Dan Brown on his journey from failed musician to bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code

0:00Dan Brown: His journey from failed musician to bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code

After studying writing at Amherst College, Dan Brown moved to Los Angeles to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a singer-songwriter. He landed a record deal and released two albums, which didn't work out. With his spirit crushed, he gave up.

"[Music] was my life goal and I put everything into it," he tells Q's Tom Power on today's show. "I was very certain that I would have success. I had a lot of important, powerful people in the music industry assuring me I would have success — and I didn't."

Though Brown's music career failed, you don't have to feel too bad for him — this is the same man who later went on to become the bestselling author of The Da Vinci Code and several other novels. His books are published in 56 languages around the world, with more than 200 million copies in print.

While Brown still considers writing to be one of his great loves, he says music has been an integral part of his life from the time he was a child. His mother was a professional keyboardist and organist, and his father was a gifted singer. On Sunday mornings, Brown would sit with his mother at the piano and turn the pages of her sheet music for her, which helped him learn how to read music. His parents didn't own a TV or a radio, so he and his two siblings read books and played piano to pass the time instead.

"All we had was a record player and my mom's classical music collection," Brown says. "So for the longest time, I thought classical music was just music. I didn't know there was anything else."

I think we all need to fail a little bit along the way before we get there.- Dan Brown

Looking back, the author says his experience of having one failed career followed by a second wildly successful career is something that he's grateful for.

"It's funny," he says. "Having failed so completely in music — and actually, my first three novels also were commercial failures — I'm very, very glad that happened, because it enabled me to really appreciate the success. And I know some of these young musicians who have huge success at age 16 and 17 [and] it's hard to handle. I think we all need to fail a little bit along the way before we get there."

Brown adds that the experience taught him that it's still worth taking the chance to follow your dream, even if it doesn't work out.

"That's what my parents said," he tells Power. "They said, 'Look, no matter what happens, this is the moment to go chase it.' And in the end, I've come full circle back to music in a way that really makes me happy."

Brown's full circle moment

This month, Brown will narrate his debut children's book, Wild Symphony, with the Sistema New Brunswick Children's Orchestra in Moncton and St. Andrews, N.B.

"For anyone who has not seen Wild Symphony, it's essentially 22 short little poems about different animals and these animals all have a little moral they'd like to tell," he explains. "And there's a short piece of classical music that goes with them."

The organization behind the children's orchestra is committed to tackling child poverty in the province by helping kids develop excellence in music that in turn improves their literacy skills and gives them confidence. Brown says he's looking forward to personally meeting each and every one of the kids, and he has a few messages he'd like to impart.

"One [is] that everything is possible," he tells Power. "That failure is not permanent…. Nobody gets there on their first try. If you're lucky, you fail a few times along the way. And also [that there's] a certain amount of humility that success can bring. When young people imagine successful people, in my experience, they're always surprised when they meet you and you're actually fairly normal and, in many cases, probably a little bit of a disappointment."

Lastly, Brown says, is that success isn't magic.

"It's hard work, a little bit of luck, a whole lot of persistence and when you get there, the first thing you do is you turn around and you help the people behind you, because, believe me, you didn't get there on your own."

The full interview with Dan Brown is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Dan Brown produced by Ben Edwards.