Architects of consummately crafted rock and soul, Daryl Hall and John Oates are the best selling duo of all time.

Architects of consummately crafted rock and soul, Daryl Hall and John Oates are the best selling duo of all time. Since meeting up in the late ‘60s in a freight elevator, scurrying away from a riot taking place at Philly's Adelphi Ballroom during a "Battle of the Bands" show, Hall and Oates joined musical forces to create an extraordinary body of work which embraced a wide swath of musical styles and genres-including pop, r&b, rock, folk, prog, funk, power pop, avant-garde, gospel, new wave, doo-wop, reggae, country and jazz.

Master musical alchemists, their legacy is unparalleled, numbering such jewels as "She's Gone," "Sara Smile," "Rich Girl," "It's A Laugh," "Wait For Me," "Kiss On My List," "You Make My Dreams Come True," "Maneater," "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)," "One on One," "Out of Touch," "Say It Isn't So" and "Do It For Love." Scoring intermittent success throughout the ‘70s, it wasn't until the ‘80s that their fortunes turned. By taking complete control over their creative destiny, the Philly boys made the top of the charts their second home with such multi-platinum releases as Voices, Private Eyes, H20 and Big Bam Boom.

Taking a self-imposed break in the mid-‘80s, Hall and Oates reemerged stronger and more focused and-most importantly-still in full possession of their immense writing and artistic gifts. Many of today's contemporaries, ranging from Maroon 5 to Gym Class Heroes (Hall guests on the group's forthcoming album) routinely cite the band for their prodigious influence. Joining such luminaries as Brian Wilson, The Bee Gees, The Kinks' Ray Davies, Paul Simon, James Brown, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dolly Parton, Hall and Oates were recently inducted as BMI Icons for their incalculable contribution to popular music. They are, in a word: legends.

More than 30 years since its release, Abandoned Luncheonette is championed as a career milestone.
Daryl Hall: I consider that our first album, the first album we had really written to be recorded... as opposed to odds and ends we'd been trying to bang around in our Whole Oats act. Abandoned Luncheonette was a very successful album on a lot of levels; it had some great songs on there, especially side one..."Abandoned Luncheonette" defines my whole philosophy of life in one song. I probably never had to write another song after that.

There was a telling jump in quality of writing from Whole Oats to that particular LP. What accounted for that dramatic creative shift?
John Oates: There's a very distinct reason for that. The Whole Oats album was a collection of songs that Daryl and I had assembled over a three- or four-year period of time when we were just starting out. It was sort of folky stuff that I'd done separately from him-stuff that he had written separately from me. Then we came together and recorded it. That was the best we had at the moment. But once we did an album and we had Arif Mardin on our side, and a contract with Atlantic Records and we were on tour... all of a sudden, we had a focus and a point of view. All we cared about was getting a record contract and going on tour-and we did that. So then the goal was, now let's make a real record. So even though Whole Oats was technically our first record, our first real record was Abandoned Luncheonette. Rather than being just a collection of songs we got out of our system, these were all songs written during a one-year period, and it was recorded with a very distinct, clear purpose and point of view.

Characterize the band's approach to writing.
JO: We never worried about hits. Even during the ‘80s, when we were having all those hits... that was the last thing on our mind. We've always had the rap of being these pop masterminds who had this formula, just had some kind of key to unlocking the door for pop success. But nothing could be further from the truth. We never picked our own singles. Our philosophy was always, make the best record you can, let the radio and record company people-who sell the music-decide what songs will be released as the singles. First off, we're not gonna put a song on a record if we don't like it, so we don't care which song they pick. There are always songs that seem to stand out that people say, "Oh, that sounds like a single." Even a song like "You Make My Dreams Come True"... as a simple and pop as that song is, we didn't say, "Let's record this as a single." You serve the composition. That's the approach where you get the best results. You write the best song you can and say, "How can this song be best served? What's the instrumentation? Who are the players? What can make this song as good as it can be?" That's always been our approach.

The chords in Hall & Oates songs are simple on the surface, but when you examine them up close, they're very sophisticated and complex. DH: That approach comes from my own regional history. I'm a Philly musician. I haven't lived in Philly since I grew up, but I'll always be from Philadelphia-just like Dr. John is from New Orleans. You can't separate me from the musical environment of that region, and I think the chords in "Sara Smile" are very Philadelphia kind of chords; they're very typical of the chords that writers from Philly like Thom Bell and Leon [Huff] would use. That influence comes from gospel, jazz and even classical music. It's a very interesting racial and geographic mix that makes Philadelphia music what it is.

John, you have a college degree in journalism. Did that education impact your ability as a lyricist?
JO: I think that's a peculiar characteristic of pop music. I think the best pop music writers are the ones that can communicate complex emotional things in very simplistic terms, and in a very direct way, that gets across in the restricted format of a pop song. You don't have 86 words. You've got four words, and in those four words, every word has to count... you've got the added restrictions that they've got to rhyme too, for the most part, and you've got to be able to sing them. So you have words that have to be able to roll off the tongue and be sung, they have to somewhat rhyme or at least have a rhyme scheme, and then they have to say something-all in a very, very short period of time. To me, that's the mark of a good pop song.

Which part of the creative process do you enjoy most?
DH: It depends really. When you have that first flash of what you think is going to be a great idea-from the mouth, from the hands-that's an amazing feeling. I don't think anything's quite as good as that. Then of course there's that moment when you're presenting it to the band, and it all clicks together in some amazing way and goes to another level. That's another great feeling. Playing live is another one.

How much is songwriting craft and how much is inspiration?
JO: There's a lot of craft in songwriting. The divine inspiration is when the idea comes. It may be a riff. It may be a word. It may be a phrase. It may be a title. Sometimes, in the best of both worlds, that divine inspiration extends through the whole song. I've literally sat down and written a song from beginning to end, almost complete lyrics and everything without ever stopping... in two minutes. The chorus of "She's Gone" was like that. I sat down with the guitar and sang the chorus of "She's Gone" basically the way that it is. Then I played it for Daryl because I didn't have anything else. It just happened. I said, "Hey, I've got this really great chorus." And we wrote the verses together. "She's Gone" is a song that endures.

