Glenn to be Guest at Songwriters Hall of Fame Master Session at NYU

Its a pain having to head back to work so quickly Soda (did it in August) but I'm sure you'll agree it was well worth it. Hope today goes well for you.

I had a little time this morning so I went over my notes, but this does not cover even half of the lecture. Between Soda, me and VA I'm sure we can put it all together but it'll take time and several posts.

During the introduction, Glenn was lauded for the solidity and consistency of his material. He was credited with being a consumate artist who created country pop and who should be recognized for his work which concentrated and iconicized the SoCal lifestyle and vibe that permeated his writing. As a songwriter and an artist he produced tightly woven and cohesive songs.

Glenn mentioned that his Standards album is almost finished and how much he enjoyed "spending time" with the artists that he covered.

They began to discuss songwriting and how important it is that nothing seemed forced or out of place. Its best if the music just flows and is natural. He made a specific point of acknowledging his association with Don Henley and Jack Tempchin and their contributions to his songwriting.

After the first Eagles album -- which had 3 hits and what Glenn called other material that was "not so good", he and Don Henley discussed how they had "better get good at songwriting and get good fast" to be able to hold their own with the likes of Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne.
They decided to write songs together and in the first week wrote Desperado and Tequilla Sunrise.

Glenn acknowledged that his is a big audiophile of American rhythm and blues, Motown, The Byrds and The Beach Boys. He thought that if he started spending time with great artists and studying their catalogs, some of their greatness would "rub off". He would listen to the music of Al Green and Hall & Oates and try and analyze and learn from them. He recently "spent time" with Neil Young's catalog.

He talked about how in Detroit where he grew up, Bob Seger took him under his wing, how they spent time together in and out of the studio. Bob told him that if he wanted to make it in the music business he'd have to write his own songs. Glenn asked Bob "Well, what if they're bad songs?" Seger said: "Oh, they're gonna be bad -- but you just have to keep on writing them". That got a laugh from the audience.

I think this is when he started discussing going to Southern California with JD Souther and meeting Jackson Browne at a fund raiser in Long Beach and how he and JD rented the upstairs apartment while Jackson lived in the downstairs unit in a house in Echo Park. Glenn said that Jackson unwittingly taught him how to write a song. Jackson would get up early in the mornings and work on his songs over and over again trying to get them right. Glenn would be listening from the upstairs apartment and came to admire Jackson for his diligence and his artistic craftmanship which he realized was necessary to write songs. Glenn learned that to write you just had to "roll up your sleeves" and "hunker down" and work at perfecting the song over and over again.

Glenn felt that at that time by himself he wasn't that great of a songwriter but that he found a great songwriting partner in Don Henley. Henley was an English literature student at North Texas State University who was smart, very literate, well read and educated, who understood lyrics, poetry, pentameter and elements of song writing. He said they were "scared great".


They started off playing with Linda Ronstadt, but shortly thereafter formed the Eagles.

More to follow -- have to go to work!

Very good so far, HH! We'll be diligently waiting.........

What an excellent summary, HH. How inspiring. I am so glad that he mentioned the After Hours album again. I wonder which Neil Young songs in particular he's been 'spending time' with on reexamining that catalogue?

Re Willie's comment about how much IYWN means to Glenn's fans - it certainly means a great deal to me. What I would have given to hear him sing it, unamplified. That's another unique rendition of one of his songs that Soda can chalk up (so can the other attendees of course).

OK -- Next short piece . . . My notes were pretty good and I'm fairly confident about my quotes being accurate. My apologies if I'm not.

Glenn was asked about the Eagles being labeled a Country Rock Band -- how he felt about that and if he agreed was it intentional to be labeled that way.

He replied: "The Eagles loved bands like Poco, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Hearts & Flowers and The Dillards. My definition of country rock was always Chuck Berry with three-part harmony. Songs like Take It Easy and Already Gone are two pretty good examples of what we're talking about. I'm not much for labels, but we definitely were more of a country band in the beginning but as we started to make personnel changes we became a little more hard rock. By the time we finished Desperado we felt like songwriters. Thanks to the Beatles and people who wrote all kinds of different songs we just felt that we could write all kinds of songs. We were growing and I think each album we made was a growing process.
Our albums reflected that process."

Desperado -- which he considers a better album than others and was a concept album -- "wasn't really a country rock opera -- it was an album with songs about people who lived outside the laws of normality".

Desperado came about because of a Time-Life book that Jackson Browne had called The Gunfighters. "We were sitting around late one night looking at pictures of the Doolin-Dalton Gang, Jesse James and Billy the Kid, so we starting thinking about that and started writing Doolin-Dalton. In the beginning it was gonna be an album about all folk heros. James Dean was originally gonna be on it, but as we moved forward we started to feel that Desperado was an umbrella for a whole concept album."


More later . . . .

