Larry Dvoskin is my five-star choice among interlocutors. In case you don’t recognize the name without Googling, he is a renowned Grammy-nominated songwriter and music producer. Mr. Dvoskin has worked with some of the world’s biggest music stars, such as Sean Lennon, Beach Boys, Joy Lynn Turner, Robert Plant just to name a few.

When my interview ended recently at a café in New York’s Greenwich Village, I said my standard phrase, “Thank you for the interview, we’ve finished.” Then I turned the tape recorder off. As the golden afternoon light was dimming, I saw Larry raise an eyebrow, and with a questioning look he said, “That’s it? I have more to say to you.” After several hours of conversation my brain was packed with food for thought. I had a lot of things to digest, physically and mentally. But the next day after listening and looking at the transcripts, I thought, “That’s it? I have more to ask to him.”

We just spoke about Lady Gaga and I said that there is something interesting about her but there is something she is missing in her songs. You said “well, she has good songs, but not a great song.” Where is the fine line between a good song and a great song?

When I am at campfire sitting around with people I can play the guitar and sing “Wonderwall” or “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” or “I Will Always Love You.” I can’t really play “Paparazzi,” “Poker Face,” or “Born This Way” as easily. Nevertheless Lady Gaga is a great artist, her videos and her personalities and her driving ambition led the way through her success. But I think the difference between a hit record and a great song is that a great song transcends the time and place where it was recorded and becomes an anthem for each generation after.

In 1990 Israel Kamakawiwo'ole’s rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” was a huge hit in a Hawaiian ukulele style because people are always dreaming of a better place some day. That’s why people come to New York from different parts of the world thinking somewhere over the rainbow their dreams will come true. And a great song is a blank canvas upon which each listener can project their own interpretation onto.

Don’t you think that it is easier for a good rather than a great song to achieve success? That it takes time for a great song to become legendary, and it might not be recognized while the author is still living?

No, because a lot of people wrote great songs that were instant hits like The Beatles, almost half of their songs such as “Hey Jude” or “Yesterday” immediately went to number one.

When I walk down to the subway sometimes I find great singers with remarkable voices and great performing skills. They look like complete artists. I always wonder why these artists aren’t playing on the stage, but in the subway.

I’ve wondered the same thing as well. I tried a few times to hire street musicians for studio work. When they get to my studio and I say “okay, tune up this song is in the key of D,” they can’t tune their guitar or they can’t sing the part that I give them. There is a sort of training to sing and sound great in the subway, but it doesn’t apply to other areas of performing. A while back I heard a great jazz band in Washington Square Park. They were killing it! Everyone was dancing and singing, but when I bought their CD and played it at home, it sounded just awful. There are of course a few musicians here and there who have been discovered on the street, but a lot of artists just don’t know how to translate their love of music and their talent into the business of music, which is a very different thing. The business of art is different from creating art.

It seems to me that if you call yourself an artist and you dedicate your energy 110% to create an art there is no room for business?

Not true. The great artist is a great businessman as well. The 24 hour artist has to be a 24 hour businessman. Moreover with the internet nowadays you are a 24 hour business man, a 24 hour social media marketing and a 24 hour artist.

Success is opportunity meets preparation. So the preparation is: doing the classes, developing skills, going to rehearsals and the opportunity is – being in the right place at the right time. Before I came to New York I read stories of “Café Wha?” where you would go in- Jimi Hendrix would be sitting in the audience, Bob Dylan would be on stage, Joni Mitchell would be talking to the person serving a coffee. They all were in a right place, so when the right time happened …boom!

Every day there are hundreds of artists who are moving to New York City to pursue their artistic career. How do you start, or break in when there is such competition; What would be your advice to those artists who just moved here?

This is probably the most important question, which is how does one follow the yellow brick road? How does one make the dream come true? I think the number one thing is to look at New York City through the glasses of what can I give to you not what can I take from you. If your energy gives off I am here to get, on some level people feel that and you only attract other takers. Whereas if you look at New York City and come from a view-point of how can I be of service, a whole new realm of opportunities comes to you. I’ll give you a made up example to demonstrate my point. Take, for example, you are an actor and you just got of the bus at Port Authority and you don’t know anyone, what do you do? If that were me, I’d volunteer for Broadway Cares/ Equity Fight Aids. You get on a phone line once a week for a few hours with a room full of other volunteers. Who knows, the person sitting next to you could be starring in a Broadway show and the person next to them is a big time director. And suddenly you are sitting there for hours and doing something good for someone else and then they’re like “Hey, man, it’s 10 pm! Let’s go have a drink.” Suddenly you have friends. And then they are like “You are a cool guy, we are having a party, would you like to come? We would be happy to have you.” And then they ask “What are you up to,” and then you tell them, “I just moved here to pursue my dream as a singer and actor,” and someone says “You know my friend is doing a play and he needs a 23 year old guy and you look perfect for this role.” And that how it works. I would recommend everyone look at the charity organizations that are in your field and go there to volunteer, it’s a short cut to the top.

