Quotes from the Best Songwriters » CompanyName.com

©2011 Lone Wolf Sullivan

These quotes were researched and compiled by Lone Wolf Sullivan. The quotes are part of the book "Lone Wolf Sullivan Goes Hollywood" ©2011. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Copyright infringement is a felony. It is punishable by up to $500,000 or five years in prison for a first offense. Under the Copyright Act, a compilation is defined as a "collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship."

Robert Burns: "Apropos, is not the Scotch phrase 'Auld Lang Syne' exceedingly expressive? I shall give you the verses on the other sheet. The words of 'Auld Lang Syne' are good, but the music is an old air, the rudiments of the modern tune of that name. ... Dare to be honest and fear no labor. ... Opera is where a man gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings. ... Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure thrill the deepest notes of woe. ... Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame."

Stephen Collins Foster: "I sought to reform minstrelsy among refined people by making words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order. ... Some of my songs should be performed in a pathetic, not a comic style."

W. S. Gilbert: "We resolved that our plots, however ridiculous, should be coherent, that our dialogue should be void of offence, that, on artistic principles, no man should play a woman's part, and no woman a man's. Finally, we agreed that no lady of the company should be required to wear a dress that she could not wear with absolute propriety at a private fancy ball; and I believe I may say that we proved our case. ... Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. ... You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself--and how little I deserve. ... Life is a joke that's just begun."

Arthur Sullivan: "One day work is hard, and another day it is easy; but if I had waited for inspiration I am afraid I should have done nothing. The miner does not sit at the top of the shaft waiting for the coal to come bubbling up to the surface. One must go deep down, and work out every vein carefully. ... After all we have each of us only eight notes to work upon ... The theatre is not the place for the musician. When the curtain is up the music interrupts the actor, and when it is down the music interrupts the audience. ... I am terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music will be put on records forever."

W. C. Handy: "Whenever I heard the song of a bird and the answering call of its mate, I could visualize the notes in scale, all built up within my consciousness as a natural symphony. ... My big ears indicated a talent for music. This thrilled me. ... I think America concedes that true American music has sprung from the Negro. ... I knew the whistle of each of the river boats on the Tennessee. I suspect that Stephen Foster owed something to this well, this mystery, this sorrow. 'My Old Kentucky Home' makes you think so, at any rate. Something there suggests close acquaintance with my people. ... If my serenade of song and story should serve as a pillow for some composer's head, as yet perhaps unborn, to dream and build on our fond melodies in his tomorrow, I have not labored in vain. ... In the South of long ago whenever a new man appeared for work in any of the laborers' gangs, he would be asked if he could sing. If he could he got the job. The singing of these working men set the rhythm for the work. ... Life is something like a trumpet. If you don't put anything in, you won't get anything out. ... With a guitar I would be able to express the things I felt in sounds. ... Setting my mind on a musical instrument was like falling in love. All the world seemed bright and changed. ... The blues--the sound of a sinner on revival day."

Irving Berlin: "You can't write a song out of thin air. You have to feel and know what you are writing about. ... Talent is only the starting point. ... The song is ended, but the melody lingers on. ... Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies."

George Gershwin: "Out of my entire annual output of songs, perhaps two, or at the most three, came as a result of inspiration. We can never rely on inspiration. When we most want it, it does not come. ... The composer does not sit around and wait for an inspiration to walk up and introduce itself. ... Life is a lot like jazz--it's best when you improvise. ... True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time. My people are Americans and my time is today. ... Making music is actually little else than a matter of invention aided and abetted by emotion. ... I like to think of music as an emotional science."

Cole Porter: "My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director. ... (when asked who wrote 'Some Enchanted Evening') Rodgers and Hammerstein, if you can imagine it taking two men to write one song. ... Good authors, too, who once knew better words now use only four-letter words writing prose. ... Brush up your Shakespeare and they'll all kowtow."

Richard Rodgers: "It took about as long to compose it as to play it. (said about 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning', the opening song in 'Oklahoma!'). ... In America the musical theatre is generally considered a whore. My ambition is to help make a good woman of her. ... I was enchanted by this little man and his ideas. Neither of us mentioned it, but we evidently knew we would work together and I left Hart's house, having acquired in one afternoon a career, a partner, a best friend and a permanent source of irritation. (about his lyricist Lorenz Hart)"

Oscar Hammerstein II: "I hand him a lyric and get out of his way. ... I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it. ... The number of people who will not go to a show they do not want to see is unlimited. ... All the sounds of the earth are like music."

Lorenz Hart: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean the bastards aren't out to get you. ... Painters of paintings, writers of books, never could tell the half. In each scenario, you can depend on the end where the lovers agree. Where's my Lothario? Where does he roam, with his dome Vaselined as can be?"

George M. Cohan: "I never wrote a better song than 'Venus', my favorite among all of the songs I've written. ... If I had my choice between Hollywood and Atlanta, I'd take Levenworth. ... I'll never be happy now until I own a part of Broadway. Just a little part, mind you. The top part. ... I don't care what you say about me, as long as you say something about me, and as long as you spell my name right. ... They don't want me no more. ... I guess people don't understand me anymore, and I don't understand them. It's got so that an evening's entertainment just won't do. Give an audience an evening of what they call realism and you've got a hit. It's getting to be too much for me, kid. I'm the little guy who's had enough. No more of that 8 o'clock stuff for me. Not any more. It was alright to change my mind, along back about 1913, but not anymore. I've retired, kid, and that's on the level."

Stephen Sondheim: "Clever rhyming is easy, anybody can do it. ... Oscar Hammerstein II taught me that a song should be like a little one-act play, with an exposition, a development and a conclusion; at the end of the song the character should have moved to a different position. ... Cole Porter wrote a valid but entirely different kind of song, in which you take a particular idea and play with it and develop it in terms of cleverness, wit, intellectual or romantic intensity. ... The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?"

Jule Styne: "I thought he might hit me over the head, knowing that he wanted to do the whole show. He was young, ambitious, and a huge talent. But he was also very gentle, and we got along fine." (on meeting Stephen Sondheim while working on "Gypsy")

Kurt Weill: "I didn't give a damn about writing for posterity. ... I have never acknowledged the difference between serious music and light music. There is only good music and bad music."

Cab Calloway: "You don't think it was because a white man wrote it, a black man wrote it, a green man wrote it. What--doesn't make a difference! I think he did a good job. ... The only difference between a black entertainer and a white entertainer is that my ass has been kicked a lot more and a lot harder because it's black. ... 90%, 100% are going there to hear the singing. The story is another thing. Nobody's interested in the story. Happiness is happiness... What opera isn't violent? Two things happen, violence and love. And other than that, name something else. You can't. ... That's what George wrote! He wrote it. Why change it? There was this European company that I was speaking about a while ago--course, didn't nobody know what Porgy was. ... My audience was my life. What I did and how I did it, was all for my audience."

Duke Ellington: "If anybody was Mr. Jazz it was Louis Armstrong. He was the epitome of jazz and always will be. He is what I call an American standard, an American original. ... I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues. ... I don't need time, I need a deadline. ...There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. ... Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one."

Sammy Cahn: "I don't write songs, songs write me. ... Writing a song can be agony or ecstasy. It can take half an hour or half a year. ... The popular song is America's greatest ambassador."

Johnny Mercer: "I could eat alphabet soup and s**t better lyrics. ... At best, maybe 10 per cent of them will ever be published, and only a tiny percentage of those will be hits. So you've got to keep turning them out, just based on the arithmetic of it. Another thing, you can't just keep knocking out the same thing. You've got to switch them up. You get stale, used-up, working in the same groove. Keep shifting. And don't try to do too much too quickly. You write a number, and even if you think it's great, put it away, let it cook, let it simmer. Then you come back to it, and you may have a different slant. You play with it, fix it, let it grow."

Henry Mancini: "Decide what kind of piece you're going to write: slow, fast, minor, major, moody, happy. ... Strangely enough, in movie writing I've been more influenced by big bands than by any other film composer. The big bands of the 'forties and then the carry-over into the modern jazz field--Basie, Ellington, all the way up to Mulligan--these are my influences rather than, say, Franz Waxman or Tiomkin or anyone like that. I don't think in their terms. ... If it calls for a Madison or a Twist, I'll do it. And if it calls for a tone row or anything in surreal music I'll do that, too. But the dance band is what has given me the kind of little edge towards the jazz field. ... The very first film writing I did was for a scene in an Abbott & Costello picture called 'Lost in Alaska'. It was a sequence in which Lou Costello is bitten on the ass by a crab--high-class stuff. But I took the assignment seriously. ... I saw the David Niven character, the phantom jewel thief, as an interesting character to score. It was a beautifully written role. He was suave and sophisticated, with a lot of class. The character reminded me of a song called 'Jimmy Valentine'. There were a number of scenes in which David would be slinking around on tippy-toes. I started to write a theme for him--one of the few times I wrote a theme before seeing the actual picture. That music was designed as the phantom-thief music, not to be the 'Pink Panther Theme'. ... I went in one day, not to work but to get a haircut and have lunch. After getting the haircut, I went out into the sunlight and encountered Blake Edwards and some other men. They had just ended a meeting at which they’d been planning a television show. We stood chatting for a few minutes, then Blake said, 'Hey, would you be interested in doing a TV show for me?' Not exactly overwhelmed with offers, I said, 'Yes. What's the name of it?' 'Peter Gunn.' ... I feel that the old adage, 'A good score is one that you're not aware of' is only half true. To be sure, this is so of scenes with important dialogue. But if the viewer is unaware of the music during a three-minute main title--as the part of the film giving the opening credits is called--the composer isn't saying much. The importance of music at this point in the picture is attested to by the 'Moon River' title sequence in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's', by Bill Conti's music for the opening of 'Rocky', and John Williams' music for 'Star Wars', among the many examples I could cite."

Andrew Lloyd Webber: "I think it's probably, musically, probably the most sophisticated. ('The Woman in White') There's a lot more daring harmony in it than in some of my pieces. ... If you know what you want to do, as I always loved musicals, and then to have been lucky enough to be successful with them, I think that's all you can ask, isn't it? ... Sondheim is absolutely wonderful and Alan Jay Lerner was wonderful."

Alan Jay Lerner: "You write a hit the same way you write a flop. ... Although Burton Lane wrote some spiffy songs and Fred Astaire danced in a way that made all superlatives inadequate, my contribution left me in such a state of cringe that I could barely straighten up. Even the one creative moment I liked had nothing to do with me consciously. One night I dreamed that Fred was dancing up a wall, all across the ceiling and down the other wall. I mentioned it to Arthur Freed at lunch the following day and lo, in the film Fred danced up a wall, across the ceiling and down the other wall. ... One day late in August of 1942, I was having lunch in the grill of the Lambs Club when a short, well built, tightly strung man with a large head and hands and immensely dark circles under his eyes strode to a few feet from my table and stopped short. His destination was the men's room and he had gone the wrong way. He turned to get back on the right road and suddenly saw me. I knew who he was, a talented, struggling composer. He came to my table and sat down. 'You're Lerner, aren't you?' he asked. I could not deny it. 'You write Lyrics, don't you?' he continued. 'I try,' I replied. 'Well,' he said, 'would you like to write with me?' I immediately said, 'Yes.' And we went to work." (on meeting his partner Fritz Loewe)

Frederick (Fritz) Loewe: "It won't be long before we'll be writing together again. I just hope they have a decent piano up there. ... Too many people have gone in for this senseless chasing of rainbows. How many rainbows does one need? ... I am having a wonderful time and writing a show is not fun. There is no reason for me to work now. I don't need the glory, I don't need money."

Burt Bacharach: "Never be ashamed to write a melody that people remember. ... I recorded the song live in front of an orchestra, and yes, I was very moved, I was in tears. ... I started playing piano with a little band in high school. I was terrible. I thought I had absolutely no talent. I couldn't keep time. ... The music is the last thing I'm thinking about right now, in order of what's important. ... I was working with structures that weren't like a normal song--no vocal starting at the top and going to the end. ... I never was concerned with breaking rules. I've never written what I thought was going to be commercial. ... I'm terribly afraid of things that wear me out a little bit when I'm working, because I feel they're gonna wear the paper out. I like things that I like hearing again. ... Music breeds its own inspiration. You can only do it by doing it. You may not feel like it, but you push yourself. It's a work process. Or just improvise. Something will come."

Hal David: "I tended not to be concerned about whether a song was going to be a hit when I wrote it. Because it became evident that none of us knew what was a hit and what wasn't. So I thought if I just write what I like, why shouldn't people like what I like? ... It's not just a revue where one song is done, then another. There are concepts and ideas at work."

Leonard Cohen: "I wish I were one of those people who wrote songs quickly. But I'm not. So it takes me a great deal of time to find out what the song is. I am working most of the time. ... I've always held the song in high regard because songs have got me through so many sinks of dishes and so many humiliating courting events."

Neil Diamond: "Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest. ... Songwriting is different from music, although I don't deny now that it would be nice to have a little more background in music theory. ... Because my musical training has been limited, I've never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song. ... I've always thought of music as something which gives the words their flight and their wings and the music often comes first, although sometimes I'll have a concept, a title idea, a lyric idea that I want to write and the lyric will come first. ... I don't like all of the music to be serious and deadly. ... Songs are life in 80 words or less. ... Songwritng is what I do. ... The main objective in any song, the songs that I write, has always been that it reflect the way I feel, that it touch me when I'm finished with it, that it moves me, that it can take me along with it and involve me in what it's saying. ... There's a mystery to writing, and you don't really know where most of it comes from."

Hank Williams: "If a song can't be written in 20 minutes, it ain't worth writing. ... I get more kick out of writing than I do singing. I reckon I've written a thousand songs and had over 300 published. ... I don't know what you mean by country music. I just make music the way I know how. ... You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before you can sing like a hillbilly. ... I was a pretty good imitator of Roy Acuff, but then I found out they already had a Roy Acuff, so I started singin' like myself. ... I ain't gonna worry wrinkles in my brow, cuz nothin's never gonna be alright nohow. No matter how I struggle and strive, I'll never get out of this world alive."

Donovan Leitch: "With songwriting, it all comes out in one flash. Then you work it, then you craft it. ... Why was I busted? Tens of thousands of guys were rolling joints that night. Why me? Because I was an example to youth. The authorities thought they could stop this revolution called the sixties by picking off the main singer/songwriters. The poets were always at the forefront."

Joan Baez: "It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page. ... People don't want to hear anything that they don't want to hear. ... You have to package it in a certain way so that it can break through the wall people put up."

Willie Dixon: "As kids, my brother and I used to sit down and make poems out of anything. He'd call a name with something and I would say all the things that sounds close to it and made sense. We'd do this all the time. ... (about recording contracts) Most of the time, I read the subject and the next thing I look for is the smallest writing on there. In those days, the people felt the reason they wrote the smaller things on the contract was because most black people couldn't read and when they would start, the first thing was to read the biggest thing they could see. ... People have been brainwashed into believing that it's got to be down or it wouldn't be blues. But it's not so. It's got to be a fact or it wouldn't be blues...The blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding."

