No doubt about it: 1980 will go down in the annals of pop music as the year of Christopher Cross.

It may also go down as the year the lily was officially gilded. For Cross, composer of three gold singles and a triple platinum debut LP and winner of five Grammys, has topped off his achievements by being voted Songwriter Of The Year in the second annual Songwriter Readers' Poll. Additionally, Sailing, is the hands-down winner in the Song Of The Year balloting.

Such acclaim in the career of a veteran songwriter would be remarkable. In view of the fact that Cross was a virtual unknown just over a year ago, it is phenomenal. But if he is a newcomer to the award podium, he is no newcomer to songwriting.

A native of San Antonio, Texas, Cross (nee Geppert) began writing songs in the seventh grade, singing and playing drums in local bands. Impatient with his ability to get his material across to other band members, he took up guitar, and, to this day, does all of his writing on that instrument.

Cross entered San Antonio College in 1973, with the intention of becoming a physician like his father; but his love of music was too strong. After a year, he dropped out to devote himself fully to music. His time at college was not wasted, however, for it was there that he met up with keyboardist Rob Meurer and bassist Andy Salmon. Together with them and a changing cast of drummers (Tommy Taylor was added in 1975), Cross formed a band to make demos of his songs, playing Top 40 to pay the rent.

They sent out their first demo to Warner Bros. in 1975. After mulling it over a couple of months, the label returned it. The second demo went out in 1977. Ironically, this one contained the single that was to launch Cross' career, but Ride Like The Wind didn't kick up dust, and Warners passed once more. Then in 1978, they sent one more demo of four tunes. This time the company was impressed enough to dispatch a representative to Austin to hear the band live; Chris' signing occurred several months later.

With the tremendous recognition he's received three years later, Cross' new release, Say You'll Be Mine, the fourth single off his debut album, should have no trouble cracking the Top 40. He's already reaped tremendous fruits since the Grammys--the day after the telecast his self-titled album sold 100,000 units, and it is expected to sell an additional million before long.

But in two chats--the first in a Hollywood restaurant months before his Grammy triumphs, the second over the phone two weeks afterwards--Christopher Cross made it clear that his foremost goals are artistic ones. That, for all he is enjoying the fruits of success, he is most fulfilled working at the art which brought him such fame to begin with: songwriting.

I mainly write from feel, and, in pop music at least, I think it's more important to have the ear and the feeling than to know a lot. I know a couple of people who are trained on the kazoo, but they don't have an ear. They can cop something from The Well Tempered Clavier without even thinking, but if you ask them to work out Louie Louie, they can't do it.

Most of my ear training came from listening to The Beatles and The Beach Boys and having to cover those songs in bands ... sitting around with three guys and going, "OK, who's going to take the middle, and what is it?" If I ever get a few minutes, I'd like to get back to the piano and take some lessons; I've piddled around on it, but I really don't know what I'm doing. And I think the piano's the basis for everything. I'd like to make it more of a writing tool, but nowadays I'm so busy ...

I listened to all the '50s music a lot because my brothers and sisters had Coasters records. And I liked Buddy Holly and Richie Valens. Then, of course, there's the whole '60s influence. Structurally, the Beatles have been my heaviest influence, so I think the way they do. They wrote verse/chorus/ verse/chorus/bridge and a chorus-or maybe just a chorus. Say You'll Be Mine is my only song that starts with a chorus. And that's because I heard Hollywood by Boz Scaggs. They used to say in radio, "If you don't get your hook in within the first 13 seconds or so, it's not a hit." And I figured Boz had a hit because he started with the chorus. So on Say You'll Be Mine, instead of arranging the pieces in the standard way, I put the chorus first. And, ironically, that was the song Lenny Waronker (Wamer Bros. vice president of A&R) picked from the last demo as the hit.

That was after I'd moved to Austin, around '77 or so. Somebody had a local label, and I was just going to put out a single and see what would happen. So Rob and I went into the studio with a couple of other guys and cut this single and I tried to think of a name to release it under--not because I wanted to change my name so much, but it wasn't a name that was easily pronounced, and it wasn't very catchy. So I tried to come up with a combination of my first name with something else. My middle name is Charles, and I thought Chris Charles sounded pretty good. Then somebody said, "How about Christopher Cross? That way it'll be Chris Cross. Isn't that cute?" And at first I thought it was too cutesy, but when we went to Wamers for the deal, the label liked the name, so we just stuck with it.