I am just finding this thread!! How exciting, to get to see this lecture. I wish I knew about it. Love all the details of Glenn's speech. How many people were there? Did you have to be a student of NYU to attend?
What a fantastic opportunity to hear Glenn. I'm so happy some of you got to attend this!! Sounds fantastic.....
I wonder if Glenn is still in NYC??

The theatre holds about 300 and it was almost full. It was open to the public, but we heard some students say it wasn't advertised well within the school.

HH, thanks so much for your summary!

I'm loving the tidbits you guys seemed to have gotten. How cool is this after this many years to know we don't all know everything about them? ;) I especially love this part so far. I know about the The Gunfighters book, etc. but I don't believe I knew that they had originally set out to make it an album about all folk heroes or that James Dean was suppose to be on this album. Very cool!!

Keep the review coming. Loving it!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Henley Honey

Desperado came about because of a Time-Life book that Jackson Browne had called The Gunfighters. "We were sitting around late one night looking at pictures of the Doolin-Dalton Gang, Jesse James and Billy the Kid, so we starting thinking about that and started writing Doolin-Dalton. In the beginning it was gonna be an album about all folk heros. James Dean was originally gonna be on it, but as we moved forward we started to feel that Desperado was an umbrella for a whole concept album."

---

Yeah, it's nice to hear something new. What a great experience for all of you that went! :bow:

Those of you who got to attend this talk are really lucky! It must have been great to see Glenn in a different setting, talking in-depth about his career and influences. It's very fitting with the band's anniversary coming up. Thanks for your detailed summaries, HH - we really appreciate your note-taking efforts!

I love the old stories about the Troubadour days and the '70s LA scene... a talented group of young singer-songwriters hanging around together, breeding creativity. One of those magical moments in music history that would spawn a whole legacy of amazing musicians and timeless songs. Not that they would have known that at the time, of course.

Yes, thank you so much, HH. Just reading this is bringing back great memories.

Seeing Glenn in this setting talking about his experiences and songwriting process was very cool and despite the copious amount of research I've done on the guys and Glenn in particular, even I heard some new stories. Of course, hearing "It's Your World Now" for perhaps the only time it has ever been performed live was very thrilling!!!

Last night I intended to write some about this as well but when I got home, I fell asleep and didn't wake up until 7:00 am this morning. I guess I needed to catch up on my sleep - October has been a pretty crazy month for me! I'll try again tonight after I get back from work (gotta leave soon in fact).

I thought this would be my last Eagles-related adventure for a while, but now that Timothy has announced dates..... too bad I can't afford Vegas!

BTW I thought "It's Your World Now" was especially appropriate considering it was done as part of a university series. Some of the students who attended may be the hit songwriters of tomorrow!

So true Soda! October has indeed been busy for you. But worth it I'm sure. Looking forward to hearing your 'review' of Tuesday evening. Hope youre feeling refreshed, and that you have a good day! :hug:

And, yet more . . . .

The discussion continued about songwriting. Glenn talked about there being a big transition from being a songwriter and somebody playing live to being a recording artist. "It's a very different animal."
In the studio its just you, an engineer maybe a few roadies and a tape machine and you have to figure out a way to put excitement on tape without an audience to feed off of. "You become more microscopic. You don't want it too rushed. Time and groove become more important".

He said that around the time they made their third album is when he thought they really started to get better as songwriters and also get better at making records. "After we wrote Desperado and Tequilla Sunrise, the criteria for us was if we played this for Jackson what would he think? If we played this for Neil Young would he think it was a good song? If we played it for Joni Mitchell would she like it or would there be a long silence which is always a sign of negation?". He talked about about how they started to feel like they were going to be OK. That he and Don had good chemistry.

They talked about Desperado not selling as many copies as the first album. Glenn said: "It was about being an artist too. It wasn't just about trying to sell records. It was about trying to do something that was valid -- something that was important."

Glenn was asked how he felt about other artists covering their songs. He said it was hard to cover Eagles songs. There hadn't been too many covers because their versions were the definitive versions. He thought Linda's version of Desperado was great as was the Gypsy Kings version of Hotel California. He also liked Vince Gill's version of I Can't Tell You Why.

They discussed the discipline and focus needed for writing. How the Eagles had put out an album a year for 5 years while simultaneously touring. Glenn said "We were young. We were excited. We were getting better. The one thing about having a hit record is that it tells you that you're doing something right and that you can just focus on what you can start doing better. For about 2 years, Don and I just could not do anything wrong."

He talked about making the album One Of These Nights. "That was when we really started to gel. We knew we were good. We knew what we were doing was good. I often tell young songwriters to find a songwriting partner. Two things happen when you write by yourself. You fall in love with your own voice and your own words and you can't really be critical about it cause you think it all sounds wonderful -- or you get very paranoid and don't think anything is good enough and you worry yourself to death."

