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" I didn't even respect singers until I heard Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong. "
J. D. Souther
Singers
Ray
Respect
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" I love Massachusetts for a number of reasons. I once loved a magical girl who lived in a magnificently converted barn, a half-hour or so from Boston. I love your winters. I love the snow. "
J. D. Souther
Loved
Snow
Love
" I don't have any particular methodology, to tell you the truth. 'Silver Blue' took exactly the amount of time to write that it takes to sing it, and 'Prisoner in Disguise' took about a year and a half. So you just never know. "
J. D. Souther
Truth
Time
You
" 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. "
J. D. Souther
Care
Time
Me
" I always think that today is the best day that there's ever been. The song that I'm working on is always the best song I've ever written. The woman I'm looking at is the most incomprehensibly beautiful woman I've ever seen. These dogs that I have now are, by far, the best dogs I've ever had - although, so were the last pair of dogs I had. "
J. D. Souther
Beautiful
Best
Woman
" Mike Campbell and Don Henley and I wrote 'The Heart of the Matter,' which was a huge hit for Don. "
J. D. Souther
Wrote
Which
Matter
" I'm not a great band member; I'm more of a band leader. "
J. D. Souther
Member
Band
More
" My dad was a huge big band and jazz fan, and we both sort of enjoyed be-bop, but man, it required so much skill to play it. And then there was cool jazz, the era that Miles, Coltrane, and Ornette ushered in, and that found a home in me. It turns out that that music was just really where I breathed. "
J. D. Souther
Music
Cool
Me
" 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. "
J. D. Souther
Work
Music
Race
" I grew up with singers. My father's mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can't remember a time there wasn't music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters - George Gershwin, Cole Porter - and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3. "
J. D. Souther
Mother
Time
Me
" 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
Think
Want
Life
" 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. "
J. D. Souther
Guitar
Loved
Why
" If it hadn't worked out professionally, I would be teaching music theory and composition in a small college somewhere and playing drums in a jazz trio at the Holiday Inn on weekends, and I'd be happy there, too. "
J. D. Souther
College
Music
Be Happy
" 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. "
J. D. Souther
Singing
Father
Time
" I'm always writing something. There's always some structure sitting around someplace. There's always things on the computer, things scratched on score paper, legal tablets full of lyrics. It's never not buzzing around me all the time. I'm always doing it. "
J. D. Souther
Doing
Legal
Me
" I was never much of a club guy. Even when I was in New York in the early eighties, I never was once in Studio 54. It was too noisy. My version of those years mostly took place at my house. "
J. D. Souther
Place
Club
Early
" 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. "
J. D. Souther
Think
World
Fan
" I had no idea what those cords were in the bridge of 'Prisoner In Disguise' when I wrote them. I had to go over to Don Gorman, the piano player, and ask what in the world I was playing. "
J. D. Souther
Go
Playing
World
" I had given myself a sort of early retirement when I left the scene in 1985. All of the people in my family worked until they dropped, including my father. I decided to take a little time to enjoy life. I traveled, built my dream house, rescued a few dogs. My return to music, and acting, was deliberate, part of my musical arc. "
J. D. Souther
Family
Life
Enjoy
" I had a jazz trio, a rock n' roll band, and I played drums in junior high, high school, college, big bands, and I played timpani in the symphony. I am a drummer. It's the one instrument I actually play pretty well. It's just hard to carry on your back. "
J. D. Souther
High School
Rock
College
" 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. "
J. D. Souther
Me
Song
Good
" I don't think I ever thought of growing up to be anything other than a musician. There really wasn't a plan B. Well, a kind of a distant plan B was to be a Formula One driver, but there really wasn't an entry point. "
J. D. Souther
Growing Up
Kind
Plan
" I never fully understand all the drama and machinations within the Eagles. "
J. D. Souther
Understand
Within
Drama
" 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. "
J. D. Souther
Two
Think
Rock
" A song of mine called 'I'll Take Care of You' was on that 'Wide Open Spaces' Dixie Chicks album. "
J. D. Souther
Take Care
Care
Mine