Dolly Parton: "I'm just a singer/songwriter and entertainer and I miss people and the energy of the crowd. When I play live it's a lovefest with me and my audience. It's how I get my rocks off when I'm inspired, I get excited because I can't wait to see what I'll come up with next. ... My music is so mine, it's hard to turn it over to someone else. I have to be really involved in the production. It's like someone else taking care of your kids--if they don't treat them well, you're going to be pissed off. I'm actually co-producing 'Backwoods' with my guitar player of 20 years, Kent Wells. We make a good combination. ... I think we're going to have a real good record. ... When the new country came out ten to 15 years ago, people my age were almost too old. But it never stopped me. I never stopped writing. I never stopped recording. ... I feel fortunate that I've had a lot of songs recorded by other people, because I take my songwriting very seriously. It's only those people that have followed me over the years and really know my work that know how serious I am about all of it--including the way I look. You can't take my high heels from me, you can't have my long fingernails, you can't take all this hair from me, because it's part of this thing that I've become. I wouldn't want to give any of it up. Do I have to be ugly to be a songwriter? This is the way I am, and it's what I choose to be. ... Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams--all of them are different styles, but those are the songs that make the times--they're the songs that last through time."

Johnny Cash: "I enjoy writing a simple love ballad or a simple song. I just wrote a Scottish folk song called 'A Croft in Clachan', and it's just a simple story set in the seventeenth century about this boy leaving the town of Clachan to fight the English and then coming back home to the girl he's going to marry. When I was writing it, Paul McCartney was talking about 'Mull of Kintyre' and he said, 'You should finish it. Mull of Kintyre was the biggest song I ever wrote'. That's something to think about! A Scottish song was the biggest song he wrote! So I finished it. ... I start a lot more songs than I finish, because I realize when I get into them, they're no good. I don't throw them away, I just put them away, store them, get them out of sight. ... When I record somebody else's song, I have to make it my own or it doesn't feel right. I'll say to myself, I wrote this and he doesn't know it."

Kris Kristofferson: "Johnny Cash's face belongs on Mount Rushmore. ... I don't write as much as I did back when I was writing songs every day. I've come to know when I've got a good one, although sometimes it takes the world awhile to catch up with me. ... If you're in it because you love it and you have to do it, that's the right reason. If you're in it because you want to get rich or famous, don't do it."

Merle Haggard: "Everybody likes Johnny Cash. I think the sad part of it is his health is givin' him problems. ... I'm just writin' about my little ol' love affair. It sounds like something from a Woody Guthrie song, but it's true; I was raised in a freight car...95% of the album is my writing, by choice, because it seems to be what the distributors want. ... HAG Records, is a company that I've owned. I've had a couple of gospel releases on it. We developed a pretty good distribution setup there and we do have something to use in case they don't want to sign us. ... I think I'm most proud of my family right now. I'm more into that then I've ever been. It also gives a new area to draw from in creativity with my songs. ... The only thing that I miss lately in all music is somebody that will put out a melody that you can whistle. It doesn't seem like there's anything happening like that. ... There's some Latino music I like, and some reggae music."

Sheryl Crow: "A song that sounds simple is just not that easy to write. One of the objectives of this record was to try and write melodies that continue to resonate. ... Everything that happens to you influences your writing...The writing process for me is pretty much always the same--it's a solitary experience. ... I have yet to write that one song that defines my career. ... Beck said he didn't believe in the theory of a song coming through you as if you were an open vessel. I agree with him to a certain extent. ... When you tune your guitar in a different way, it lends itself to a new way of looking at your songwriting."

Ray Davies: " When I wrote the song, I had the sea near Bombay in mind. We stayed at a hotel by the sea, and the fishermen come up at five in the morning and they were all chanting. And we went on the beach and we got chased by a mad dog--big as a donkey. ... I think that songwriting changed when groups started spending more time in the studio. ... I've written so many songs about Englishmen, I have to go elsewhere. ... Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things."

Stevie Nicks: "It was my 16th birthday--my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do--write songs and sing them to people. ... Everything on this record is what I really wanted to say, and I'm back to being the poet I always thought I was. ... For 70 nights, right across America, I've been getting out there with two ex-lovers and we've been playing songs which are so specific about each of us, you just wouldn't know. We're friends now but we can't forget what happened between us."

Lou Reed: "You can't ask me to explain the lyrics because I won't do it...I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it. That's why I survived because I still believe I've got something to say. ... I don't like overdubs, never liked them. ... The music business doesn't interest me anymore...Don't the people you're around shape the music, is that what you're saying? Everything does. ... I'm not joking around when I've said occasionally, trying to learn how to play a D chord properly has been a very big thing for me."

Ozzy Osbourne: "I didn't think anything we did was spectacular. I remember we thought, 'Let's just write some scary music.'... Black Sabbath were a hippie band. We were into peace. ... This has all been such an amazing journey for me. I can vividly remember sitting on the step of my house in Aston, just tripping about what it would be like to be a Beatle. And then, here I am at 58, and I'm at Elton John's party. All these megastars are there, Paul McCartney or whatever. And there's me with them, standing with all these people I used to admire. It's like I`ve been in the music industry for 30, 40 years, and it`s just been incredible really. ... It could be worse--I could be Sting."

Joe Strummer: "I have a weird life because I live on songwriting royalties, which are a strange income. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn't. ... I want to grow up with my audience. I don't expect to be getting through to the younger pop crowd. I learned that from Paul Simon. ... People have told me songs I've written have changed their life. That's remarkable. That keeps your faith."

Warren Zevon: "But there's a thin line between songwriting and arranging. ... Recording at home enables one to eliminate the demo stage, and the presentation stage in the studio, too. ... And I think it's safe to say that the single very impressive figure to me was Merle Haggard. ... Dylan can do no wrong. ... Glenn Gould was my hero. Glenn Gould was my idol. I loved him. ... I loved Hendrix. I mean, really, really loved him. As if he were one of the great classical composers. And he was. That's how I saw him."

Valerie Simpson: "We were pretty excited that we could make $75 just by sitting down and writing songs. Actually we were taken, but we didn't feel that way at the time. ... Once in a while I'll contribute to the lyrics, but Nick's the poet. Sometimes, though, I have to push for certain kinds of songs. 'I'm Every Woman' was like pulling teeth, yet I do touch his soul...(about 'Street Opera') It's semitragic, because she understands his problems and that they must leave each other, but there is hope in the end because she understands--why he must leave. ... In the future I think the labels on most pop music are going to go. Everyone keeps jumping into everyone else's space...No, it just wasn't they. It was a joint decision. We have been playing to a 70-30 black to white audience. And we are just doing what should come next, trying to attract a larger house, trying to reach an audience that's half black and white...It's very natural to want to grow. A fusion of forces. ... What he means is that he used to have more time to do things on his own and we used to have a lot of extra lyrics. ... The one inherent problem we have is whose key it should be in. ... When we came up with something, we always thought we could make more money out of it with someone else--so we never cut it ourselves! ... We kind of hesitated about the romance because it could have messed everything up." (about "Nick" Ashford, her lyricist husband)

Nickolas "Nick" Ashford: "She put me in a spin. ... They thought we needed some different exposure. ... I agree. I hope we don't sound like we are on quiz show. I agree, she agrees, bingo. ... The flowing toward the color of her music, then the mutual understanding that that's something to say. ... We still don't have a formula. I might think of a line or two. Valerie might hear me singing and try to catch up on the piano. But then I might hear her playing and come with an idea. ... But I think marriage has changed my style of approach. ... We fight over dumb things."

Paul Anka: "I had this talent for these stupid little teenage songs. I just couldn't get anyone to sing my songs, so I had to sing my own tunes. ... The thing is to be able to outlast the trends. ... They are actually manufactured entertainment groups. They are a product of technology. What you are listening to is technology."

Smokey Robinson: "I always try to write a song, I never just want to write a record. Originally I was not writing songs for myself. ....And I can say this, most of the people who have recorded my songs are songwriters themselves. ... Even if I don't release it myself, somebody else might hear it and want to record it. When you write a song, it gives it that potential. When you write a song, a song has longevity. ... So I wanted to sing inspirational music, and that's exactly how I approached it--only the words have been changed to declare my relationship with God. Songwriting is my gift from God."

Mark Knopfler: "Each song has its own secret that's different from another song, and each has its own life. Sometimes it has to be teased out, whereas other times it might come fast. There are no laws about songwriting or producing. It depends on what you're doing, not just who you're doing. ... After a while, though, the group just wasn't a good vehicle for the songs I'd written. ... The music just tends to be a vehicle for that poetry. ... What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I've always rebelled against theory. ... While listening, to things like western swing, for instance, I'd work something out in my head, then play it on my National; not the same song, but one that captured the feeling of the original tune."

Lamont Dozier: "I don't think about commercial concerns when I first come up with something. When I sit down at the piano, I try to come up with something that moves me. ... Young writers should definitely research the current sounds and styles. ...You can't write all those little nuances, inflections that they'd do, James and Benny playing off each other, they'd come up with something ten times better than what you thought you had. ... A girlfriend had caught me in a compromising situation with another girl. In trying to defuse the situation, I said 'please, stop in the name of love,' as corny as that may sound. Then I said 'Wow, did you hear that cash register?' That's how things happen, songs come out of nowhere. ... Billy Paul's song is hard to beat. I made it my own with a couple of little things, but I wasn't really going to fool with his thing. I ain't crazy. ... We wanted to guide the musicians, so we could create our own sound. We would never let the band just go in and play the chord sheets. We were very focused on what we had in mind for these productions."

Kate Bush: "When I'm writing I've been playing something for a couple of hours and I'm almost in a trance. At two or three in the morning you can actually see bits of inspiration floating about and grab them. ... I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people. ... I think quotes are very dangerous things. ... It's not important to me that people understand me."

John Lennon: "Even in the early days, we used to write things separately, because Paul was always more advanced than I was. His dad played the piano. Usually, one of us wrote most of the song and the other just helped finish it off, adding a bit of tune or a bit of lyric. ... 'Please Please Me' is my song completely. It was my attempt at writing a Roy Orbison song, would you believe it? I heard Roy Orbison doing 'Only The Lonely' or something. That's where that came from. And also I was always intrigued by the words of 'Please Lend Your Ears To My Pleas', a Bing Crosby song. I was always intrigued by the double use of the word 'please'. ... I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, 'Nowhere Man' came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down...Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep. "

Paul McCartney: "Somebody said to me, But the Beatles were anti-materialistic. That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, Now, let's write a swimming pool. ... I think people who create and write, it actually does flow--just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they write it down. It's simple. ... I had this song called 'Helter Skelter', which is just a ridiculous song. So we did it like that, 'cuz I like noise. ... Lyricists play with words. ... George wrote 'Taxman', and I played guitar on it. He wrote it in anger at finding out what the taxman did. He had never known before then what could happen to your money."

George Harrison: "We worked the medley on side two of 'Abbey Road' out carefully in advance. All of those mini songs were partly completed tunes; some were written while we were in India a year before. So there was just a bit of chorus here and a verse there. We welded them all together into a routine. ... I wanted to be successful, not famous. ... The biggest break in my career was getting into the Beatles in 1962. The second biggest break since then is getting out of them."

Gary Wright: "George Harrison is perhaps one of the most creative people I ever met, not only in his music and songwriting, but just the way he lived his life, decorated his gardens and homes. He was a dear friend of mine. His entire approach to music was very unique. ... India profoundly changed my outlook on life because you see how people can be content and very happy with little or even no possessions. It's the reverse of the West. My music and lyrics became an extension of this Indian philosophy. ... No one likes to work for free. To copy an artist's work and download it free is stealing. It's hard work writing and recording music, and it's morally wrong to steal it."

Buffy Sainte-Marie: "As a teenager I started painting and playing guitar. ... Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel. ... This song ('Until It's Time for You To Go') popped into my head while I was falling in love with someone I knew couldn't stay with me. The words are about honesty and freedom inside the heart."

Michael Jackson: "I wake up from dreams and go, 'Wow, put this down on paper.' The whole thing is strange. You hear the words, everything is right there in front of your face. ... I am always writing a potpourri of music. I want to give the world escapism through the wonder of great music and to reach the masses. ... And I remember going to the record studio and there was a park across the street and I'd see all the children playing and I would cry because it would make me sad that I would have to work instead."

David Bowie: "Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write. ... Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I've seen on some of the songs that I've written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in. ... There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what for me is inexpressible by any other means. ... I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way. ... I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I'm not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does. ... But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him. ... On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts. ... I once asked John Lennon what he thought of what I do. He said 'It's great, but its just rock and roll with lipstick on.'"

Stevie Wonder: "I really do seek to create music that is timeless. ... Each project takes on its own life, and the songs from 'A Time To Love' are the most appropriate for the statement I wanted to make...The most important thing is, when I do give the music, I'm satisfied with it, that it speaks for what I want to do. ... It is a different kind of lyric; it's very picturesque. I can see everything that I'm writing, I can visualize all those things happening. ... Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn't mean he lacks vision."

Janis Ian: "I write a lot from instinct. But as you're writing out of instinct, once you reach a certain level as a songwriter, the craft is always there talking to you in the back of your head--that tells you when it's time to go to the chorus, when it's time to rhyme. Real basic craft...it's second nature."

Mick Taylor: "It's nice to finally have a CD out which reflects my songwriting, my singing and the band that I have. ... I do remember actually learning chords to Beatles songs. I thought they were great songwriters...I've written lots of songs on the piano. My mother had a piano and it was the first instrument I played. I play the piano a lot at home. I write songs on the piano and guitar. I would like to actually play piano on stage. I don't think I'll get the chance for a while. ... (on leaving the Rolling Stones) It's not rubbish to say that I was a bit peeved about not getting credit for a couple of songs, but that wasn't the whole reason. I guess I just felt like I had enough. I decided to leave and start a group with Jack Bruce."

Freddie Mercury: "People are always asking me what my lyrics mean. Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. F**k them, darling. I say what any decent poet would say if you dared ask him to analyze his work: If you see it, dear, then it's there. ... I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics. ... I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs."

Brian May: "I have a perfectly clear idea of what was in Freddie's mind. But it was unwritten law among us in those days that the real core of a song lyric was a private matter for the composer. ... I had this big thing about guitar harmonies. I wanted to be the first to put proper three-part harmonies onto a record. That was an achievement. ... I never took sheet music seriously. I could do better myself just by listening to other people and using my own intuition. ... We do play to our audience. It's very important. You can't create music in a vacuum. ... We just thought that Freddie's blueprint for 'Rhapsody' was intriguing and original, and worthy of work. This was a well-planned project from Freddie, to which we contributed our best, but there were always changes along the way as tracks developed."

Michael Hutchence: "What we try to do with all of our albums, is live out our musical fantasies in the most honest fashion we know how. ... We want to include songs that lyrically cover subjects ranging from the heaviest things we’ve ever done to light-hearted experiences that can best be presented through sentimental bluesy ballads that are usually good for a chuckle or two."

James Brown: "I've outdone anyone you can name: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Strauss. Irving Berlin, he wrote 1,001 tunes. I wrote 5,500. ... I would like to pass on the want to do something. The need is there. Good lyrics are good things, but I would like to pass on that drive, that vigorous undying determination. ... Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown. You know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90% of their music is me. ... Elvis was a hard worker, dedicated, and God loved him. Last time I saw him was at Graceland. We sang 'Old Blind Barnabus' together, a gospel song. I love him and hope to see him in heaven. There'll never be another like that soul brother."

