I’ve thought a lot about this. And I’ve been able to ask some of the greatest songwriters of the rock era how they find inspiration.

The original spark can be many things, from an overheard snippet of conversation to the rhythm created by the sound of car wheels on a bridge, which was the inspiration for “Jive Talkin’” by The Bee Gees!

My daughter and I went to see The War on Drugs at the Greek Theater in October 2017 two weeks after Tom Petty died. In an understated tribute, the band played “Time to Move On“ from Petty‘s “Wildflowers“ album. We’d seen one of the last Tom Petty shows at the Hollywood Bowl and it reminded me how his songs reveal layers through time. On this occasion, “Time to Move On” could have been about moving on from this world.

This was the first music that brought me to tears.

The Beatles awakened the rock ‘n’ roll spirit in me and Bob Dylan revealed the power of language, but it was Laura Nyro who showed me the well of emotion that lived in a song.

Part of growing up addicted to music was deciding who was cool and who was lame. And we were tougher than any singing competition judge, tougher and unflinching in our dismissal of an act that didn’t measure up. Artists were quickly assigned their places on the status map, and it was virtually impossible to get reassigned to a more desirable location. That first single better kick ass, right?

I was excited to hear the 50th anniversary edition of George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass”. The remixes of The Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper”, “The White Album”, and “Abbey Road” had been revelatory. I thought for sure the infamous Phil Spector ‘wall of reverb’ would finally be torn down, revealing the phenomenal collection of songs that made up the original 1970 release with the clarity they deserve. So when I sat down to listen, with the phone on mute, and a glass of wine at hand, it was far from the experience I expected.

Do you have a favourite opening line from a song? How about “Please allow me to introduce myself/I’m a man of wealth and taste.” Or “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend.”

I love “Like a bird on a wire/ Like a drunk in a midnight choir.”

You probably remember the effect these brilliant opening lines had when you first heard them. It’s that all important first impression in song. The first two are from The Stones and Dylan, and the last one is from the master, Leonard Cohen, the same man responsible for this Chagall-like image,

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin,” the opening to “Dance Me to the End of Love.”

When I’m asked if I come from a musical family, I always pause. I think the right answer is “sort of”. Whether it was Sinatra, Rachmaninoff piano concertos or her Majesty’s Royal Dragoon Guards pipe and drum band, something was always playing on that hulking blonde piece of furniture in the living room. This was before the British Invasion take-over of the hi-fi.

“So what comes first, the words or the lyrics?”

Working at MuchMusic meant a steady diet of interviews with artists of all genres, from Mötley Crüe to Enya and Phyllis Diller to Steve Earle, sometimes all in one week. (Click for more)

It’s the dog days of summer and a good time to be a hard-core Jays fan.I remember the snowy opener in 1977 featuring Anne Murray in a parka with a pair of giant headphones singing the national anthem. We cheered wildly to keep warm. We won the game and I remember as we all exited that concrete monstrosity known as Exhibition Stadium chanting “we’re number one!”. And for that day we were. I listened to a lot of Tom (Cheek) and Jerry (Howarth) on the radio, and before that Tom and his first broadcast partner, Early Wynn, for whom a detailed commentary might consist of “I tell you Tom, he’s a big fella”. Or if Early was feeling verbose, “I tell you Tom, he’s a tall drink of water.”(Click for more)

Last weekend I returned to California, strange but familiar as always.Since I left a couple of months ago, the coral trees and their late spring splendor have bowed out, and the jacarandas electric lavender moment has passed. In their place, there are fires, heat waves and drought and the sun has turned red. The stratified nature of L.A. life is fully in evidence. On the way to my place from the airport we passed the sidewalk city on nearby San Vicente Blvd., flags hanging limply in view of the Veteran’s Administration building and restless residents gathering on the street outside their tents in the steamy summer heat.(Click for more)

I was a broke songwriter. Go figure. My friend Nelson got me a job picking apples on his uncle’s farm near Thornberry, Ontario, and it was exhausting but satisfying work. My coworkers were Jamaican - strong, hard-working and much better apple pickers than I was. The guys were nice to me and were remarkably tolerant of how slow I was but I wasn’t really part of their crew at first. I slept in the guest room at the main house while they were lodged in a refurbished Quonset hut. One day while I was up a tree, I started singing Sam Cooke‘s “Wonderful World“ and the reaction from my fellow pickers was pure exuberance. (Click for more)