I started out just writing songs without any instrument at all, Bill, when I was somewhere in the mid-teens. I was madly in love with Buffy Sainte-Marie at the time, so I wrote this song lyric about her and fitted it to the tune of "Four Strong Winds". That was my first real attempt in the songwriting trade and I had to steal the melody!

I also used to draw pictures of Buffy in pencil, using the album cover photos for inspiration. ;-)

I had a lot of trouble getting used to Bob Dylan at first, because he didn't sound anything like a "folksinger" to me...but I loved his songs as recorded by Joan Baez and others. It took a few years before I could relate to Dylan himself singing them.

The first guitar I had was bought by my parents and it was SUCH a lousy instrument that I don't think it was even possible to play decent music on it. No joke. The intonation was way off, the action was way high, the tone was wretched, it wouldn't stay in tune. Just totally hopeless. The thing has probably been used for firewood by now. I hope so anyway.

A few years later I moved to Toronto and actually got a reasonably good guitar. By that time I was totally nuts about Bob Dylan while being still pretty obsessed with Buffy Sainte-Marie and Joan Baez. Interesting combination. They became my holy trinity, you might say.

Once I could play guitar and had one that would stay in tune then I wrote a lot of songs and they did get better with time. I won't play most of the early ones anymore, but they served a good purpose at the time.