It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn't play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs.

So gradually, and then I had an Italian roadster that I built, it took me five years to build it, it was stolen from me and stripped. I said, well maybe we should have another where we shouldn't steal from each other.

When I wrote "Green, Green," it was like a really a statement of where I was at philosophically in my life.

The big turning point, really, was the Beatles' influence on American folk music, and then Roger took it to the next step, and then along came the Lovin' Spoonful and everybody else.

And a friend of mine in the Christys, we used to sit up at night and talk and read and wonder if reincarnation, and if it wasn't reality, what would happen to the human spirit when the body dies? Is there an afterlife? Just questions like that.

You know, the music business is like the Lotto. Just put your numbers down and sometimes they hit, and sometimes they don't. There's just no rhyme or reason.

To have a songwriter that wrote so specifically what I felt to be true... I've never been much of an actor either. If something is real for me, then I can do it.

Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space, but when you return, it's the same old place.

There was a report that used to come out back in those days, I don't know if it was the Gavin Report or something like that. And they said, no matter what McGuire comes out with next, we're not gonna play it.

And there was a real shedding of the old dogma, like boundaries of morality were being broken down and everybody was into the new party mode of just loving on each other. Which destroyed thousands of us. I lost 16 of my personal friends through that lifestyle.

There's only one drummer. We all travel to his beat. Well, I couldn't sing his song. Because for me, it wasn't a truthful statement. Well, Linda sang it, and it was a monster for her.

I know great songwriters. Fred Neil would come up when he was in L.A., we all used to hang out. He would sit there and sing, and we would just melt. I mean, we would go to his recording sessions.

If you listen to the left track on their album, if you get The Best of the Mamas and Papas, you listen to the left track, you can still hear a little bit of my voice. My son discovered that once.

It was really fun. Well, Bobby was just basically a folk singer. He didn't play with any bands or anything, like all the rest of us. Just played his guitar and sang his songs.

Marches alone won't bring integration when human respect is disintegratin'

But times changed, and I changed, and I didn't feel that way anymore. The Beatles were happening. I think that was probably the main thing. The Beatles just changed the whole world of music.

Hate your next-door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace.

My buddies worked with me for weeks, and I went up to take my test, and started crying because I couldn't remember the words. I can remember songs. If you put it to a melody, I would have sung it to 'em in a minute.

I did about a 100 concerts this year. All over the United States. We're cutting back next year to about 40. We generate money for an organization called Mercy Corps.

I remember we woke up one morning at Denny's house and John Phillips called. He said, you guys okay? We said, yeah, what's wrong, what's going on? He said, well, everybody's dead over at Sharon's house at Terry Melcher's place.

I was very laced with drugs myself, but Fred seemed to be even more so than me. That might have had something to do with it. That might have had something to do with nobody wanting to play my records, too, I don't know.

That's why I had to leave Hair on Broadway, because I did it for about a year, and one night I was doing the show, and I realized, well, this is not real. I told the director. He says, man, it was a killer show tonight.

When I wrote 'Green, Green,' it was like a really a statement of where I was at philosophically in my life.

We were like psychedelic folk combined with Sonic Youth's noise.

I think my election is one of several indications that gay and lesbian folk are being brought more into the center of things. I'd like to think that my election signals my bringing of gay and lesbian folk into the center of the church.

Over and over again, financial experts and wonkish talking heads endeavor to explain these mysterious, 'toxic' financial instruments to us lay folk. Over and over, they ignobly fail, because we all know that no one understands credit default obligations and derivatives, except perhaps Mr. Buffett and the computers who created them.

The models for me were more the folk-rock singers of the '60s and '70s.

I think they do a great job on Queer as Folk.

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

Real folk music long ago went to Nashville and left no known survivors.

I have a deep rooted folk sensibility that I can't get away from completely.

Civilization is a conspiracy. Modern life is the silent compact of comfortable folk to keep up pretences.

My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affinity for it.

I really understand what that process is all about and how important it is, especially with young folk and creative folk that love looking for some platform that makes it easier for them to express themselves.

The local music community here was dying for a place to record, so we started doing acoustic, folk and bluegrass and then did rock projects for other bands, as well as for my son Tal and my own work.

The novel is the first art form that is an honest-to-god commodity. That's what makes it different from both high art and folk art.

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.

Why do we need to wait until somebody sells 10 million records to give people a show like that? What about us smaller, hungry folk? At least gimme a curtain!

But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there.

All music is folk music. I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.

But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them.

My idea of heaven is a place where the Tyne meets the Delta, where folk music meets the blues.

He helped make Living Things even more crazy than I wanted it to be. He added old-fashioned piano and classical folk music - that weird otherworldly vibe - all these elements got onto the record.

Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people.

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.

I've been getting into Nick Drake lately, the folk singer. Sad, gorgeous stuff.

Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He's the chap who makes it possible for civilised folk to despise war.

At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement.

It was darn nigh impossible for women in rock in the '70s. There wasn't a mold if you were a woman and you were in the entertainment in the '70s. You were probably a disco diva or a folk singer, or simply ornamental. Radio would play only one woman per hour.