He talked about how Don and he had enough mutual respect for each other that they could sit down and write a song and not be offended if the other did not like a suggestion made by the other. How they had a good checks and balance system with each other. Same with Jack Tempchin. He talked about how it helped to be working with people you trust. He likened the writing relationship to a marriage. You have to find the right fit and that with trust and mutual respect comes the courage to write songs.

He talked about the Troubadour and how they came to write Lyin Eyes. How it was the story of this triangle between the singer with the heart of gold and the rich sugar daddy and the beautiful girl caught in between.
"We wrote Lyin Eyes in 2 days. It's a song with 8 verses that is 7 to 8 minutes long and we actually had more lyrics than we used. The story just worked. We wrote it fast."

Glenn talked about what a great high voice Randy had but that he never had a hit record so they decided to write TITTL for him which was the Eagles first million-selling single. "It just sort of felt like we knew what we were doing. We knew the rules. We knew what was good and what wasn't good and we weren't afraid to go in there and just have at it."

They talked about the unusual structure of One Of These Nights. They played the intro and the beginning of the song. Glenn said: "That's my favorite Eagles record. We almost called the OOTN album Black In The Saddle because we felt we were getting a little more R&B into our music, moving a little bit away from Country Rock on some songs."
"We had Don Henley who was one of the great singers of our time and he's got the kind of voice that can sing R&B".

Glenn told the story of how he and Don had written OOTN and were to meet up with the band in Miami and go into the studio. Randy got stuck in a snowstorm in Cleveland and got delayed so they started without him. That is how Don Felder came to pick up the bass and write the intro on OOTN. Glenn also said that OOTN was originally written on the piano.

They discussed the "simple but innovative structure" of the song.
"It just felt right. Sometimes the songs take over and they tell you what to write. Sometimes it's not always you doing it. There are no rules in songwriting other than it's gotta sound cool. It can't sound forced. It needs to be natural. Respect the song. Understand what it says. Respect the vocal."

He talked about how a song isn't finished until the record is mixed and gave the example of OOTN. How they had the line -- I've been searching for the daughter of the devil himself -- but that they didn't have the line searching for an angel in white for about 3-4 weeks until a friend/producer suggested it.

Continuing the discussion about how a song is really never done, Glenn talked about how Don as a lyric writer would never give up -- even when his lead vocals were done. "He'd come back in and say I wan't to try it this way and he'd try new lyrics." They used the phrase "Hidden Deeper Meaning". How they would try and squeeze more meaning into the song. "Something personal".

"Songwriting is about getting big ideas into small places. You're not writing a novel with vivid descriptions. Sometimes you can't say everthing you want to say. Sometimes what you leave out is just as important as what you leave in. Never explain everything. I think that's a big mistake."

He said: "One of the greatest allies that you have as an artist is the imagination of your audience -- of finding a way to draw them in -- to have them identify with this piece of material so that it's them, not you. It's them. They're the guy in Lyin Eyes. They're the guy in BOML. You want to get people involved. You can't do that if you're just gonna explain everything. People need to be tricked into enlightenment."

He continued: "As a songwriter, the one thing you have to do is show up. I don't wirte songs all the time, but I carry around titles with me. I carry around ideas and then when it comes time for songwriting you need to do it everyday." He talked about how he used to think songs came from "up here" meaning the air, but now thinks they come from the subconscious "cause that's where you've read all the books, listened to the music, chords and stories. It's all in your subconscious. You have to get yourself ready and oiled enough to let that stuff flow out."


That's all I time for now. More later. . . . .

That's really an in depth look at the way they wrote songs but I am glad they didn't call the OOTN album 'Black In The Saddle'. Despite Glenn's enthusiasm for the title track, the album is my least favourite Eagles album because the songs NOT written by himself & Don were quite frankly not as good. I didn't know the third person in the Lyin' Eyes triangle was 'the singer with the heart of gold'. Does he mean himself? I never thought of it, even though it originated in the Troubadour, as being about an 'industry' relationship.

My only complaint with all this is he doesn't talk much about how doing his own lead vocals influenced the way songs were written; he only talks about Don's vocals. I know he's being modest & he doesn't want to blow his own trumpet. The only part I could find which I thought may apply to him too is 'respect the vocal'.

He mentioned that once they had some money, they went up the block from the Troubadour to Dan Tana's restaurant and hang out there. They'd introduce themselves to these beautiful women who'd stay till 1 AM and then go home to their rich sugar daddy boyfriends. That was the context of the triangle.

It continued . . . .

"I've had moments where I've written songs when I wasn't even aware of starting the song." He uses two songs written with Jack Tempchin as an example. They were writing "The One You Love" and Glenn started talking about a sax riff that he had and he described it for Jack. Jack "got it" and they wrote "I Found Somebody" out of the blue.

On songwriting, he added:
"I love the self exploration. I love a little bit of the pain and suffering that must go into it, but I also love the fact that it is never the same. It's always different." He talked about each song having its own personality and said, "It's like with your kids. They are of you but they're not you. Some get written fast. Some take time. Some never get finished and I like that. I'm still amazed. I'm never disappointed. Sometimes the title comes first, sometimes the chords come first. Sometimes the title".