How interesting that you did not mention audition at all...

Yes, auditioning works as well, for a lot of people. And it’s certainly one of the ways. I would not say don’t to audition because it’s a part of an artist’s job. But you can also do what Mariah Carey did, and meet and marry Tommy Motola, the president of Sony Records at the time.

My friend Bert Padell has been in New York for a very long time. As an accountant and business manager to the stars, at one time he has managed a good part of the New York creative community. From Madonna to Britney Spears, Robert De Niro to The New York Yankees . I asked him what is the secret of New York? He told me very matter of factly “If you stick around long enough something is bound to happen.” I was very disappointed. After all the hits, and blockbusters, and billions earned by a few of the most successful people on Earth, I thought it would be a powerful, alluring secret. Just hanging round didn’t sound like much of anything to me at the time.

Don’t you think that one is meant to be a star, it’s their fate, no matter if he or she wants it or not, and for the others, no matter how much they struggle, it’s just not meant to happen?

We talked about Madonna and Lady Gaga. Those .01 per cent of artists are not necessarily the most naturally talented. But they are like thunder, a volcano, tsunami – the have a force of nature behind them and they come through. To my mind, even if you drop them by helicopter into the middle of the jungle they will find a way back. Bob Dylan is not the best singer but he made it. Jimi Hendrix wasn’t the best singer either, but through his virtuoso and original musicianship he made it. There are some people meant to be stars.

But here is another way of making it. Again think “what can I give” and not “what can I get.” Is there calculation? Yes! Do I want to schmooze and network? Yes! But I want to get close to them by making something really nice happen without the guarantee of anything in return. Here is a good example. This is a true story as told by rap Godfather Russell Simmons, and I hope I tell it right. A guy came in to intern at Def Jam records early on during that labels heyday. He showed up earlier than anyone else, he left later than anyone else. And he just did so much work that it kept making him more and more indispensable to the company. After six months he told them “Hey, I got another job at another label.” The company seemed shocked, broadsided. His boss said “You can’t leave you are practically running our whole marketing department.” He replied “Well you haven’t paid me for six months and I got a job somewhere else that will pay me.” His boss had forgotten this fact and said “really?” Very soon Def Jam hired the intern to a full time position, and in short order he becomes head of his department. He got a really good salary and within two years he is the chairman of the company. Over time this man, named Lyor Cohen left and went to run Warner Brothers where he has been chairman for many years. I remember sitting with him at the restaurant and Jay Z called and he just hit the silent button and did not take the call – that was power. The intern who worked his way up by worker harder than anyone else and kicking ass.

So summarizing what we’ve just talked about - what’s the recipe for success?

The recipe for success is love. Love what you do and love the people that are doing it. Most of the people that I know, who are successful musicians tell me that singing or dancing or taking photographs is something that they would do for free and that it’s amazing to them that somebody wants to pay them for it. And the people, who fail continuously are the people who are saying to me “look, I am writing songs because I really want to make money. How much money do you think I can make if I have a hit?” I say I don’t know. With streaming these days, probably nothing. If that’s your only motivation, maybe you should go into finance.

How does someone avoid failure?

I feel like in the seeds of failure are the learning lessons for success. You need to learn how to embrace the negativity instead of resisting it. In failure there is a tremendous amount of opportunity to learn. I myself continuously fail a tremendous amount of the time.

What is your biggest failure?

Well, I thought growing up that I would be on the level of Elton John or Billy Joel by the time I was 30, and retired as an esteemed statesman in music by 40. What I found is that my career just did not take off. I turned my attention to writing songs and producing and suddenly I began working with some famous artists. So just I had to give myself permission to fail and not make who I am about how much money I have, or the square footage of my apartment.

And what about fear of being rejected?

