Glenn and I met in late '68 or early '69. He came out from Detroit to visit his girlfriend. Our girlfriends were sisters. We were flat broke and moved in with our girlfriends, who were actually doing better than us. We started writing songs day and night. We talked about what we wanted to do and we said, "Let's write songs and play music, just the two of us."
We were just called "John David and Glenn." Doug Weston, who ran the Troubadour, was our manager, and he said, "You should change the band name." I liked the Penny Whistle and Glenn liked Longbranch, since he liked cowboys. Weston said, "Great — Longbranch Pennywhistle." Within hours, we had a little tiny ad in the
Free Press and our first paying gig. We opened for Poco for a week and the second gig we opened for the Flying Burrito Brothers. Gram Parsons [leader of the Burritos at the time] really wanted to be Mick Jagger. But they didn't have the discipline Glenn knew a band like that needed. He paid attention. He was a real student of how that worked and how it didn't work. He studied their mistakes and Poco's and CSNY's.
Glenn and I knew everyone at the Troubadour that year. We knew all the waitresses. They fed us. The bartender gave us tequila and we saw every actor who came through.