Pastoral Resources

Instinct taught me 20 years ago to pace a song or a concert performance. That translates into pacing a story, pleasing a reading audience.

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.

I want to write songs and play them for people - live.

But my point is these Civil War songs were gruesome. The hatred that's so bad in this country today, and for the past 10 or 15 years, bad as it is, is nothing compared to the kind of things people would write down and sing back in the Civil War.

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.

Ozzy wanted to get us back together. It's been 20 years. We did a couple of songs during his farewell in 1992 and that got the ball rolling.

Toward the later days of Sabbath, instead of going in and knocking out what songs we did in rehearsal, we would polish them to death.

However long the song is was how long it took us to write it.

We would play, then they would play a set, then we would jam on the last song.

That jam was so much fun that by the end of the tour, we just jammed on all of the songs.

What is that song that Willie Nelson sang? 'Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few.' I think of that. No big deal. I've reached a stage in my life where I am content.

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.

The popular song is America's greatest ambassador.

That's what my life is, writing songs.

I cannot sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low, 'Tis that I can't remember how They go.

Some people have said that I can 'hear' a hit song, meaning that I can tell the first time a song is played for me if it has potential. I have been able to hear some of the hits that way, but I can also 'feel' one.

It's fun having songs about parties and gigolos, but I really wanted to use my music as a form of art. Art is supposed to spark conversation and make people think, and I wanted to do that with this song.

Mr. Fantasy was the only song that was scribbling on a piece of paper.

I was half asleep lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke Steve up with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song. I wonder where that piano is now?

But then you have to write a song, so at that point, I picked up the reins and started to write lyrics.