American - Musician | November 2, 1945 -
I don't want to think that anything is off limits for me to write about, but I also don't want to intrude on anybody's life, which is why there's very little specificity or names in the songs I write.
J. D. Souther
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I'm a huge Robert Altman fan and don't take issue with his filmmaking, as eccentric as it is. But I just think 'Nashville' was a world he didn't know.
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Mike Campbell and Don Henley and I wrote 'The Heart of the Matter,' which was a huge hit for Don.
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I think I've been influenced by everything I've ever heard. The first thing I ever heard was my grandma, who was an opera singer. The first song I ever learned was the 'Nessun Dorma' from Puccini's 'Turandot.' My father was a big band singer, so I used to hear him walking around the house singing standards all the time.
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Think back to the early rock n' roll records, and the average record length in the '50s - and well into the '60s - was two and a half minutes. It's very hard to put that much songwriting into two and a half minutes.
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I have a wonderful piano that I really love: a handmade Yamaha grand. Sometimes I'm sitting there, and it sounds so good that I find some little melody or a phrase that leads me into a song, but probably more often than not, I actually grab a notebook.
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I never even held a guitar until I was 23 and living in California, but then loved it. I'm really not an accomplished instrumentalist. Maybe that has something to do with why I write and sing.
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Dixie Chicks surprised me with a beautiful three-part harmony version of 'I'll Take Care of You.' And Don Henley's performance of 'The Heart of the Matter' still just slays me every time I hear it.
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I'm not a great band member; I'm more of a band leader.
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There's no musical landscape to poetry. It has somewhat of a higher standard than songs, I think.
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I didn't even respect singers until I heard Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.
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In the '80s, I got tired of the rat race. It was a terrible time for music. I wasn't part of that whole MTV craze. I did 'Go Ahead and Rain,' which was Madeleine Stowe's first bit, but felt no connection to it. I went many years where I didn't have to work.
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