Historically, musicians know what it is like to be outside the norm – walking the high wire without a safety net. Our experience is not so different from those who march to the beat of different drummers.
I’ve tried to avoid that all my life. When I wrote about soldiers in Vietnam, I wasn’t trying to make a political statement. I was trying to write about how screwed things were for soldiers, and how they still are.
I have been both praised and criticized. The criticism stung, but the praise sometimes bothered me even more. To have received such praise and honors has always been puzzling to me.
It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you’re gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05.
Most people you’d tell “I’m gonna be a musician,” they’d say, “you’re crazy, you’re gonna starve, you’re gonna be poor, a drug addict, go to jail, you’ll never make it, there’s too much competition.