(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Due to the mass of notable names that the classic rock period produced, so many do not get the dues they deserve, particularly those who played a key role in propping up world-famous artists. While David Bowie and Neil Young are two artists who immediately spring to mind for weaponising the creativity of others to bolster their efforts, the Eagles are another global powerhouse that secured some of their best-loved hits in doing so. One man who was consequential for their career is J.D. Souther.
The Eagles were famously comprised of stellar musicians in their many different iterations, with Glenn Frey, Don Felder, and Don Henley helming most of their songs and forming a triptych of songwriters unlike any other. Blending their respective influences to create a unique take on soft rock and country, without the fumes this constant power struggle created, the band’s engine wouldn’t have got going in such a scorching fashion and produced records such as their 1976 masterpiece, Hotel California, and its predecessor One of These Nights.
As for Souther, his link to the band was instituted even before they formed in 1971. During the excitement of the heady countercultural peak in the late 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles, where he would meet a fellow wide-eyed creative, Frey. The pair quickly realised they were kindred spirits, sharing a similar worldview and artistic slant, and became roommates.
As regularly occurs when budding musicians of similar backgrounds co-habit, the pair started to jam and work out if and how their approaches could be melded. It worked, and they decided it was easier to give music a go as a duo rather than singular entities trying to find their way in an era brimming with dreamers who would give anything to be the next star. They formed the folk twosome Longbranch Pennywhistle and released their eponymous debut in 1970. This project fell flat, though, and the group broke up that year.
Undeterred, in 1972, Souther produced a self-titled solo album and, after growing in prominence, founded the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band with former Byrd Chris Hillman and ex-Buffalo Springfield man Richie Furay. While a shortlived project that released just two albums, it gave Souther the opportunity to refine his style in the company of two of the era’s most lauded songwriters.
As Frey had been in the Eagles for some time when the trio split up, naturally, Souther was asked to join – which he turned down – and would end up occasionally co-writing classics, including ‘Best of My Love’, ‘Heartache Tonight’, and ‘New Kid in Town’, three of the band’s best-loved efforts. Yet, it wasn’t just with the Eagles that Souther would find fame. He scored two major hits with 1979’s ‘You’re Only Lonely’ and 1981’s duet with friend James Taylor, ‘Her Town Too’, with his formula that pulls from country, folk and rock distinctive.
Souther has often been asked to name his influences, and during an interview with Debbie Kruger in 1997, he revealed that during the Longbranch Pennywhistle era, he and Frey were both big fans of the late folk hero Tim Hardin, a hero of the Greenwich Village scene and countercultural era, who sadly died of an accidental heroin overdose in 1980. A master of sincere acoustic-led compositions, Souther explained that Hardin had “the most direct influence” on him, placing faith in the acoustic as his primary weapon of choice.
He said: “Tim Hardin had a huge effect on me as a songwriter, probably the most direct influence as far as feeling like I could make complete sounding music with an acoustic guitar. I loved Tim Hardin. I thought he had a style and a gift that really had bits of everything in it.”
You could hear that Hardin loved country in his simple forms and chords, Souther said, but his almost legato-styled vocals confirmed that the folk legend was also into jazz, too, adding a different dimension to his unique style. It wasn’t just this angle that was immensely impactful for Souther’s style, either. So was the fact that he never wasted a word. Like fellow folkie Bob Dylan, he showed that filling a verse with rhymes, as was pop tradition, didn’t have to be the way; it’s what the words meant that were most important.
