Dan Hill Quotes

Songs sometimes are so connected to the sociology of the time.

At 10, I heard Neil Diamond’s ‘Solitary Man’ and it moved me so deeply I stood, frozen in place during school recess, feeling such empathy for the narrator in Diamond’s masterpiece that my heart was smashed.

I don’t want to lose my legs, you know. I don’t want to be wheeled around in a wheelchair. I don’t want to be attached to a catheter. I saw all that stuff happen to my father, and as much as it upset me because I loved my father so much, it also really traumatized me.

I did have one bad accident up north near Deerhurst. I was driving back in the winter on these snowy roads, and these two snowmobilers were racing up a hill and they weren’t looking, so they caught me as I was going up the other side of the hill, and they smashed into me.

Ringside seats mean you hear the breaking of ribs, the splattered cartilage of what was once the boxer’s nose, the dislocation of the jaw, the horrifying ‘ugggh’ that the boxer utters milliseconds after receiving a crushing left hook to the solar plexus or kidneys or head.

My problem is I don’t have this incredible, hip image. I’m not some flamboyant or gorgeous-looking guy who’s going to sell records based on his image.

My, oh my, how ‘Sometimes When We Touch’ has travelled since I solemnly wrote my first version at the age of 19.

Since the dawn of recorded music, every generation has felt shocked by the musical tastes of the next.

In the music world, concerts unfold strictly according to plan. But, as I’d been finding out, in the book world, things keep changing by the second.

Hit songs are mysterious and slippery beasts; few artists have a lock on them. This means that many people, like me, have become fans of songs rather than fans of artists.

Some stresses are unavoidable – it’s just part of life. One of the things I do to avoid stress is not work with people that I don’t really like or drive me crazy.

When we bemoan the lost golden age of music, it’s worth remembering that mainstream radio listeners of the ’60s and ’70s, particularly in Canada, missed out on an outpouring of brilliant R&B music.

Our house is a constant mayhem of music, noise, socializing and business. It vibrates life, as a house should.

When you think of bike couriers, you think of hyper speed. They get paid by how fast they can drop stuff off. The faster you go, the more chances you take. And the more chances you take, the greater the war between cyclists and cars.

My wife is unusually kind and generous, but she’s no fool. You don’t mess with her.

When you look at the lyrics of ‘Sometimes When We Touch,’ it’s really very much an adolescent song.

You succeed and accomplish and accomplish; the problem is when you stop, you become depressed because you could never do enough.

Most of my friends in Nashville – almost all of them – seem to have had hits in the ’70s, either as artists or songwriters or producers.

While certainly no pressing threat to Gordon Lightfoot, I knew it was simply a matter of time until I was going to be a star.

To be 23 and riding the crest of a song sweeping the world country by country is to live an altered and wholly rarefied existence.

I just wanted to show people – maybe I’m wrong – that I can still really sing. I can sing better than I ever have before. My intonation is way better, my timing, my phrasing – there’s a lot more expression; I feel it’s a more lived-in, soulful voice.

I’d sometimes do 50, 60 takes of song.

Blessed with Mom and Dad’s remarkable genes, raised on big words and big, iconoclastic attitudes, Larry and I, before entering kindergarten, knew who we were, what we wanted, and how we would get there.

One of the things I did to make myself feel better is that I kicked up my running even more. I knew that I had to stay active, that I had to keep living as if my life was actually going to unfold naturally because when you stop, when you freeze, and you think about it, that’s when the demons come and can drag you down.

I’m an intense guy. I run 10 miles a day, which helps alleviate my intensity. Also, singing helps defuse my intensity. Playing the piano helps, and writing helps.

To be sure, boxing has always been, at best, a shady and sometimes cutthroat business, buttressed by hype and tomfoolery rivalling, at times, that of carnival circuses.

I cannot emphasize just how dangerous it is cycling in the city. Especially now. Even though it is against the law to do this, you’ll see people texting while they drive.

The tricky thing about songwriting is that, more often than not, what you consider to be your best work generates a collective shrug, and something you’ve simply tossed off bowls people over.

I was wired to be intense. I don’t think that’s ever going to change.

In Don Mills in the Sixties, nothing comes close to the humiliation of losing an argument. In our weird little creative circle, no one cares who has faster fists, but to lose an argument suggests inferior intelligence.