The ferry ride from West Seattle to Vashon Island only takes about fifteen minutes, but once there it feels like you're days away from the bustle of downtown Seattle. And there must be some kind of time warp in effect, because a recent lunchtime conversation with songwriter Danny O'Keefe was over practically before I knew it. It was as if time had stepped on a banana peel and slipped by quicker than one can say "Double cappuccino."
O'Keefe has been dancing with the muse for more than 30 years--it's hard to believe that his "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" dates from the early 1970s--and his reddish brown hair and weekend stubble are shot through with gray. His eyes, though, are incredibly alive and alert, and one senses there's nary a nuance that he doesn't pick up on. They're the clear blue eyes of the storyteller and songwriter, eyes that read emotions and hidden meaning like most people read street signs. And when he's passionate about the subject at hand, one swears that if the room were dark it would take on a bluish cast from the intensity of his gaze.
Although O'Keefe achieved substantial commercial success with major labels in the 1970s, his most recent and mature work has been on independent labels. In 1984 he released The Day to Day on Coldwater Records, from which two songs reached the charts. Since then he's continued writing and performing, alone and with others, and has also worked as a contract songwriter on Nashville's Music Row. O'Keefe's songs have also been recorded by a wide variety of artists, including Judy Collins, Elvis Presley, Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss, and Waylon Jennings.
While he's accumulated an impressive song catalog, O'Keefe is not one to rush product to the marketplace. The followup to his 1984 release didn't come until early in 2000, when Runnin' from the Devil was released on Miramar Recordings, a boutique label based in Seattle. The themes O'Keefe explores on this CD include (as always) matters of the heart, but songs like "Can't Outrun the Years" and "Never Got Off the Ground" (the latter co-written with David Mallett) are commentaries about mortality and the human condition in general. "Only An Ocean Away" is a beautiful, touching song about a veteran leaving a child behind in Vietnam, and "Well, Well, Well" (co-written with Bob Dylan) is a commentary about human abuse of the Earth.
Conversation with O'Keefe rambled all over the place, from his career as a songwriter and chronicler of affairs of the heart to his thoughts about Napster and MP3, from his musings on the creative process to his wide-ranging knowledge of the forces that shape the ever-evolving state of American music. He also talked about some of the people he's known and worked with. But it's not all about music; an especially meaningful topic to O'Keefe these days is The Songbird Foundation, the non-profit organization he founded in 1997 that's dedicated to the preservation of songbird habitat by promoting ecological methods of growing coffee.
First, a little bit about your background. You're a Northwest native, right?
Yes. Born in Spokane, raised there and in Wenatchee--and a little bit in South St. Paul, Minn. I finished high school in St. Paul, and my grandmother owned a stockman's hotel in South St. Paul. It was the second-largest stockyards in the nation at the time. I lived there from the age of 17 until about 19.
So--the Midwest. Didn't think I'd be asking this, but do you have any appreciation for Garrison Keillor and A Prarie Home Companion?
I love Garrison. I was just listening to him this morning. It's very Minnesotan, and I think of him as a closet singer/songwriter who's established his own venue.
How did you decide to become involved with music as a singer and a songwriter?
Like a lot of young men in their early 20s, I took life a bit too fast. The result was a serious motorcycle accident that broke my left leg in numerous places. During a long convalescence, I started evaluating what I really wanted to do more than everything else.
I found that songwriting alleviates the day-to-day tedium. If I'd been, say, a restaurant supplies salesman it would have been alleviated somewhat by family and friends, but the gaping hole of tedium would have been patched by drugs, drink, television, whatever. It's that urge to be creative that many people have not been allowed to explore, or have been told that they don't have--which is the biggest lie that gets sold to us by the system at large. Woody Guthrie said everybody should write a song.
Do you feel there's much of a distinction to be made between songwriters and poets?
I think the music fills something that the words themselves can't do. They give you space, and within that space they give you emotional context. How do you describe something that's more feeling than vision? In the synthesis of eye and ear, the beautiful thing about the music is that it holds you. You can do things with a song that you can't do with a poem on the page.
How does the songwriting process work for you? Do you write quickly, or do you like to let things simmer?
Once I get an idea, I usually charge through it. I don't write songs over months. I tend to stay on it, because it's like something unknown that's revealing itself to me, and I want to see it.
Do you write about matters of the heart primarily from experience, or do you take points of view of people that you think about to create your work?
Both. You have to think of yourself through another--that's part and parcel of the creative process. Who's that woman? It's Magdalena. She's an icon, a metaphor for all other women. Maybe there's an element that's very real and personal, but she's Mary Magdalene. She's the sainted whore. She's that analogy that you'll work to death if you're not careful.
