...That was in 1966 and no I wasn't into the Beatles as much as my friends were. At that time I liked Simon's (Simon and Garfunkel) acoustic style because he fingerpicked and his songs told a story. I wrote my first song around then, I didn't try to it just came out all by itself. After high school I went to Auburn University as a music major and quickly found out I wasn't going to cut it. You see back then the school of music was for people that had been reading music for years, you know from playing in a marching band or from classical lessons growing up. Also the curriculum had nothing like music business or copyright classes, it was all geared for classical music and modern writers like Bela Bartok (gag). Anyway I changed to a Spanish Lit major and a music minor and held on as long as I could. That Summer I went to Knoxville to write with a friend of mine Stephen Foster and we both worked for Easy Sound Studios putting music to lyrics. Remember those ads in the paper back then? People would pay to have their lyrics put to music hoping they'd have a hit song and of course the studio would be more than happy to record it for them. Trouble was most of the lyrics were a very bad rip-off of Johnny Cash's Folson Prison Blues. It was a very painful job but, hey I was working in the music business. Steve and I wrote a song called 'Looking in the eyes of Love'. Steve was very hip to the business side and thats when I signed my first publishing contract. It was gonna be recorded by 'The American Band' or 'The Great American Band' something like that. I never heard anything more so that was my first lesson in the music biz-Don't count your chickens before they hatch." To be continued...