Do songs ever come to you without an instrument?
DH: I remember this one song, kind of an obscure one. It was one of the first times I went to London, and I was up in the middle of the night. I was jetlagged and was walking in the park and the bells were ringing. It was like six o'clock in the morning, maybe even earlier. My footsteps, the bells and the traffic sounds all had this kind of rhythm. Not only did I use that to write the song, but I used that for the lyrics too. That's the first verse for the song, "London Luck and Love." That's the ultimate example of that. "Looking for A Good Sign" [from the Private Eyes album] was one of the few songs in my life that I actually dreamed. I woke up in the morning and ran to the tape recorder and sang my dream into the tape recorder and got that. It's great... it's a dream song. [Laughs]

Looking back over your career as songwriter, have you changed the way in which you write songs?
DH: Inspiration comes in a lot of different ways. Sometimes, it's a drum machine and a groove that inspires me to play something on the guitar or the piano. Sometimes, it's the opposite; I come up with an idea on guitar or piano. Sometimes, I'll write a lyric, and the rhythm of the words will dictate the rhythms of the song or the chords I choose. I seem to be writing lyrics first more often more than I ever did. The songs come out a little bit different that way. They're a little less groove-oriented and more singer/songwriter-y.

Is there a song you wish you wrote?
DH: Oh man, "What's Goin' On" [Marvin Gaye]. It's the best song ever written. It's everything. Its message is timeless. It's the perfect marriage of groove and vocal. Yeah, I'd wished I'd written that song.

If you could choose one person you wished would have covered a Hall & Oates song, who would you pick?
DH: You could take any song you want and... I'd like either John Lennon or Marvin Gaye to sing it [laughs]. I don't care what the song is. Otis [Redding] could sing "Every Time You Go Away."

Share some memories about your hits. "Sara Smile."
DH: Sara Allen was my life partner, a co-writer and, to some degree, a muse too-for many, many years. We're not together anymore, but she certainly was a very significant part of my life...and that song said what I wanted to say about her. That song came quick because it was such an easy and direct thing I was saying lyrically. I know the song means a lot to her now, although she's told me that she can't hear it anymore. It plagues her; it drives her out of the supermarket. When that song comes on, the reality hits that we're not together anymore, so it's a very poignant and hard thing for her to deal with. I can still sing that song today and feel real about it-and always will-because emotions don't change even though circumstances change. The song is about timelessness. As usual, we were stretching the boundaries of what we were doing, trying to find ourselves, and a song like "Sara Smile" is one of the more pure soul songs I've ever written.

"Rich Girl."
DH: "Rich Girl" was written about an old boyfriend of Sara's [Allen] from college that she was still friends with at the time. His name is Victor Walker. He came to our apartment, and he was acting sort of strange. His father was quite rich. I think he was involved with some kind of a fast-food chain. I said, "This guy is out of his mind, but he doesn't have to worry about it because his father's gonna bail him out of any problems he gets in." So I sat down and wrote that chorus. [Sings] "He can rely on the old man's money/he can rely on the old man's money/he's a rich guy." I thought that didn't sound right, so I changed it to "Rich Girl." He knows the song was written about him.

"I'm Just A Kid (Don't Make Me Feel Like A Man)."
JO: That's a really important song. Even though I was still young, I went to a show in New Jersey to see The Byrds. I was only in my early 20s, but for some reason I felt old...and I don't know why. I don't know what it was about that show. I felt kind of out of it. Maybe it was because I was in the audience and not on stage. I wrote as if I was kind of a child trapped in a man's body. I thought that song worked really well.

"Kiss On My List"
DH: That's the first song Janna [Allen] and I wrote together. It came very quickly. She had a little Wurlitzer piano in her apartment in L.A., and we just started writing, literally, standing there in a room. She started singing things...it was very much the two of us writing together.

"Private Eyes."
DH: That's a real Janna Allen song. Janna, and I, and Warren Pash wrote that. Warren and Janna wrote most of the song, and I took it and changed it around-changed the chords. Sandy [Sara Allen] and I wrote the lyrics. It's a real family song, the Allen sisters and me.

"Maneater."
DH: John had written a prototype of "Maneater"; he was banging it around with Edgar Winter. It was like a reggae song. I said, "Well, the chords are interesting, but I think we should change the groove." I changed it to that Motown kind of groove. So we did that, and I played it for Sara and sang it for her...[Sings] "Oh here she comes/Watch out boy she'll chew you up/Oh here she comes/She's a maneater...and a ..." I forget what the last line was. She said, "Drop that shit in the end and go, 'She's a maneater,' and stop! And I said, 'No, you're crazy, that's messed up.'" Then I thought about it, and I realized she was right. And it made all the difference in the song.

Ralph Stanley is a man of few words and short answers, and this doesn't make him the ideal interview subject. But at 81 years old, he has earned the right to say as much or as little as he wants, and after over 60 years of playing music, he can be forgiven for not wanting to say it all again.Ralph Stanley is a man of few words and short answers, and this doesn't make him the ideal interview subject. But at 81 years old, he has earned the right to say as much or as little as he wants, and after over 60 years of playing music, he can be forgiven for not wanting to say it all again. No doubt, he's got plenty to talk about, from his boyhood in rural southwest Virginia to his years as half of bluegrass legends the Stanley Brothers and his reintroduction to a new generation of listeners as the mournful voice singing "O Death" on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Now the living embodiment of Appalachian mountain music, he still tours tirelessly and continues to use his band-once the music cradle of artists ranging from Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley to his own son and now 16-year-old grandson-to bring up the next generation. If you ask him, he'll tell you all these things, but don't expect him to elaborate.

So it must be nice to be able to tour with your grandson?
Yeah, I like that real good. He's been playing with me a couple of years. He's only 16 years old, and he's just now getting material together.

