "Let Motorsportsland help you get away" ; Gibsons "Gibsons gives you more, because we are a very extraordinary discount store" ; R.

Willey "There's a house of things for your home" ; and Major League Baseball "Who will be the real hero? When Lynne got in a bad automobile accident, McLean dropped out of school to take care of her and their daughter and never went back to finish his degree.

He was a rock and roll singer. But I believed he could do it. It didn't dawn on me that he wouldn't be successful. He always found a way to support us. After we had Meagan, I told him we needed to talk about our budget. He was very uncomfortable. He didn't want to talk about it. Finally, he said, 'How much more do we need? He said, 'I'll get it. He was a good provider. The combined sales of all his albums exceed Platinum status. He makes his home with wife Lynn and three children in Heber, Utah.

Blodgett-Williams, Rovi. Open App. Michael McLean 15, monthly listeners. Gospel Teaching Book Collection. Children's Fiction. Sheet Music Downloads. Audiobook MP3. PDF - 1 License. PDF - 5 Licenses. PDF - 10 Licenses. Audiobook CD. Digital Album. Canvas Giclee. Any Price. On Sale. Average Rating 4. Average Rating 5. On Sale Now. Dragonwatch, Vol.

Scripture Totes Audio Scriptures. COVID updates. Michael McLean. Michael McLean has released more than two dozen albums, has written, produced, and directed award-winning films and television commercials, and has annually presented his landmark Christmas production, The Forgotten Carols, based on his book, to sold-out audiences throughout the United States since He and his wife, Lynne, live in Heber Valley.

Read More. The Forgotten Carols. My Unexpected Encounter With Jesus. Encountering Jesus. Sheet Music Download. Greg Hansen.