He was a shy boy, fond of books and pictures, a solitary rambler in the woods & fields around his country home in England where is was born and grew up. At fourteen he went to America, and for the next 5 years he wrote poetry and learned to play the guitar. During this time he got to know music intimately. James Taylor and Paul Simon were his great loves, but he admired Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake and other sentimental musicians who wrote about the sufferings of the poor and abandoned.
In Southern California, he began to doubt himself and his work. A rebuff from a girl he loved was the starting point of his despair. Writing about this wretched world and finding some consolation in his clumsy efforts to represent what he saw and felt, he resolved at twenty-seven, after a period of wandering and depressing uncertainty, to become a songwriter. He thought this was his only means of salvation, a solitary and pure activity in which he would be free, responsible for himself alone, and yet might create a work that would give joy and understanding to others.