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	Diane Warren
	Interviews with Successful Songwriters DIANE WARREN THOM BELL			< last page \| 1, 2, 3, 4 \| next page > JB: Beyond the artistic advantages of collaborating, are there any other benefits? DW: Sure, depending on who you're writing with. When you write with someone else, you get their whole network of contacts and people they deal with. You have a double shot of getting some major stuff happening. Although, when you have a name for yourself, you have that on your own, too. JB: Do you co-write with artists as well? DW: Yeah, I just wrote something for the new Kiss album with Paul Stanley. JB: Are those projects coming to you a lot more now that you've had hits? DW: Oh, yeah. I wish I had enough time to do everything, but unfortunately I don't. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunities now. JB: So you're at a place where you can pick and choose your projects? DW: Yeah, definitely more so than before. You really have to be careful what you do. You only have so much time in your life, you don't want to get on the wrong project. You also want to be careful not to spread yourself too thin. My whole thing is coming here everyday and writing on my own. I don't want to do too much to take away from that either. JB: How much time do you spend here in your studio? DW: Oh, 23 hours a day. I'm never home. JB: Do you have a fairly regular pattern? DW: Yeah, I get here between 9:30 and 10 every morning and work all day and go out to lunch and dinner and come right back here, and maybe if I'm writing with somebody they'll come here or I'll leave to go where they are. I'll be here 'till 11 or 12 at night usually. In that time, I'll also be on the phone dealing with people and business stuff. JB: Do you ever get blocked? DW: Oh, yeah, everybody does. I think, with lyrics, it takes longer for me. I'm quicker musically. I really want my lyrics to be great, so I take a lot of time there. Sure, you get blocked. JB: How do you get out of that? DW: I jump out the eighth floor window...it jars my mind a little and I get the line every time. No, logically, I should just walk away and take a drive or something, but I'm a masochist and end up staying here and hitting my head against the wall most of the time. Sometimes it looks like you're never going to get out of a situation, like you're never going to get that one line. With me, I'll have the whole song almost done, and I'll need one line at the end of a bridge or something. I'll work three days on that one line and it drives me nuts. But the end result is hopefully a great song that is worth it. JB: Do you read or listen to people's conversations or are there any techniques you use to come up with the ideas? DW: Oh, everything. I listen to people...what's the word? JB: A voyeur? DW: Yeah, a conversation voyeur. I love to listen to people. I get the best song ideas from that. I like to talk to people. I get ideas from everything, reading something and thinking it says something else. I can hear a song and think they're saying something else and get an idea from it. One time someone said a song title and it was the wrong one and it was a great song title. I wrote a really good song from that mistake. JB: When you work, what does that mean in actual practice. Do you sit down at your keyboard and start noodleing? DW: Yeah, usually. I'll start playing around with chords or a drum pattern and hopefully something will come out. Even if I have a whole day and just come out with a little piece of something, it's worth it to me. It'll develop into something. It all comes down to me to have a really good work out. I'm probably overly disciplined, 'cause I don't have much of a life outside of it. How do you spell "life"? This is my life. I try to get away and take a vacation and I get bored after five minutes and get bored and want to be back here working. Then I get here and wanna leave sometimes, but I don't. JB: Do you keep a lot of notes on ideas? DW: Yeah, on napkins, checks. Once I'd written a song title on a check that I cashed, so I lost the title. I've even written on my hand... but I have lots of notebooks with ideas, scribbling ideas that'll grow into songs eventually. JB: What's your demo process. Do you demo every song that you write? DW: Yeah, I do. If they're good, I do. Usually, I won't finish them unless I think they're good songs. I work really hard to get to the point of concentration I have on that song, so it better be good. I do spend a lot of time on the lyric on everything, so I do tend to demo all that I finish. Maybe in the past it wasn't that way, but now it is. JB: To get to that, how do you assess those ideas as to whether or not they're going to be good enough or not? DW: I wait 'till the drugs wear off...just kidding. I do them long enough to where I know if it's good or not. I'll play them for friends, too, people I trust, for feedback. If enough people think it's the worst thing they've ever heard, no matter how much I like it, I'm going to question it a little bit. If I love it, I'll still write it. JB: How do you do your demos? DW: I hire musicians. I'll work with a keyboard player and show him what I hear in the song and arrange it with him. I hire a singer or maybe sing it myself depending on the song. Demos are really important right now. JB: Are your demos fairly elaborate? DW: Yeah, I'd say they are. They sound like records. A lot of my records don't sound as good as the demos. JB: Do producers usually do it pretty close to the demos? DW: The ones that have been hits have been pretty close. They also take it to the next step. Narada Michael Walden did a brilliant job on the Starship record. There were some things on the demo that were similar to that, but he took it to the next step. Same thing with Richard Perry on "Rhythm of the Night." A lot of times you don't want someone to do it exactly the same. You want them to add something and keep it spontaneous. You want someone to take what you do and elaborate in a good way, which every writer knows doesn't happen too much. We get disappointed with the results. I've been lucky with some things and hopefully it will continue to be so. Of course I'll be disappointed a lot too. That's a reason to get into production, I guess. JB: Do you feel like you'd like to get into that someday? DW: I've done it a couple times. I co-wrote and co-produced something on the last Joe Cocker record. It was a hit in Australia and a small hit in Germany. I wrote something for the Bunny DeBarge album and co-produced it. It's something that I don't really enjoy doing. I don't really enjoy being in the studio. I'd rather be writing. But it's a chance to make sure the song is coming out with the vision I had for it. The only person I can kick in the head then is myself, if doesn't come out right. JB: I remember Ray Parker Jr. saying he became a producer because he was never satisfied with the way anybody else produced his songs and the only way to be satisfied was to do it himself. DW: It's true. When you slave over a melody and lyric ...I really do, I want to get it right. I wanna get the exact melody right. Then someone goes in casually and screws up the whole thing, even just a couple notes or a couple words and the whole meaning can change. It drives me crazy. So in that sense, I'd want to get into it more, but in the sense that it takes time away from my writing, I really don't. I'm not as good a producer as I am a writer. It's more like I'm babysitting my songs. I'm watching my baby to make sure it's ok when it goes out into the world. < last page \| 1, 2, 3, 4 \| next page >