Have the crowds at your shows changed much?
I'm having bigger crowds than I used to and different classes of people. Young and old, there's a variety. I give a lot of credit to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and I think that got me out to a lot of new fans and listeners. And I recorded with a few country artists, and I think that helped me spread out, too.

Do you remember the first time you wanted to be a musician?
Well, it was a long time ago. It's back when I was a teenager, maybe 11, 12 or 13. That was about the first time that I ever heard a radio. I got to liking it and me and my brother together decided that we'd like to do that together, if we could. We got a radio in 1939, and I would always listen to it, and there was country music on everyday somewhere. There wasn't too much music around where I was raised. They liked it, but there wasn't that much in that particular part of the world. It was hard back in those days. They had to work sometimes from daylight to dark. And some people like music but aren't interested in playing it. It has changed a lot. Back in my days, there weren't any paved roads. We didn't have electricity back then.

Did it take you long to develop your own style?
Well, no. I think we had God-given talent. It don't sound like anybody [else], and it was a natural sound that we had. I never was too good of a songwriter. I've written a few songs, but my brother was a better songwriter than I am. It took a few years.

How about your style of playing the banjo?
I first played clawhammer banjo, and then I played a two-finger, and then I heard the three-finger. I heard Earl Scruggs. I started to learn that, but I learned my way. I play three-finger, but it's my way of playing. It's not like his.

From what I understand, you come from a long line of banjo players.
A lot of them played the old-time clawhammer. My mother had 11 brothers and sisters, and every one of them played the old clawhammer style. I heard my mother play it, and I first started playing like her. Clawhammer don't suit a lot of songs and singing, so I had to switch to the three-finger style.

How much of an influence did church music have on the way you developed your style?
I think the church and singing influenced us a lot. The singing goes back to the church. There wasn't much music at all in our area. The church we went to did not use music, so we learned to sing a cappella.

Did you and your brother sing well together from the start?
We were real natural. We spoke our words alike, and we liked the same things, and it just fell into place. We were too young to sing much together in church, but we listened to it.

Was it difficult to find your own audience when you started out?
No. When we first started playing on the radio station in Bristol, Virginia and Tennessee, we started a new radio show called "Farm and Fun Time." And first thing we knew, we were getting cards and letters by the sack full by fans requesting songs. We started right off with plenty of listeners. I don't know how we got ‘em, but they appeared.

Do you remember the first time you heard Bill Monroe's music?
About 1939, I'd say. Bill Monroe has always been my favorite, but I don't sound a bit like Bill Monroe. I have my own sound. It's old-time traditional music.

He is sitting right there on the sidewalk, eating red snapper, heavy-lidded eyes taking in the world around him and engaging with the various people who wander up-looking for that gen-u-wine piece of downtown authenticity. Lou Reed has always been a perpendicular player: someone who strikes gold, then blows up the mine, and that defiance of commercial convention makes him the ultimate rejectionista, the judge of hipper-than-what-most-think-you-oughta.

He is sitting right there on the sidewalk, eating red snapper, heavy-lidded eyes taking in the world around him and engaging with the various people who wander up-looking for that gen-u-wine piece of downtown authenticity. Lou Reed has always been a perpendicular player: someone who strikes gold, then blows up the mine, and that defiance of commercial convention makes him the ultimate rejectionista, the judge of hipper-than-what-most-think-you-oughta.

Lollabelle, his rat terrier, is curled beneath his chair, half-alseep, half-taking in the passers-by. Mostly bored by life as the best friend of the man who made nihilism seem like a trip to Disneyland, switch-blading the bourgeoisie conventions with the dingy reality of the people living in the cracks, she waits.

He is here on the brink of the reissue of Berlin, the follow-up of his wildly successful David Bowie-produced Transformer. What should have been a slam dunk-even Bowie wanted to be Lou, as Lester Bangs tells William Miller in Cameron Crowe's coming-of-age Almost Famous-was a star-making car wreck of catastrophic proportions.

The song cycle scandalized and appalled fans with its unburnished take on junkie life, bottom-feeding whore-tricks and an obsessive love affair that resulted in Caroline losing her children ("The Kids") replete with the shrieking of producer Bob Ezrin's own children, who'd purportedly been told their mother was dead upon returning home from school.

What was a momentum-killer then, now more than holds up in modern light. An operatic take on downtown street life, it examined complexities of lust and obsession, jealousy and addiction's bottomless pit. Disconcerting to listen to-if only for the relentlessness of the writing and arrangements-Berlin is an audio vérité concept album that captures the rest of that celebrated "walk on the wild side."

An acclaimed man about Manhattan, Reed is the paramour of performance artist Laurie Anderson, a regular at St. Ann's in Brooklyn, a compadre of Hal Wilner, a creative partner to John Zorn, John Cale and Bill Laswell, an alum of the Velvet Underground, a veteran of Andy Warhol's circle and someone who seemingly knows every hipster, true blue-blood and creative engine in NYC.

With a Julian Schnabel film capturing the staging of Berlin-its own sort of Rorschach of the subconscious dream-states and impressionistic scenes the work evokes merging with the initial performances of the album once most charitably deemed "challenging"-it seems Reed's reviled-at-the-time-of-release work is being vindicated. Not that he works for approval; indeed, he works to scrape all that's inside him to be written.

As locals stopped and he exchanged neighborhood news, and caught up with people he rarely sees, Reed was not so much the snarling pre-punk, as much as a man respected for his uncompromising wrestle with his muse. With one of his most polarizing CDs-more so than Songs for Drella, Metal Machine Music, Magic & Loss or even the wildly pop New Sensations-finally performed in public, it was a good time to weigh the weight of creation, the reasons songwriting matters and how he views the reality of what he does.

As a writer, is it more important to be great, or true? What do you value?
Certainly those two words go together. It's hard to imagine one without the other. But the real thing is: do you like it?

That's pretty clean.
It's kind of a weird thing to do...

It's a very weird thing to do, and yet...
If you grew up listening to rock and roll songs, it's kind of an obvious thing...

Because...
Because it's the only thing worth anything. It's immediate. It's not like going to the movies is the same as listening to music. It's kind of weird to even be thought of as a songwriter. "Oh, is that what I am?"