He went on to tell the story of how Life In The Fast Lane came about.
"I'm in the San Fernando Valley and its 1975. We used to play alot of poker in those days and we used to do alot of drugs. I'm riding in a Corvette with a drug dealer and we're riding on the Ventura Freeway and I know he has drugs in his briefcase. I'm sitting shotgun in this little 'Vette and he's all the sudden doing 85 mph in the left lane of the Ventura Freeway. I'm like -- what are you doin' man? He looks at me as says -- Life in the Fast Lane. So I said to myself -- now that's a song."

He told Don about it and while they were rehearsing in Stone Canyon at Randy's house. Joe played a lick warming up and Glenn told Don -- That's it. That's LITFL. He said they had a good story in mind of a young couple who had it all -- jet set lifestyle, fast cars and parties but ultimately found that an empty life. None of those things could satisfy the couple. He felt the song was perfect for Hotel California which he considered a "dark record".


to be continued . . . Anybody getting sick of this or should I keep going?

I want to read more and I was there!

No, HH, this is absolutely perfect. Although I have heard a lot of these stories in other forms, you are telling them the way Glenn told them, and that is important. In any case I hadn't heard the 'self exploration' part. I'm finding out more & more about him the more you write & you are doing it very well indeed. :rockon:

OK -- last installment for tonight -- cause I'm going blind trying to decifer my notes.

We are still on LITFL. They played the intro and Glenn said: "Makes you want to get high, doesn't it?" That got a laugh from the audience.
They played it partway through and continued the discussion on its structure. How it only had a half chorus in the beginning and that was because they felt it was important to get back to the story and then include the entire chorus later on in the song. They discussed how in the beginning of the song the characters are described physically (brutally handsome/terminally pretty) rather than describing their situations which came later in the song. Glenn said: "part of telling the story is to make the characters look a little more glamorous and interesting." His point was you have to leave somewhere for the characters to go in the story.

He added: "We used to have a saying in the Eagles, which was -- everything changes once Don starts singing -- and in a song like LITFL he is such a compelling vocalist that he becomes the center of the record. He is telling the story. He becomes the narrator and you want to listen to him." Glenn compared it to hearing Michael McDonald sing -- that you're just drawn in.

"Starting with OOTN, personally, all I cared about was singing one song on an Eagles album and I just wanted to write a bunch of songs with Don for Don to sing because he was money. He was straight to the radio."

Glenn was asked about any material that the Eagles may have done but never released. He said no, that if they felt a song wasn't good enough to be released they'd never have finished it. It was in the context of not using all their material where Glenn said Don Felder would bring them songs and 90% of them had so many guitar parts there was no room for vocals and therefore not used -- with one exception -- and that was Hotel California.

(Soda, please double check your notes on the above Felder section as I don't want to misinterpret what Glenn said or what he meant!!!) He was in no way derogatory to Don Felder.

Glenn and Don (Henley) really liked the synthesis of the Mexican/Raggae sound on Hotel California. Glenn said he likes songs with multiple influences. He said it makes them more interesting.

More tomorrow -- or maybe Soda wants to pick it up from here?

I agree - your write-ups are superb, HH! I'm really enjoying them.

The gushing about Don is admirable. There seems no point in saying that Glenn's narration of songs such as Lyin' Eyes & New Kid In Town is just as compelling.

Both New Kid In Town & Heartache Tonight - songs GLENN sang - went to Number One & won Grammy awards. One of those was for the vocal performance.

I know how humble he is & I know that he wishes to acknowledge Don's talent, but for heaven's sake, there were two of them in that partnership, and still are, and they both bring an equal amount of talent to the partnership & to the band.

ETA: Don't get me wrong; I am grateful to hear these insights. I know very well that he isn't going to go to something like this & tell everyone how wonderful HE is. That isn't what he does. As I said; admirable & humble.

WOW...wish it had been video taped...I would've loved to seen him/listen to him talk about all this....did you guys take notes?..or tape him...or else you have an incredible memory....great job..

I took notes. I took stenography & typing about a thousand years ago and it's like riding a bike -- you never forget. I was a little rusty at first, but it kicked in and I managed to concentrate and get it down. The difficulty comes in getting the notes transcribed without misquoting.

On a more frivolous note, Glenn looked HOT. :inlove:

I saw him outside the venue talking on his cell phone when he first arrived and he had on a dark, three-quarter length overcoat. He wore a two-piece suit that fit very well. He looked fit but cold. The theater was like a freezer. Betcha he wished he'd kept on the coat!

Wow, HH you really got every detail on Glenn's appearance. I don't know how you got down all that info. It was great reading all about it!!
Thanks so much for writing this up for us..... must have been a real thrill for those who attended.

