“The easiest thing to write is a difficult song. Just play a bunch of chords and hit a bunch of melodies. OK, congratulations, you’re a songwriter. Now, can you write a song that people can name in four notes? If you can do that, you, my friend, have done the hardest thing in the world: You’ve written a simple song (laughs). If I sing, ‘You’re once …’ and stop right there, you know the song [‘Three Times a Lady’]. You never heard a chord, a drumbeat or a cymbal crash, but you know where we’re going.”