Do you think of yourself as a songwriter?
No.

Then how do you think of yourself?
Artist. Sometimes, it's with music and words. Sometimes, it's photos. Other times, it's electronics. Whatever it is... But being a songwriter, that's pretty good.

Once the king of the glitterbillies-the term he coined for the style of music known for a rhinestone suits and rockabilly backbeats-Marty Stuart seems comfortable with more modest apparel, both in terms of music and clothing.

Once the king of the glitterbillies-the term he coined for the style of music known for a rhinestone suits and rockabilly backbeats-Marty Stuart seems comfortable with more modest apparel, both in terms of music and clothing. Now 50 and with flecks of gray in his once jet-black pompadour, he sits on a leather chair in his tour bus and plays riffs on a well worn mandolin while fielding interview questions. He now prefers music that's a little quieter and little more raw, but he certainly hasn't mellowed with age, positioning himself at the center of America's great bedrock forms with a series of gospel and roots albums. But as much as he seems to be reinventing himself, he's really just returning to where he started when he was making a living playing music when most kids are booting groundballs in little league. Having gotten his start as a 12-year-old bluegrass prodigy-playing mandolin with the Sullivans and the Lester Flatt before riding shotgun with his hero, Johnny Cash-Stuart's career has been defined by struggle and success. Whichever one of those options wins out in the future, one thing is certain: he'll get there on his own terms.

I didn't realize it, but you once played as a member of Doc Watson's band.
Yeah, for a summer's worth of concerts in about 1980, and I felt like we played about 20 years worth of music in that one summer. It stands as one of the most enjoyable musical experiences of my life. It was Doc and Merle and T. Michael [Coleman] and me, and it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. I had never been a part of music at that level at that time. Coming out of Lester Flatt's band was wonderful, but [Doc and Merle] played at a different place. It was something.

Then, after that is when you joined Johnny Cash's band.
The last date that I had with Doc and Merle was in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and then they were going to go on hiatus for a few months. And I had no idea where I was going to go to work next. We had a matinee show in Cedar Rapids, and I went back to the hotel after the first set, and the light was blinking on my phone. It was my mom, and she said that one of the guys in Johnny Cash's band was looking for me and that Johnny Cash wanted to talk to me. I called, and he said, "John wants to know if you want to come talk about being in his band," and I said, "Well, this is a good time to talk!" And he said, "How about tomorrow?" and I said, "Sure." They were in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which was about two hours away. So I got a rental car and drove to Cedar Rapids, which was about two hours away. I never saw him. I talked to him on the phone, and they stood me on my spot, and that's how I got started with Johnny Cash.

Were you nervous?
No. He called me, and when I first got to the hotel in Cedar Rapids, his guitar player and band leader, Bob Wooten, got me acclimated and told me what time he'd be leaving to go to the show. So I sat down at the restaurant, and the maitre d' came and said, "Mr. Cash' is on the phone for you." He said, "Hey, son." I said, "Hi, J.R." He said, "Do you know my songs?" I said, "Every one of ‘em. Do you still do them in the same key?" He said, "Probably. Do you have anything black to wear?" I said, "Probably." He said, "Well, that's good. I'm probably going to take a nap, and I'm probably going to see you in a few minutes. Bye." And that's all there was to it.

What was it like the first time you met Johnny Cash?
It was a few months previous to that in Jack Clement's studio. I went with a friend of mine named Danny Ferrington who had built him a guitar to deliver it. And when I shook hands with him, he kept looking me, and like I've said, I heard thunder. And I really did. He just kept looking at me, and he said, "Where you from?" I said, "Mississippi." He said, "Where you been?" I said, "Gettin' ready." He said, "Alright," and we hung out that night. Nothing serious. And we hung out one other time, and that was it until that phone call came, and that was three or four months later. I've said before, sometimes I think God puts people on your heart early on if you're supposed to meet them and know about them, and the first two records I ever owned in my life were Flatt & Scruggs and Johnny Cash. And the only two gigs that I ever had were with Johnny Cash and Lester Flatt, so I was ready. I really was prepared.

When you ended up marrying Johnny Cash's daughter, did that change your relationship with him?
No. We kept it totally separate-business. We were friends before any of that occurred, so we left it at that.

Was that a hard decision when you left Johnny's band?
No. It was time. I think he knew it, and I knew it. He helped me get a recording contract with Columbia. There weren't any bad feelings or anything. I left with his blessing, and he helped me. It really didn't change much of anything, other than the fact that I wasn't going on the road with him anymore. To the day that he died, when he called and wanted me to go play the guitar, he was still the chief. He came and helped me on sessions. He played on records of mine, and I played on his, and we were next-door neighbors. Really, not much changed.

When you first went solo and were getting established, did you look to him for advice?
Sure. He was always there for advice. One of the things that I remember is that we got booked to play the Billy Graham crusade. Don't ask me why. But I knew that he'd been playing them since the ‘50s, and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to ask or how to be, so that was one of the times that I called him and said, "Help!" And he never ever pushed advice, but he was there any time that it was asked.

And then there was a period of time that you went home and recharged for awhile in the late ‘80s, the time before Hillbilly Rock.
Yeah, I had no choice but to go home, because nothing else was working.

And you ended up playing with the Sullivans again?
Yeah, because the Sullivans were the first people that I ever played with, and Jerry Sullivan called and invited me out to play for a weekend, and I went back and played the same kind of little churches and events that I played with them when I was a kid. There was nothing else to do that summer except get my life back together. But it worked out great, and I enjoyed it, because I got to go down that trail of Southern culture that there is very little left of. See, they started their church meetings in what they called brush arbors, which were makeshift churches in the woods made out of brush into an arbor. And that's where that kind of music that they play came from, and I used to call them "children of the brush arbors," and they were like American Indians. They were a vanishing people. There are very few people left that used to play that old brush arbor circuit, and I'm glad that I got to go back to see that one more time. That's what happened that summer. I would up producing a couple records for Jerry and Tammy of songs that we wrote along that way that summer. It was a very beneficial time.