Woodie Guthrie: "I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim or too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard travelling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you've not got any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow. ... Anyone who uses more than two chords is just showing off...This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

Roy Orbison: I've always been in love with my voice. I liked the sound of it. I liked making it sing, making the voice ring, and I just kept doing it. And I think that somewhere between the time of 'Ooby Dooby' and 'Only the Lonely', it kind of turned into a good voice. ... On balance, I'd say it was at least fifty-fifty. 'Dream Baby', 'Mean Woman Blues', 'Running Scared', even 'Pretty Woman' has a happy ending! ... He (Sam Phillips) wasn't talking my language. I wasn't sophisticated but I was university educated. And, when he brought out the first record ('That's Alright') and the second ('Mystery Train') he said, 'now sing like that.' If he'd have said 'sing with the same emotion, the same feeling in everything that you do that this man is doing' then I would have said 'I understand exactly what you mean.' But, I didn't understand what he meant, I didn't know what he was getting at. I couldn't sing like that. I had already been in the business a good while and I was patterned in my own way. ... Well, Chuck Berry is the first singer/songwriter I know of. ... I may be a living legend, but that sure don't help when I've got to change a flat tire. ... I thought maybe in 1964 I could have been swamped by The Beatles. But it turned out the other way round and I was voted Number One vocalist in 1965. ... I messed up the first day I got there. I walked out in this little theater and they had Beatles placards everywhere, life-size ones. And I said, 'what's all this? What is a Beatle anyway?' and John Lennon said, 'I'm one.' He was standing right behind me. ... People often ask me how would I like to be remembered and I answer that I would simply like to be remembered."

Jerry Lee Lewis: I write. I got songs. ... People hate me because I am a multifaceted, talented, wealthy, internationally famous genius. ... (about Elvis' death) I was glad. Just another one out of the way. I mean Elvis this, Elvis that. All we hear is Elvis. What the s**t did Elvis do except take dope that I couldn't get ahold of?. ... Just gimme my money and show me where the piano is...I never thought about writing a book. Everybody else has written one. But one day I'll write the real truth down--the real truth. Then I'll go to the penitentiary. ... When they look back on me I want 'em to remember me not for all my wives, although I've had a few, and certainly not for any mansions or high livin' money I made and spent. I want 'em to remember me simply for my music."

Tom Waits: "I'm usually more concerned with how things sound than how they look on the page. Some people write for the page and that's a whole other thing. I'm going for what it sounds like right away, so it may not even look good on the page. But I'm still a word guy. I'm drawn to people who use a certain vernacular and communicate with words. Words are music, really. I mean, people ask me, 'Do you write music or do you write words?' But you don’t really, it's all one thing at its best. Sometimes when you're making songs you just make sounds, and the sounds slowly mutate and evolve into actual words that have meaning. But to begin with, most people who make songs just start out with (Waits makes noises)...The piano has been drinking, not me. ... I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things. ... I guess the only thing I hate is bluegrass played poorly. ... Roy's songs were not so much about dreams as like dreams. When you were trying to make a girl fall in love with you, it took roses, the Ferris wheel and Roy Orbison. ... I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else. ... Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends."

Phil Collins: "You know, a song is like a kid. You bring it up. And sometimes something you thought was going to be fantastic, by the time it's finished, is a bit of a disappointment. ... Many people think of me as a perfectionist, someone who polishes and shines each song and performance. I've always been bothered by that assumption. ... A lot of the older fans think that Genesis should be a brand name for progressive rock or whatever, but actually Genesis is the name for a group of songwriters who have always done whatever they felt like doing under that banner. ... I'm writing new songs for a Broadway version of Tarzan, which is very interesting. I think what I learned from the 'Brother Bear' score side of things, I've brought into the new Tarzan songs. Thinking outside just guitar, bass, drums and keyboards...Beyond a certain point, the music isn't mine anymore. It's yours."

Geddy Lee: "That is what intrigues me: songwriting and song structure and expression. ... For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song. ... I am moved more by melodies, song structure, and evocative textures. ... I feel safe and comfortable to do that once I know that the song structure around the bass part is very interesting and it satisfies me in a compositional sense. ... It's hard for me to just practice without writing something. ... Then, once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process."

Michael Bolton: "I love songwriting. It's second to my love for singing in how I express myself. ... It's a combination of melody and lyrics, not one without the other. It's a confluence of these different elements that makes something powerful. ... A lot of my success comes from black music. It's something I'm very proud of. ... Considering the amount of information we're bombarded by, it's amazing if a song can transcend time. ... One song will launch you, but you don't want to be a one-song artist. ... It's understanding the intention of a composer that allows a producer and an arranger to make those moments speak. ... Someone told me there was a publisher that could find a good home for my songs, but I didn't want to give up my pursuit of a career in the business as an artist. "

John Denver: "We must begin to make what I call 'conscious choices', and to really recognize that we are all the same. It's from that place in my heart that I write my songs. ... On composing for 'The Bears and I') Heck, I'm no Henry Mancini or Michel Legrand. I just play the guitar and write songs. I know I'm incapable of orchestrating an entire film. They just asked me to write something expressing the story about a guy who's back from Vietnam and sorta lost, who goes to an Indian village in the Northwest."

Laura Nyro: "There are no limitations with a song. To me a song is a little piece of art. It can be whatever you like it to be. You can write the simplest song, and that's lovely, or you can just write a song that is abstract art. ... A lot of my songs are very serious, I'm like dead serious about certain things and I feel that I'm writing about the world, through my own eyes. ... I have a love for simple basic song structure, although sometimes you'd never know it. ... Most of the songs I wrote at night. I would just wake in the middle of the night. That's when I found the space to write."

Ian Tyson: "I'm sort of on the verge of making a new album, but it's gonna be such a downer. But you've got to write about what you've got to write about. ... Old cowboys have lots of aches and pains, that's part of the deal. ... I became a historian, a chronicler of this way of life, and this way of life is just about over. The cowboys are all gone. ... Once the Beatles took over, the folk music thing disappeared, though it seems healthy enough now, a couple of generations later. I get so many questions about those early days. ... I don't type. And my hands hurt too much to write longhand. It takes me half an hour to write out a couple of song verses. ... I can't figure out how I got to be 75. I think there was a miscalculation somewhere, I really do. ... My deal is strictly ear. ... I tour because I can. A lot of guys would like to tour, but they can't fill those seats. If they stop coming, I'll hang it up. ... They don't come as quickly as they used to, but they're good songs. I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel. I'll have four or five new songs by Christmas. ... Working with music is like working with horses--there's always the next level."

Jackson Browne: "I'd have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe--and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it. ... I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing--an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse...and that led to writing my own songs. ... It's not like I'm looking to describe something that's only true of my own circumstances. It's beyond. It's way inside, you know. It's reaching inside to something that you have in common with many. ... Also, right at that particular time in the music business, because of people like the Beatles, people began owning their own publishing. I'll just say this really quickly--they used to divide the money for the music that was written in two, just equal halves. ... So what I do, more than play any instrument--I mean, I love to play--but more than that, I write songs. Songs that are about living, about what it's like to be going through all the things that people go through in life...The biggest influence? I've had several at different times--but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs."

Van Morrison: "I write songs. Then I record them. And later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple. I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it. ... Music is spiritual. The music business is not. ... Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag. ... A famous person to themselves, they don't get up in the morning and think, I'm famous. I'm not famous to me. Famous is a perception. ... I always record far more than I can use. There's probably twice as much recorded as comes out. ... I educated myself. To me, school was boring. "

Billy Joel: "I consider myself to be an inept pianist, a bad singer, and a merely competent songwriter. ... I'm probably writing music now for the same reason as I started writing songs when I was 14--to meet women. ... If you make music for the human needs you have within yourself, then you do it for all humans who need the same things. You enrich humanity with the profound expression of these feelings. ... My songs are like my kids."

Randy Newman: "If getting on the radio was a major motivation, I'd be one of the worst writers of all time. I admire people who do it, and I think it's a nice way to work, but I try to do the best I can and write what I like. I don't worry about it. ... I started recording because I was always complaining about the records that I was getting of my songs. At least if I did them and messed them up, I wouldn't have anyone else to blame. ... I do movies because I love writing for orchestra though it scares me and the money is good. I can't make a living doing just albums, times are difficult now for geriatric artists."

Harry Nilsson: "It happens so quickly it seems like it's coming from somewhere else. It's not. It just means that you're in sync with yourself. And whatever your goal is, in terms of hearing a melody or a lyric, the closer you get to it, the faster it comes out and the easier it is to 'spit it out', as it were."

Deborah Harry: "I really, really like writing songs. Capote wrote every day. He said that's the only way, you have to sit down every day and do it. ... Something that's written out is okay, but it's not always a clear indication of what a person means. ... But as a writer and performer, I want to get paid for what I do. ... Music is wonderful. Especially if there's some kind of content to it. ... We probably, as primitive people, made music before we actually had a language, and that's where language comes from."

Little Richard: "I was washing dishes at the Greyhound bus station at the time. I couldn't talk back to my boss man. He would bring all these pots back for me to wash, and one day I said, 'I've got to do something to stop this man bringing back all these pots to me to wash,' and I said, 'Awap bop a lup bop a wop bam boom, take 'em out!' ... When you sit down and think about what rock 'n' roll music really is, then you have to change that question. Played up-tempo, you call it rock 'n' roll; at a regular tempo, you call it rhythm and blues. ... Elvis may have been the king of rock'n'roll, but I am the queen."

Bernie Taupin: "'Captain Fantastic' was the first album in history to enter the (American) album chart at number one. We did it for a second time after that. Now that's not a boast, that's frightening...The process of doing it was unique because I wrote the songs in the order they were recorded, so it was written like a story. ... We may have limped onto Broadway as the underdogs, but underdogs bite back occasionally. ... Usually out of town, I was led to believe, you don't expect profits. You expect to lose money or break even, but word of mouth was so good every show pretty much sold out."

Elton John: "It turned out so well because it was the first album that I could identify with in terms of lyrics. ('Captain Fantastic') It was passionate. ... I could associate myself with every song. ... It's a unique album in our history. This was the story of us. ... 'Curtains', the lyrics to that are so beautiful because it sums up our friendship so much, and our relationship. ... There's a lot of Liberace in me and as a gay artist as such, but I am an openly gay man. A lot of my audience is the same kind of audience that Liberace would have had and they didn't seem to give a s**t. I think that's so great. ... I am such a Luddite when it comes to making music. All I can do is write at the piano."

Moby: "It just seems like musicians want to sell a few records and put out a perfume line, and I think it's so sad that there are so many musicians who don't want to change the world. ... I learned in the last few years that it's really unhappy and really unsustainable to try and base your well being on something as arbitrary as record sale and critical acclaim and the interests of the public. All of those things are so fickle. So my approach now to music is I want to make records that I love, and I hope that other people love them, then that's OK."

Isaac Hayes: "I felt what I had to say musically could not be said in two minutes and thirty seconds. So I did my thing. If it was a hit, great. But I just did what I wanted creatively. ... I'd been hearing things in my head for a long time, but I'd been restricted. Now I did what I felt. ... When I had the opportunity to do my own thing, that's when I thought about strings and different chords...The audience said 'Whoa'. When I finished the tune, there were maybe a few dry eyes in the house. But not many. I got a standing ovation. ... They're standing on our shoulders. Some of them don't realize it because they sample me so much...Have you ever wondered why young people take to music like fish to water? Maybe it's because music is fun. Plain and simple. It opens up their minds to dream great dreams about where they can go and what they can do when they get older. ... Elvis was a giant and influenced everyone in the business. ... Every artist would like to have something that lives a long, long time."

Otis Redding: "When I go into a studio to record a song, I only have a title and maybe a first verse. The rest I make up as we're recording. ... If it hadn’t been for Little Richard, I would not be here. I entered the music business because of Richard; he is my inspiration. I used to sing like Little Richard, his Rock ‘n’ Roll stuff, you know. Richard has soul, too. My present music has a lot of him in it. ... This loneliness won't leave me alone. ... I've got to go now, but I don’t want to."

Bob Geldoff: "Those songs are about getting out; they're not about getting out of family. It wasn't about how family life was curtailing because I didn't know family life. ... Music is still above all else the thing that does it for me...Music is what I must do, business is what I need to do and politics is what I have to do. ... Playing live is the thing I love doing best. ... Music can't change the world. ... I'd always thought the Rats were good fun, but one of the very nice things about being of Saga age is that I can actually look back and think, When I was younger I was in a great band. It was always a collective thing. ... This is the most important tour in Ireland since the Rats because I've built up a body of songs, since we split, as a solo artist. ... If you were a pretty boy pop singer, it would wreck you, growing older. ... You can't trust politicians. It doesn't matter who makes a political speech. It's all lies--and it applies to any rock star who wants to make a political speech as well."

Eminem: "I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit. ... If there's not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something. ... I need drama in my life to keep making music. ... A lot of my rhymes are just to get chuckles out of people. Anybody with half a brain is going to be able to tell when I'm joking and when Im serious. ... I don't have to say anything to my fans about my music and try to explain it, because they get it, and that's why they are fans, do you know what I mean? ... A lot of truth is said in jest. ... My only scheme was to be a rapper...If I said in one of my songs that my English teacher wanted to have sex with me in junior high, all I'm saying, is that I'm not gay, you know? People confuse the lyrics for me speaking my mind. I don't agree with that lifestyle, but if that lifestyle is for you, then it's your business...Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism. ... Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you're always going to find a hip-hop tape; that's all I buy, that's all I live, that's all I listen to, that's all I love."

Buddy Holly: "I'm not trying to stump anybody. It's the beauty of the language that I'm interested in...We went over there and were making a dub to send in to various companies and see if we could possibly do anything in the line of the music business, and Norm asked us if we'd like representing in to Brunswick Records in New York. And so we told him, 'Yeah, go ahead, we can't lose!' ... Well, we have three records going right now and, of course, the first one was 'That'll Be the Day'. Our first release. And then we have a new one out by The Crickets, called 'Oh, Boy!' and 'Not Fade Away', and then there's one out, it's the same group but it's under my name--I don't know why they did it that way--but they put one out under my name called 'Peggy Sue' and 'Everyday'. ... Well, it's usually not the record, doesn't seem like to me, that's the best that does it, seems like it's the first one out and ours was the first, seeing as we wrote the song and all, and usually it's the original recording that does it on that kind of a deal, seems like to me. ... Yeah you can do your four or five songs and really, I mean it feels good to play to an audience that's watching instead of an audience that's either interested in something else like in nightclubs...We like this kind of music. Jazz is strictly for stay-at-homes. ... Without Elvis none of us could have made it. ... If anyone asks you what kind of music you play, tell him 'pop'. Don't tell him 'rock'n'roll' or they won't even let you in the hotel...Death is very often referred to as a good career move."

Sam Cooke: "The song just came to me. I never scuffled with the words or anything. It was like it was somebody else's song. What do you think of it, Bob? Just tell me whatever comes to your mind. ... It was something I enjoyed doing and decided to give it a couple years, though I'm not making a lot of money now either! ... (to a policeman) You push the f**king car. You may not know who I am, but your wife does. Go home and ask your wife about me. ... (about performing to a racially segregated audience) S**t, forget it. Cancel it. ... (his press reslease) I am against his policy and the policy of his promoter to play to a forced segregated audience. This is the first time that I have refused to perform at show time simply because I have not been faced with a situation similar to this one. I hope by refusing to play to a segregated audience it will help to break down racial segregation here and if I am ever booked here again it won't be necessary to do a similar thing. ... (last words) Lady, you shot me."