Anthony Robbins talks about people being fundamentally driven by two fears – either the fear of abandonment or the fear of rejection. And one of the two is always at work in people’s subconscious. I don’t believe I have a fear of rejection. I can personally knock on one hundred doors, and only need one to open for it to be potentially life changing.

The people who experience fear of rejection have a much harder time in the world of art because it is a business of constant rejection no matter who you are - a new artist or a big star. I see people who are the most talented people on earth, but they are so afraid of rejection that they never follow up. Successful people feel fear but do it anyway. So, NO is the first step toward YES.

Would you be able to produce an untalented artist?

Yes, and it can even happen with someone just starting out that has a driving passion to make it so strongly that I agree to develop and produce them. I really love pre-production- helping to write the songs, selecting the best ones, arranging them and then recording them. When I was first starting in music, I always hung around older and more experienced musicians. The things they taught me in five minutes, might have taken me five months or years to learn on my own. And you know what happens when you are around good people – they pull you up. That’s another secret of success- surround yourself with the people who are better than you and they will pull you up.

You teach songwriting at NYU. What do you teach them? What is the most important message students take away from your classes?

To listen. We are living in a culture where everyone is tweeting, texting, instagram-ing, snapchatting, and being so unpresent, so distracted. Music and art often comes from a quiet place. So listening, whether it’s meditation or being in a quiet place with the phone switched off is a secret, a lost art.

Last Year I was deeply moved by the movie Whiplash and the story line. I remember when we started to discuss the movie your opinion was, that movie does not reflect the reality, especially if we are talking about jazz musicians.

If you look at the most famous groups in my industry, for example, Rolling Stones – Mick Jagger and Keith Richards did not have an angry task master whipping them or throwing chairs on them. They just played in pubs and drank booze and flirted with girls and smoked in a dressing room and had a blast.

I know that some people do make it with the whiplash model. I work with Al Jardine of the Beach Boys and I watched the recent Brian Wilson biopic “Love and Mercy.” Brian had a very mean tempered, abusive father. In that case it pushed Brian to prove himselfin his father’s eyes. No matter how famous Brian or The Beach Boys got, it never seemed good enough for his father. So it works in some cases. In my life personally I am a joy person. One of my seven keys from my book Do What You Love- Songwriting is following your joy. And for some of the people that I’ve met – their joy was singing and it made them millionaires.

I remember I was with a rock band in Texas. We were stuck in traffic for hours and one of the singers said “Let’s write a hit song right now” And I said ok, and at the same moment it made me think about how to create a song in order to make it a top hit.

A secret of songwriting is usually either in a melody or a phrase that is very simple to remember. “It’s all about the bass, the bass, the bass no treble.” – that annoying song is a genius hit, because you hear it once and it sticks with you. And then you dig a little deeper and realize that what she is talking about is women who are large size, that it’s not about this idealized figure of a woman who is usually on the cover of a magazine. People first heard the catchy hook, and melody but after understanding the lyrics were like “wow, that has a great message.” To me I agree it’s a great message tied to the most annoying, repetitive chorus in the history of music. That’s a great song. I wish I wrote it.

You’ve been working with the biggest names in the music industry: Sean Lennon, Alec Baldwin, The Beach Boys and many others. What did you learn from them?

The most famous people that I have worked with don’t over think things, especially in the music industry. They go into the studio and do it and then it’s either done or they say “we can work on it later a little bit more.” Usually the people who are not famous yet, have this belief that –there has to be blood on the guitar from constant rehearsal and they need to spend hundreds hours before they make a record. Going back to some of the greater 20th century musicians like The Beatles – their first album was finished from start to finish in one day. It went right on the radio and became a huge hit. But there is an exception to every rule. This is not an absolute.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that a real star makes you feel great, not the other way around. When I met Bill Clinton for the first time, he walked into the room like it’s not about him it’s about you. He looks you in the eyes, blocks out the secret service and handlers and he is 100% with you. There is an afterglow, a buzz that follows. Stars are called stars because they shine a light. On you and what’s around them..

Complete the sentence music is…

Fun. Music for me is water flowing out of a faucet. It just comes out. Because I treat it respectfully, I don’t abuse it and it always comes through for me. That being said I don’t make it into a “whiplash” scenario, forcing myself to practice or write a song even if I have nothing to say. I wait till I have something really important to say and then I say it.

2015-2016.