Did it feel like you were starting over at that time?
Yeah, but I've never been afraid of new starts. As I get older, I hate ‘em, but I'm not scared of them. If you're a true artist-or any human being-it's the evolution of circles. Always going back to the beginning, yet again. A new chapter. It used to tear me down to where I thought I had to tear everything apart, disassemble everything that I've ever done in my life, and start over. Now it's more like a continuation. It isn't quite as severe [laughs]. There's more breathing when you look at it that way.

It must have been gratifying when Hillbilly Rock became a big hit then.
Well, it was. It finally gave me a reason to get out and have a bus and a band and put on cowboy clothes and live the dream. We had a string of good hits through that time, and I was really playing that radio game and doing that whole hillbilly star thing. I loved every minute of it.

After that you became very interested in preserving country's roots. Do you see yourself as responsible for preserving the traditions that came before you?
Well, it's probably self-imposed, but it's more a family thing to me. Those people raised me when I was a kid, and they gave me a place to play. They gave me a family away from home. As time went on, and country music started changing into more of a commercialized industry beyond the mom-and-pop-setup that it was founded on, I saw that more of those people that I loved were being disregarded. Their treasures and contributions were being swept under the carpet, and I saw this as an injustice. The question I posed was, "Why do we have to breech with the past? That's our foundation and our roots. Why not take the entire story forward?" It's great that Carrie Underwood is out there and Kenny Chesney is packing stadiums tonight, but does that diminish the contributions of Doc and Merle or the Carter Family or Willie Nelson or Connie Smith or Johnny Cash of Snuffy Jenkins? No. It's all part of the same family, and it should move forward as such, I believe. If anything, I'm an antagonist to make sure that that happens. A radical preservationist, maybe, but an antagonist, too. A reminder.

So what was it like to work with Porter Wagoner on his last record?
It was divine. It was a divine mission. I don't know if you're familiar with a TV channel called RFD, but everything is rural. I came in from the front of the bus one day, and they still air The Porter Wagoner Show like it is current programming, and I really got back in touch with Porter's show. He'd always been my buddy, but I decided it was time to go back and see Porter. It made me miss him. So I went home to Nashville, and 15 minutes into the visit I knew I wanted to produce a record, because he kept playing me these songs that were almost like well-kept secrets that he was just waiting for the right time to tell. I thought, this is not going to be easy to get somebody interested in a 79-year-old man who has been there and done that more times than we can imagine. Nashville passed on him, and I found him the deal with Anti- Records out in California. And it worked. My pitch to Porter was that "You don't have to change one thing about yourself. You just be Porter Wagoner. We got you covered." And my goal was to get a guitar back around his neck, get his pompadour back up, and get kids to dig it. And we did that simply by putting his sound around him again. I think after Dolly left, he started chasing a little bit, just trying to keep up with the times, and I understand that. But it was time to put him inside of the sound that made him great and famous, and it worked. And it was an honor to be there.

I talked to him a few months before he passed, and he said there were hundreds of songs that he had that he never recorded. Would those songs have just gone with him?
Probably. At least some of them.

That must be pretty satisfying to know that you got him one last shot.
When we were standing there on stage at Madison Square Garden opening for the White Stripes, he looked at me and said, "We're doing pretty good aren't we?" And I said, "We're doing pretty good. Keep going." That was a pretty good moment.

I bet. Did you know at that time that he was sick?
Well, we had to cancel the sessions, because he had an aneurysm, and it delayed the sessions from July to November. So it was pretty known that he was kind of weak, but most days were pretty good, and he was intent and had something to live for, and he was really pulling toward being his best again. As sick as he turned out to be? No, I had no idea. He was supposed to go up to the White House and light the National Christmas Tree, and I was going to help him get his music together, so I went by and saw him and said, "I'll be back in two weeks, and we'll get this done." And when I went back in two weeks, I could tell that something was terribly wrong. It happened that fast. And two more weeks later, and he was gone. We went to Cracker Barrel and were having a salad and telling jokes one day, and two weeks later it was over.

Since you're so connected with an earlier generation of country music, you have the benefit of getting to know them all, but you also have to bury them all.
That's true. And it hurts. It leaves a void that can't nothing but God fill up. I've tried filling that up with dope and liquor years ago, and none of that makes sense. It just makes more messes. It's just life. It's a hard assignment. But at the same time, knowing those people is worth any of the pain that you have to go through to get there.

So what's next for you?
Well, we're finishing up the first season of "Marty Stuart's American Odyssey" on XM. That's the closest thing to a job that I've ever had. My book is coming out in wide release this Christmas. As far as records go, I've got about three songs and that leaves up 12 to go, so it's a long walk to the microphone. I'm not in any hurry to get there, since we've put out four records in the past three years. It's time to put a real inspired record out there. I'm feeling a real need to play some real country music-a fresh take on country music. So we'll see.

So, overall, this has been a pretty good life. Is this anything you ever could have imagined when you were a kid?
It's what I dreamed about. I had a pretty good feeling that this is what it was going to be. I got there as fast as I could [laughs], and I wouldn't have had anything else to do had this not been here. It's my life, and I love it.

With his wondrous songs extolling the simple joys of sun, sand, surf-and more introspective fare examining the psychic heartbreak of life-Brian Wilson is recognized as one of the most important songwriters of the last century. From the elegant simplicity of "Surfer Girl" and the elastic, pure pop bounce of "I Get Around," to the r&b-fueled mini-pop symphony of "Good Vibrations" and the sprawling, impressionistic introspection of "Surf's Up," Wilson has composed some of the most beautiful, moving and melodically rich songs in popular music.

With his wondrous songs extolling the simple joys of sun, sand, surf-and more introspective fare examining the psychic heartbreak of life-Brian Wilson is recognized as one of the most important songwriters of the last century. From the elegant simplicity of "Surfer Girl" and the elastic, pure pop bounce of "I Get Around," to the r&b-fueled mini-pop symphony of "Good Vibrations" and the sprawling, impressionistic introspection of "Surf's Up," Wilson has composed some of the most beautiful, moving and melodically rich songs in popular music. His new album, That Lucky Old Sun, is yet another shining example of his consummate songwriting mastery.

