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Well we only did it once. It was an exercise in vanity. I was at Fred’s house for dinner,
and there were some other guests there, and we were boasting about how fast we write.
This was fairly early on in our collaboration, and one of us said, “We’ll write a song
between dessert and coffee. You clear the table, and…” So they took us up on it,
and so Fred and I, while they were clearing up, Fred and I went to the piano and set on
the piano bench, and he said, “What do we write about?” and I said, “I don’t know.
I don’t care much,” and he said, “Play a waltz.” And we wrote a song called “I
Don’t Care Much,” which was a waltz which ended up in Cabaret and has now been expanded
to be quite a moment. But it took us about fifteen minutes. We were showing off, and
but it… There is something about it that’s interesting, and that is sometimes you can
write something (whish) like that, that’s really terrific, because this is a very good
song, and sometimes you can spend days and days working on a piece and finally finish
it, and it’s absolute crap. So it’s not always a matter of application and serious
hard work. Sometimes it just comes.