Her pen was smokin'! So I kicked back and put mine away, then asked to copy her notes later. Or, better yet, get her to type them all in then just swipe them! I never did stuff like that as a student, but it's working for me now!

Thanks, HH!

Ok, I'll pick up at the Felder section above since HH asked me to double check, and go on from there for a little bit! I may not have the following word for word, but it's pretty close.

"Don Felder, the guitar player for the Eagles from 1974... 'cause he joined in 1974... every time we made an album, Felder would give Henley and I a 90-minute cassette full of instrumentals for us to write songs to and, 90% of the time, he had played so many guitar parts that there was no room to even sing.. and we would say that to him. 'Hey, where do we sing? First this guitar plays this, then this guitar plays that....' The one exception was 'Hotel California.' He gave us this instrumental demo and Don and I were listening to it and we said, 'mmm. This is really a nice synthesis. It's Mexican Reggae. We think this is really good.' And I like songs that are a synthesis, where there's multiple influences.... it's not just one way or another. I think it makes things more interesting..."

He continued:

"So, we had this chord progression. Now, at the time, Don and I were big fans of Steely Dan. I think we'd met them a couple times, maybe, and we were especially impressed with how brave Steely Dan was with their lyrics. They said things in their songs that Don and I would never even dream of saying. I mean, they got the Steely Dan t-shirts.... just things that they said. We were very impressed.

"So, we started thinking that maybe we should be a little braver in our lyrics, and 'Hotel California' was the perfect song. So, we're sitting there and I said to Don, 'This song should be like an episode of the Twilight Zone. Start out, the guy's driving in his car. He takes a hit off a joint, he comes over the rise, he sees a place in the distance with some lights, he drives over there, someone opens the door, there's a bunch of weird people....and what does it mean? It means nothing! Now, later on in the song, we're talking about tarnished elegance, we're talking about how man continues to soil everything that's good, once he finds something really nice he goes there and wrecks it... there are certain elements of that tarnished elegance sort of thing... there's meaning in Hotel California... but a lot of it was just movie-making.... just pictures.

"And of course, we started writing songs before there were videos. Your mind - the back of your eyelids - was the screen for the songs you listened to. I would drive around in the car listening to 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds' and dreaming it up. Sometimes I'm thinking about what it must have been like at the Beatles session, who was playing what and where they were sitting... and other times, I'm just having this movie going on in my head along with the lyrics that somebody's written. So that's really what we were trying to do. We've always been very visual writers.

"I have this theory: don't tell me how you feel. Tell me a story; paint me a picture. That's what's important. I want to be entertained. Other stuff can filter in... all your hidden meanings... your message... that can be included, but first and foremost, you have to entertain.

"'Hotel California' goes there. There's a lot to like about 'Hotel California.' There's the cricle of fifths chord progression, there's the reggae beat, Don and I wrote these lyrics, it's got a story that moves and continues to be like an episode of the Twilight Zone, the guitar parts, and how we went to the end of the song and built these guitar parts... Felder's solo first, then Joe's solo second, then split one for the third, then they play the triplets twice through... we had this whole thing, and we thought it was very interesting; it never got dull. 'Hotel California' never got dull. And then we put it out there...

"But back to Steely Dan. Walter Becker of Steely Dan had a girlfriend who loved the Eagles, and she's playing Eagles all the time. It probably drove him nuts. So, there was a song on a Steely Dan album called "Tell Me Everything You Did," and there's a line that says... they were having an argument, and the line in the song is, 'Turn up the Eagles; the neighbors are listening.'"

[We audience members all laughed at that!]

"So, we wanted to send a message back to Steely Dan. My idea was 'They stab it with their Steely knives.' Now, we couldn't say 'Steely Dans' because a 'Steely Dan' was a dildo, was slang for it."

[At that, I (Nancy) am like "Whhaaaa???" I had no idea that group named themselves after a dildo!]

Glenn added, "The other thing that happened... another line in that song.... we were always trying to put things in the song that meant a little something to us that maybe nobody else would get. Back a few years before we recorded Hotel California, a friend of ours... I won't say who he is... he had left his wife, and his wife became suicidal. She didn't wanna go on. And she would call Don. And Don would go over to her house and talk her off the ledge... I'm using a figure of speech. But she used to always say, 'I just don't really see any reason for going on. I'll just check out.' And that's what she called dying. So, now we've got this metaphor. So when we say 'check out of the hotel,' now we know that it means a little something more to us. So, we would look for things like that to include."

Again, Thanks a so much everyone for your detailed summaries!I have enjoyed reading it very much !

I knew about the Steely Dan name origin.

That was very detailed & interesting.

I do wonder why he & Henley didn't feel they could rework or write extra parts/melodies for some of Felder's 'guitar parts' submissions. You can understand a bit better why Felder felt somewhat rejected by them.