He did all the orchestration and the horn arrangements; there were times when he was a great help. The material on the album was pretty much together, but there were some songs where I'd gotten hung up with a chorus I didn't like or I was missing a transition--songs that otherwise had great possibilities. Never Be The Same, for example. I had the verse and the chorus, but I couldn't come up with a bridge. I wanted to just play a solo over a verse but it sounded so stagnant. So Omartian said, "Why don't we just invert it up to the key of C out of A, play the solo in C, and then come out of it in A"--which was no brilliant scheme. But I'd just hit a mental block and couldn't think of anything else. That's why it's great to have a third ear.

I think Omartian's best writing comes from collaboration; that's not a cut on Michael. When he writes with Boz or anybody, that's just when he does his best work. His mind is working a million miles an hour, because he's working on so many projects. But if you just give him something to go with, he'll make something beautiful out of it. Whereas my strength is in starting. I can't always finish.

The only real requirements for me to write--and these are things I don't have much of these days--is total peace and privacy. Even if I'm in a hotel room, if there's somebody in the other room and I know they could be listening, I won't do it.

start playing. I'll find a musical groove that seems to work real well, like in Ride Like The Wind, and start singing. And as long as there are no distractions, it starts happening pretty easily. Often, I'll sit down and write a bunch of songs that sound about the same. So I just put them all on tape and then put the best pieces together and try to make one really good song. As long as I'm writing in that mood, it's impossible to break out of it, so I don't fight it. I just sort of roll with it and wait for another time when I have a different kind of feel.

But I'm pretty self-critical; I always try to sift through my songs. So I never have much more than 10 or 15 that I claim are songs. I'm not one of these guys with the big spiral notebook.

What I do a lot is find a chord movement that works well and move the bass note around under the progression. The Light Is On is a perfect example of that; it's basically just a major chord to a minor seventh chord, first over A-flat, then over E. Ride Like The Wind is exactly the same thing: it's a two-chord movement where the bass moves from the tonic down in three different steps. The same with Sailing. Usually, I use the same movement three times.

I also try to structure chords that allow me a lot of melodic freedom to sing--real open-sounding chords where I'm not real pinned down to a standard major chord and can only sing over a major scale. I try to put either a minor ninth, or a major ninth . . . something that allows me to stack something a little better melodically.

Partly from drumming. I think every musician/writer ought to play the drums; it gives you meter. You'd be surprised how many musicians there are who didn't play drums first and have terrible meter. I was also inspired by Joni Mitchell. She does very free-form counterpoint singing, and I like to do that.

Yeah, I use a lot of modal tunings on my guitar. That's why I play a double-neck guitar; I can play rhythm in a modal tuning, and lead. I used modal tunings on both Sailing and Minstrel Gigolo; you have to learn a whole new set of chords, but the open sound is pretty inspiring. And that's also something that Joni does. It's funny . . . I was writing songs that way long before "For The Roses" came out, which is where she really started doing it. I'm not saying she copped anything from me; it's something we both do.

What is the tuning?

I'd rather not say. For a long time I wouldn't even let my roadies tune my guitars because I didn't want them to know. It's not so much that I'm afraid of someone beating me to the punch; I'm certainly at a point now where I have the means to release records. But I had to struggle to work out songs for 10 years in copy bands, and if people want to know what the tunings are, let them figure them out. Plus, I think it's funny, when the songbooks come out, to see how the arrangers interpret the chords--they're always totally wrong.

How did Ride Like The Wind get written?

In pieces. Musically, the verse and chorus came together at the same time. And then I discovered that this piece of music I had on tape--the ba da da dap part--worked with it real well, so I added it. Lyrically, I wrote the chorus first, so all I needed was the words for the verse. And, as we were on our way from Houston to Austin to record the song, I just wrote those words in that three-hour trip.