But an icon is the basis of a metaphor that allows you to keep reinvesting, because metaphors are a part of that archetypal set of structures that are the common language from which all language is predicated. They're the science, the semiotics that you draw from, the universal--and I don't think you can help but use them. That's all you have, really. And how you invest them with yourself is the feeling that you've got from your own real experience.
It's the feeling that really counts, and if it gets you to invoke a key experience that perhaps you don't have adequate words for, you will make that connection with your audience, because that's what they're really there for--they're making their song up as you sing yours.
That was the beautiful thing about 1950s radio. "In the Still of the Night," for example. You had your own story that goes along with the song. It went on for 3 generations until we get to the point of a video that dictates someone's idea of what the pictures have to be for the song.
I have my own pictures for "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Their pictures don't bother me, but I would love that song just as much without them. To me, it's one of the greatest rock 'n roll songs of all time. Like a lot of people, I miss Kurt Cobain. I wish he had been less fearful, and that he would have challenged himself into his next life--but too bad. Unfortunately, he died young and left a beautiful corpse...
It's best to write from the heart and soul. Sometimes the songs that are written to be commercial are the least successful. If I had written "Never Got Off the Ground" for Alison Krauss, I don't know that she would have recorded it. But she heard it--I think from Mollie O'Brien's version--and it appealed to her strongly. (O'Keefe's version of the song, co-written with David Mallett, appears on his new CD Runnin' From the Devil, available from Miramar Recordings.)
The song "Only an Ocean Away" on your new CD sounded so real that I thought it might be autobiographical. Did you serve in Vietnam?
No. The motorcycle accident left me with a bad leg and a 4F deferment from the military and Vietnam. That song is the result of many conversations I had with Vietnam veterans who still struggle with the emotions of serving their country in an unpopular war. I knew a lot of guys, and most of them came back with a lot of damage. They had no forgiveness. We didn't forgive them, they couldn't forgive themselves, the Vietnamese weren't going to forgive them, and a lot of them did leave children there. That longing of not being able to find your child is what motivated me.
However, everything I write has a certain amount of autobiography--it's inevitable. You have to let your heart get broken, and sometimes rebroken, before it can be set right again. That's part of the emotional creative process. If you define yourself so that you're rigid, you'll break --which is what happened to a lot of those guys. They're afraid of the overwhelming potential of the grief they carry, and you have to look at that grief as energy you're not using creatively.
What do you think about the notion that songs don't get written, but transcribed?
I know it happens. "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" is a classic example of that. It pretty much wrote itself in 45 minutes. It was a very simple song, and there's something very deceptive about a good, simple song. I think of John Prine and Hank Williams as the all-time champion 3-chord songwriters.
You've never really been a trendy songwriter, but you must feel the influences of the times. For example, "Along for the Ride" (from the 1984 release The Day to Day, re-released on Miramar Recordings) has something of a disco beat…
The sound of that song was largely due to the person who wrote the music. Actually, I've long thought that it would be great to cut that as a bluegrass tune.
When you're working with someone who's doing the music you sometimes think of it as so complex, but when they break it down you see that you could make an arrangement that works just fine. Elaborate synthesizers and drum machines sometimes overwhelm you, until you see the structure of the song.
Most of the songs on your new CD are written with other people, and in your early years you were known more as a classic solo singer/songwriter. How did you come to start writing with other people?
I never knew how to do it, and missed some really wonderful opportunities with the Eagles and some other people as well. I tried to sit down and write with them, and I couldn't understand it. To me, the song was cut from whole cloth, and I couldn't imagine adding a line and then next Thursday you adding a few lines, and after a while we'd have a song. It's still a little strange to me.
I wrote for Warner Bros. in the 1970s, and in the 1990s I started working as a contract writer. Most recently I wrote for Dylan's publishing company, but I worked for another company in Nashville on a freelance basis before that. What publishing companies want is a lot of songs, and the way you do that is to work with other people.
When you're writing for yourself, there's a consistency to it. But when you write with someone else, for me there's something new musically--which is really great. It's like somebody brought a new color for your palette.
You were a contract writer for Dylan's publishing company? For how long?
Yes, for a couple of years. For the first year or so, the woman who developed the company, Tina Snow, was still there, but in the second year she had left. I was generating my own work, but there wasn't really a person at the company to run songs at that point. They paid my salary, though, for two years.