This is fascinating reading. HH, you have done an awesome job with your notes! :bow:

I particularly like that Glenn was so respectful to both Randy and Felder. (Did Bernie get any mention?).

Wish I'd been there to see Nancy's face at the origin of Steely Dan's name.
;)

Interesting comment about Felder's songs not having space for lyrics. All I can think of is that maybe they built a certain momentum that lyrics would interrupt... but then, Joe's warm-up lick turned into LITFL. Maybe because it was shorter?

Could they have picked up parts of Felder's compositions and dropped them into the middle of something else, as a guitar solo? Or would that just not have worked... (I know we can't really answer the question, I'm just speculating here!).

This is really very interesting! Thanks guys for getting it all down so completely!

I would have loved to have heard Glenn tell all this in person!

This is fascinating reading. Thanks for all your hard work, HH and Soda!

From this point on in the lecture, it was very difficult to hear the questions, but you can kind of tell what was being asked from Glenn's answers.

He was asked about the impact of Hotel California -- how it was used as a metaphor for the lifestyle.
Glenn talked about HC being their second concept album. How it could have been called Tales from the Dark Side or The Underbelly of Fame.
"We were writing about ourselves. We were rich and famous and we were dealing with how it's not all its cracked up to be. Where is the meaning here? What was fluff? What didn't mean anything?" He talked about how if he wrote something & Don like it, then he thought everyone else would like it too.

In the same vein, he was asked if he was surprised that all this "overlay meaning" appeared. Glenn said: "God yes. Televangelists would be on and they'd hold open the fold out of HC -- it was sort of our Sgt. Pepper -- we'd gathered a whole bunch of wierd people and people we knew in a hotel lobby and they'd go up and point to a shadow of a woman up in the balcony and say -- this woman is a satanist, she is a devil worshiper, a witch. It was just some girl we'd said to dress in black and stand over there. But that song is the perfect example of letting your audience's imagination bring the meaning to the song. So it means what it does to you."

They went back to the discussion of Cover Songs. They played a portion of the Gypsy King's version of HC. Glenn said: "That was good" and did a little chair dance to the mexican/raggae beat.

Then they played a long portion of a truly horrific cover of HC by Nancy Sinatra. (Horrific is my word -- not Glenn's -- but he seemed to cringe as well.)

Glenn was asked about the periods of time after HC where they didn't release a record and if writer's block was an issue.
He replied: "Certainly. I would never trade the experience of having HC as a huge selling album and then going in and trying to make a record after that. As Bob Dylan said 'They deceived me into thinking I had something to protect'. That's basically what happened."
He talked about how Saturday Night Fever & Rumours both outsold HC that year, but that eventually HC probably surpassed them in sales.

"When we went into the studio to record The Long Run we were pretty uptight about just how great everything had to be now. I wish at the time we could have taken a little bit more of a European view of our career where things happen in peaks and valleys but we were sort of in this arc going up. It was like how do we beat ourselves? How do we do better? The LR was a difficult record to make and it took a long time."

He talked about how he truly loved some songs on the album - in particular the song they wrote for Timothy. "It took a long time and part of the reason too is that words are not a replenishable resource. We had already used the moon, the sky, the wind, the desert, the ocean, the sea, the night, the stars. We sort of used all that stuff up in our songs and then what do we do next?"

He mentioned that the title track -- The Long Run was one of his favorites and that is was a R&B song. He mentioned ICTYW, HT and a song they wrote for a hollywood producer - The King of Hollywood. He also talked about Those Shoes being the only song he'd ever heard with two guitar talk boxes playing together.

Again, I could not hear the question, but they started discussing Timothy and his "pure voice". Glenn mentioned how Timothy had played in Poco and they sang kind of "happy, happy tunes" and how the Eagles were "really not into happy". He said Tim had a great falsetto voice like Smokey Robinson and that they should write something like an Al Green song for him. "So that's how that started. I went to the piano -- like I'm gonna do now -- and this will be bad cause it's in Timothy's key (D major 7)."
Glenn starts playing and singing ICTYW. (I think VA and Soda sighed simultaneously.)

He was asked about how the Eagles didn't do "happy" but how they still got emotions "melancholy pathos" into their songs. Glenn said: "I just think bittersweet is way more interesting that just sweet. I think there needs to be a little tension. It just makes the story you're telling in the song more interesting, so that was something Don and I always had in our minds." He used Wasted Time as an example. How its the story of a love relationship that is struggling. BOML - same thing and uses the line "That same old crowd was like a cold dark cloud that we could never rise above."
as another example of melancholy pathos.

We are getting near the end of the lecture, but there will be one more (maybe two) transcriptions to come . . . . .

Just spent the last 1/2 hour or so in this thread and all I can say is WOW!!!! HH & Soda, thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!! :bow:

Going on the record here, knew about Steely Dan's origin. We (especially hubby) are big Steely Dan fans. I've always gotten a kick out of it because I figured there were lots of people out there that were clueless to that unless you were a fan. And of course whenever we listen to The Royal Scam album by Steely Dan and hear Everything You Did, hubby sings that line really loud at me. :hilarious: Heaven knows, my neighbors have heard a lot of Eagles from our house.

