Marc Jordan - It's nice to be here.

John - You know my favourite album of yours is 'Reckless Valentine' it has stayed with me and I'll never get sick of that one.

Marc - Thanks John.

John - It's a real break-up album I was really hurtin' when you released it but you know it helped. You were not breaking up when you wrote it. Didn't you just marry Amy (Sky) around that time?

Marc - Yeah, I got married. I'm glad it helped.

John - So what was the deal with the melancholy mood on that album?

Marc - Well, I moved to Los Angeles in 1980 and I stopped playing live. I spent ten of those years in a studio and I was kind of blinded by science, as I got involved with synthesizers and computers. I really got into the technology for record making and I made a few records that were very difficult to make and quiet frankly over produced. I think they were good songs but maybe they were over powered by the production.

John - Do you listen to them now and cringe?

Marc - Well not really I just think I had too many ideas. I think when I made 'Reckless Valentine' I just wanted to make things simpler because I was burnt out a bit on the synthesized sound. There were a couple of things that kind of turned things around for me and I remember picking up my acoustic guitar that I hadn't played in five years.

John - Five years?

Marc - I was playing guitar but not acoustic. So I picked up the guitar and played it and instantly it hit me how beautiful it was so I started to get back to it. I also went to a party and saw this old Broadway writer called Sammy Fain. He's sort of like an Irving Berlin or Sammy Cahn. He's written forty songs that everyone would know. The party was at Sammy Fain's son-in-law's house and so he asked Sammy to play a song. Well, Sammy sat down on the piano and played for an hour and a half. I turned to my wife and I remember saying, "If I'm 90 and someone asks me to play my songs at a party their going to have to wheel in a million dollars worth of equipment."(Laughing).

John - (laughing) Felt a little heavy?

Marc - (laughing) Just a little but you know what I mean. I wanted to get out and play again because I'd been in these dark rooms with no windows. I wanted to get out and play so I made a simple record and 'Reckless Valentine' was a simple acoustic record.

John - Well, since 'Reckless Valentine' wasn't about you and Amy wrestling on the floor. Where did the inspiration come from?

Marc - That album was sort of about old relationships. I think I know what happened I just never use to write songs about boys and girls in love, I use to hate that. I like to think about things intellectually and that's how I use to write. You know people used to actually say there was a kind of distance between my lyrics and me and I can kind of see it now. When I got married my wife informed me that we all have an emotional side and we all have an interior landscape that's just as interesting as the exterior one and quiet frankly, I didn't know that.

John - Was that really foreign to you at that point? Amy really opened you up to that?

Marc - Absolutely.

John - Your lyrics though have a tendency to stick with me. You will come up with a zinger that really speaks to me. I had the same feelings with Billy Joel and Bernie Taupin on the early Elton John records.

Marc - We've all had those experiences I love that too.

John - Your voice works well with a simpler production and it brings your voice out for one thing.

Marc - It's because I know the genre. I think I can mix Jazz and folk together and make it work because I just know those genres very well.

John - You were in Toronto before you moved to L.A. back then right?

Marc - Yes.

John - Were you a little lost when you first moved down?

Marc - Well yeah, kind of. You see before then I'd been commuting back and forth I had a record deal down there so I had been commuting for three years before that. The reason I moved down there is I knew a lot of people.

John - Were they musical friends or real friends?

Marc - You don't have friends in LA.

John - (laughing)

Marc - You work with people and you sort of do things that friends do. You're not really friends you just work with them and when you're not working with them, you never see them. I didn't know that about L.A. and I didn't have a record deal when I eventually moved down there so by then I didn't really have any friends and the friends I had weren't there because I didn't have a contract. So there I was thinking what the hell am I going to do now. So I just starting writing and got a publishing deal and picked it up from there.

John - A lot of folks have recorded your songs, for instance, Manhattan Transfer, Chicago and the biggie Rod Stewart. That must be really gratifying.

Marc - It is. It's terrific.

John - How does that process start? Do you write with someone in mind or do you always write for you first?

Marc - Absolutely some songwriters work differently. Someone will say Michael Jackson needs a hit song and some writers can get into the Michael Jackson space and write a Jackson song that sounds just like Michael Jackson. I can't do that, I just write for me and if someone else writes it then so be it.

John - You must have been asked to write specifically for someone?

