I don't know what the answer is, but I'm very blessed and lucky to have made a good living doing what I've loved to do. I just hope I can do another one after this.

I was in Hollis' band for eight years, playing drums. At one time we had Barry Beckett, Jimmy Johnson, David Hood - everybody but Roger Hawkins. We had a hell of a band.

Tom Stafford was an odd character, you know - a brilliant guy. He looked weird and I think he took a really defensive attitude about being a hunchback. You know how people can be, giving him a hard time. So he turned that into a defensive mechanism. He would strike first, a lot of times. But he was a great guy, and really those talks we had when I was about 15, out of all of that came the studio over the drugstore and everything else. I'm not saying - I'm no big deal, but I was a part of the birth of the music there.

I was writing with different people in Nashville - whoever I could. Eddie Hinton came on the scene about 1963, and about four years later we wrote a ton of songs together. I drifted around, but Eddie and I had some cuts through the '60s and '70s. I went on the road with Kris Kristofferson in 1970.

I've known just thousands of people a hell of a lot more talented than me who never could get anywhere.

I was writing for a publishing company in this old building right next to the RCA Victor Studio in Nashville. We were on the top floor, and Combine Music was on the bottom floor. I was friends with all those guys.

As long as you have those brilliant songs, it didn't matter how bad you played, or how bad he sang on 'em sometimes. It was one of those magical things that really worked, and I don't think could ever happen again.