Dan Hill: The stories behind his songs

MANILA, Philippines - Dan Hill revealed that he will be doing a concert with Manny Pacquiao three days after the pound-for-pound king’s bout with Juan Manuel Marquez on Nov. 12 (Nov. 13 Manila time) in Las Vegas.

Dan told The STAR in a phone interview that at the concert to be held in San Francisco, he will, of course, perform a duet with the Pacman of his 1978 smash hit Sometimes When We Touch. It will be recalled that Manny recorded a solo remake and a duet (with no less than the multi-awarded singer-songwriter himself) of the now classic song early this year. Both versions cracked the Billboard charts, with the former making it to No. 7 (Secondary Adult Contemporary) and the latter landing at No. 14 (US Adult Contemporary).

Dan’s friendship with Manny began when he saw the Pinoy boxing hero singing it in a guesting on the American show Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2009.

He said, “Manny had gone on record saying Sometimes When We Touch is his favorite song of all time. Then I saw him perform it on Jimmy Kimmel Live, and I was so impressed at his sincerity. He was so genuine. So I reached out to him. We managed to get together in New York and we agreed to make a record together, then a video and a documentary. We’ve been friends ever since.”

His close affinity with Manny also brought him closer to his Pinoy fans, and through a concert here last February, he found out that he actually has a strong fanbase in the Philippines. “I feel like I have adopted the Philippines as my second country,” said Dan, who is set to return come 2012 for another Valentine concert.

MCA Music Inc. has recently released a greatest hits edition spanning his three-decade career and Dan especially dedicates this collection to his Pinoy fans. Titled Intimate Dan Hill: The Platinum Collection, it contains his other famous ballads like Can’t We Try, Never Thought (That I Could Love), love ditties he wrote for other artists such as I Do (Cherish You) popularized by 98 Degrees and Seduces Me by Celine Dion, plus a bonus DVD featuring the docu he shot with Manny. 

As a songwriter, Dan deftly combines story and song. And much of the inspiration for his songs had been drawn from very personal experiences, both painful and happy. He opened up about the stories behind some of his biggest hits.

On Sometimes When We Touch, he said he wrote it when he was 19. “I was madly in love with this older woman. I liked her but she wanted to date other men, and I was very upset with that, so I wrote a song that would make her see how passionate I was about her. But it scared her away instead,” he recalled with amusement. “So, yes, when I was younger, I would write these very passionate love songs, and they would scare the women. When you look at the lyrics of Sometimes When We Touch, it’s really very much an adolescent song. Again, I never thought it was going to be a record or a hit, I just wanted to write a song that would get a girl to like me more.”

On Can’t We Try (a duet with Vonda Shepard): “I wrote it after having a big fight with my wife. I could actually hear her whining about me on the telephone with a friend, so I wrote the lyrics I hear you on the telephone with God knows who/ spilling out your heart for free. I was thinking, you should be talking to me about the problem, and not with a friend. So Can’t We Try was a song trying to break through issues so many couples have by communicating better.” Dan also said that (Can This Be) Real Love was also composed for his wife, who is a lawyer.

On Never Thought (That I Could Love): “(In this song,) I wrote about my mother, who was very, very sick at the hospital. She had a nervous breakdown. I used to go into the music room of the hospital, and she would sit beside me on the piano bench, and I would play songs for her to cheer her up. Then I looked at my mom, and thought, ‘Oh My God, I don’t really want to lose her.’ So, as she was sitting beside me, I wrote Never Thought (That I Could Love).”

The 57-year-old Canadian singer, whose parents were social scientists/activists, said that the song I Am My Father’s Son was about trying to get his father to respect him and accept his life’s path “because I felt that he never did; he wanted me to go to university and be a professor. In a way, that was the hardest song (to compose) because I was writing it while he was dying.”

Dan admitted that, a few years back, he wanted to concentrate on writing for other artists rather than make his own record. Then, exactly a decade after his last album, he came out with Intimate. He said, “Now, I like to do a little bit of everything. I still write a lot for other artists. I’m writing songs for the new albums of George Benson and Celine Dion as well as for (the Simon Cowell-groomed emerging singer) named Heather Russell, but I’m trying to have a balance of everything now.”

By doing a little bit of everything, he also delved into writing books. In fact, he published I Am My Father’s Son the memoir. What moved him to go public with his life story? “I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that made me the man, husband and father that I am. I never thought it would be published, I just wrote it because I had to write it. There was this hole in my life, and I thought writing could fill up that hole. It did help. It was also my way of grieving as I wrote it for three years.”

How did his relationship with his father affect his relationship with his only child? “With my son, I tried not to be so judgmental, and tried not to push him so hard. I didn’t want him to feel that everything or that our love for him will be based on how much he has achieved.”

He proudly shared that his son is writing a book himself on the adventures and misadventures he has gotten himself into, and how they dealt with them as a family.

Still and all, whatever Dan went through in his life, it was worth pursuing his musical career. “I think so. All (people) have challenges, tragedies and miracles. That’s the inevitable part of life. But to be the real man that I am is to follow and honor my gift for music, and I worked really hard to realize that.”