I grew up on popular music, and rock-and-roll expresses very deep feelings of those people who don't have a lot.

...indeed it is very true that, just as the finest air in the world is vulgarized beyond all bearing once the public has taken to hum it and the street organs to play it, so the work of art that has appealed to the sham connoisseurs, that is admired by the uncritical, that is not content to rouse the enthusiasm of only a chosen few, becomes for this very reason, in the eyes of the elect, a thing polluted, commonplace, almost repulsive.

Entertainment isn't just based on the very structured syndrome of European popular music, and it's great that there are so many thousands of people who are of the same opinion.

Jazz was the pop music of its day, and all American popular music has stemmed from it one way or another.

We still have to overcome the notion that a clarinet squeaks. People need to remember what a beautiful instrument it is, including in popular music.

Popular music usually has a chorus that needs to repeat, and people need to remember the song. That's sort of the major guideline when you're writing a song.