Marc - Oh yeah, they ask you all the time but I don't do it. I've tried it. Early on I tried and I just couldn't do it and now I don't even try.

John - For young songwriters that may not know how the process works, explain for instance how Rod Stewart heard about your song 'Rhythm of my Heart?'

Marc - That's an interesting story. I wrote 'Rhythm of My Heart' in 1983 and I turned it into my publisher and they sent it to their affiliate at Warner's In London. They sent it to a guy named Rob Dickens who thought it would be a great Rod Stewart song but he apparently had another single in the early eighties that sounded something like it so he just filled it. Well nine years later, he still remembered the song and when 'Vagabond Heart' the album was finished they played it for the record company and the company said, "You don't have a single?" and Rob Dickens said, "I have the song you need." So they played it for Rod and he loved it.

John - So you had one Porsche then you had nine.

Marc - No, actually it was nineteen Porsches.

John - That was a number one song in many countries right?

Marc - Oh yeah.

John - Why did you record it for yourself? Was that always in the plan?

Marc - I wasn't going to but my manager said, "You should take a shot at it." The way Rod Stewart did it was very much like my demo and I wanted to do it differently so I stripped it down like a folk song. Essentially it is a folk song.

John - It's a great campfire song. It's not hard getting twenty people to join in on the chorus of that song.

Marc - Oh yeah. It has one of those Celtic, Gaelic kind of hum along chords.

John - Are you happier in Canada now?

Marc - Oh yeah. You know before I moved down to the States I thought Canadians and Americans were just about the same except Americans had a lot more guns. I found out we are very different with the cultures. America is very different and I don't really like it that much. It's a great place to do business but Canada really is the greatest country in the world. I've really traveled a lot in my life and I've been to a lot of places and have seen a lot of things. Well, you know what I'm trying to say here.

John - You're preaching to the converted.

Marc - I guess I've turned into a pathological nationalist. It just feels right to be here.

John - Your dad was in music. As a kid did you ever feel the pressure to do this? Did you think hell I think I'll be a shepherd (laughing)?

Marc - (laughing) I was in shepherd school for a long time.

John - Didn't have what it took to be a shepherd? (Laughing)

Marc - (laughing) No. I'm not going to tell you what happened. Well, music came very naturally to me. I thought what you did when you grew up had to be hard and very alienating so I went out and did something else and I studied film for a couple of years. I found it very interesting but music was really what I wanted to do and it's who I was so I drifted back into it.

John - My producer Neil Thompson wanted me to ask where you were between 1979 and 1987. He thought you disappeared.

Marc - Well I didn't really disappear. I kind of became a songwriter for a while. I did make a record for a small Japanese record company. Also I was on Atlantic Records for two years and didn't make a record so that hung me up for two years and I had to threaten to sue them to get out. I guess I didn't actively start making international records again until I was with BMG and that was 1986-1987.

John - I was in L.A. for the first time when I first heard 'I Ching' on KTWV The Wave. They were playing a lot of your stuff then. Actually when I talked to Bruce Hornsby he told me he loved that song.

Marc - You know something, Bruce and I were on BMG at the same time and yeah he loved that whole 'Talking Through Pictures' record. It was very keyboard heavy and it was very complicated. I think it got way past most people and I think there were too many ideas and it was a bitch to mix. We were wiring up consoles (laughing) and it was a nightmare.

John - For the young songwriters out there how many songs do you write for an album before you pick the ten best?

Marc - Oh I don't know it varies but it's usually about thirty.

John - Also explain the process of publishing. Let's say Elton John wants to record one of your songs how does that work?

Marc - The process would be this. I write a song and it goes to my publisher and they put it in their tape file. Then my publisher would hear that Elton John is recording and if he's looking for songs then they send my stuff over to who ever is screening songs for him. If it gets through that screening process then Elton would hear it and if he likes it we're in business. It's funny but a lot of people think they buy the songs but they don't. Like a lot of people come up to me and ask, "How much did Rod Stewart pay you for that song?" They don't buy the song because the copyright is always owned by me and the publisher. So they just do the song and it doesn't cost them anything to record it. Where I get paid I get a royalty per record and every time it's played on the radio you get a couple of cents or whatever.

John - Oh, are we back to talking about twenty Porsches again?

Marc - (laughing)

John - Marc thanks so much.

Marc - Well thank you John.