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.

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.

I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.

Then, in that hour of deliverance, my heart spoke. Does not such a country, and such defenders of their country, deserve a song?

If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you.

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

I guess a good song is a good song is a good song, ya know.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.

The band set up in January and just started rehearsing. If there was a song, we'd just rehearse it as a band, and it would get arranged as a band, and it got changed around a lot.

Peace Train is a song I wrote, the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions of human beings.

I love listening to Radio Head's 'Everything in its Right Place' because it's all major chords, it makes you feel really good. It's soothing, it's got a beautiful voice, crazy textures. When I'm down I listen to that song and it really makes me feel good.

I've always wanted to sing, just as I've always known that one day I would have my own niche in the annals of song. It was a feeling I had.

I have eighteen titles in the German language. I had a number one song in 1965.

Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies.

There's a lot of rage... you have to express it somehow. If I didn't express it in song, I'd become incredibly violent.

I do not mind having written the song at all. I just wish that I had written it in a different key, as the high d is hard to play. I am glad that I wrote something that brought joy to millions of people.

It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with the song. The record company can only do so much.

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.

I guess you could write a good song if your heart hadn't been broken, but I don't know of anyone whose heart hasn't been broken.

A song has to become as much a part of you as a tailored suit.

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.

In an age of incompetence, I've been able to last in this crazy business. I actually know how to play my ax and write a song. That's my job.

The only thing that's a little tricky about it is sometimes people assume that if it's a new song, it's a reflection of what you're feeling or going through now.

When I write a song, it's all about the riff - the riff first, then the words come later.

There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record.

Song Sung Blue took a lot of compressing and refining, and it has one of my favorite lyrics.