Marvin Gaye: "I want to put out something, something that you can feel. There’s only so much in this world that you can write and sing about. It’s the same thing over and over again anyway, and to me its gets a little boring sometimes. ... I hope to refine music, study it, try to find some area that I can unlock. I don't quite know how to explain it but it's there. These can't be the only notes in the world, there's got to be other notes some place, in some dimension, between the cracks on the piano keys. ... I think if you listen closer you’ll find a spiritual connotation in all my songs, even the ones that appear to be highly sexual...I am not going to be dictated to by fans, certainly. I am dictated enough to by my record company to last me a million years. ... Great artists suffer for the people. ... I would like to be remembered as one of, if not the greatest, artists to have walked the face of earth."

Tom Petty: "You're dealing in magic--it's this intangible thing that has to happen. And to seek it out too much might not be a good idea. Because, you know, it's very shy, too. But once you've got the essence of them, you can work songs and improve them. You see if there's a better word, or a better change. ... I'm frustrated by what I hear. Maybe it's not meant for me. Personally, I'm way too bright for a lot of the hip-hop lyrics to affect. I'm much too smart to think that jewelry or how cool I am is really going to change much about my personality. If you're dumb enough that it entertains you, have a great time. But I am seeking more than that. ... It's funny how the music industry is enraged about the Internet and the way things are copied without being paid for. But you know why people steal the music? Because they can`t afford the music."

David Byrne: "I didn't have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff. ... Often I don't know what the song means until it's finished. Sometimes months later. I don't think that's bad. It implies that I don't know what I'm doing but--I think if you're able to follow your instincts, then that's knowing what you're doing. ... The better a singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying. ... All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label."

Jimmy Buffet: "You know, as a writer, I'm more of a listener than a writer, 'cuz if I hear something I will write it down. And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them. ... There's something missing in the music industry today, and it's music. Songs you hear don't last, it's just product fed to you by the industry. ... We are the people our parents warned us about."

Angus Young: "I'm sick to death of people saying we've made 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we've made 12 albums that sound exactly the same. ... Its just rock and roll. A lot of times we get criticized for it. A lot of music papers come out with: 'When are they going to stop playing these three chords?' If you believe you shouldn't play just three chords it's pretty silly on their part. To us, the simpler a song is, the better, 'cause it's more in line with what the person on the street is. ... We can't sit on our arses and say the world owes us a living because we've paid our dues. Me, I think if I fluff a note I'm robbing the kids. You're gonna pour it all on until you drop, so even if they hate you they can still say 'At least they tried.'"

Brian Ferry: "I like my own lyrics, but I don't write as prolifically as I would like to. So that's probably why I went into the whole world of interpretation. ... The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song. ... When you get music and words together, that can be a very powerful thing. ... As far as the words are concerned it's a bit like an actor tackling Shakespeare. I like finding the melodies that Bob Dylan's hidden away in there. ... You can never get silence anywhere nowadays, have you noticed? ... But when I started writing songs, I stopped painting completely, and the only art things I do are connected to the career, like album sleeves and, to some extent, posters and things like that. ... Music is just something that comes to you. You don't question it. ... I like the fact that music is more abstract. ... I mean, there are so many of his songs that I like that I could easily do that one day...I didn't really want to give up music. ... But I don't write so much now, because they're too painful."

John Oates: "The idea was to take these great songs, take them out of their production style and their dated recording style, and show them for the songs that they are--as if you had just played them on an acoustic guitar. It's all about timeless songwriting, really. ... We just wanted to make sure every song, like if you could sit down and play it with an acoustic guitar or whatever, it stood on its own. ... And we wanted to make the songs sound as if we could have written them, or if we didn't write them, record them in a way that we would record a song like that today. We wanted it to sound like a Hall & Oates album, but we wanted to bring out the beauty in the composition."

Barry Manilow: "I am nervous that the craft of songwriting is taking a nose dive. And since I'm a songwriter and I connect with an interpretative, you know, interpretation of a song, I miss it. I just miss it. ... They were writing real well-crafted lyrics. ... There's one part of me that is very grateful for these singers who continue to introduce these brilliant songs to a younger generation that might not know them. And, of course, there's another part of me that is appalled by the dreadful versions of them. ... I have been in the music business for too long and I've heard the best, and I know what the best is, and when I hear people attempting to do it and they don't know what they're doing, it just ruins my day."

Roy Acuff: "There were people coming in here from New York, California, Chicago, all different places that had publishing companies, trying to buy my songs. ... Everything was dark, until I found the fiddle. If it had not come along I don’t know what I would have become. ... Turn loose and have fun. Give the audience a show. ... Don't be a blueprint. Be an original. ... Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes. ... See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time."

Carly Simon: "Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music. ... I've gone through the village of my songwriting and my artistry, and I've gone through lots of different phases, including one where it has been very quiet and abandoned me for a few years. ... I always sang standards because the songs I wrote for myself weren't as easy to sing."

Pete Seeger: "I write a song because I want to. I think the moment you start writing it to make money, you're starting to kill yourself artistically. ... Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history. ... Songs won't save the planet, but neither will books or speeches. Songs are sneaky things; they can slip across borders."

Robbie Robertson: "It would be nice to abandon the verse-chorus-bridge structure completely, and make it so none of these things are definable. ... Make up new names for them. Instead of a bridge, you can call it a highway, or an overpass. ... Music should never be harmless. ... I remember from my earliest years, people speaking, you know, in a certain kind of rhythm and telling stories and sharing experiences in a way that was different in Indian country than it was other places. And I was really struck by this and obviously very affected by it, because it's always come out in my songs."

Jimmy Page: "My vocation is more in composition really than anything else--building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army. ... I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened. ... I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising. ... I don't think the critics could understand what we were doing."

Robert Plant: "The essence of my lyrics is the desire for peace and harmony. That's all anyone has ever wanted. How could it become outdated? ... We are trying to communicate a fulfilled ideal. Does anybody remember laughter? ... I am a reflection of what I sing. Sometimes I have to get serious because the things I've been through are serious. ... The way I see it, rock n' roll is folk music."

Paul Simon: "It's very helpful to start with something that's true. If you start with something that's false, you're always covering your tracks. Something simple and true, that has a lot of possibilities, is a nice way to begin. ... I don't think that Simon and Garfunkel as a live act compares to Simon and Garfunkel as a studio act. ... Artie is a singer, and I'm a writer and player and a singer. We didn't work together on a creative level and prepare the songs. I did that...I think 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. ... 'The Boxer' was a really nice record. But I don't think I've written any great songs. Having a track record to live up to and the history of successes had become a hindrance. It becomes harder to break out of what people expect you to do. ... Not every song I write is ecstasy. And it can happen only one time. After that, when you sing the same melody and words, it's pleasure, but you don't get wiped out. ... I question what emotion Manilow touches. People are entertained by him. But are they emotionally moved? I don't believe anything that Barry Manilow sings."

Melissa Manchester: "Everybody wants to write a hit song, but in Nashville people want to write the best song, which was my original intention as a singer/songwriter. ... I left because I could no longer make records that sounded less and less like me. I tried to please people instead of believing in my own strength, until the only thing I could do was walk away."

Bill Monroe: "Bluegrass is wonderful music. I'm glad I originated it. ... It's got a hard drive to it. It's Scotch bagpipes and old-time fiddling. It's blues and jazz, and it has a high lonesome sound. It's plain music that tells a story. It's played from my heart to your heart, and it will touch you. ... I was determined to carve out a music of my own. I didn't want to copy anybody. ... I'm a farmer with a mandolin and a high tenor voice. ... Practice every time you get a chance. ... (on his uncle Pendleton Vandiver) Maybe if I hadn't of heard him, I'd have never learned anything about music at all. Learning his numbers gave me something to start on. One thing that he learnt me how to do was to keep time, and the shuffle that he had on the bow was the most perfect time that you ever heard. I give him credit for all of my timing."

James Taylor: "I started being a songwriter pretending I could do it, and it turned out I could...To be a musician, especially a singer/songwriter--well, you don't do that if you have a thriving social life. You do it because there's an element of alienation in your life...I wish I could say, 'Oh, that would be great to write a song about.' But what I'm doing is assembling and minimally directing what is sort of unconsciously coming out. It's not something I can direct or control. I just end up being the first person to hear these songs. That's what it feels like...that I don't feel as though I write them. Then there's a phase when you button it up and finish it. But it all starts with a lightning strike. A melody will suggest itself in the context of whatever I'm playing, and then the cadence will suggest words. And those words don't come from a conscious place. I typically will work on a lyric in a three-ring binder. On the right side, I'll write the lyric, and on the left side, I put in alternate things."

Tracy Chapman: "My older sister encouraged me from early on and bought me one of the first guitars I had. She listened to all of the crappy songs that I wrote when I was 8 years old and encouraged me to keep doing it. ... Songwriting is a very mysterious process. It feels like creating something from nothing. It's something I don't feel like I really control. ... After it's finished, sometimes I can trace a path that goes back to the possible source of inspiration. ... I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about...I often write either really early in the morning, or really late at night. ... Some things remain fragments, just the lyrics and melodies or a line or two or a verse. ... The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together. ... I see some recurring themes: things that feel threaded together, some symbolic references, and songs about some of the big questions, like death. There are a lot of references to weather, too!"

Peter Townshend: "What I took back, because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father, was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh. ... Songwriting is best. It's the hardest--finest--tightest. It also requires the most discipline. ... The problem for me, still today, is that I write purely with one dramatic structure and that is the rite of passage. I'm not really skilled in any other. Rock and roll itself can be described as music to accompany the rite of passage. ... The Kinks were much more quintessentially English. I always think that Ray Davies should one day be Poet Laureate. He invented a new kind of poetry and a new kind of language for Pop writing that influenced me from the very, very, very beginning. ... I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf."

Todd Rundgren: "I don't have the same restrictions that other people do because I never painted myself into a corner. I've always done things that didn't necessarily fit the form. I've never felt limited in that respect in terms of songwriting. ... 'One Long Year' was just a song here and there, and it was meant to reflect the mood that I was in but unfortunately it also reflected too little of any particular thing rather than hanging together as a whole album. ... Singles needed to come back. And what I tried to do in my online experiment was to change the rules for myself and make available at a more regular pace the fruits of my labour, for people who decided they wanted to support my recordings."

Linda Ronstadt: "I can draw with sound. That's the most useful thing I learned in terms of what my craft is. ... The arrangements were mine. They were little lines and stuff that I had written myself. ... I sat down with Wendy Waldman and we wrote a song. ... And I was locked into this idea that vocals didn't count, melodies didn't count, songwriting craftsmanship didn't count. The only thing that counted was high arching guitar solos. ... Elvis Costello, who I think is writing the best new stuff around, wrote three of the songs. I sent him a message: 'Send me some more songs, just keep thinking about the money.'"

Brian Setzer: "With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues...The songwriting has never really stepped forward from the '50's. ... I can't tell you how many people have asked me to show them Stray Cat Strut and that little diminished run on the C. I guess my brain is wired backwards. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but I did. ... Since the big band started I'm just always swamped with movies and things. It certainly pays the bills and it's very satisfying, because I get to write all these big charts and all this crazy music."

Usher: "I learned how music works dealing with Jermaine Dupri, and I learned how image works dealing with Puff Daddy. ... Singing is an acting role within itself...I've gone through a lot of trial and error to find what works and what doesn't. With that comes an understanding of how to offer the same opportunities to other artists. ... In my opinion the world is in need of real soul music. ... I'm a flamboyant type of guy, a cooler version of Liberace. ... I'm a younger Morgan Freeman. ... I've been working so hard, I'm about to have a Mariah Carey."

Rod Stewart: "What I do now is all my dad's fault, because he bought me a guitar as a boy, for no apparent reason. ... I wrote some of my best love songs ever when I was unhappy and my saddest love songs when I was very much in love. When I wrote 'You’re in My Heart', which is an uplifting song, I had just broken up with--Now who had I broken up with?. ... Half the battle is selling music, not singing it. It's the image, not what you sing."

Barry Gibb: "When I was about ten and Robin and Maurice about seven, we started writing songs. Now that's a bit young for writing songs and we certainly didn't write anything that was worth anything. We wrote one song called 'Turtle Dove' and another about a year after that called 'Let Me Love You'. We were just little kids sitting at home thinking, 'Let's write songs.' ... My initials are B. G. and a disc jockey named Bill Gates suggested that that's what we should call ourselves--the Bee Gees. ... From 'Jive Talking' on, we've had three platinum albums with all our own material, have had hits with our songs by other artists, but our songwriting has never been mentioned. ... When 'Jive Talking' became a hit people started saying that we had stepped down to be a disco group which was sort of a put down to disco music as well. We don't think disco is bad music--we think it's happy and has a wide appeal. It's for people to dance to. That's what it's all about. It was a departure from the ballad style we were most often associated with. And we had been writing about politics and saving the world for so many years, we decided to try something lighthearted, and we did. ... We write together more than anything else. We find that bashing it between each other is the best way for us. And we do use our voices a lot in our writing. ... A title can always inspire a songwriter. We write a lot of titles down and give them a lot of thought. ... We don't write it down until we have the structure pretty well set. We get the song to the point where we can more or less hear the finished record in our heads. ... Experiment and failure, experiment and failure, and experiment and success. ... We've been doing this for twenty years now and after all that time we've learned a lot about writing songs."

Maurice Gibb: "I suppose being his twin made me understand Robin that much more easily. ... Barry seems to be more flamboyant merely because he gets more interviews to talk about it. ... Everybody who knows us knows we always have a good time. ... Harmonies are nice. ... I was always the sexy bass player in the background while Robin stood centre. Barry and I played it up a bit, gave 'em a bit of thigh. ... I write the music because I can't really write lyrics. But I can write chords like Robin's never heard of. So I provide the music for them to add the lyrics to. ... I'll be honest. We copied everyone: the Beatles, the Bachelors. It was the only way people would even listen to you. ... I'm quite proud of my piano playing. Robin's never played a note on the piano at our recording sessions. I just wish I could be appreciated musically now. ... It's very hard to write a song alone. It's only by jamming that you can get a song together. ... When we write, we complement each other. We wrote six songs, Barry and I, while Robin was ill during the American tour, and they were terrible until Robin came back, and then everything worked out. ... We don't mind being ripped apart, but don't rip the songs apart. They're like our kids."

Robin Gibb: " We don't plan our songs. We'll take the ideas as far as we can until we reach a point where we seem to be blocked, and then we go back again and try to work through it. ... Nobody ever asks about our songwriting. Some people don't even know we write our own songs. ... We also write to rhythms. ... The Bee Gees were always heavily influenced by black music. As a songwriter, it's never been difficult to pick up on the changing styles of music out there, and soul has always been my favourite genre. ... I'm really happy that I got to work with such fresh talent. In a day when record companies are not particularly good at encouraging young, talented songwriters to come forward and get exposure, I think it's important to give tomorrow's songwriters the opportunity. ... With Maurice suddenly going, I realised--I think I've matured. I don't take things lightly any more. ... You're looking at the Bee Gees right now."

