13th May, 1996

Neil appears on the

Tonight Show

This was the very first of a new show introduced by Judy Finnegan and Richard Madeley.

The other guest in the first half of the show that night was O.J. Simpson.

Richard - We have to talk about this survey that was done in America a couple of years back that said …..

Neil - Oh oh....

Richard - You know this? This one has come your way before? .. . that more people make love to your records than any other artist. You must have a handle on this.

Neil - I wonder how they keep track of things like that. I'm not sure if that is true but I take it as a compliment as long as I take no responsibility for the progeny.

Judy - Absolutely no paternity suits. You have had writer's block for four or five years. Is that true? Tennessee Moon is the first album you have written in that length of time.

Neil - This is true. I stopped writing about five years ago. I needed a little rest. I needed a little time to think about what I was doing. After four or five years ago I was ready to really go at it. I went down to Nashville and started to write with all these wonderful writers.

Richard - But it must be awful that somebody whose whole reputation is built on the fact that they are a singer/songwriter not to be able to write. I mean what was happening? Were you sitting down and trying and leaving frustrated?

Neil - I would start songs and not finish them. I had no reason really to finish them. And it is a little scary you know when you have been writing since you were sixteen years old to finally come to a point where you don't want to write anything any more.

Judy - Is it kind of emotions that you run out of or is it partly the fact that if you are incredibly rich and you have earned so much money that you are not so hungry to write any more?

Neil - Well I am not sure that it has anything to do with hunger. There is a lot of pride in your own work involved in the thing. I write because it is part of me. This was like a little sabbatical that I took. I had once done this with the road. I took four years off and I think this period was kind of like a writing sabbatical for me.

Richard - And was it Tennessee, was it the atmosphere, that got it all back for you?

Neil - I think it was. There are so many writers there and it has got a great tradition of writing. Everybody's a writer in Nashville, the Federal Express girl, the girl that delivers the mail was a writer.

Judy - It's like in Hollywood - everyone's an actor.

Neil - That's exactly right. So everyone in Nashville is a writer and I had the good luck to get together with a lot of the top ones.

Judy - We have read that there is a lot of you in this album, a lot of your personal experiences of life, a lot about your very long and enduring marriage which has now sadly broken down. Is that right?

Neil - There is quite a bit of myself in this album. I tried to hide the cuts that were more revealing in different places but the album is reflective of me. There is no question about it.

Richard - Is it reflective of the actual breakup because this marriage lasted twenty four years? Is that in the lyrics?

Neil - Well to some degree it is. In some of the songs it reflects that and talks about that.

Judy - Well you are on a sellout tour. Every piece of luck with it. What are you singing for us tonight?

Neil - I am going to sing one of the songs from the Tennessee Moon album. It's called Can Anybody Hear Me - and I hope you like it.

Neil then went over to sing Can Anybody Hear Me

accompanied by his "Backing group" of Linda, Doug and Ron.