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. – Dan Hill
I feel the only way I can survive is to spend a lot of time writing songs. I have to have incredible, killer songs that also are hits, or I just don’t have a chance. – Dan Hill
Our house is a constant mayhem of music, noise, socializing and business. It vibrates life, as a house should. – Dan Hill
All the Junos, the Grammy nominations, the gold and platinum records, did nothing to assuage my conviction that I was an out-and-out loser. – Dan Hill
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. – Dan Hill
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. – Dan Hill
Much as my Boomer friends will hate me for saying this, Kanye West is the New Dylan. Not only do Kanye’s best lyrics match Dylan’s prescience, highly inventive word-play and genius for storytelling, his indefatigable cockiness eerily channels Muhammad Ali. – Dan Hill
If we don’t invest now in so-called priority neighbourhoods with music classes, athletic facilities, and skills training and mentoring, we will all pay more in the long run. – Dan Hill
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. – Dan Hill
When you look at the lyrics of ‘Sometimes When We Touch,’ it’s really very much an adolescent song. – Dan Hill
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. – Dan Hill
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. – Dan Hill
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. – Dan Hill
In 1953, Mom and Dad, living in Toronto, discovered, to their shock, that Mom was expecting. I was born in June 1954. My parents, thrilled, showered me with love. – Dan Hill
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. – Dan Hill
I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that made me the man, husband and father that I am. – Dan Hill
The stuff I write I’m very proud of, but I’m smart enough to know I’ll never get on the cover of ‘Rolling Stone’ next to Elvis Costello. – Dan Hill
When I was 3 or 4, I seemed to be bursting with music. They played Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra in the house, so I learned my vocabulary from song lyrics – I was literally singing before I was talking. – Dan Hill