"Surfer Girl" is still one of your favorite songs; why does that song still stand up for you?
It was the first song I'd ever written in my whole life. I wrote that back in 1961, and it still stands up because it's such a pretty tune. It's one of the prettiest ones I ever wrote. I really love the bridge. I came up with the melody in my car [sings melody of verses], and then I went to the piano and finished it off. "Surfer Girl" came together in about an hour from start to finish-music and lyrics. When you write music in your head, as opposed to at a piano, it comes out a little different.

At what point did you recognize you had talent as a singer and songwriter?
When I was around 18 or 19, right around the time I wrote "Surfer Girl" and "Surfin'." That's when I started to realize I could be a good falsetto singer. And as a songwriter, as soon as Gary (Usher) and I wrote "409" and "In My Room," I knew I was gonna be a good songwriter.

"In My Room" is a special song for you; where was your special room in your house?
We had a music room that used to be a garage. My dad turned it into a music room. It didn't turn into a music room until I was about 14. We had a jukebox in there, and there was a piano and a Hammond B-3 organ in there too. Gary and I worked in that music room. He was on guitar, and I was on piano...and we wrote "409" and "In My Room."

Were there any songs that you wrote which had a simpler demo, and once it was finished, it far exceeded your initial vision?
Yeah, that happened with "Good Vibrations." We recorded the song at four studios over a period of six weeks. We wanted to try different sounding studios to see what would work. "Good Vibrations" evolved over time. We edited elements of the song together from all those different studios to create the finished version. It started out to be sort of a rhythm and blues track...then it turned into a real sophisticated pop record with a cello, in kind of a Phil Spector sort of style. It's a symphony in itself. Derek Taylor, who was the Beatles and Beach Boys press agent, called it a pocket symphony. I knew it was gonna be a hit.

Does the tag of being labeled a "genius" add extra pressure when you are trying to create or record?
Because of people calling me a genius, I feel pressured to write original melodies. Trying to get a song up to the standard that's expected of me is a tough job. Today, songs don't come as fast for me, like they did in the ‘60s. Inspiration for songs doesn't come as quick either, but now and then I'll hit on something big. It's like you're going along on the sea shore, and you're picking up all these shells, and all of a sudden you find a great big beautiful shell. That's like songwriting. You just tap into a great big song and go "Whoa!"

Some say songwriting is a young man's game; do you believe that to be true?
I think I'll always write great songs whenever I write. I just don't know how often I'll write. But when I do write I'll continue to write great songs. I work on that piano there [points to a piano in music room]. It's a Steinway. If I get in a songwriting rut, I keep at it until I'm done. I keep working at it and working at it until I'm done with my project. I won't stop. I keep motivated because I make myself motivated. I work each day on the piano a little bit. Sometimes I don't try to write...but at least to play the piano each day is important...to stay in touch with my piano and play in my favorite keys.

What are some of your favorite keys to play in?
E, B, E-flat and C-sharp.

Do you have a favorite piano chord?
E-major 7th. It's just a beautiful chord.

What song took you the longest to write?
"Good Vibrations" took about six weeks to write. "God Only Knows" took about a half hour to write. I started playing chords and knew it was going to be a good song. I knew it was special when it was done.

Had he only penned Elvis Presley's No. 1 smash, "In The Ghetto," Lubbock, Texas, native Mac Davis's place in the annals of important songwriters would be assured.

Had he only penned Elvis Presley's No. 1 smash, "In The Ghetto," Lubbock, Texas, native Mac Davis's place in the annals of important songwriters would be assured. Through the years, whether composing hits cut by the likes of Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, Glen Campbell, Lou Rawls and Bobby Goldsboro, Davis's innate gift as an evocative storyteller is a hallmark of his work. By the turn of the ‘70s, Mac would also go on to enjoy major success as a recording artist, straddling the pop and country worlds and racking up an impressive array of timeless gems like "Baby, Don't Get Hooked On Me," "I Believe In Music," "Stop and Smell The Roses," "Hooked On Music," "One Hell of A Woman," "You're My Bestest Friend" and "Texas In My Rearview Mirror."

An inductee into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2000, at age 66, Mac is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Currently working on a new CD, his first since 1994's Will Work For Food, he's still passionate about songwriting-still caught up in that intoxicating rush of writing a great tune.

Growing up in Lubbock, how did that environment impact on your work as a songwriter?
There's a passel of people out in West Texas that are good writers. Joe Ely jumps in my head, and he's a poet. It's hard-scrabble land out there. There's tornadoes and foul weather and wind blowing constantly. Yet if you stand back and look it's a vista, you can see for miles and miles. There's a feeling of isolation out there I think inspires a lot of people. It's like a muse of some sort, the West Texas plains.

Was music your way to connect?
It was my way to be somebody. I remember sitting on my front porch and seeing Buddy Holly purposefully drive by at 25 miles an hour in his brand new Pontiac Catalina with these good looking girls in the car...[I was] going, "Woah! If he can do that, I can do that!" I wrote about it in "Texas In My Rearview Mirror." I mention if Buddy Holly could make it that far, I could too. I used to go to the dances at Lawson's skating rink and see him play on weekends. It was so strange to see a local boy accomplish the things he did and become so huge.

When did you begin writing songs?
I started writing melodies when I was seven, eight, nine years old. My daddy thought every kid should learn to whistle. As soon as I learned to whistle I started making up songs. I found that I had this gift. I don't call it a talent; I call it a gift. Nobody in my family played instruments or sang. I remember my Daddy asking me, "What's that song you're whistling?" and I told him I made it up. He said, "You did not." [Laughs] He couldn't fathom that and neither could I. I put words to them when I was about 14-the same time Buddy Holly started making it.