Roger Nichols: "A lot of it is experimenting with a song after you've finished it to see what improvements can be made. Sometimes you come up with an improvement and the only explanation you can give for that improvement is that it feels better. ... Bridges are important and shouldn't be approached offhandedly. I try to avoid the obvious, although I may not be doing that on an intellectual level. On a bridge if you can surprise the listener that bridge is going to stay with him longer and it won't just be a point in the song when the listener's ear is vamping waiting to get back to the song's main melody. ... In terms of experimenting, after I've finished a melody I generally play it in two or three different keys to see if anything is happening chord wise. Many times I'll hear a new chord in a different key. ... I basically compose the melody line by singing the melody that occurs to me as I play the undercarriage on the piano or guitar. Ballads seem to come easier to me and I would say that I don't have a great rhythmical sense. Bacharach composes his melodies in his head and with his voice because his expertise on the piano leads his hands to the familiar. ... Paul Williams had come to A & M with a guy named Biff Rose with whom he had written a couple of tunes. Paul and I wrote steadily for four years and got a lot of action, but no big hit. He had come up with some lyric lines. I played him what I had and he said, 'We've Only Just Begun' and spit out the entire lyric as I was playing him the melody for the first time."

Paul Williams: "I know that songwriting is probably the most mystical of the things that I do, in a sense that I'm not sure where it came from or how it started. It's something that I just knew how to do. It's something that just happens. ... Very seldom do I write words and have somebody put the music to them. If I'm writing lyric and music at the same time, I usually finish the music rather quickly. ... The real task was to write songs that were believably bad. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had in my life."

Neil Sedaka: "I knew I had to have a hit. I would get no more chances. Analyzing what they had in common I discovered they had many similar elements: harmonic rhythm, placement of the chord changes, choice of harmonic progressions, similar instrumentation, vocal phrases, drum fills, content, even the timbre of the lead solo voice. I decided to write a song that incorporated all these elements in one record."

Brian Eno: "Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it's different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He's very quick. ... For me it's always contingent on getting a sound--the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it's always sound first and then the line afterwards. ... As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me. ... I take sounds and change them into words. ... I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice. ... Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don't fit in a very interesting way. ... My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing. ... People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words. ... The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important. ... Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others. ... When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me. ... Aggressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable. ... I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper."

John Fogerty: "For years I walked around with the phrase 'Green River' because I had seen that on a soda fountain drink when I was probably 8 or 9 years old, and I went, 'Gee, I like that.' Another one was 'Lodi', which I thought sounded really cool. I got this cheap little empty plastic notebook at my local drugstore, and bought a little slab of filler paper and the very first title I wrote in it was 'Proud Mary'. I had no idea what that title meant. ... But I think beautiful is simple and elegant, like a ballad with simple harmony. ... I work hard at that, but the fact that there are a lot of good songs means there are also a lot of really bad songs I've written that you never hear. I usually destroy unreleased material. It has a way of coming back to haunt you. ... I wrote that song for my wife, and it's what some guy who's sitting under a tree would be singing to the woman of his life, telling her how wonderful she is. To me, that's more lasting than something that sounds like it belongs on a movie Soundtrack."

Phil Spector: "I wonder how Michael Jackson started out as a black man and ended up as a white girl. But in a world where carpenters get resurrected, anything is possible. ... I'm dealing in rock'n'roll. I'm, like, I'm not a bona fide human being. ... You have to conquer yourself, and take control of yourself. I make fun of a lot of people, like Brian Wilson, because they don't have control over themselves. I think they're largely phonies. They use their illness as an excuse. I have no mercy for that. He does interviews; he writes his autobiography about me. I know, I know, I know. It's sad, you know, but I don't know whether you can feel sorry for untalented people. Maybe he's not that talented. Maybe he's overrated. Maybe. Jimi Hendrix was not overrated. Janis Joplin was not overrated. I feel sorry that they died, because they shouldn't have. They should have been a little smarter. Brian Wilson outlived his brothers for God's friggin' sake. How do you figure that? Carl Wilson--pretty bright guy. Dennis--pretty silly guy; y'know, a muppet. And Brian outlives them? But maybe Brian wasn't that talented to begin with, and we're burdening him with that. We make these people more than they are. I don't feel sorry for Brian Wilson; I never thought he was that talented to begin with. I'm glad he idolizes; I wish that Jimi Hendrix idolized me. I heard he did. I'd be more impressed if somebody with a brain idolized me."

Brian Wilson: "I wanted to keep trying to beat Spector at his records. I kept trying to whip him. When it all started going crazy was when I couldn't. ... The idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio...well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else. ... My state of being has been elevated, because I've been exercising, writing songs. ... No masterpiece ever came overnight. A person's masterpiece is something that you nurture along"

Carole King: "I'm a songwriter first. ... I didn't want to be an artist. ... In my career I have never felt that my being a woman was an obstacle or an advantage. I guess I've been oblivious. ... Sensitive, humbug. Everybody thinks I'm sensitive. Wait until they hear my new album. ... There is a downside to having one of the biggest-selling albums ever. ... Everyone has been telling these great James Taylor stories, and nothing for me says it better than this song. ... The song is the center; the song is the key. If you don't have a good song you don't have anything by my value...I love that I wrote with all kinds of different people."

Bob Marley: "One good thing about music, when it hits--you feel no pain. ... My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die. ... Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen. ... My music will go on forever. Maybe it's a fool say that, but when me know facts me can say facts. My music will go on forever."

Cat Stevens: 'Peace Train' is a song I wrote, the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions of human beings. ... The words of the songs speak for themselves. ... Music is part of God's universe. ... In those days a concert was a personal experience. I wanted to be as close as possible to the audience, and of course big stadiums didn't enable you to do that. It wasn't my style. ... Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally. ... If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are. ... Music is a lady that I still love because she gives me the air that I breathe. We need all sorts of nourishment. And music satisfies and nourishes the hunger within ourselves for connection and harmony."

Ann Wilson: "All the songs that were written for that album are just all our first sophomore songs. So they're all from real life. Very sweet and very innocent. I think the theme of the album probably was just that it was our first record. ... Back when we were first making records, you didn't just make the music, you put a great deal of energy into the way it looked, and every word that was written on the whole thing."

Willie Nelson: "I like myself better when I'm writing regularly. ... I was influenced a lot by those around me--there was a lot of singing that went on in the cotton fields. ... I'm a country songwriter and we write cry-in-your-beer songs. That's what we do. Something that you can slow dance to...I never gave up on country music because I knew what I was doing was not that bad. ... Most of the stuff I've read about me has been true."

Prince: "I try not to repeat myself. It's the hardest thing in the world to do--there are only so many notes one human being can master. ... One of the reasons we’re going out on the road and why we’re titling this tour as 'Musicology' is because we want to bring that back. We want to teach the kids and musicians of the future the art of songwriting, the art of real musicianship. ... Yes, it is different all the time. The main way that something comes is fully completed. And the fun part then is just listening. When I'm writing, some days the pen just goes. I'm not in charge and I'm almost listening outside of it. That's when I realize that we all have to start looking at life as a gift. It's like listening to a color and believing that these colors have soul-mates and once you get them all together the painting is complete. ... Do you know how many of my songs I own? Not a single one. Out of 16 albums, not a single one. They won't belong to my children. I won't be able to pass them on to my grandchildren. They belong to someone else. Why? It's my music. ... What if I don't want to sing 'Purple Rain' every time I go on stage? The fans don't want that, either. It's my music, they're my songs. ... You can always renegotiate a record contract. You just go in and say, 'You know, I think my next project will be a country-and-western album.'"

John Prine: "I just tried to come up with some honest songs. What I was writing about was real plain stuff that I wasn't sure was going to be interesting to other people. But I guess it was. ... I wrote it just to get my father's attention. ... It's a different thing when I sit down with (collaborator) Keith Sykes or some of my buddies in Nashville. It's more likely that I'll actually make the appointment and I'll have some fun and maybe at the end of the day we'll get a song out of it. But I've never had any discipline whatsoever. I just wait on a song like I was waiting for lightning to strike. And eventually--usually sometime around 3 in the morning--I'll have a good idea. By the time the sun comes up, hopefully, I'll have a decent song."

Ian Anderson: "Martin, Dave, and I get together and rough out a few songs and put them on cassettes for some reference. ... With the actual music, I'm not interested in objectivity, quite the opposite. I want a solely and totally subjective experience. ... I can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton. ... A lot of pop music is about stealing pocket money from children."

Neil Young: "I didn't really know what I was doing when I started. I just started writing songs. After two songs I just continued to explore it. ... I don't force it. If you don't have an idea and you don't hear anything going over and over in your head, don't sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn. ... I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time...With a lot of songs on this record, one verse doesn't relate to the next verse. I don't think that one day really relates to the next day in life. ... My music isn't anything but me. It has jazz in it, and rock'n'roll, and it has an urgency to it. ... My songs speak for themselves."

Eddie Van Halen: "Everything comes to me while I'm sitting on the pot (toilet). ... David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon--Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music. ... The hell with the rules. If it sounds right, then it is. ... The whole story behind 'Eruption' is unusual. It wasn't even supposed to be on the album. I showed up early one day and started to warm up because I had a gig on the weekend and I wanted to practice my solo guitar spot. Our producer, Ted Templeman, happened to walk by and he asked,'What's that? Let's put it on tape!' So I took one pass at it and they put it on the record. I didn't even play it right. There's a mistake at the top end of it. To this day whenever I hear it I always think,'Man, I could've played it better.' I think they put it there because it was different, but I'm not really sure."

Boudleaux Bryant: "As far as my creative urge is concerned, I do sit down and write my own music. ... I'll tell you a writer who I think is a genius: Ray Stevens. He comes up with some of the most fantastic novelty ideas. Dolly Parton also writes well. I like a lot of songs, a lot of writers. ... (about 'Bye Bye Love') That phrase just just dropped into my mind. It was written in the car actually. The chorus was written in my head in five minutes. The same morning the Everly Brothers took the song, Gordon Terry turned it down and asked if we had something stronger. Elvis Presley turned it down too. We wrote for the Everly Brothers after 'Bye Bye Love'. They recorded 27 of them, 12 of which were hits."

Felice Bryant: "The only style God has blessed us with is what people seem to like. ... It doesn't bother me if a song doesn't get recorded, because I feel somebody down the road, maybe not even born yet, has his name on it. ... What does hurt is when a song is recorded wrong. ... I was singing 'O Solo Mio' when they cut the umbilical cord. ... I went back to writing poetry and song lyrics, which I had done as a child. Boudleaux would come home at night and I'd have dinner ready for him. He'd say, 'Well, what have you done today?' One day I showed him some of my song lyrics. ... A lot of them are remnants that don't go anywhere in the beginning. Then one day we'll run across them and they'll practically finish themselves."

Stephen Stills: "I've written good songs, bad songs, mediocre songs, great songs. I suppose Ralph Gleason (music critic) was the first one to tell me I'm a great songwriter. ... The song's got to be there in the first place. A great song can be either enhanced or destroyed by the production. The juxtaposition of a fine poem with a good arrangement and good musicianship with a good mood--a good paradoxical mood, like a blues to a very happy track. That makes a good record. ... I sit down and start playing the guitar. If nothing comes I put it down. If something comes I pursue it until I get bored. I know better than to force it. ... Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Albert Camus said any author who will not rewrite is not doing his job. Talent without discipline is worthless. ... A lot of people write very insipid songs that turn out to be enormous hits. ... The feel is first. My phraseology comes naturally and I don't mess with it. Sometimes I'll do something clever, but I try not to be clever just to be clever--that would be contrived. ... Sometimes a guitar lick will set up a song; a line will set up a song; a chorus will set up a song; an idea will set up a song. I'm not a formula writer. I'll find myself doing an ABAB just for the symmetry of it. ... If I've got too many verses, I'll cut out two verses and then take the meaning of the song and condense it. ... I damn well try to make my collaborator happy. I'm wide open for whatever I get hit with from him, but in case of a tie, the final analysis is mine."

Janis Joplin: "I always wanted to be an artist, whatever that was, like other chicks want to be stewardesses. ... All my life I just wanted to be a beatnik. Meet all the heavies, get stoned, get laid, have a good time. That's all I ever wanted. Except I knew I had a good voice and I could always get a couple of beers off of it. ... Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That's what music is to me. ... On stage, I make love to 25,000 different people, then I go home alone. ... People, whether they know it or not, like their blues singers miserable. They like their blues singers to die afterwards. ... Besize, honey, this Janis's tour so you better pay attention to me, motherf**ker! Don't mind me, man, I'm just f**kin' with ya."

Chrissie Hynde: "I've done lots of songs for film soundtracks and things like that--stuff I'm not ashamed of, but that doesn't represent my legacy with the Pretenders. ... I think domesticity certainly doesn't make it easy to write, you know, because you've got a lot of distractions and I think a writer is always looking for distractions. ... A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss. ... Yeah, the industry has always been both the enemy and the best friend of the artist. They need each other. That's the bottom line."

Beck: "Originally, the lyrics to 'Girl' were really upbeat, and then it didn't work for me somehow. You need the dichotomy. If you're doing something happy and light, you need the shadows. ... I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out. ... There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from 'Midnite Vultures' to 'Sea Change' that's never been released. ... You have to shelve a lot of your inspiration. There's only so much you can do with one record. ... Set your guitars and banjos on fire and before you write a song, smoke a pack of whiskey and it'll all take care of itself. ... I did that Grammys thing--I did a little freeform poem."

John Mayall: "I write songs about real things. The subject dictates the mood and it goes from there, really. ... I never really thought about becoming a professional musician. ... I also went to art school and learned to play a piano there, but I play by ear. ... I always make it a point to pick songs on which players really shine. ... Working with people, the musical part is one thing but the personal part is totally different and just as critical. If the friendship is there and it's a lasting friendship, then it will take care of itself. ... You have to pack as much as you can in an hour or 70 minutes. This time around it was 15 songs, so it was a challenge to get them all the right length so you could get them all on. ... There's no pain in any of them. They're memories and recollections of time we spent together as musicians, and the stories that were going on at the time. They're diaries, really. They all have pleasant memories. ... The biggest change I have seen is that it seems the audiences are getting younger and there are more people starting to play at an earlier age."

Carl Perkins: "I felt out of place when 'Blue Suede Shoes' was Number One. I stood on the Steel Pier in 1956 in Atlantic City. and the Goodyear blimp flew over with my name in big lights. And I stood there and shook and actually cried. That should have been something that would elevate a guy to say, 'Well, I've made it.' But it put fear in me. ... After all those days in the cotton fields, the dreams came true on a gold record on a piece of wood. It's in my den where I can look at it every day. I wear it out lookin' at it. ... That rockabilly sound wasn't as simple as I thought it was...(on Bill Monroe) Some of those old songs of his are so close to rockabilly it’s scary. ... If it helped you get your music off the ground, I'm glad you done it."

Dr. John: "The first lesson, Papoose listened to my chops and said ‘Hey, man, you can't play that s**t and get a job. What are you, crazy? That outta-meter, foot-beater jive. You gotta play stuff like this.' Then he started playing legitimate blues, which I was on the trail of with T-Bone Walker. It was the Lightning shuffle that was off the wall as far as Papoose was concerned. ... It was a special time in New Orleans. The radio stations played basically New Orleans music, and I thought that was what the whole world heard. ... We used to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week, on Bourbon Street. That was real easy to do because there were so many clubs. ... It was like a little history of New Orleans music--from way back in the 1850s to the 1950s. ... The most important thing to remember is this: New Orleans music was not invented. It kind of grew up naturally joyously, just for fun. That’s it. Just plain down-to-earth happy-times music. When I was growing up in the Third Ward, I used to think, 'Oh, man, this music makes me feel the best!'. ... My aunt was a groovy old broad. I used to drive everybody mad playing 'Pinetop Boogie-Woogie'. ... Let us musicians get into a stretched-out New Orleans groove. ... The hardest thing to do is let the spirituality flow and turn the meat on. Doing that is creating art, radiating the 88's. ... After we cut the new record I decided I'd had enough of the mighty-coo-de-fiyo hoodoo show, so I dumped the Gris-Gris routine we had been touring with since 1967 and worked up a new act, a Mardi Gras revue featuring the New Orleans standards we had covered in Gumbo...the only thing that can beat a failure is a try."

