Musician

Let's face it: pop music in its myriad permutations will always be sexually presumptuous, racially controversial and, frequently, politically charged.

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.

To be sure, boxing has always been, at best, a shady and sometimes cutthroat business, buttressed by hype and tomfoolery rivalling, at times, that of carnival circuses.

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.

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.

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.

Ringside seats mean you hear the breaking of ribs, the splattered cartilage of what was once the boxer's nose, the dislocation of the jaw, the horrifying 'ugggh' that the boxer utters milliseconds after receiving a crushing left hook to the solar plexus or kidneys or head.

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 didn't have that thing that Michael Bolton did; my star power - my charisma - was not a match to my writing ability.

I was wired to be intense. I don't think that's ever going to change.

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.

When you look at the lyrics of 'Sometimes When We Touch,' it's really very much an adolescent song.

My, oh my, how 'Sometimes When We Touch' has travelled since I solemnly wrote my first version at the age of 19.

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.

Much as my Boomer friends will hate me for saying this, Kanye West is the New Dylan. Not only do Kanye's best lyrics match Dylan's prescience, highly inventive word-play and genius for storytelling, his indefatigable cockiness eerily channels Muhammad Ali.

Since the dawn of recorded music, every generation has felt shocked by the musical tastes of the next.

My dad was one of four children. His three siblings were female, and he loved and protected them.

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.

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.

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.