In the late ‘50s you moved to Atlanta and joined Vee-Jay Records.
When I got out of high school, I moved to Atlanta in ‘58. I went to Emory University for one semester. I worked for the state of Georgia...the probation department. I also put a band together and started playing around town. Then I met some people that were in the record business. Knowing my love for r&b, they were looking for somebody to go to work for Vee-Jay Records, which was a black label [based in] Chicago. They hired me to do local promotion, and later I was regional sales and promotion man. Later I worked for Liberty Records. Then I worked for a wonderful fella named Mike Gould at Metric Music, a music publishing company. I was a song plugger, and I replaced Lenny Waronker who later found success at Warner Brothers Records as a producer. Mike was a great guy, but he was out of his element. He was still a suit-and-tie guy in a hippie world. But I learned so much from him, just listening to him say that songwriters don't finish their songs. He said they write a great title or great first verse, and then they just race through it and don't finish it. My daddy was always one of those guys who said, "If you're going to do a job, do it right." As a songwriter I feel the same way. You have to put your heart into a song and also some blood, sweat and tears into it. To me the last verse should be just as good or better than the first verse. Mike Gould also taught me to think what Cole Porter would do; he'd go for the hard rhyme.

Having that background in publishing, did that put you a step ahead of the pack?
Yeah, I learned a whole lot trying to promote other people's songs. In those days, my demo was on the bottom of the pile. I knew better than to go out there and just work my own songs ‘cause I was hired to plug everybody's songs. I enjoyed the process of recording them and doing demos, which was just me and a guitar. You can't get away with that anymore.

Two of your biggest hits were songs cut by Elvis, "In The Ghetto" and "Don't Cry Daddy." How did you get those songs to him?
Billy Strange was working with Nancy [Sinatra], and they had a publishing company called B&B Music. I was on B&B, which stood for Billy and Boots.

They told me Elvis had wanted to cut some more songs. "Memories" and "If I Can Dream" both did real well. They wanted me to send to Elvis anything that I had which had a Memphis-type sound. So I sent them a tape with 19 songs, which was everything that I had at that time. The fist song was "In The Ghetto." I had pitched "Don't Cry Daddy" to him already. I sang that song...and I think "In The Ghetto"...over at his house-that same night I met Lisa Marie and Priscilla. I grabbed one of his guitars and played "Don't Cry Daddy." I remember his comment exactly. He got tears in his eyes and said, "I'm gonna cut that song for my daddy." I was kind of surprised that was one that Elvis really liked. I thought it was going to be a little too country for him, but he loved it.

How did you come to write "In The Ghetto"?
My daddy was a small building contractor. There was a guy named Alan Smith that had worked for him for years and years. He was just like...part of the family. He was a black man and his little boy, Smitty Junior, was my age, and he and I used to play together. Our daddies would be working and in the summertime. Smitty would hang out with me. They lived in a really funky dirt street ghetto. Today's term would be a ghetto. The term "ghetto" had started to become popular to describe the urban slums. The word was used during the Holocaust to describe those situations, but they hadn't used it in an American context until the late ‘60s. Smitty Junior lived in a part of Lubbock called Queen City. They had dirt streets and broken glass everywhere. I couldn't understand how these kids could run around barefoot on all that broken glass; I was wondering why they had to live that way and I lived another way. Even though we weren't wealthy or anything, it was a whole big step up from the way that Smitty Junior had to live.

A friend of mine, Freddy Weller, showed me a lick on the guitar. Freddy was a guitar player that I knew from Atlanta. He later became a country artist. He was playing for Paul Revere & the Raiders at the time. He came by my little office that I had there on Sunset Boulevard and was showing me a guitar lick. For some reason or another I had to learn it [imitates guitar lick]. I was messing around with it after he left, and I just went [sings] "In the ghetto." I thought, man, that just fits. I had always wanted to write a song called "The Vicious Circle." There's nothing that rhymes with circle...if you wanna know the truth about it. A child is born in a situation, his father leaves and he ends up acting out and becoming his father. Being born and dying and being replaced by another child in the same situation is basically what I was talking about. Dying is a metaphor for being born into failure. Being born into a situation where you have no hope. If you listen to the song, it's more poignant now than it was then. Instead of getting better it's gotten worse. Back then we had gangs and violence in a few cities, now we have it in almost every American city.

It was risky for Elvis to cut "In The Ghetto."
Yeah, I think his producer Chips Moman had a lot to do with it...[probably saying], "C'mon, let's do something different. This is why we're here." I heard that The Colonel didn't want Elvis to record it because it was controversial. They believed it was a story of a protest song. I just thought it was drawing attention to a problem that's been around for a millennium. The more we can draw attention to it, the more likelihood that somebody can find a solution.

I'd heard you first pitched "In The Ghetto" to Sammy Davis Jr.
No. That song was pitched to Sammy after Elvis had cut it. He eventually went on to record it. But Bill Medley has never lived down turning that song down. Today he says, "Man, I can't believe that I turned that song down."

"Don't Cry Daddy" sports some of your most moving and accomplished lyrics, especially the line, "Why are children always first to feel the pain and hurt the worst/it's true but somehow it just don't seem right."
Yeah, I like that line. There's a line in that song that Elvis changed. The original line was, "As I tried to sober up, a voice inside my coffee cup kept crying out ringing in my ears. Don't cry daddy..." He changed it to, "As I think of giving up, a voice inside my coffee cup..." I'm sure The Colonel made him change that line. Elvis changed almost everything. Like on "In The Ghetto," mine just finished with, "Another little baby child is born in the ghetto." I thought that was the end of the song, and he went one step further and added, "And his mama cries." He was smart.

