It Never Rains in Southern California

Hammond is a singer and songwriter who wrote this with help from lyricist Mike Hazlewood. Their songs have been recorded by many artists, including Art Garfunkel, Johnny Cash and Olivia Newton-John. Hazlewood died in May 2001 while vacationing in Italy. Other hits Mike helped Hammond write include "The Air That I Breathe" and "Free Electric Band."

Hammond: "It never rains... was written in London, before we (Albert and Michael) came to Los Angeles, and we knew we were coming, and I've been telling Mike the story of me in Spain when I started and how I was asking for money outside of the train stations because I had no money to eat and I didn't want to tell my parents. My cousin was on honeymoon then, and he came out of the train station and saw me, and I didn't even know it was him... I just asked him for some money, too. And he said 'you should be ashamed, I'm gonna tell your father,' and I said 'please, don't tell him, he'll go crazy and stop me doing this!' And then he took me back into the hotel, I had a bath, he gave me some clean clothes and some money. I moved on, but he did tell my father, you know. All these things like 'will you tell the folks back home I nearly made it' and all that stuff came from that era of my life when I was struggling, trying to make it, trying to get from Morocco to Spain, from Spain to England, from England to America... That struggle you go through, that's It never rains in Southern California, the story of my life."

Hammond: "One of my most important songs not only because I think it's a great song and I love it and I think it tells the story of my life in a way, but also because I was the artist, the producer, the writer - I mean, everything was right, it was just like the right thing. If I hadn't had that, I might have got slowly downhill, you know."