Pastoral Resources

Girls are losing their virginity at 15, 16. I'm not promoting that. But my songs are talking... about me becoming a man.

You just went right in and just recorded songs and listened them, and if there were any mistakes, then we would correct them and just went on... one take or two take.

Certain songs by hearing the rhythm, it tells you that is either a love song or you might be heartbroken or the songs give you the vibes and you just know that certain songs are militant that you have to write.

If you are speaking about my own songs, I would think so because we were talking about that particular era and I was singing one of my songs that I recorded 50 years ago.

There was a time we decided that it was songs that were done especially from my background because of the things we were dealing with, but nowadays, anybody who has a need, and can find the need, they can sing the blues.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

So what I do, more than play any instrument - I mean, I love to play - but more than that, I write songs. Songs that are about living, about what it's like to be going through all the things that people go through in life.

The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs.

I have to choose songs that represent my personality.

T Bone is genius. The way they've recorded my voice and the instrumentation to these songs is really quite extraordinary.

I love Mary Chapin Carpenter songs. I love her songs 'Come On, Come On' and 'I Am A Town', they're two of my favorite songs.

There's something missing in the music industry today... and it's music. Songs you hear don't last, it's just product fed to you by the industry.

I want to write songs and play them for people - live.

But my point is these Civil War songs were gruesome. The hatred that's so bad in this country today, and for the past 10 or 15 years, bad as it is, is nothing compared to the kind of things people would write down and sing back in the Civil War.

I think probably the only thing that is around in these songs is that I was really lonely when I wrote a lot of them. But it was really by my own choosing because I was devoting myself to songwriting and dancing and I wasn't really going out and seeing people.

Ozzy wanted to get us back together. It's been 20 years. We did a couple of songs during his farewell in 1992 and that got the ball rolling.

Toward the later days of Sabbath, instead of going in and knocking out what songs we did in rehearsal, we would polish them to death.

That jam was so much fun that by the end of the tour, we just jammed on all of the songs.

That's what my life is, writing songs.

I cannot sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low, 'Tis that I can't remember how They go.