It's amazing how much of that music I still listen to actually. I was such a fan of music, even after I got started professionally I remained a fan. But what happens when you're so involved is you start spending all your time based on the music that you're involved with, you just don't have as much time.
I noticed when I was writing the book that I would tend to mention 'outside' songs right through to about the middle of the 70's. And then all of a sudden that starts disappearing from the book, and just about everything I'm talking about from that point on are the records that I'm totally involved in.
Listen- my relationship with radio on a personal level is nothing but a one way love-a-thon... I love radio, I grew up on radio. That's where I heard Buddy Holly, that's where I heard Chuck Berry. I couldn't believe it the first time I heard one of my records on the radio, and I STILL love hearing anything I'm involved with on radio, and some of my best friends were from radio. But we were on different sides of that argument, there's no question about that.
I realize that my opinion is my opinion, not everybody has to believe it and I never tried to shove anything down anyone's throat, but I was willing to take that to the trenches if you know what I mean. I took that opinion to the wall, often in public, often had to... I often had to fight in public with the very same people who I was trying to convince to play my records!
Now that I'm afraid was institutionalized, and the great thing about the Canadian content regulations is that it broke that open. I mean it broke it open because people were faced with no choice, but to really start listening to these records and find the ones that they could play. It didn't take long for Canadian radio to go "Wow! We're not going broke doing this, it's not killing us, the audience isn't complaining."
I had promised myself when I first got started that if I got to the point my life where I started feeling 'Gee, I'd rather be at home than at work', and that started happening more often than not, that it would be time to leave. I'd wake up some days and go "Oh, I don't even know if I want to go face this anymore". I would, I would go do it, I'm a dutiful kind of person and not afraid of work.
