“It’s amazing how much of that music I still listen to actually. I was such a fan of music, even after I got started professionally”

I had promised myself when I first got started that if I got to the point my life where I started feeling ‘Gee, I’d rather be at home than at work’, and that started happening more often than not, that it would be time to leave.

I’d wake up some days and go “Oh, I don’t even know if I want to go face this anymore”. I would, I would go do it, I’m a dutiful kind of person and not afraid of work.

Now that I’m afraid was institutionalized, and the great thing about the Canadian content regulations is that it broke that open.

I remained a fan. But what happens when you’re so involved is you start spending all your time based on the music that you’re involved with, you just don’t have as much time.

And then all of a sudden that starts disappearing from the book, and just about everything I’m talking about from that point on are the records that I’m totally involved in.

I took that opinion to the wall, often in public, often had to… I often had to fight in public with the very same people who I was trying to convince to play my records!

I noticed when I was writing the book that I would tend to mention ‘outside’ songs right through to about the middle of the 70’s.

I couldn’t believe it the first time I heard one of my records on the radio, and I STILL love hearing anything I’m involved with on radio, and some of my best friends were from radio. But we were on different sides of that argument, there’s no question about that.

I endorse only products I actually use. Like Wheaties keeps offering me money, but I don’t eat Wheaties, so I can’t do it. Now, if Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes offered me a deal, I’d take it right away. Apple Jacks, I’d be on the box in a heartbeat. Apple Shaqs. Yeah.

“Nobody listens any more. Everyone knows what they want to hear, but nobody actually listens.

A lot of my colleagues actually yell and curse at each other. I don’t do that.

I know it’s horrible, but they actually make me laugh. They make my day.

Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartednes s that requires the true courage — however often we are hurt as a result of it.

What I teach is literary criticism and comparative literature and so on and that’s my function, but from time to time it’s possible for me actually to help a writer. I read something and something strikes me then, I feel I can talk to that writer about it.

I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you’re actually sitting down putting words to the paper.

Yes, it’s true – I love the roar of the crowd. When the fans are with you, their voices come together in a big booming rush of sound that you can actually feel in your body – almost like a wave that lifts you and carries you past your own limits.