Melanie Safka: "My mother always encouraged me. ... I worked Monday nights. I would sing all the Peter, Paul and Mary songs, four and five hours, for $20. ... I was always simply too afraid to get up and say 'this is what I am,' So I would sit there, reading the theatrical trade papers. Descriptions of the people wanted never fit me. ... (on Woodstock and 'Candles in the Rain') It was magical. I had never performed in front of so many people in my life. I had my first out-of-body experience. I was terrified, I had to leave. I started across that bridge to the stage, and I just left my body. I watched myself walk onto the stage, sit down and sing a couple of lines. And when I felt it was safe, I came back. It started to rain right before I went on and the announcer said that if you lit candles, it would help to keep the rain away. By the time I finished my set, the whole hillside was a mass of little flickering lights. ... My married name is Schekeryk. I'm not ashamed of it. I just have trouble spelling it! And very few know how to pronounce it. ... When I began to sing, I used my maiden name: Safka. For some unknown reason, when my first album came out, it carried only my first name. And that's the way it has been ever since."

Captain Beefheart: "I am a genius and there's nothing I can do about it. ... I guess the reason I use lyrics is because I'm a singer and the record companies and everybody would think I was ridiculous if I didn't use the English language. ... It's hard to use the English language. I'd rather play a tune on a horn. ... I'm lyrically less turbulent now. I'm like a woman because I have my periods, if you know what I mean. Every once in a while I get the cramps and do something far out. This album needs someplace to go, you know? So I sing with a definite woman in mind, not like those groups that have men on their mind. ... With my voice and my band, I can do anything. Believe me, I'm not compromising one damn bit on this album. Sure the changes will ruffle some feathers, but I'm fooling them all because I enjoy playing this stuff more than 'Trout Mask Replica'. ... I would just as soon play the music on the new album because when I see all those people out there taking acid to get into my music, then I don't want to play that kind of music. I don't want to make people think they've got to use some sort of elevation to get into what I do. If I did that, what kind of artist would I be? Just another phoney asshole. ... I think people have had too much to think and ought to flex their magic muscles. It takes awhile to get oriented to what I do, but people seem to be able to hear it if they give it a chance. I'd never just want to do what everybody else did. I'd be contributing to the sameness of everything. ... I don't believe in time, you know, 4/4 and all that stuff. Frank Zappa believes in time and we could never get it together. He writes all his music and gets sentimental about good old rock 'n' roll, but that's appeasement music. ... I don't do lullabyes. I'm tired of lullabyes, like The Beatles. We're the only people doing anything significant in modern music. I haven't heard anything else that gets away from mother's heartbeat. All I've heard is a rebelling against parents, and I'm tired of hearing that. ... There's no competition with our music. It can't be compared or impaired, or impaled with points or justifications. ... It means absolutely nothing, just like the sun. ... I don't think there's any way you can 'know' music. The minute you 'know' it, you stop playing, and the minute a person stops playing, the music isn't playing anymore. ... I'd always thought music was too formal, and I thought 'Well, I'll get into this and fix it.' ... It makes me itch to think of myself as Captain Beefheart. I don't even have a boat."

Peter Yarrow: "People love the music, and the music should, for them, carry on. We're not saying we're Peter, Paul and Mary. There will never be another Mary. But I'm proud of the legacy. ... I started looking at other performers in Greenwich Village and found Mary. ... We’re part of a long train ride...When people sing together, community is created. Together we rejoice, we celebrate, we mourn and we comfort each other. Through music, we reach each other's hearts and souls. Music allows us to find a connection. ... When I was in high school, I heard The Weavers sing 'If I had a Hammer" at Carnegie Hall. It was inspiring, and it showed me the extraordinary effect that music of conscience can have. ... I don't want to sell my music. I'd like to give it away because where I got it, you didn't have to pay for it. ... As an artist, I feel a synergy at work here. Because when people feel empowered and raise their voices, that, naturally, will mean raising their voices in song. The emergence of artists like Tracy Chapman and the Indigo Girls is the handwriting on the wall. The recognition of new artists that are writing from the heart is the most positive and energizing of musical evolutions. ... Music speaks louder than words."

Keith Reid: "When I first started writing, I had absolutely no control over the situation. For my first couple of years as a songwriter, I wasn't confident from one song to the next that I'd ever write another song again. I thought it was just inspiration and I had absolutely no control over it. … you know, if might never happen again. After that I started to realize that I do have some control over this. Of course, you're inspired, but in some ways you have to work at it, you have to keep your eyes open, you have to keep your ears open. You can wait for it to hit you, but you can exercise some element of direction over it. I also realized that you go through periods; people talk about writer's block, but for myself, there are just periods, you go through periods where songs seem to happen almost every day. You just get an idea or something works out. And then you'll go for a period of time and nothing seems to strike a spark. I also learned not to worry about that, you go through very creative periods, and you go through periods where you're not so bubbling over. Probably every writer learns that if you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, boy, you'd better write it down, because you won't remember it in the morning. (laughs) And like many writers, I feel that somehow when you write, that the songs are around you. It's kind of like a radio, you tune into it. You find it somewhere. ... At our first session, we cut four tracks, and 'Whiter Shade of Pale' was the one that recorded best. In those days it wasn't just a question of how good is your song? It was how good of a recording can you make? Because it was essentially live recording, and if you didn't have a great sound engineer or the studio wasn't so good, you might not get a very good-sounding record. And for some reason everything at our first studio session came out sounding really good. ... Yeah, that goes with what we were talking about earlier, the songwriting. I feel with songs that you're given a piece of the puzzle, the inspiration or whatever. In this case, I had that title, 'Whiter Shade of Pale', and I thought, There's a song here. And it's making up the puzzle that fits the piece you've got. You fill out the picture, you find the rest of the picture that that piece fits into. ... Gary and I, before we formed Procol Harum, when we were just working together as songwriters and getting into it, we had this regular deal where he lived about 40 miles from London near the ocean, and I'd jump on a train once a week and go visit him. He'd have a bunch of my lyrics and he'd play me whatever he had been working on. This particular time, though, I'd got down there and he'd been working on a tune. He said, 'What does this sound like to you?' And I said, 'Oh, conquistador.' It had a little bit of a Spanish flavor to it. I went into another room and started writing the words there and then. 99 out of 100 of those Procul Harum songs were written the words first, and then were set to music. But that particular one, the words hadn't existed before he had the musical idea. ... At the beginning of King Crimson, I think Pete Sinfield was thought of as being a band member. But that's the only one that really comes to mind. With Procol Harum, it was myself and Gary that formed the band in the first place. That's a fairly unusual situation--in my case the lyricist is sort of responsible for the band's formation."

Bobby Hart: "A high school buddy introduced me to his college mate, Curtis Lee, and asked if I could help him break into the business. When I introduced him to my manager at a recording studio, we both met Tommy Boyce and we all became good friends. Tommy and I began writing together in 1960. Tommy, my first wife, Becky and I were involved in a freeway collision driving home from a Long Beach show where Curtis was discovered by Stan Schulman, signed to Dunes Records and summoned to New York. Once there, it didnt take Curt long to convince Stan that he needed Tommy to write with. ... Tommy definitely contributed a lot more than the 'do dos'. That came about in the studio when Micky balked at singing the fast paced sixteenth note lyrics and suggested he just sing 'do dos' over the melody. ... My version is actually more astounding in that, from the time we jumped in the car and started writing the song while heading over Mulholland Drive to Kirshners rented house in Trousdale Estates, to when Tommy jumped up on Donnies coffee table with his guitar and we started playing it for him, not more that twenty minutes had elapsed! Tommy, in the back seat, had come up with a guitar riff and we had the title. That's it. We sang 'Va...al...aeal...er...ee, I love her, Va...al...aeal...er..ee'. And then we quickly added, 'There's a little verse that goes in here' and continued, 'Va..al...aeal...er...ee'. We sold it. Donnie loved it. The two little two-line verses that we came up with later took less that an additional twenty minutes. Louie Sheldons great Flaminco work, as one of your readers pointed out the first time this series ran, added greatly to the songs appeal. Although he tried to duplicate his guitar work the second time we produced the song, I don't think he was ever quite able to match the magic of his first spontaneous solos."

Grace Slick: "Through literacy you can begin to see the universe. Through music you can reach anybody. Between the two there is you, unstoppable...(on "White Rabbit") I have lived her (Alice's) story, and I admired it as a little girl...I believe the White Rabbit represents her curiosity. She has no idea how that chase is going to turn out. I admire that--when people have the guts to follow their hearts, their curiosity. ... The wiser you get on the inside, the uglier you get on the outside. The world's great gurus have beautiful things to say but they generally look like s**t. ... I didn't want to write a book. They made me do it. ... Janis Joplin knew more than I did about 'how it was', but she lacked enough armor for the inevitable hassles. She was open and spontaneous enough to get her heart trampled with a regularity that took me thirty years to experience or understand. Janis felt like an old soul, a wisecracking grandmother whom everybody loved to visit. When I was with her, I often felt like a part of her distant family, a young upstart relative who was still too full of her own sophistry to hear wisdom. Did we compliment each other? Yes, but not often enough. ... Jim Morrison was a well-built boy, larger than average, and young enough to maintain the engorged silent connection right through the residue of chemicals. ... (on Monterey Pop) It was the first time many of the bands had met and saw each other perform, so we were all really marveling at each other. It was just one good group of people after another. And different kinds of music--from Jimi Hendrix to Ravi Shankar, The Mamas and the Papas to The Who. They had a backstage area where there was food being served 24 hours a day, so everybody was wandering around meeting each other. It was just amazing."

Tom Paxton: "I was one of the first. It didn't occur to me at the time. It was just, I had begun to write a lot, and I was writing pretty much in the folk genre. I mean, I certainly had examples of people like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and Ewan MacColl. I mean, there were people writing songs. But I was one of the first of my generation to do it. It just didn't strike me as anything unique at the time. And of course, I was singing many of the songs that I was writing. But it really was many years before my shows consisted of nothing but my own songs. I did a lot of traditional songs, I did Guthrie songs, I did some of Pete's 'Where Have All the Flowers Gone' and stuff like that. But all the time I was writing, when I'd write a new song, I'd try it out in the show and see how it went. Gradually, there came to be enough songs of a good quality that I could just do my own stuff. But it was a long time before that really happened. ... I wrote a song in Paris recently. I had to get up in the middle of the night and write the thing down or it wasn't going to let me sleep. It's about hunger and the way grain markets are manipulated for profits. ... Paul Simon says he works with a complete melody down to the last note, then he writes the lyrics. But I don't work that way at all. The only time I've worked like that I had one of the few hits I've had, 'Bottle of Wine'. I should have learned from that. But I prefer to write lyrics first and then find a tune that fits them. After I write the lyrics I kind of have a shorthand melody in mind, nothing I can hum, but something I can feel where it's going. ... I don't write specifically for other artists but I'm always ecstatic when someone else records my songs. I can use the money. I don't make a lot from my records or songs."

Ric Ocasek: "I could never be a country person, sitting around trees trying to write a song. I would rather be in the middle of society, whether it's growing or crumbling...Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes. ... Your high points and your low points. High points don't last that long, it's a high and it happens. It's great at the moment but you really can't live on it. ... The most important thing to a lot of people, is to belong to something that's hip or whatever. To be a part of something that's not society, just a clique."

Steve Earle: "Sonnets are guys writing in English, imitating an Italian song form. It was a form definitely sung as often as it was recited. ... I think the criticism that I take to heart is from other writers that I respect. ... I don't really think in terms of obstacles. My biggest obstacle is always myself. ... If there is such a thing as a workaholic, I'm it, and that's what passes for leisure. ... Townes van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."

Townes Van Zandt: "I'm trying to define the relationship between man and the universe. Often it's between man and man, or man and woman, or man and the cosmos. Whatever song comes through the door I'm happy with. ... I really consider myself very fortunate. I started when I didn't have a family. It was easier then--we could play for $20 a night and still have enough left for the week. We could audition in a club on Wednesday and play on Friday. Now it seems guys go to a garage or basement and then send tapes to record companies and MTV. We used to pick up our guitar and suitcase, hit the highway and go to Oklahoma City. ... I'm lucky just to play the guitar and sing...It looks like I'm forever going to be a folk singer. ... The fact that I decided to do this, and made a little mark, is very nice. It's not something I think of day to day or minute to minute. It's mostly B.S., but very pleasant B.S. ... You've got to get a guitar, or harmonica, or piano--a guitar and harmonica are easiest to carry--and blow everything off. I mean everything. Blow off family, love, security, comfort, money, food--everything, and see what happens. Certain truths will become self-evident, or you'll starve to death. It deters a lot of people. But that's the only way to do it. ... I don't think you can ever do your best. Doing your best is a process of trying to do your best."

Justin Bieber: "I wrote the song 'Down to Earth' a few years ago, and I was really excited to record it for 'My World' album. It's a huge fan favourite. So many people feel where I'm coming from. It doesn't need any spectacular stage effects in the touring show; the best thing I can do is just sing it straight from my heart. I'm not afraid to show my emotions; if you love someone, you should tell them. If you think a girl is beautiful, you should say that. Usher says some songs work best when there's a sob in the singer's voice. You gotta let that deep feeling come through. And that's how I felt about this song. Sometimes the emotion of it is enough to bring tears to my eyes. ... I started singing about three years ago, I entered a local singing competition called Stratford Idol. The other people in the competition had been taking singing lessons and had vocal coaches. I wasn't taking it too seriously at the time, I would just sing around the house. I was only 12 and I got second place. ... I think older people can appreciate my music because I really show my heart when I sing, and it's not corny. I think I can grow as an artist, and my fans will grow with me."

Loretta Lynn: "Everyone was taking it but me and I have the kids to prove it. I write about everyday life and that's what got me into so much trouble. Women weren't supposed to talk about those things in public. (about 'The Pill") ... A woman's two cents worth is worth two cents in the music business. ... I don't like to talk about things where you're going to get one side or the other unhappy. My music has no politics. ... I don't know what it's like for a book writer or a doctor or a teacher as they work to get established in their jobs. But for a singer, you've got to continue to grow or else you're just like last night's cornbread--stale and dry. ... All I've done is try to help others, starting with my family. I never did this for myself."

Syd Barrett: "When we parted I had written everything for the group. (Pink Floyd) My leaving sort of evened things out within the group. ... I like songs that are simple...I always write with guitar. I've got this big room and I just go in and do the work. ... I do tend to take lines from other lines I like, and then write around them. ... Getting used to the studio and everything was fun, we freaked about a lot. I was working very hard then. ... I was sleeping in the woods one night after a gig we'd played somewhere, when I saw this girl appear before me. That girl was Emily. (on how he wrote 'See Emily Play') ... 'Chapter 24'--that was from the 'I Ching', there was someone around who was very into that, most of the words came straight off that. 'Lucifer Sam' was another one--it didn't mean much to me at the time, but then three or four months later it came to mean a lot."