And if I'm not mistaken, on the Eagles Greatest Hits or Best Of album, isn't it in the liner notes somewhere how the "stab it with the Steely knives" being because of Steely Dan? Will have to double check when I get a chance.

And on the "gushing about Don". I just don't see it as that way at all. I see it as more he's simply stating facts and how he sees it. I don't want to offend anyone, but I think he's pretty much on the money on it all.

On that note, wouldn't it be interesting tho to have the exact same conversation with Don and hear his take on the same subjects?

HH - And you didn't sigh??

The key was too high for him, but he still sounded great. Of course, I'm just a bit biased.

I think what's coming next, if I remember correctly, he talks about how they wrote the song. If I were a songwriter, I'm not sure if I'd find this discussion helpful or frustrating. All in all, his approach to songwriting was different with every song, it seems. Sometimes the title could come first and he'd write a song to match it. Sometimes a chord progression would interest him and he'd write some music and let Don handle the lyrics. Sometimes he'd set out to write a certain type of song. Sometimes he sat down at a piano and things flowed from his fingers, and sometimes he struggled with that. If I were a budding songwriter, I'd be happy to hear that it can word regardless of your approach, but I'd also want to hear a more methodical approach. I guess songwriting is like other art forms...it just happens as it's meant to happen. And really, that was the point he was trying to get across the entire evening. Don't push it, don't force it, keep it honest, and put yourself into it.

I'll try to add a little more while HH takes a break!

IMHO, they spent way too long playing that crappy Nancy Sinatra cover. You know, I couldn't help but notice that they didn't play a clip from an Eagles song GLENN sang one time! We heard clips from Desperado, OOTN, LITFL, and HC. Now, I can only surmise this is because Glenn thinks that those are the Eagles' best songs and he wanted those highlighted but still, I was kind of bummed. At least we got to hear him sing ICTYW and, of course, IYWN.

He identified the "King of Hollywood" - apparently it was about a producer named Robert Evans. I had never heard that before!

One thing that cracked me up about when Glenn was describing Timothy's days in Poco - he started singing a bit from Poco's "Hoe Down" - "Going to a hoe down! Kick up your heels! Woo-hoo!" Glenn sounded freaking hilarious trying to imitate them.

To get more into detail as to how ICTYW was written.... he said that he came up with the opening chords on the piano and Don came up with the opening lyrics pretty much off the cuff. As far as how Glenn sounded - he actually did pretty good despite the fact that it was so high. I was indeed sighing, not cringing, lol.

The interviewer complimented Glenn's guitar solo, calling it "wonderful," and Glenn told the tale about how he usually wound up playing lead guitar on the bass player's songs. He said that both Felder and Joe had tried playing lead on ICTYW but "they just didn't seem to play what I ended up playing, which was very melodic..." He then quickly added, as if afraid he were come off as bragging, "I'm not saying it because I played it, but it's a very melodic, memorable guitar solo. You can sing along to it, just like you can sing along to the rest of the song."

After talking about bittersweet songs and BOML, the interviewer commented that many people thought BOML was a great love song. [Me, Nancy, I'm sitting there thinking, "Who are these people and do they not understand lines like 'We both see it slipping away'? Um, BOML is so obviously NOT a love song!"] But back to Glenn, lol.

Glenn added that BOML was quasi-autobiographical. "Don and I were in the Eagles, and we were trying to have girlfriends, and the Eagles were more important than the girlfriends, and it put a strain on relationships. We just wrote about that. But we didn't write about it just for us; we wrote about it in a way that other people could relate to. Someone once told me that people didn't just listen to the Eagles; they did things to the Eagles. They broke up with their girlfriend, they got the nerve to walk across the room and ask somebody to dance, they got in a car and had a fandango and drove all the way across the United States smoking dope and listening to Hotel California...." [folks in the audience were laughing at this] "...which I took as a great compliment. And people have said that to me, too. Like, 'I was in the hospital undergoing surgery and I heard this song...' and those sort of things. And I think that's a good testimony to the songs."

Next was a part I really appreciated as a professor of literature, and that was Glenn talking about the value of reading to songwriting. The interviewer stated, "I know you are an avid reader."

Glenn replied, "Yes, and so is Don, and I think that is something I learned from Joni Mitchell. She was an avid reader and I met her around the time we were doing the third Eagles album, and she wrote words and taught me to write words. The best way to be a wordsmith is to be reading all the time. I don't think that that means you have to read just poetry. You can read stories; you can read a lot of things."

The interviewer then asked him about the importance of doing research for songs, and if he had rode out into the desert to write songs about the desert, etc., and introduced himself to new experiences in order to "shake it up."

