GROSS: Do you ever think, in spite of the body of work that I'm famous for, I feel today like writing a simple song with an easy-to-sing melody and some nice chords behind it?
Transcript
GROSS: Do you ever think, in spite of the body of work that I'm famous for, I feel today like writing a simple song with an easy-to-sing melody and some nice chords behind it?
GLASS: (Laughter) I feel that all the time.
GROSS: Do you write it?
GLASS: I'm always trying to - I'm trying to. I'm writing an opera right now for the Washington Opera, and I'm always looking for clarity and simplicity. It doesn't come easily to me. ---
GROSS: Because you couldn't make a living - a good enough living - with your music for several years, you did things like you had a moving van and had a moving business, furniture-moving business. You had a plumbing business for a while. You drove taxis for about five years. Did you ever worry about your fingers when you were doing - in moving furniture...
GLASS: Yes, I did. And I ended up - I did. I got a lot of the - I also was an assistant for my friend Richard, Richard Serra, for a long time. I got worried about that, especially when I was doing - in those days, the plumbing business - you know the word plumb comes from the word lead, you know, it's the Latin word. And we used to - a lot of the work was done with lead, and it was hot lead. It was melted and you could - I was worried about my hands. And eventually, the safest place for me to be was either moving furniture, which is actually pretty safe and actually pretty good for you too - a lot of up and down stairs, carrying books - not a very interesting thing to do. In a way, the driving was the easiest one to do, but it was the most scary, too, because the city can be violent and the - any taxi driver will tell you that it can be scary.
