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Right from day one, you know when you've written a good song.

I'm a composer, and therefore I know when I've written a good tune. When you've written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song.

I sometimes don't know what songs are about for several years after I've written them.

The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, Yeah? So, your point is?

If you look at someone like Joe Strummer or John Lennon, when you heard their music you knew that they wrote it and they cared about it.

Just this morning, out of a large memory for songs, and having been obsessed by them since childhood, suddenly, at the age of 84, I thought of a song I hadn't thought of in over 50 years. It came into my head unbidden.

It wasn't until later when people became aware of my writing that I would hear begrudgingly, 'You know, you really are a pretty good singer, I guess.'

You know, songs often have a very coloured past. They might have something about them but it still doesn't work, so someone else adds a bit, and someone else adds a bit so perhaps one day I'll know its full history.

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.