While walking one day through an abandoned gold mine, you spot a shiny old oil jar. Curious, you pick it up, rub off some of the dust that’s covering its spout, and — behold! — a glowing aquamarine genie emerges. You’ve rehearsed this scene a million times in your head and know exactly what to say: “I want to be rich, I want to be famous, and I want to be a rock star.” “I can make you a rock star,” the genie replies, “and I can make you kinda famous — but not super famous. Is that all right?” “But aren’t you supposed to grant all three of my wishes?” “Waddayou want from me? I’m just a genie! I’m not God! … Well? You gonna take the deal or not?” “Yeah, yeah. Fine.” Congratulations! You now have the life of J.D. Souther.
An admired singer-songwriter among music cognoscenti but not as well known as his more popular partners, Souther, who died this past week at his home near Albuquerque, New Mexico, had about as good of a life as any of his musical contemporaries. He also had an instrumental role in the formation of one of the great bands of our time. If the history of American rock cannot be written without Souther, it’s because Souther himself wrote some of American rock’s greatest hits.
John David Souther was born in Detroit on Nov. 2, 1945, and grew up in the Texas Panhandle towns of Wellington and Amarillo. In the age-old nature vs. nurture debate, Souther stands as a testament to the decisive influence of both factors: His father (a singer in a big band) gave him his music genes, and his mother (who managed a music store) provided him with a rich musical environment. It was in his mother’s store where he first became acquainted with a wide variety of musical forms and instruments.
Souther dropped out of college to become part of the burgeoning mid-‘60s Los Angeles music scene. Ironically, though, the classical and jazz-trained Souther, who had no background whatsoever in country music and scant experience in rock ’n’ roll, would have a strong hand in the creation of Southern California country rock. He formed lifelong friendships with some of the scene’s singer-songwriters who would soon become some of the new genre’s major players, including Linda Rondstadt and Glenn Frey. In the late ‘60s, when Rondstadt told Souther that she was helping some other musician-acquaintances form a new band, Souther recommended that she bring Frey into the group. Rondstadt did, introducing Frey to a drummer and singer named Don Henley. The rest, as you might say, is American rock ’n’ roll history. Henley and Frey teamed up with Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner to form the Eagles.
Merely assisting in the formation of the Eagles would’ve been enough to assure anyone a place in music history. But Souther went one step further, co-writing some of the band’s most memorable songs, such as “James Dean,” “You Can Never Cry Like a Lover,” “Doolin-Dalton,” and their Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Heartache Tonight.” He was also the solo writer for some of their other most successful singles, like “How Long,” which won the Eagles a Grammy for best country performance.
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But if the Eagles could not have been born without Souther, and if it was Souther who helped the Eagles soar, why wasn’t Souther a part of the Eagles himself? Souther did try out for the band, but after his audition, he realized that joining them would detract from rather than add to the group he had helped create.
In addition to the smash hits he co-wrote with the Eagles, Souther also wrote a Billboard 100 top-10 hit of his own (“You’re Only Lonely”), wrote a song with James Taylor (“Her Town Too”) that reached No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, recorded with the Dixie Chicks, collaborated with Jackson Browne, and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2013. Later in life, he also enjoyed a surprising and moderately successful acting career, earning roles in the TV series Nashville and in the Steven Spielberg movie Always. Still, for someone whose claim to fame was his association with the Eagles, people naturally wondered why this claim seemed to have garnered him only a relatively modest degree of fame. But these concerns never bothered the unassuming Souther. “I like the fact that I don’t get made up before I go out of the house or check to be sure my hair looks great,” Souther once told an interviewer. “I’ve got on these beat-up old boots right now and some Levi’s with a hole in the knee. I don’t really want to be stopped when I’m in the grocery store and have somebody pay a bunch of attention to me.”
Daniel Ross Goodman is a Washington Examiner contributing writer and the author, most recently, of Soloveitchik’s Children: Irving Greenberg, David Hartman, Jonathan Sacks, and the Future of Jewish Theology in America.
