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Slash Podcasts.

This is the BBC World Service. I'm John Schaefer, radio host based in New York.

I've been playing the music of Philip Glass on my program New Sounds for over 30 years.

But he wasn't always a successful composer.

This is Philip Glass, Taxi Driver.

I think that the pulse of the music is a part of the life of America.

It's a rough place in some ways, but it's not short on energy or imagination.

And you see that with all kinds of people. When I was driving my driving days and I was picking up

people at the Port Authority bus stations, you'd see young people coming in three hours,

coming pouring into New York, coming here to make a career, to make a life.

They weren't all artists. They could have been people going into business or people wanting to

open factories or open design studios or whatever, but people who are leaving relatively comfortable

places for the intensity and excitement of a city like New York. And that's what they found.

New York in the 70s was on the brink of financial collapse. It was danger.

Dark, dirty, chaotic, but also incredibly creative, full of young artists trying to find a way to

make a living. For the man who would eventually become America's most celebrated and successful

living composer, trying to find a way to make a living meant driving a yellow taxi cab through

the five boroughs at night. I was doing the kind of day labor that was very hard on my hands.

I worked for a very good friend of mine who was rich as Sarah, but that was very heavy work.

And we were working with lead and hot lead. I had learned about that from working with a couple

of guys, quite a plumbing outfit, but the trouble with this kind of work is the day of swinging

...