I never really thought about that at the time. l think the theme was already set. It came from all the cowboy movies I'd seen as a kid--The Lone Ranger, Zorro--and hoping the bad guy gets away.

Well, I've always let the company make the decisions. They're the people who have to do the work, so I let them decide. I never figured we'd get on the charts anyway, so I didn't see what difference it would make.

Most of the tunes for the second album are done except for a verse here or something there, which I'll do when I get into the studio. I'm really pleased with the progress; all the songs are really good. But as far as if there is going to be a Sailing on there, I really don't know. Paul Simon, Carole King and I are the only ones who have ever won five Grammys. Paul did it with "Bridge Over Troubled Waters." He didn't have a "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" on every album, but he's still written a lot of great music. So if I do it once and next year I win one Grammy, or I don't win any, I did accomplish this. And, front a writer's standpoint, to be in that kind of company, I'm totally pleased with myself. So instead of looking at it real negatively and getting hung up about how I'm going to top myself, I'm not going to try. There's only so much top and I've kind of gotten there.

Yeah, but it's really, really hectic. And I'm put in situations that, if I weren't this successful, I wouldn't have to be in. Like having to host 'The Midnight Special." I didn't have to, but it was something I should do for my career. And I'm not a TV personality. It just isn't my thing to stand out there with Wolfman Jack and read cue cards.

Also, it can be awkward, because there are a lot of artists who don't write. I'm getting a lot of requests from Barry Manilow on down for songs. I met Natalie Cole a few months ago, and the first thing she asked me, "You got any songs?" I played a simple ballad live and Bonnie Raitt asked me for it, and I couldn't give it to her. I've got songs, but I want to keep them for myself.

But obviously there are good sides. I'm making a lot more money. My wife and I have been living in apartments for seven years, and we just bought a house in Austin. And, of course, I'm meeting people. It's an unfortunate fact, but it's just the way life is--I have credibility now. People now seek me out, where, if I'd met them a year ago, they might not have given me the time of day. Kenny Loggins, for example. We had called him and asked him to sing on Sailing. He didn't really blow us off, but he was too busy and couldn't do it. Then he heard the song on the radio, called me up and told me: "Man I really wish I'd done it now. It sounds just like me. I'd like to sing on the next record."

Is your picture going to be on the next album?

Yeah (smiling). There should have been a picture on this one, but we put the lyrics on the inner sleeve and we just didn't have room for a picture. That whole business is so weird. I haven't hidden myself, I've been on TV and around. I've read a few articles that say I write all this romantic music and when I come on stage all the girls are disappointed 'cause I don't look like Kenny Loggins. The thing is, I don't want those people as fans anyway.. I'm an artist, and if that's what it takes to make it, then I'll go back to what I was doing. But I don't think it is. I think the majority of my fans are sincere record buyers. And most of the girls that I meet, maybe they were expecting that and so that's one element that isn't there for them anymore ... But at the same time, it's not that I look like the Elephant Man.

I have signed with a couple of movie music managers. They approached me totally out of the blue and said that my music is really conducive for the movies. So they've been shopping for scripts for me; but so far, I've turned everything down. I did go to L.A. recently to see a screening of one movie, "Endless Love" with Brooke Shields. Its total impact was a little too tragic. I want something that's just a nice love story. So I'm still looking into that, with Omartian. I'm certainly not technically competent to do the actual score, but I'd like to write some songs for a movie and sing them and have Michael score the movie.

Also, I want to produce. There's a young artist in Austin--a guitar player--named Eric Johnson, and I'm going to do some demos on him, shop him, and get him a deal if I can.

Do you have any advice to songwriters?

If you think you've got something special, then keep doin' it. People tell me they know how to write songs and sing, but they don't have a band and they don't know what to do. It's not that hard. There are recording studios in town. It takes money. But I don't care if you get it from your parents or your boyfriend whatever you gotta do. Find out where you can get studio time and how much it is. Then go to local bars, listen to the bands and find out the names of the band members you like. Get a section of players and contact them and ask them if they're interested in playing on your demos. Most young local bands would be glad to get into the studio and get a chance to play. And there's usually somebody in the band who can read pretty well, or a keyboard player who can help you with arrangements.