what it is is the memory of a dance a song you heard long ago to hear it is to be young again and for once for once you are happy
Sometimes a song indicates that it wants to be about a certain thing. And then if you write it, you find that it is about something that you've done.
Oh, I'll tell you about 'Anyone Can Whistle' - the lesson I learned with doing that record is that the simplest songs are the hardest to do.
Writing songs is really about writing. It's not about necessarily focusing on one particular style or making it one particular thing.
I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, but I made a rap song 20 years ago with Afrika Bambaataa.
When I heard his first songs, Dylan was answering certain questions that I had all my life been asking myself.
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.
But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there.
Women do not like CDs of live music. We only like the original recordings. If a song sounds different from the version we fell in love with, then it's awful.
Every time I write a song I feel really lucky and kind of surprised. Not surprised that I wrote it, but just surprised that things exist that you don't know about.
Every time you write a song, you're looking for some sort of perfection, and you never quite reach it. You're always looking for that extra missing piece.
Once you sit in front of people and start playing songs, it's all on you. No matter what happens, it's entirely your responsibility the entire time. I like that intensity.
I have a hard time narrowing things down to ten or 12 songs. If I walk off stage in anything less than two hours, it just feels strange. It feels early.
I wrote 'Happy Man' with a couple of boys of mine. I have been writing in Nashville for a long time. Of course I was writing songs back in Oklahoma when I was a kid.
I always played around with writing songs, but when you're spending a lot of time in bars, you have a lot of big ideas, but you don't do much with them.
'All Over Me' is a song that I really got fired up the first time I heard it: it just really moved and it really had a lot of energy.
I've forgotten lines all the time. Sometimes I switch verses in a song. It's just hard not to when you're doing the same thing all the time.
I'm always in that mode - whenever I have a little free time, I'm always recording songs, writing, whatever I gotta do. It's like my job is my vacation.
Morrissey wrote to me and said, I have a song for you and if we release it as a single, you'll be on the charts for the first time since 1972, I said, what time, where?
If I've got a talent, it's for picking the right song at the right time for the right audience. And I can always get people to sing with me.
The first time I tried to write was when I was 14, after I got an electric guitar. I put a song together, and it wasn't that bad! The writing came natural to me.
