SOUND ADVICE
Steve.” Later he was at one of my shows
where he saw 22,000 people go clap, clap,
clap. That was one of the high points in my
career.
Is there a special songwriter gene
that allows you to know that those
few chords are good enough to be the
foundation of a song?
I think there is. It becomes taste. I really
severely edit myself. What I put on record
is boiled down from what I may do as I’m
developing it. I am constantly making things
simpler. You know one good groove is worth
400 bad lines and chord changes. I think
that’s always the truth. If the groove is really
good maybe you change it once in a song.
That’s one of the hooks. You start changing
it four times or there is too much stuff going
on that is not interesting, or it detracts from
the story, or the lyrics, or whatever. Then it’s
too much.
By the same token, those parameters
forced you to craft some great songs,
which may have been greater because
of the limitations that were put on you.
“I really severely
edit myself. What
I put on record is
boiled down from
what I may do as
I’m developing it.
I am constantly
making things
simpler.”
AUG/SEPT
Yeah, I think that there is a lot of truth to
that. When you say I’m going to write songs
for radio – when you finally get that clear
in your mind – what it is these songs are
supposed to do – then you know [to] ask
yourself, is this a song that is going to lead
your album? It’s going to help you tour; it’s
going to help you get a bigger crew and a
better stage, and a much bigger audience,
then you write that, too. You have to come
up to that. Sometimes it can create a new
form. We hit right when AM radio was its
peak and then AM lost it to FM radio, which
took it over. I really hit with “Fly Like An
Eagle.” “The Joker” was the first one – that
was in ’74. “Fly Like An Eagle” was in ’75-’76.
Book of Dreams was in ’77. In 1978 AM radio
got overtaken by FM, so I had songs like
“The Joker.” Anything I did was automatically
played on FM radio. They played me day
and night, just like classic radio does now.
That’s what FM radio was then. They would
DIGITAL EDITION
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