Pastoral Resources

While I've had a great distaste for what's usually called song in modern poetry or for what's usually called music, I really don't think of speech as so far from song.

For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.

I know what my job is: I write the songs, I sing them, I play them on the piano.

I'm not used to not having enough time to live with the songs. Usually, if I write something, I live with it for a little while.

I wanted to write a happy song. I didn't know how.

After that I didn't listen to music as much because '70s music just wasn't... I remember all the songs, but it wasn't because I was into them, you know what I mean?

I had to be at least 8 or 9; I was listening to everything on the radio. You name it, I heard every song.

I would have to work on the song and figure out how they wanted the song done, because they're such high-intensity songs. We figure that out first, then I go back and listen to it and go over and rehearse stuff with it and try to get a feel for the words.

If it were bad songs, yeah, I'd speak up, but they're not bad songs.

Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse!

That was the reasoning behind learning to play bass, and then after that it was more like it was neat to play songs together - for me to play bass and for him to play guitar.

Right from day one, you know when you've written a good song.

One of them would definitely be the Nelson Mandela gig, when I played the tribute song for him. He was up and dancing, and he really enjoyed it. It was a really lovely occasion.

My mother bought a piano, put it in the front room, and I just started writing my songs.

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

This is my seventh decade... and every once in a while I get a hankering to re-visit these songs again... songs with which I have had a great relationship.

United Artists wanted to do records with me. I had no idea, what a rare thing that was... to make an album. And they put a guy with me working on songs, and I got busy with films. I just kind of let it slide. Isn't that amazing?

I never for a day gave up listening to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or delineating them in the best way I could.

They look for the top note to end every song. They don't know what they are singing about. There is no style.

Kids know me from their Grease DVD, so they instantly respond. You can hear a pin drop when I do my old songs.