Barry Mann Quotations

There's so much fear involved in trying to do something you don't know how to do that drugs and alcohol can become a big part of your life if you have an addictive personality or are very unsure, which most songwriters are.

It's amazing how a competitive nature can turn a negative into something positive.

If I waited for inspiration every time I sat down to write a song I probably would be a plumber today.

You're going to have more rejection than acceptance.

I think if one wants to be in a continual state of insanity one should stay married to that writing partner.

It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest.

I know at the beginning of our careers, my wife and I were gut wrenchingly competitive.

One other thing, if it's possible, as songwriters, you should also develop yourself as record producers.

Probably most successful songwriters have an innate songwriting ability.

You've got to really be able to accept the rejection.

A guitar riff played on a piano doesn't come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.

I also used to work in the Catskill Mountains as a bus boy, and I performed in talent shows.

Cynthia's lyrics always expressed the feelings people felt but they couldn't express themselves.

I get a different kind of lyric from someone else that might make me go in a different musical direction.

I quit college. I was studying architecture for about a year.

I think that most writers who wait until they're inspired to write are just waiting for the fear to subside.

I've written songs sober and I've written songs high.

If we didn't get the record, we didn't exist.

If we were the team that won out, then life was good and we felt that we were worth something.

It's very important, at least for me and for Cynthia, to get outside input.

We've written something like 900 songs in all.

You can get stale writing with each other for a while.

You have certain writing tools but generally creating something from nothing makes one quite mad and Cynthia and I are quite mad you know.

You have to be very brave in that first writing session.

I looked through our catalog year by year, and I saw that there were pockets of time when we wrote some terrific songs. Then all of a sudden, we'd go for another two or three months and there weren't great songs.

The real danger of writing a great song when you're on something is that it might get you thinking that the only way to repeat that is by only writing when you're high.

I was very fortunate, though, to have a writing partner that truly is brilliant with words and at the same time very soulful.

Who put the bomp in the bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp, who put the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong?

We became the songs we wrote.

We happened to start writing pop songs in a time when the old music business was beginning to fade and a new kind of music was emerging.

Once I get into it, then I'm into it.

I'm very nervous that this whole affair will hurt our business financially.

I had already about five or six songs written just for myself, but I never thought I'd end up being a songwriter.

And even though I know how very far apart we are, it helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star. And when the night winds start to sing a lonesome lullaby, it helps to think we're sleeping underneath the same big sky. Somewhere out there, if love can see us through then, we'll be together ... Somewhere out there, out where dreams, come true.