Performing Songwriter

Dr. John: Funky Business

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, September 1997

FUNK IS one of those words, like cool or hip, that is difficult to define. In music, it's an amorphous thing, an attitude, a looseness, ...

Aretha Franklin: Arif Mardin: A Man For All Musical Seasons

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, July 1998

READING THROUGH the list of artists that producer/arranger Arif Mardin has worked with is like looking at a chapter of history from American pop music. ...

Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor: Peter Asher: A World Of Sound

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, April 1999

"I ALWAYS found the studio a fascinating place," says producer Peter Asher, "and the process of assembling a track and figuring out what each musician ...

Beth Nielsen Chapman: The Lightness of Being Beth Nielsen Chapman

Interview by Debbie Kruger, Performing Songwriter, September 1999

WHAT STRIKES YOU first about Beth Nielsen Chapman, and then again repeatedly on further meetings, is her lightness. She is a woman who has been ...

Lou Reed

Interview by Paul Zollo, Performing Songwriter, 2000

"Music was what bothered me, what interested me. I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it. That's why I ...

Eddi Reader

Interview by Debbie Kruger, Performing Songwriter, March 2000

EDDI READER ready to do it alone. After a decade of drawing heavily on collaborations with other writers, she realizes it's okay – in fact ...

Kasey Chambers

Interview by Debbie Kruger, Performing Songwriter, December 2000

IT'S A LINE so stark in its humility that it has some American reviewers looking for irony and missing the point altogether. ...

David Bowie: The Sound and Vision of David Bowie

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, September 2003

PLANET EARTH is blue and David Bowie's beige. Dressed down in khakis, a light tan T-shirt and a matching ball cap, he looks more like ...

David Gates, Bread: Legends of Songwriting: David Gates of Bread

Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, December 2003

REMEMBER "soft rock?" You don't hear the term much anymore, but in the early 1970s, this musical genre floated onto the AM airwaves in the ...

Harlan Howard: Legends of Songwriting: Harlan Howard

Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, January 2004

THE TYPICAL songwriter who rolls into Nashville is an unknown hopeful with an acoustic guitar and a notebook full of half-finished songs and titles. When ...

Chi-Lites, The: Legends of Songwriting: Eugene Record of The Chi-Lites

Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, May 2004

IN 1969, WHEN The Chi-Lites scored their first hit with 'Give It Away', it was a well-earned triumph. ...

Bill Withers: Legends of Songwriting: Bill Withers

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, July 2004

A BLACK MAN wearing faded jeans and an orange turtleneck sweater sits on a stool. He's hunched over his acoustic guitar. Eyes closed, sweat glistening ...

Elvis Costello: A Man with a Mission (In Two or Three Editions)

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, Fall 2004

ELVIS COSTELLO is about to take over the world. No, he's not going to reveal himself as a nefarious arch-villain in league with Doctor Octopus ...

Sergio Mendes: Legends of Songwriting: Sergio Mendes

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, October 2005

ON TIMELESS, the latest album by Sergio Mendes, there's a line in the title track that goes, "Kindness is timeless/Love is so easy." ...

Eurythmics: The Power Of Two

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, January 2006

WHEN DAVE Stewart and Annie Lennox formed Eurythmics in 1980, they drew up what they called "a manifesto." A list of their intentions, along with ...

Jeff Barry: Bubblegum Hero

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, July 2006

When Don Kirshner hired Jeff Barry as a producer and writer for the Monkees, then the Archies, he knew he was getting a guaranteed hitmaker. ...

Simon & Garfunkel, Paul Simon: Surprise Surprise: Paul Simon

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, September 2006

"THE TRUTH is flexible and complex," says Paul Simon. On the eleven songs that make up his latest album Surprise, the legendary songwriter sizes up ...

Jimmy Webb: Legends of Songwriting : Jimmy Webb

Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, March 2007

"SOMEONE LEFT the cake out in the rain." No single lyric is more infamous in pop music than the one Jimmy Webb wrote forty years ...

Herb Alpert: Legends Of Songwriting: Herb Alpert...

Profile and Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, July 2007

...plus an interview with Dolores Erickson, the lady beneath the Whipped Cream ...

Legends of Songwriting: Diane Warren

Interview by Bill DeMain, Performing Songwriter, September 2007

ASKED WHETHER she could ever love a person as much as she loves songwriting, Diane Warren doesn't miss a beat in answering an emphatic "No." ...