It was an interesting time. I probably wouldn't go back to Nashville again to write, because I'm more interested in another kind of writing, one that's more connected to my poetry and has nothing to do with radio. I know radio is important, but I think it will assume less importance in the next few years. I can't really do what I want to do and be concerned with the commercial end of it anymore. That's not to say I couldn't write with commercial in mind, but...
One of the songs on your new album was co-written with Dylan. What was it like working with him?
Well, that wasn't like much of anything, because it wasn't an in-person collaboration. He provided me with a music track, and I wrote the lyrics. I really wanted to do it, because I thought I might never again have a chance to write a song with him. The chances of being in the same room with him are really extreme, you know? Somewhere on the tape that Dylan sent me are the words "Well, well," which gave me the idea for the title of the song.
Do you ever get frustrated playing solo? Do you wish you could afford a band to play with?
I don't know about a band... I don't know if I'd really need a band, but the luxury of having a couple of other players is nice. It was fun playing for the opening of the Experience Music Project in Seattle recently. We had one rehearsal, and they were mostly friends of mine--and good players. They learned the songs and we had a good time. It was very satisfying.
I would love the luxury of a really good utility player. I always thought Jackson (Browne) was very lucky to have the Lindley Brothers. When they first started playing together, it was Jackson Browne and the Lindley Brothers. That's how David billed himself, because he played so many instruments. He's a really delightful human being, and also a really wonderful, inventive player. A lot of that inventiveness was really on exhibit with Jackson, because he not only loved Jackson but also loved Jackson's music--and he created some wonderful things. Everybody would love to find that kind of player.
Carrying another person is hard, because if they're really involved in your music then you have to be really involved in their lives and provide them with an income. I don't really have that luxury. It's a big thing to carry a band. Bonnie (Raitt) carries a band, and has to figure out how to pay their bills each month.
I always think of Ellington, being on the road most of his life with a big band--but the reason he was on the road was to pay for them, and they grew older with him. Whatever he made on the road, he just paid to them. The luxury of having that kind of complex instrument, of those players, some of the greatest players of the 20th century--to have them at music's beck and call --that kind of luxury doesn't happen very often...
Do you write on other instruments?
I tried to learn piano, and I couldn't get my hands to work independently--probably just an old-dog-new-tricks deal. But there's also something about the embrace of the guitar that makes it a unique instrument for writing. If I felt like I'd exhausted the possibilities I'd probably be driven to something else, but the only other instrument is the piano. I love writing or playing with people who play the piano.
Your new CD has such a beautiful, lush sound. Have you ever thought about recording instrumental songs, without any lyrics?
I've not really thought about writing only instrumental music. I have enormous respect for instrumentalists that I've worked with. I remember a music festival in Canada where Leo Kottke was playing. I could hear all the influences, and I knew exactly where it all came from, but he's distilled it to such a beautiful cleanliness... I really loved listening to him play.
I sometimes play the bases of my songs as instrumentals, but they feel naked without the words, because the words carry the idea for me. I can change my creative options through the voice, because space and inference can be used in completely different ways. Maybe if I were a more capable guitar player...
In the last fifty years or so pop music seems to have shifted its focus from melody and allegorical lyrics to rhythm and more confessional lyrics. Do you have any thoughts about how popular music evolves? Whether it's cyclic or linear, for example?
Contemporary music, like all music, is synthesis. And if it starts off with someone simply banging on a log, it will get more complicated, because I think it's the nature of things simple to become more complex. I'm not sure if it's the nature of things more complex to become simple--that may be inevitable, as things become too complex and break--but I don't know.
It's all really very interesting. For example, at the turn of the century, before jazz really developed, it was still in a very rudimentary form in New Orleans. Many people who became jazz players were trained by those who studied the classics, especially French classics. A lot of those old jazz tunes came out of French quadrilles--so they had their antecedents not only in Africa, but also in European court and folk music. There's a synthesis right there, and one that says the idea of jazz being a uniquely American music is really only partly true.
You see an interesting thing more recently in hip-hop. It's a synthesis of street music, borrowing from street players with boom boxes or simple drum machines or whatever was handy--they could just make up the bedrock to jam on.
There wasn't much lyric content making social commentary until well after World War II. There was inference in lyrics, but popular music was usually watered down to its lowest common denominator in order to sell it. Take "Limehouse Blues"--that was about opium dens, but the public never really knew that. And a lot of love song lyrics were referring to sexuality, but it was "Let's veil this as much as possible so no one understands but us."