Glenn agreed. "Yeah, I think that's really important. You have to keep feeding yourself, nourishing your mind. What else are you going to talk about?"

At this point, the guy read two questions from the audience. I was a bit disappointed that they only read two as there were many questions submitted, but I guess it was a time thing. Still, if they had spent less time playing Nancy Sinatra, maybe they would've had more time to read questions from the audience!

At any rate, the first question was: "What do you do if your lyrics and chords feel cliche? How do you get off that plateau?"

Glenn seemed a bit puzzled by this question. His answer: "Well, you don't use those!" That got some laughs. He continued, "That's a great thing about songwriting and it's a great thing about making records. It's not oil painting, where if you went to some color you screwed up the sky and now you have to throw the whole canvas away. This is songwriting! I mean, if you stay up all night and write some stuff, and you think it's great, and you wake up the next morning and it's bad, you throw it away. You say, 'Yeah, I wasn't very good last night. I thought that was great, but it sucked.' And then you just move on."

He continued, "I've taught a songwriting class at UCLA about fifteen years ago; I've done some speaking about songwriting this year as well. The one thing you can't teach anyone is how to be clever, and the best songwriters are SO clever. James Taylor is SO clever. Paul Simon is SO clever. The way they can spin a tale... write a catchy tune. To be clever is a certain talent and I'm not sure how you can educate, I'm not sure how you can teach that."

He came up with an example of not-so-clever vs. clever: "'My baby left me, I'm all alone, I sure am blue.' Now, that's not as interesting as 'An empty glass, an ashtray, a lonely room' - that's more interesting, but it's the same story. Again, it's about spinning a tale, casting a little intrigue out there. I mean, is there anything more interesting than the intro of Phil Collins' 'In the Air Tonight'? That intro comes on, and just the chords, and the dark pad, and you're hooked, you're there. It's not always the lyrics, sometimes it's the mood, but the whole idea is to draw people in. It has to be interesting. It can't just be slop. Like I said, if you find yourself writing cliches or hating the chords that you've written, well, then you keep working and find some good chords. You find another way to do these things. You just keep working."

Instead of going to another question, the interviewer asked Glenn to talk about his "rules" of songwriting, especially his most important "rule" which was "Be Honest."

[Note from Nancy: I found this part to be the more revelatory of the evening.]

Glenn replied, "Somebody once asked me in an interview back in 1973 why I was in the music business, and I looked her in the eye and said, 'For sex and drugs.'' [audience laughs] "But it was only because I felt that that person didn't deserve to know the truth. That's not why I was really in the music business.... which was because I had something inside of me that wanted to get out. I wanted to make people feel good. I wanted to communicate. Music goes so far beyond the spoken word. I was just watching the George Harrison documentary on HBO and Robbie Shankard (?) was saying, 'Music transcends all the speeches you can give about God and religion... it's a feeling; it's a language unto itself.'

"The one thing I know about the Eagles and the one thing I know about myself is... whether you like the Eagles or you think we're pretentious country-rock snobs or whatever you feel, we have never spent a dishonest moment on stage, or in the studio, or sitting in my living room with two legal pads, Don and I staring at each other going, 'What do we do?' It's not something that I strive for; it's just the way we are. We have to be honest. And I think these things show through. I really believe we're transparent. I really believe that if you see somebody walk onstage and say, 'Geez, it's really great to be here tonight, ladies and gentleman! I wanna sing you a song that I really love. I wrote this a long time ago - originally it was called Brandy but Clive Davis told me to change it to Mandy, I really love this'... which he did...or so he says he did. But, you know, people can tell if you don't want to be there. People can tell if you're insincere. People can tell if you're fakin' it, if you're just going through the motions.

"And it's about your reputation. It's about something you have that you don't want to soil. You want that to be part of who you are. Bob Dylan.. honesty. The Beatles... honesty. They're not trying to fool anybody. They're just doing what they do because they love it. I think that comes across; I really do."

His final bit was simply introducing IYWN. He told a story which he first mentioned briefly once back in 2007, and that was that the guy in the song was dying. Specifically, he said:

"This song is very long and it has four chords. This song is very interesting to me... speaking of 'hidden, deeper meanings'... I was writing to Jack Tempchin, and I said to him. 'I've got a title. I've always wanted to write a song called It's Your World Now.' And so he said, 'Yeah, that's cool, that's a good title.' So then, a couple weeks later, he called me up and said, 'I've started some lyrics for It's Your World Now. You want to get together?' I said, 'Yeah!' So he sent me some lyrics and basically, on the surface, this is a song about a guy who comes to visit a friend, or a girlfriend, or a lover, and they spend the day together, and then he's got to go. The truth of the matter is, the guy in the song is dying... and I've never told anybody 'til just now." Then he went into the song and, despite a couple minor blips, it was magnificent.
:inlove:

And with that song, the lecture was over. He said his goodbyes, blowing a kiss to Cindy on the way out.

What a great evening!