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Songwriting—The Heart of the Matter Don
Henley’s Songs Mirror Today’s Society By Deborah Evans Price “I
read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were
original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in
such lines; let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instill
is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own
thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is
true for all men—that is genius.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson Those
few lines from Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance, speak volumes about what makes a writer truly
great—originality, conviction, passion and a total disregard for
convention. Those are all qualities that have made Don Henley one of the
most successful singer/songwriters on America’s musical landscape.
Like his literary heroes Thoreau and Emerson, Henley has emerged as one
of the eminent voices of his time. Comparing
one of this generation’s songwriters to the literary masters might
seem presumptuous, but Henley’s songs transcend mere entertainment.
His reflections on the country’s moral climate in “Dirty Laundry”
and his poignant revelations on lost love in “Heart of the Matter”
are examples of how a songwriter’s personal thoughts and feelings can
strike a universal chord with the listener, and as Emerson suggests,
that is genius. Henley
recently performed at the opening night celebration for Nashville’s
Hard Rock Café. Following his performance he took time to talk to American
Songwriter about the craft of songwriting. “I
keep a legal pad on the bedside table beside my bed. I try to keep them
all over the house,” he says. “I’ll start three or four different
songs on the same pad and write things on different pages. That’s why
it takes me so long to make an album. It’s not writing the songs,
it’s sorting out…I’ll write things on little bitty pads, like in
hotels, and I’ll stuff them in a duffel bag. Then it comes time to
make an album. I have to go back in my house and I’ve got dozens of
duffle bags with little pieces of papers, sometimes maybe with just one
little thing written on it. And it’s just a mess. “I’ve
got a computer now, but I don’t use it much. I’m afraid it will
change something. That’s why I wouldn’t let them take my tonsils
out. I was afraid it would change something. So I do it the hard way,
but I don’t care. It seems to work and I’m going to keep doing it
like that.” Henley
says he really doesn’t block out specific times to devote to his
songwriting. “Glenn is better at that than I am,” Henley says.
“He’s much more disciplined. I sort of just wait for it to come to
me. He likes to block out a certain amount of time every day and sit
down and go ‘okay, we’re writing.’ Sometimes that works and
sometimes it doesn’t. You usually have a day where nothing comes to
you. Lyrics and songs usually come to me when I’m doing something
else, like loading the dishwasher or gardening or riding the horses.” When
asked what makes a good collaborator, Henley replied, “Somebody with
enthusiasm, somebody who is willing to carefully criticize and examine
themselves, that’s where most people fall down on the job. Most people
don’t take criticism very well from others or themselves. Glenn and I
are very willing to criticize ourselves. “You
have to be critical of yourself. Now you can be overly critical. You can
criticize yourself to the point of paralyzation. I know, I’ve been in
that position sometimes. Nothing I did was good enough. You set too high
a standard for yourself and then you can’t come up with anything. So
you have to be a little bit kind to yourself, especially on days when
it’s just not happening. Be confident in the notion that it will get
better. That this is the best you can do for now.” Henley
admits that rewriting and being overly analytical can be a tricky
business. “That’s hard for me because once I commit something to
paper, I’m afraid I’ll get it in my head and won’t be able to
replace it or think of anything better,” he says, “and sometimes
that’s the case. But oftentimes it’s not. Oftentimes I can come up
with something better if I try. If I can’t, we always figure that it
wasn’t supposed to happen anyway and we usually end up throwing the
song away. If a song doesn’t sort of finish itself, if it doesn’t
tell you what it needs, or if you’re not enthusiastic enough about a
song to finish it, then chances are there’s something inherently wrong
with that song or your approach to it and it might be better just to
scrap it and start over.” Other
songwriters previously profiled in American
Songwriter have talked about how some songs they’ve written have
become its, yet when they heard them on the radio there were lines that
still haunted them that they wished they’d written differently. Henley
admits he feels that way about a couple of his song. “The Long Run”
could have been a better song,” he says. “The Boys of Summer”
maybe could have even had a couple of lines be better. You know you do
the best you can at the time. And in songwriters’ defense sometimes
that’s just the best you can do. Every line can’t be brilliant.
Every line can’t be a gem. When
asked how he thought his songwriting had evolved over the years, he
replied, “I don’t know if that’ for me to say. I think my
writing’s evolved and has become more mature and wise…I think maybe
I’ve gotten better at saying what I want to say, more clearly and
concisely with a better choice of words. But I think there’s still
room for improvement. There’s
always plenty to write about. I write about the same things a lot. I
just write about it in a different angle. “One of the themes is
relationships between men and women, of course, and how to reconcile
that with work, how to make a relationship last while you’re trying to
do whatever it is that makes up your career and you life’s work. And I
write about politics some. I try to write about the environment a little
bit and the value system, or the decline of the value system in America
as it pertains to spiritual values and environmental values and people
taking responsibility for their own actions. The song “Get Over It,”
that’s really about people’s absolute refusal in this day and age to
take responsibility for their own actions.” In the
song Henley blasts people who go on tabloid television shows to air
their problems. “You see all this whining every day on television,”
he says. “It’s become an industry. I write about the press and the
decline of journalism, the quality of journalism.” To
become a better songwriter, Henley advocates reading great literature
and listening to great writers. He recommends Emerson’ essays,
particularly Self-Reliance.
There’s also a book titled Stranger
Music whish features selected songs and poems by Leonard Cohen.
(Henley is one of the artists who is recording a song for an upcoming
Cohen tribute album.) Henley cited a selection of page 287 titled “How
to Speak Poetry” that he feels is valuable for lyricists. “Listen
to the greatest,” Henley says. “Try to figure out what it is about
Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger and Randy Newman and people like that,
who I consider to be great songwriters, try to figure out what it is
about them that makes them great. It’s not just one thing either.
It’s a combination of things. It’s the way they combine words with
melodies. It’s the words they choose and the words they choose not to
use. “Be
very careful about what words you use. Try to make you songwriting
conversational and please, please, please try not to emphasize syllables
and words that are not emphasized in conversation. Use the notes to make
the emphasis on the correct syllable in the word and make it grateful.
Do not try to awkwardly cram lyrics into the music that doesn’t
fit.” “Be brave, but also try to look at your own work objectively. Don’t write ten songs in one week and say ‘boy howdy, I wrote ten great songs this week’ because you didn’t. Maybe you wrote one, maybe you didn’t even write that much. Great songs don’t come that quickly. Work on it. Criticize your own work, but not to the point where you paralyze yourself. And don’t sit home and make tapes and send them to a bunch of people and say ‘Call me when I’m famous.’ Get your ass out to Hollywood or Nashville and suffer with the rest of us.”
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