Mariah Carey: "What I write is all from my imagination. Fact is, I haven't had time to experience all that, but that doesn`t mean to say that I don't write from the heart, because I do. I put myself in other women's shoes, I can feel their pain and joy when I think about it. It's all the same, we're all women. ... One person could say 'Hero' is a schmaltzy piece of garbage, but another person can write me a letter and say, 'I've considered commiting suicide every day of my life for the last ten years until I heard that song and I realized after all I can be my own hero.' And that, that's an unexplainable feeling, like Ive done something with my life, ya know? ... Basically, I started singing when I started talking. Music has just been my saving grace my whole life. ... A lot of people are singing about how screwed up the world is, and I don't think that everybody wants to hear about that all the time."

Jimmy Webb: "I usually know what kind of song I'm after. I know what I'm trying to do when I start. I don't always get there. But I try to visualize what it's actually going to be. ... We as songwriters are in the same position as a professional fisherman. Our fishing grounds are kind of fished out. ... The people who are making money are the ones who are writing and singing their own songs. ... I started out quite instinctively, mainly imitating songs that I heard on the radio and then the follow-up six or so months later. ... I think the individual writers are out there punching away but the market is not there. The Top 40 as we knew it was a kind of open forum where people could come and sing their songs and that's not there any more. ... Almost without exception, every great songwriter whom I know personally or that I've heard of or read about, uses a specific technique: Some free-associate on legal pads for hours and then pare lists of cross-referenced words or phrases down to related components that can by used un-lyric lines. ... Many write draft after draft--as many as twenty--of a whole lyric in composition notebooks, lining out their less fortunate efforts as they go. Some sit at a piano or hold a guitar and 'chain-of-consciousness-sing' any old thing that comes into their heads at the outset--getting a 'sound' first and working out the intricacies of meaning later. ... Another well-known writer stands in front of huge speakers and 'word-jams' to tracks that are already finished. ... Some write lyrics, some only music. Some write both and among these, many write the words first. Others write a catchy tune and add words that fit. Many move the lyrics and melody along simultaneously in careful steps. ... How can one write an original song if one hasn't heard and 'read' at least a few of the most famous and best examples that have ever been written?"

Lenny Kravitz: "I never sit down to write. When I'm moved, I do it. I just wait for it to come. You just hear it. I can't really describe writing. It's in my head. I don't think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrumentation works for those songs. ... A lot of people don't listen to the lyrics, really. A lot of people pretty much only listen to the chorus."

Kid Rock: "I've just really been into melody and lyrics and songwriting. Writing a rap, to me, is easy. I could write a rap like that. But writing songs and melodies and s**t that's hopefully going to stick around for 30, 40 years is f**king hard. ... If you have good songs and you're talented, people will eventually come to your shows, people will buy your music."

Axl Rose: "I write the vocals last, because I wanted to invent the music first and push the music to the level that I had to compete against it. ... Once the energy was figured out by the new guys, how much energy was needed to get the songs right, then it really helped in the writing and recording process of the new record. ... Yeah, I have a full studio, and that causes me great pain and pleasure."

Sly Stone: "My only weapon is my pen, I'm a songwriter. ... There is a yellow one that won't accept a black one, that won't accept a red one, that won't accept a white one. ... Don't hate the black, don't hate the white, when you get bitten, hate the bite."

Joni Mitchell: "You could write a song about some kind of emotional problem you are having, but it would not be a good song, in my eyes, until it went through a period of sensitivity to a moment of clarity. Without that moment of clarity to contribute to the song, it's just complaining. ... I can't remember anything I ever wrote. ... I have one piece of music, since 1997, and I don't see it having lyrics. Where does it go in this world? So I haven't recorded it. ... Paul Simon started piling up a lot of words, more than the bar could handle, and I stopped. ... I've written myself roles to grow into gracefully, but there is no growing into gracefully in the pop world. Basically the reason I'm so unruly in this business is because I never wanted to be a human jukebox. ... I have always thought of myself as a painter derailed by circumstance. ... I'm a painter first. I sing my sorrow and I paint my joy. ... Ira Gershwin, shame on him. I mean, some of the writing. ... Not to dismiss Gershwin, but Gershwin is the chip; Ellington was the block."

Jerry Leiber: "We didn't write songs, we wrote records. ... The Coasters were an extension of our personalities. The other artists like the Drifters were themselves but the Coasters were our persona. They were good singers for sure but they were great comedians...We had more fun than any group. That was the most fun in the world, the studio. I hated the stage. In the studio we had King Curtis on sax. We had a crew that wouldn't quit. We just had a ball. Every time you went in there was no doubt it was going to be a hit. That was when music was fun. ... (on Elvis) Our respect for him grew over time. Our disdain was the disdain we felt for white people. We were pretty high hat about it. People who thought we were white just because we were white, didn't get it. We considered ourselves black. We thought all these white kids like Ricky Nelson were a joke. ... I received a special delivery letter from Colonel Parker (Elvis' manager) with a note saying, 'Dear Jerry, we expect you here by the weekend. Enclosed you'll find your contract for the new movie score and the recording sessions that are to follow.' However, behind the cover letter was this blank page with just the space outlined for Parker and I to sign and date. There was no contract! So, I spoke with him on the phone and when I pointed out to him that there had been a mistake he said, 'What mistake?' I said, 'Well there's a page for the signatures but I don't see any contract.' He said, 'That's the contract!' I said, 'Tom, there's nothing written on the page.' He said, 'Well, boy, you just sign it. We'll fill it in later!'"

Mike Stoller: "We started writing songs where each member of the group had a kind of character. ... But if you can't, can't put the words immediately, why stay around? I have a jaundiced view of bands that can't really write but sing. We didn't write everything we produced, whoever the artist was we always went for the best song and we would bring in other writers like Doc Pomus and go for the very best songs we could get."

Doc Pomus: "I didn't want to be the crippled songwriter or the crippled singer. I wanted to be the singer or the songwriter who was crippled. I wanted to be larger than life and a man among men. ... It all changed for me when I was about 15 or 16 and I heard Joe Turner's 'Piney Brown Blues'. From that moment on I knew what I wanted to do. I was going to be a blues singer. That to me was everything music was supposed to be. It was the way the male voice was supposed to sound. ... Well, it's always easy to come up with explanations after the fact, but I feel like we were writing songs that couldn't be pigeonholed, and we weren't writing songs in a single voice. Now you take a song like 'Save the Last Dance for Me' or any of the Latin songs that Mort and I wrote together, and I was trying to get the lyrics to sound like a translation. My job was to bring the thing back to some elemental point, something palatable to the recording industry, so you would have the image in your mind. ... The songwriting was the same kind of thing. I always felt that writing songs was like gambling, a profession where the odds were definitely loaded against you. But the idea of being able to bet on yourself--playing cards in a way was just an extension of the rest of my life."

Patti Smith: "If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer. ... When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep. ... An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch. ... I always enjoyed doing transgender songs. As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag...I knew if I lived long enough I would be poet laureate of something."

Boz Scaggs: "My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together. ... The way that I come up with the words and the concept to a song is perhaps similar to the way that a novelist writes. It's very much a fictional process. I have to find the characters in each song individually. I have to listen to what each song says, plus what the attitude of the singer is. Then I find the voice and create the character that can perform that song. And sometimes the music is so suggestive that I can pretty much write it in a few passes. At other times-and more often than not-it's a matter of trial and error and trying to find that voice. In doing that I use a little multi-track hard disk recorder and just lay my voice into it. I then listen back and see if that voice is really resonating with that particular version of the music-until I find a voice that I think is the right voice. Then I listen to what that voice is saying and try to fill in the blanks. I don't dwell on melody much at all. That comes in the very beginning. I'm primarily a singer, and where my voice goes is where the music's going. ... A lot of what I have always done is do other singers. ... There's a whole lot of songs that men just can't do. The words are from another time and represent too much of an emotional commitment, whereas women can say that because of who they are. ... I started to feel insecure, and felt great frustration several times because of difficulty writing things. I had a feeling that things were getting out of proportion. It was frightening at first until I realized that it was just a whole new thing. I was learning how to sing, how to use my voice, and how to use dynamics. I really had to live up to those tracks. ... 'Miss Riddle' I am very proud of because the idea is complete, as far as the song’s composition from beginning to end. And 'Thanks to You' because it is autobiographical. It means a lot to me and I am very happy with the way it turned out. ... 'Vanishing Point' was one of the most challenging tunes I had ever written. I had written pages and pages of notes, trying to find the theme of that song. David Paich wrote the music to it, and it's more a song from his idiom than mine, although I liked a lot of things about it. I wanted to complete it, but I just couldn't get a handle on it. I couldn't find the key to it. ... I'm sick of trying to elevate this song. I just want the guy to go to Vegas or something...I keep notes, drunken images and things. I have this box full of bits of paper, cocktail napkin scribblings, bits of wisdom. I always look through it before I do an album. In fact, 'silk degrees' was a phrase I'd had around in that box for a long time. Originally I was going to use that name for my second album ('Moments')."

Arlo Guthrie: "We would turn everything into songs in those days. ... A lot of people think 'Alice's Restaurant' was an anti-war song. It's not. It's an anti-idiot song. ... I didn't change my style very much, but it sure made it possible to work a lot! It also made it possible to entertain a whole new audience, normally middle-of-the-road or country & western. We started to generate interest among a broader range of folks. ... (family joke about 'Alice's Restaurant') Woody heard a test pressing, we played him Alice’s Restaurant, and then, uh, he died. ... (why Arlo no longer sings 'Alice's Restaurant') There's just no way to do it because I can't remember it all. I can dust off the song, but I can't dust off my brain. ... Music used to be a part of living. It is only recently that it's become entertainment."

Lady Gaga: "Some artists take years. I don't. I write music every day. When I'm writing music, I'm thinking about the clothes I want to wear on stage. It's all about everything altogether--performance art, pop performance art, fashion. For me, it's everything coming together and being a real story that will bring back the super-fan. I want to bring that back. I want the imagery to be so strong that fans will want to eat and taste and lick every part of us."

Otis Blackwell: "I'd hate to be a songwriter starting a career today. ... When I was young, I just sat down and started playing Chopsticks at the piano. I got so far and then lost interest. Eventually, I regained it and started writing songs. ... When I started writing it was kind of hard getting people to do my stuff. They'd say they couldn't do my style. ... I always figured it was best if I write my songs, take them to my publisher and just lay back. There used to be so many things going on--getting to the artist, getting to the publishers--you know, politics. I just didn't want to get mixed up in all of that. ... I got behind that pencil and nothing happened for many years, but since they put me in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, I've turned around. I took a good look at myself and said, I think it's time to get back at work. ... Al Stanton walked in one day and said, 'Otis, I've got an idea. Why don't you write a song called 'All Shook Up'?' Two days later I brought the song in and said, 'Look, man, I did something with it.'"

Cynthia Weil: "It was kind of like songwriter's boot camp. You had to produce. You had to produce fast. You had to learn. ... Actually I was writing with people that didn't get records. ... Although I like the work I've done in the past, I like what I'm writing now even more. ... I can't seem to write young enough anymore. ... I wanted to write for Broadway. ... On the other hand when you are someone who records their own songs you are basically stuck writing for one voice and for one style that can stifle you a bit. It's a real trade off. ... Sharing a triumph with someone you love is an incredible high. ... She could only write with him at night and she was wasting her days just sitting around. So he thought I could write with her during the day. And that was Carole King. ... That first writing session, what Dan Hill calls a creative blind date, is always a real challenge, and you bring that back to your partner when you return to writing with them. ... That's what it is every time you walk into the room to write with someone new. It's like, oh God I have to take my clothes off 'my creative clothes' and let them see all of my flaws. ... There is the great creative part of it. The writing is the best part. ... We wrote what sounded good to us and hoped it would find a home. ... You just have to believe in yourself when you've got something, and just keep pounding on the door, because if you pound long enough, somebody is going to open it. ... You made a lot of mistakes, and you wrote a lot of crap. But it was all part of the learning process. ... The business today is completely different and it's very producer driven, so that a songwriter needs to have producing chops, be a singer/songwriter, or find a singer to develop."

Barry Mann: "Cynthia's lyrics always expressed the feelings people felt but they couldn't express themselves. ... You have certain writing tools but generally creating something from nothing makes one quite mad and Cynthia and I are quite mad you know. ... I think if one wants to be in a continual state of insanity one should stay married to that writing partner. ... You can get stale writing with each other for a while. ... I get a different kind of lyric from someone else that might make me go in a different musical direction. ... You have to be very brave in that first writing session. ... Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability. ... I looked through our catalog year by year, and I saw that there were pockets of time when we wrote some terrific songs. Then all of a sudden, we'd go for another two or three months and there weren't great songs. ... I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside. ... I've written songs sober and I've written songs high. ... If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today. ... The real danger of writing a great song when you're on something is that it might get you thinking that the only way to repeat that is by only writing when you're high. ... There's so much fear involved in trying to do something you don't know how to do that drugs and alcohol can become a big part of your life if you have an addictive personality or are very unsure, which most songwriters are. ... We became the songs we wrote. ... We lived, ate, and breathed pop songs. ... We've written something like 900 songs in all."

Jimmy Cliff: "It was the vehicle that propelled me to international stardom. ('Harder They Come' movie) I was known as a singer/songwriter before that, but people did not know me as an actor. It showed the world where the music I contributed to create was coming from. It opened the gates for Jamaican music, internationally. ... Now you can manufacture just about what you want and after just a little time the artist is forgotten and gone. ... If you go out to Hollywood you'll find a lot of fantastic plastic people there in the business and a lot of people in life generally. They find it so hard to be themselves that they have to be plastic."

Peter Tosh: "I don't have to say I'm going to make a song. A song is always there. I just have to open my mouth and a song comes out. ... Those devils have been around for thousands of years, trying to separate us by creating super stars. Bob Marley was my student from the moment he picked up a guitar. ... Mi tired fi hear songs bout shake yah f**king booty and Baby I Love you, dem songs ah play 24 hours on the radio, right now people tired fi hear that Bumboclaat. ... I travel the garden of music, thru inspiration. It's a large, very large garden, seen?"

Emmylou Harris: "I was the audience he wanted to reach. Gram Parsons' writing brought his own personal generation's poetry and vision into the very traditional format of country music, and he came up with something completely different. ... Gram was always fine when we were singing together. That was one thing I could do for him. It was when I wasn't around that he seemed to get into trouble. ... I like to think about stringing songs together like a string of pearls, or a string of beads, but ultimately it has to be stuff that really works with the band, and gives a spin to the older material. ... The crazy thing is that, if you add up the actual recording time, it was less than two weeks. But Mark was so busy that I got the tracks he mixed two at a time over a period of years. It was frustrating, because I had rough mixes of all these great songs, and he'd be like: 'Don't play them to a soul until they're finished!' I was a good girl scout, though. ... When he was mixing it I'd get a couple songs every week and I was, like, waiting for the mail to come. It was so exciting."

Gordon Lightfoot: "'If You Could Read My Mind' was written during the collapse of my marriage. It's a great song. No one has any gripes about it. I wondered what my wife and daughter might think. My daughter is the one who got me to correct 'The feelings that you lacked' to 'The feelings that we lacked'. ... I try to keep it light and positive most of the time, whereas earlier on I didn't always do that. ... I don't think they should regulate the music field. I don't see how they can regulate the arts."

Madonna: "Deep in my heart I'm concealing things that I'm longing to say. Scared to confess what I'm feeling, frightened you'll slip away. ... Music! Makes the people! Come together! ... (on an album recorded in Prince's flat) I'd come by in the morning and Stuart would answer the door in his stocking feet--as he'd been up all night. I'd bring him a cup of coffee and say, 'Stuart, your house is a mess, there's no food in the cupboard.' Then I'd call someone from my house to bring food over for him. And then we'd work all day. Prince reeks of lavender. It turned me on, actually. ... I always thought I should be treated like a star. ... I have the same goal I've had ever since I was a girl. I want to rule the world."

