Tim Henson says Berklee rejection got him into Polyphia “for real”

Let it be known that the birth of Polyphia probably wouldn’t have occurred if Tim Henson hadn’t been rejected by the Berklee College of Music.

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In a new interview with Kerrang, the guitarist shared how getting turned down by the prestigious music school had pushed him to turn his focus to the band: “I didn’t have a back-up plan,” he said. “It was just like, ‘Well… fuck.’ There was a week of depression, but after that, it was just like, ‘Okay, fuck college. Let’s do this band for real.’”

Henson recalled lying to his parents every day that he was going to community college, “getting up at the fucking ass-crack of dawn, pretending I had 8am class”, when in reality he was “sitting in Starbucks with my laptop, promoting our music” — a decision his parents did not take kindly to when he eventually came clean.

“[My dad] was pissed off,” he said, though that eventually went away when Polyphia ended up raising “33 grand’’ (via crowdfunding) for their debut studio album Muse.

“That’s when my dad was… he wasn’t pissed anymore. After that, he was like, ‘Okay, you guys could do this.’ I guess that was the moment that we all realised we could do this.”

Elsewhere in the chat, Henson also opened up about becoming a ‘guitar hero’ that others can look up to, saying “It’s fucking cool.”

“I remember being a young kid looking up to the people on those magazine covers, and we get to pass it on with our own little brand of what we do. Hopefully there’s some kids out there that read these magazines and see us on these covers, and they go on to make shit 10 times doper than us.”