Coming out of my parents' divorce, "Don't Cry Daddy" hit me pretty hard. I was a drinker back in those days and went at it pretty good. I can remember when my mother and father broke up when I was nine years old. My daddy was the toughest son of a gun you ever met in your life. We were driving down the road in his pickup truck, and he was talking to me about him and my mother breaking up...and pulled the car over to the side of the road and started crying and I'd never seen him cry before. It hurt my feelings that daddy was crying, and I was too young to understand what was going on. That came back to haunt me years later when I got divorced and some of that showed up in "Don't Cry Daddy." I think it's a universal thing. If you're a true songwriter, you try to just write a beautiful song and you don't worry about hooks. I do now because I'm a pro and I realize that you have to do that. But I still feel it's better if you really get to the soul of a song and search inside yourself to find that stuff because people like because you identify with that. It's a good feeling to know I wrote a song that touched somebody and maybe in some small way changed their life. That's why we do it. With "Don't Cry Daddy" I had no idea it would have the impact it did. It's true, children are the ones to feel the pain and hurt the worst.

What inspired the writing of "Don't Cry Daddy?"
At the time I was going through a divorce. I had my son, Scotty for the weekend and was about to take him home. I had some time to kill, and I flipped on the five o'clock news. Scotty was about five or six years old. It just happened to be the broadcast where they were showing some film of the massacre in Vietnam. It was a very famous horrific incident where some of our guys shot to death some women and children villagers. They were showing some scenes of the bodies, and apparently I started crying and didn't even realize it. The next thing I know Scotty was patting my back and trying to comfort a grown man going, "Don't cry daddy." That's where the inspiration came from for "Don't Cry Daddy." My songwriter's brain made it totally different. By the time I got Scotty home to his mother's...on the way back to my house I had the chorus written. Basically that's where the song came from. It was a combination of him telling me not to cry because of watching this massacre in Vietnam on TV and my own situation having gone through a divorce. I didn't know at the time that it was a special song. It was just another day in the life of a songwriter. We write songs about our lives and about things that happen to us...I do remember thinking that I should have written another verse for it. But that was me. That'll be on my tombstone, "I was still working on that last verse."

Who inspired you as a lyricist early on in your career?
In the beginning, Leiber and Stoller were a big influence on me. I loved all those funny songs that they wrote for The Coasters like [sings part of "Yakety Yak"], "Why's everybody always picking on me?" I also loved r&b and used to listen to one of those 50,000-watt radio stations out of Shreveport, La. The first song of mine that got recorded, I wrote with The Coasters in mind. I ended up singing it to Sam & The Shams' manager who I cornered at a urinal in a restroom in Memphis, Tenn. I sang this song called "The Phantom Strikes Again," and it ended up on their Little Red Riding Hood album. I loved the cleverness of rhyming things. Later when I started doing well as a songwriter in the late ‘60s, I was really inspired by Jimmy Webb and Jacques Brel. I liked the combination of the real flowery, poetic stuff that Jimmy wrote...and I also liked the realism of
Jacques Brel's songs too.

Can you characterize the stylistic thread that runs throughout your work?
You know what just popped into my head? Hard rhyme. Except now I've been co-writing so much lately with a lot of guys down in Nashville that I've learned to stop worrying about that hard rhyme stuff so much. I look back over the years and realize some of my better songs didn't have the hard rhyme. I would rhyme "find" with "rhyme."

Share the story behind one of your biggest hits, "Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me."
It's a true story. I was cutting an album with Rick Hall, my producer at the time. He was chastising me for giving away all my hook songs. He said, "You give away all your hook songs and you come in here with these old sugary ballads, and you expect me to cut a hit?" He said, "I just can't do it." It incensed me when he said that so I went upstairs to his office above the studio. I went up there and pulled out a legal pad and thought...I'll write him a hook song as a joke. I came down and told him, "Hey Rick, I wrote you a hook song," while I was winking at the other musicians. He said, "What is it?" I grabbed a guitar and went [sings] "Baby, baby don't get hooked on me. Baby, baby don't get hooked on me. ‘Cause I'll just use you and I'll set you free"... Long silence. Then he says, "That's a smash!" I said, "No, you don't get it. It's a joke. "He said, "I don't care what it is...it's a smash, let's cut it!" We cut a track on it before I even had the rest of the lyrics written. I went back to the hotel that night and wrote the lyrics, next day out...a vocal on it, and I still didn't think it was a hit. I thought it was a little bit chauvinistic. In fact, it became Ms. Magazine's chauvinist pig song of the year for 1972. I used to tell everybody, "Thank God Paul Anka came up with ‘You're Having My Baby' and took it away from me." [Laughs].

Is easier or harder today to write a good song?
I still surprise myself a lot today. Things still pop into my head every day. And if I haven't already written it, it surprises me because I've written so many songs. Somebody might say, "It's a great day. Why don't you just stop and smell the roses?" And I'll go, "Yeah, I wrote that already." Or they'll say, "That's one hell of a woman" and I'll go, "Yep, wrote that." I quit writing for a long time. It's difficult for me to walk into an office in Nashville and some guy is sitting there who's 21 or 22...you play him something, and he's wondering why you don't have a demo with you. You play it, and he goes, "What else you got?" [Laughs] That's really hard for me to deal with that. Man, that's gold, but that's the way the business is today.

What are your feelings on the state of songwriting in 2008?
I think there are some great songwriters out there and some great storytellers. I just don't think they're all being heard on the radio. I'm hearing a lot of stuff on the radio that's manufactured. I'm old school, and I still write my lyrics by hand. I don't use a computer. There's a guy named Paul Thorn who is fairly obscure in the record business; he's a country swamp rock artist, and he's a great lyricist who tells stories with his songs. I like that kind of songwriting.

Lastly, can you pick a few songs that you wished you'd written?
I wished I'd written "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face." I wished I'd written "MacArthur Park" or "Up, Up and Away" by Jimmy Webb. "Sweet Caroline" is another one. Oh God, there's so many. Every time I hear something that's really good I say, "Man, I wish I'd written that!" I just wrote a song called "Songs I'd Wished I'd Written." [Laughs, sings] "Songs I'd wished I'd written/things I wished I'd said/gifts I'd wished I'd given/books I wished I'd read/I've done a lot of living/but my only real regrets are the times/I'd wished I'd listened/to my heart and not my head." It's a story of a guy that didn't quite achieve the great happiness that he wanted. That should find its way on a new CD I've been working on for some time with Lari White and Chuck Cannon down in Nashville. We've got 25 sides cut thus far.