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I've been writing a lot about my encounter with love. Which is the white stag as far as songwriting is concerned because love songs are so banal, and my experience with love is anything but that.

I was totally involved in Bobby's World from the time we started the idea to sitting with the artists on how he would look, to the script meetings, the music, the lyrics, the songs.

It took me three weeks to write the 'Rhapsody in Blue.' I had always wanted to write something blue and Paul Whiteman inspired.

Writing songs has a therapeutic effect, and it either kills off love or wins the heart of the lover.

I came along in the '60s having absorbed as much as I could up until then and added my own tastes and search into the equation. I guess that's how I see 'Now He Sings, Now He Sobs' in relation to the development of jazz in general.

I wrote that song 'Black,' and it was just this idea that I had been married for 10 years. Everyone talks about 'happily ever after,' but there's so much more to it than that.

I don't know why, but I don't fancy writing love songs; I never have.

We write the song, then it gets played for the artist, and they somehow fall in love with it and go back in and make it their own.

Bobby had faith in my ability as a singer.