Puff Daddy (P. Diddy): Everybody's just been spilling their guts all over records and talking about how hard it is to be an entertainer and how much we get hated on and what we have to go through. But I ain't really got it that bad. I'm just happy to be here. ... Life ain't always what it seems to be, and words can't express what you mean to me. ... I got a chance to have my dream come true, and I wanted to make sure I made the decision as to when I dropped my last album. If I don't feel like this album is an incredible piece of work, then I'm cool with the albums I've done. I don't have to put out another album. ... He cried on television? Man, try being a black man for a day. I feel like crying all the time. ... I'm in the studio 24 hours a day. It's true that once you get a certain level of success, you become a target. Talk magazine should be ashamed of themselves. ... Fans made me. The fans gave me a chance, and they made me. Beyond that, my career has been trials and tribulations and ups and downs, so I have to have true fans riding with me. ... Being an international rap superstar, sex is one of the easiest things to get, so there is a point where you get tired of it."

John Mellencamp: "It's my responsibility as a singer/songwriter to report the news. ... I don't have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don't have to worry about choruses and hook lines. ... I want to sell to people my own age, because that's the way I write songs. ... I'm the guy who wrote 'The Authority Song'. Did they think I was kidding? Did they think it was only a song to entertain? ... In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that. ... This is not a rock opera. This is not Tommy. I can write songs that emote, and that's it. ... A lot of Woody Guthrie's songs were taken from other songs. He would rework the melody and lyrics, and all of a sudden it was a Woody Guthrie song. ... Bob Dylan's first couple of records in the 60's weren't considered cover records, but he only wrote one or two original songs on each album."

Jorma Kaukonen: "I was writing a lot of true love songs--true love almost gone wrong but saved at the last moment. ... Many of the best songs get written in a state of abject misery. I prefer to write fewer songs and have less cataclysmic events in my life. ... Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good."

Bjork: "Sometimes when I write lyrics there are images in them, usually on a quite simplistic level, like colors. But most often music comes first and then later I sit down with visual people and we chat about what we want to do. I don't look at myself as a visual artist. I make music. ... For a person as obsessed with music as I am, I always hear a song in the back of my head, all the time, and that usually is my own tune. I've done that all my life. ... I love being a very personal singer/songwriter, but I also like being a scientist or explorer"

David Crosby: "My songs emerge unbidden and unplanned and completely on a schedule of their own. ... We have, all of us, over the years, written things that responded to the world as it slapped us in the face. Me and Nash, singing 'To the Last Whale' and 'Find the Cost of Freedom'. Stills coming up with 'For What It's Worth'. These came right out of the news. People have accused us of taking stances and the truth is we don't."

Billy Idol: "My dad was one of the reasons I got into rock and roll because I was learning the ropes of his business, which was selling power tools, and I was looking for a way out from under his heel. I was like, 'Where's the fun? Where's the glamour?'. ... William is idle. ... I never wanted no proper job. ... It would have been so easy to brush my hair down and become the new David Cassidy. ... Rock isn't art, it's the way ordinary people talk."

Frank Zappa: "All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff. ... Basically what people want to hear is: I love you, you love me, the leaves turn brown, they fell off the trees, the wind is blowing, it got cold, you went away, my heart broke, you came back, and my heart was okay. ... Modern music is people who can't think signing artists who can't write songs to make records for people who can't hear. ... Most people wouldn't know good music if it came up and bit them on the ass. ... I detest 'love lyrics'. I think one of the causes of bad mental health in the United States is that people have been raised on 'love lyrics'. ... If lyrics make people do things, how come we don't love each other? ... My lyrics are there for entertainment purposes only--not to be taken internally. Apart from the snide political stuff, which I enjoy writing, the rest of the lyrics wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for the fact that we live in a society where instrumental music is irrelevant."

Johnny Rotten: "I don't listen to music, I hate all music. ... You'll find that empty vessels make the most sound. ... I'm not here for your amusement. You're here for mine. ... If you give me the chance, I'll destroy America for you. ... (on his manager Malcolm McLaren) Let's just say that if Malcolm breathes, it's too much for me to stomach. ... (on Sid Vicious) I could take on England, but I couldn't take on one heroin user. ... (after the Sex Pistols' last show) Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

Iggy Pop: "You write about things of importance to you. And it's gotta be for real. ... Do I think about my d**k? Oh, yeah, all the time. If I think about it all the time, I got a right to sing about it. If I wasn't thinking about it all the time but thought, "It's time to write a rock song, I'd better mention my d**k," then I wouldn't even be able to say "d**k" right? Besides, it's an ecological line. It's not, "My d**k is all bad, motherf**ker, wickety wackety woo." It's nature-oriented. (laughs) It is! ... After I write a song I wonder, "God, what are people going to think of these songs. Are people going to think that's a disgusting, boring topic for a rock song. We don't want to hear about that depressing s**t. ... It helps the writing a little bit, the kind of writing that works for music, which is tiny writing. It's not like writing a novel--it's all about making your point small. ... The way I feel today, I don't want to write any more f**king songs. F**k it, my brain hurts, and I'm sick of hearing that's good, or I get it, or I don't get it. It's too dumb. It's not dumb enough. Oh, shut the f**k up. Leave me alone. I'm not gonna write anymore. ... This is what I've lived through in this goddamn f**king music business. I have loaded my potentially excellent mind with the crap that these pigs are pouring on it."

Ray Stevens: "I went out to Mr. Lowery's house, and I said, 'My name is Ray Ragsdale, and I'm going to write songs for you.' He said, 'Okay lad, go to it.' Amazingly, when I brought him my first one, he actually liked it. He had some connections and got me a recording contract when I was still only seventeen and still in high school. ... I mean, I've--I think I've wanted to write songs and make records since I was a sperm. So, thank goodness I was able to do that--so far. ... I not only want the lyric but the production and the sound to tell the story. ... I am first and foremost a musician....It never occurred to me that you can't use a known character in a song unless you get permission. ...You know, I never considered myself exclusively tied to any particular style of music. ... I was a big fan of Spike Jones, Dave Gardner, who was a great southern comedian back in those days. ... And I don't do parodies. I do comedy songs. ... The less you know, the more you think you know, because you don't know you don't know. ... Hey, everyone has change in their pockets. ... As far as marketing your records is concerned, you have to stick with one bag, or the radio stations don't know what to do."

Weird Al Yankovic: "At this point I've got a bit of a track record. So people realize that when 'Weird Al' wants to go parody, it's not meant to make them look bad. It's meant to be a tribute. ... One of the hardest things I've had to deal with in my career is keeping my material topical even though I only release albums every three or four years. ... Parody is often denigrated as the lowest form of comedy. ... I wrote 'Eat It' because I wanted to buy a house. It worked. ... Eminem was fine with me having the parody on my album. He sees 'Lose Yourself' as an important hip hop song with a strong legacy. ... Fans would be rioting in the streets, I think, if I didn't do a polka medley. ... If money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it."

Bono: "I have never tried to write this thing called a song that's played on radios all around the world, that window-cleaners hum, that people listen to in traffic jams. I was never interested in song: U2 came about through a sound. ... As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both. ... Rock 'n' roll is ridiculous. It's absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we're wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss. ... Pop music often tells you everything is OK, while rock music tells you that it's not OK, but you can change it. ... The most profound voice of any musician I have ever heard. Joe Strummer took his message to the world, and the world listened. He managed to influence more than one generation with his innovative and determined manner, and I am not alone in repeatedly turning to his thoughts and lyrics when searching for inspiration. The Clash was the greatest rock band. They wrote the rule book for U2."

Sting: "Songwriting is a kind of therapy for both the writer and the listener if you choose to use it that way. When you see that stuff help other people that's great and wonderful confirmation that you're doing the right thing. ... It's never easy to write a song. It's the most difficult thing I do. ... I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set...I do my best work when I am in pain and turmoil. ... If you make your living writing, and you can't write anything, it's over. It's very frightening. ... I don't like singing before noon. ... I hate most of what constitutes rock music, which is basically middle-aged crap. ... I see songs not as a commodity used up when the album goes off the charts, which is often the case with pop songs. I see them as a body of work. Life should be breathed into them."

Bruce Springsteen: "I didn't know if it would be a successful one, or what the stages would be, but I always saw myself as a lifetime musician and songwriter. ... I was always concerned with writing to my age at a particular moment. That was the way I would keep faith with the audience that supported me as I went along. ... I'm a synthesist. I'm always making music. And I make a lot of different kinds of music all the time. Some of it gets finished and some of it doesn't. ... The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with. ... But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find. ... I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition. ... In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it."

Elvis Costello: "You have to face the fact that I have no reputation as a composer; I have my reputation as a songwriter and a performer. ... (about explaining his lyrics) And If I could say it in other words than are in the song, I'd have written another song, wouldn't I? ... I find humming is very useful. ... Sometimes I write notes that I have difficulty singing. ... Writing about music is like dancing about architecture--it's really a stupid thing to want to do. ... It was difficult to develop an original style. I have no idea who it was I might have been imitating, whether consciously or unconsciously."

Annie Lennox: "I knew that I wanted to be a singer/songwriter when I was much younger and, um, I've been able to, you know, to realize that dream and I'm very pleased with that. ... I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. ... Music is an extraordinary vehicle for expressing emotion--very powerful emotions. ... A lot of music you might listen to is pretty vapid, it doesn't always deal with our deeper issues. These are the things I'm interested in now, particularly at my age."

Jim Morrison: "Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you. ... I believe in a long, prolonged, derangement of the senses in order to obtain the unknown. ... I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to think. ... If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel."

Mick Jagger: "A lot of times songs are very much of a moment, that you just encapsulate. They come to you, you write them, you feel good that day, or bad that day. ... There's not a lot in rock that is new. It's the same kind of chord sequences and the same kind of rhythm references and the same recycling of subject matter. But I don't think it's a problem. I mean, traditional musical forms like folk music in three chords or blues are endearing to Americans. They find some comfort in them. ... I came into music just because I wanted the bread. It's true. I looked around and this seemed like the only way I was going to get the kind of bread I wanted."

Keith Richards: "I don't think rock n' roll songwriters should worry about art. I don't think it comes into it. As far as I'm concerned, Art is just short for Arthur. ... I don't like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned before hand. You've got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. ... I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous. ... A painter's got a canvas. The writer's got reams of empty paper. A musician has silence. ... My epitaph will be: 'F**kers! I told you I wasn't feeling well!'"

Ron Wood: "There's a basic rule which runs through all kinds of music, kind of an unwritten rule. I don't know what it is. But I've got it. ... I loved touring with Rod Stewart when we were in the Jeff Beck Group and then The Faces in the late Sixties and early Seventies. We toured non-stop during those days. Rod and I shared a hotel room and were always worried that one of us would see what the other was doing whenever we brought women back, which was often. ... I had a fiery affair with George Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd. One night at George's house, Friar Park, in Henley, I took George aside and told him that when it was time for bed I would be going to Pattie's room. Seemingly unflustered he pointed to the room my first wife, Krissie, and I were staying in and said: 'I shall be sleeping there.' When the time came, the two of us stood on the landing outside the respective bedrooms. 'Are we going to do this?' I asked. 'I'll see you in court,' George replied and in we went. The following morning we were woken by George, who informed me that he had called his lawyers. He never actually did. ... My fellow Rolling Stone Keith Richards is my brother and mate but it's fair to say our relationship has had its ups and downs. ... Let's face it: I paint well. I know it, you know it. There's no arguing really, is there? ... The thing is, I don't want to end up being a boring bastard like Clapton."

Billy Gibbons: "My discussion with Keith Richards about the creative process led me to believe that there's an invisible presence of a stream of ever-flowing creativity that we overhear--all you have to do is pull up the antenna and dial it in. This presence allows you to maintain your sense of origin and move forward. ... Sounds like the blues are composed of feeling, finesse, and fear. ... The mystery behind the magic of ZZ Top is an engaging endeavor. We take the latest composition and go to the woodshed, where we place Frank Beard at the opposite end of the room where Dusty and I are set up. We then deliver the goods, and at the end of the day we ask Frank what it is he thought we said? Usually, it's an interpretation that is so far removed from what was actually written, yet it's usually better than what we had originally started with earlier in the day."

Jimi Hendrix: "Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction. ... All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland. ... I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around. ... Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music. ... See, that's nothing but blues, that's all I'm singing about. It's today's blues. ... I've been imitated so well I've heard people copy my mistakes. ... It's funny the way most people love the dead. Once you are dead, you are made for life. ... When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do."

Eric Clapton: "The writing of the song is the therapy. The toughness is doing nothing. It's very dependent on your state of mind. And your emotional state as well. And a lot of it comes pouring out, you don't really have that much control with it. ... I've felt that the only way to survive was with dignity, pride and courage. ... My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity. ... My definition of blues is that it's a musical form which is very disciplined and structured coupled with a state of mind, and you can have either of those things but it's the two together that make it what it is. And you need to be a student for one, and a human being for the other, but those things alone don't do it. ... The blues are what I've turned to, what has given me inspiration and relief in all the trials of my life. ... I am and always will be a blues guitarist."

Bob Dylan: "My best songs were written very quickly. Just about as much time as it takes to write it down is about as long as it takes to write it. ... It is the first line that gives the inspiration and then it's like riding a bull. Either you just stick with it, or you don't. ... In writing songs I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie. ... It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs. ... I've never written a political song. Songs can't save the world. I've gone through all that. ... What the songwriter does is just connect the dots. The ends he sees and the ones given to him and he connects them. ... (when asked what his songs are 'about') Oh, some are about four minutes; some are about five, and some, believe it or not, are about 11 or 12. ... I've only written four songs in my whole life, but I've written those four songs a million times. ... People can learn everything about me through my songs, if they know where to look. ... They'd like to use my tunes for different beer companies and perfumes and automobiles. I get approached on all that stuff. But, s**t, I didn't write them for that reason. That's never been my scene. ... (on his song 'Everything Is Broken') Critics usually don't like a song like this coming out of me because it didn't seem to be autobiographical. Maybe not, but the stuff I write does come from an autobiographical place. ... Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything. ... I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet."

Chuck Berry: "When you're writing a song, nouns and verbs will carry you right through. ... For many years I've been reluctant to make new songs. There has been a great laziness in my soul. ... All those m- words and f- words, don't blame me for that. I'd rather hear Tommy Dorsey or Artie Shaw any day. ... Look, I ain't no big s**t, all right? My music, it is very simple stuff. I told you all this before. I wanted to play blues. But I wasn't blue enough. I wasn't like Muddy Waters. ... You don't just go to the studio and say, 'I'm going to write a hit.' It becomes a hit when people like your compositions. ... I love poetry. I love rhyming. Do you know there are poets who don't rhyme? Shakespeare did not rhyme most of the time, and that's why I do not like him. Imagine: a man with that much. I'm looking for a word that begins with the letter f. Well, Shakespeare had a lot of it, anyway. He had too much f not to rhyme. Finesse: that's the word I was looking for. Shakespeare had a lot of finesse. ... I was in Australia, and I found out they wouldn't even let a black man become a citizen there. That's why I wrote that song. You know 'Back in the USA,' don't you?"