The hits I had in the '80s - I made those deals directly with American companies.
— Dan Hill
I'm highly distractable, and I have too many things on my mind very often. When I'm driving in the city, it drives me so crazy - the city traffic and the parking - I just take cabs everywhere.
How did George Bensen cut 'In Your Eyes?' How did I work with the Backstreet Boys? It all comes back to 'Sometimes When We Touch.'
I don't want to lose my legs, you know. I don't want to be wheeled around in a wheelchair. I don't want to be attached to a catheter. I saw all that stuff happen to my father, and as much as it upset me because I loved my father so much, it also really traumatized me.
When you think of bike couriers, you think of hyper speed. They get paid by how fast they can drop stuff off. The faster you go, the more chances you take. And the more chances you take, the greater the war between cyclists and cars.
I was wired to be intense. I don't think that's ever going to change.
Songs sometimes are so connected to the sociology of the time.
Hit songs are mysterious and slippery beasts; few artists have a lock on them. This means that many people, like me, have become fans of songs rather than fans of artists.
At 10, I heard Neil Diamond's 'Solitary Man' and it moved me so deeply I stood, frozen in place during school recess, feeling such empathy for the narrator in Diamond's masterpiece that my heart was smashed.
The stuff I write I'm very proud of, but I'm smart enough to know I'll never get on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' next to Elvis Costello.
Due to my work as a musician, songwriter, recording artist and author, hundreds of people stream in and out of my basement studio to help me with my creative projects.
I'd sometimes do 50, 60 takes of song.
With my son, I tried not to be so judgmental and tried not to push him so hard. I didn't want him to feel that everything or that our love for him will be based on how much he has achieved.
I feel like I have adopted the Philippines as my second country.
In a world where people are hungry for quick fixes and sound bites, for instant gratification, there's no patience for the long, slow rebuilding process: implementing after-school programs, hiring more community workers to act as mentors, adding more job training programs in marginalized areas.
The tricky thing about songwriting is that, more often than not, what you consider to be your best work generates a collective shrug, and something you've simply tossed off bowls people over.
Woody Allen movies notwithstanding, therapy, in the early eighties, was not exactly a hot conversation starter. Nor was it a favoured activity for dysfunctional couples or suffering individuals.
Most of my friends in Nashville - almost all of them - seem to have had hits in the '70s, either as artists or songwriters or producers.
I got the big BMW X5, and I didn't like it. It was just too big, and I didn't feel comfortable driving it. It was taking up too much room, and I was afraid I was going to smash into something.
I just want people to know they are the masters of their own fortune and misfortune. A lot of us think that doctors and drugs are going to control and help us, but the reality is we're our own best doctor.
It was a double jolt for me. The jolt of seeing my father slowly die, the jolt of knowing that I was diabetic and could meet the same fate if I didn't take care of myself.
I cannot emphasize just how dangerous it is cycling in the city. Especially now. Even though it is against the law to do this, you'll see people texting while they drive.
I'm an intense guy. I run 10 miles a day, which helps alleviate my intensity. Also, singing helps defuse my intensity. Playing the piano helps, and writing helps.
In Don Mills in the Sixties, nothing comes close to the humiliation of losing an argument. In our weird little creative circle, no one cares who has faster fists, but to lose an argument suggests inferior intelligence.
You can tell black artists are front and centre when Usher discovers and launches Justin Bieber.
When I was 3 or 4, I seemed to be bursting with music. They played Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra in the house, so I learned my vocabulary from song lyrics - I was literally singing before I was talking.
My problem is I don't have this incredible, hip image. I'm not some flamboyant or gorgeous-looking guy who's going to sell records based on his image.
While I've won five Junos, I've donated four of them to the National Archives in Ottawa. Which left my fifth Juno sitting, seemingly abandoned by its four family members, on my bookcase in my dining room.
You get your heart stomped by the opposite sex, and you're hurting so badly that you write 'Sometimes When We Touch.' But then what happens when you've been married for 25 years? You can't rely on those emotional male-female roller coasters. You have to start using your imagination and the powers of empathy more.
I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that made me the man, husband and father that I am.
Sling your guitar to wherever you're going, and you'll be amazed by the connective power of music: It knows no boundaries, cultures or class.
My wife is unusually kind and generous, but she's no fool. You don't mess with her.
While certainly no pressing threat to Gordon Lightfoot, I knew it was simply a matter of time until I was going to be a star.
All the Junos, the Grammy nominations, the gold and platinum records, did nothing to assuage my conviction that I was an out-and-out loser.
I did have one bad accident up north near Deerhurst. I was driving back in the winter on these snowy roads, and these two snowmobilers were racing up a hill and they weren't looking, so they caught me as I was going up the other side of the hill, and they smashed into me.
That was my first introduction to BMWs in 1978, when my friend bought it for me as a surprise with my money. And ever since then, I've stuck to BMWs.
I never go on a run when I don't think of my dad, where I don't think about how powerful his legs were and what happened because, unfortunately, he didn't take care of himself.
Toronto is exploding with cyclists, with more and more people wanting to cycle and being turned off driving because of the incredible congestion. Biking is a much more efficient way of getting around, and you get there faster.
When I'm not running, I cycle about 30 miles a day. I use the biking as cross training. I'm kind of a maniac. I race everybody.
I think the last thing you want to do as a writer, as a storyteller, is to create indifference. I don't necessarily go out of my way to provoke, but I would much rather have a song that triggers a whole myriad of reactions than a song that inspires a shrug of the shoulder.
In the music world, concerts unfold strictly according to plan. But, as I'd been finding out, in the book world, things keep changing by the second.
When we bemoan the lost golden age of music, it's worth remembering that mainstream radio listeners of the '60s and '70s, particularly in Canada, missed out on an outpouring of brilliant R&B music.
I feel the only way I can survive is to spend a lot of time writing songs. I have to have incredible, killer songs that also are hits, or I just don't have a chance.
Our house is a constant mayhem of music, noise, socializing and business. It vibrates life, as a house should.
I just wanted to show people - maybe I'm wrong - that I can still really sing. I can sing better than I ever have before. My intonation is way better, my timing, my phrasing - there's a lot more expression; I feel it's a more lived-in, soulful voice.
So many songwriters peak in their early 20s because they're living off their passions.
When you look at the lyrics of 'Sometimes When We Touch,' it's really very much an adolescent song.
If we don't invest now in so-called priority neighbourhoods with music classes, athletic facilities, and skills training and mentoring, we will all pay more in the long run.
To be 23 and riding the crest of a song sweeping the world country by country is to live an altered and wholly rarefied existence.
My, oh my, how 'Sometimes When We Touch' has travelled since I solemnly wrote my first version at the age of 19.