With the advent of the 60s and the so-called protest songs--which are really like broadsides from the 1700s or 1800s--you started getting that assumed right of privilege to say whatever you wanted to say. The advent of FM made a lot of those songs possible. A lot of Dylan's music wouldn't have gotten on AM radio--very little did, actually--and his influence really was heard on FM. The Beatles made it on to AM radio, but probably not with anything from, say, Rubber Soul on that was really important to them. If they'd only been FM artists without the big hits but still accepted by the audience that they cared about, I think they'd have been more than successful in their own eyes.
I've always thought Dylan's acknowledgement of the vocal harmonies in early Beatles work was interesting, because he tends to be thought of more as a wordsmith and poet instead of a vocal arranger or melodist.
In folk music, which is where Dylan was coming from, that's what you listen to--the strange mountain harmonies, the harmonies in bluegrass. The first time I ever heard the women's choruses from Bulgaria, I wondered where did that come from? And that's ancient. And then you study it a little bit and realize that Bulgaria was the crossroads of the world. Everybody came through those mountains. And that's what the music sounds like.
How did The Songbird Foundation (http://www.songbird.org) come about?
I've done a lot of benefits for a variety of causes, and the thing about the songbird habitat just really spoke to me. It's also about trees, because the birds depend on the trees, but there's more. We lose so much of our tree cover on a daily basis, and when you take away the trees you lose the soil.
Also, our culture has a powerful effect on the rest of the world. For example, the Chinese believe they're growing a culture that will give them a lifestyle that is at least the equivalent of the Japanese, if not the American. This is the reverse part of colonialism, bundling all of the goods that you use and then selling the quality of the lifestyle you've acquired back to those who are least able to support it.
Our appetite for energy resources is another concern. Our oil is still very cheap, and when the price goes up we'll see how expensive this life that we're living really is. There's a great quote, although I can't remember who said it, that in the future (which we're in right now), the luxury items will be cheap, but the essentials like water and air and food will be expensive.
One of the things we hope to accomplish with The Songbird Foundation is to spotlight these types of issues for enough people so that perhaps some kind of change can be accomplished.
Have you worked with any of the existing organizations, like the Sierra Club or Greenpeace?
Well, it's an ongoing process. We were disappointed with the Audubon Society, because they stuck their toe in water with the songbird issue but then backed away from it, apparently because of funding issues. I thought of it as a core Audubon issue, but...
Also, I think Audubon got in business with a coffee company as a moneymaking venture, which I thought was a bad idea for a non-profit. But hey, they didn't ask me.
It's been said that one reason why more coffee companies aren't certified for cultivating shade-grown coffee is because the certification process is unnecessarily complicated. Do you think that's the case?
That's not exactly true. Starbucks' shade-grown coffee is certified by Conservation International, and other coffees are certified as shade-grown by Rainforest Alliance's ECO-OK program, Quality Assurance International, and the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. But there's room for a lot more certified shade-grown coffee in the market place. There's also a fair amount of shade-grown coffee that isn't certified, because it's just considered another expense to the grower who hasn't been shown the benefit.
It isn't hard to certify for shade, and other groups are including it in their existing criteria. Essentially, it requires putting someone on the ground to record the diversity of shade cover. There are many ways in which this could be monitored, but basically an eyeball visit and a simple measure of diversity is all that's needed. The more the consumer is aware of the importance of shade, the easier the process will become. Much of organic coffee is shade-grown, as is much of the fair trade coffee.
We're hoping to get the existing organizations to certify for shade along with their other certifications, so a separate shade certification might not be necessary. Hopefully, the coffee countries may begin to do it as well. It's largely an educational process, and it does seem to be working as evidenced by the increasing amount of sustainably grown coffee in the market place and the emphasis that the three local biggies have put on it. Starbucks, Tully's, and SBC's (Seattle's Best Coffee) shade-grown coffees are all very good. Small steps, but we're getting there.
Do you think it's possible for human beings to grow and harvest food and still live in harmony with the Earth?
Well, not when bankers are running the agricultural systems, and land is seen as nothing but a view through a ledger. We're destroying more and more of our resources as we're adding more and more consumers. Two billion more consumers in 20 years? I don't know if that can be effectively imagined. We're losing more species on a daily basis, and the loss of diversity is perhaps the greatest loss of all.
Sometimes I think there's something wrong with us. We seem to have built into our psyche an outlaw or escapist mentality, and we think that we can sustain ourselves in the dire moments of calamitous earthly change. We're nomads, and that is a core of our unconscious processes. You burn out here, and then you move on. But if the Earth wins through cataclysm and catastrophe, enormous numbers of life forms will be lost.
Do you tour to promote your music, or to make a living, or to raise consciousness about the social issues you talk about?
Part of my problem is that I have a hard time touring because of the blood clotting condition in my leg. I'm in that position of having to find new ways, novel ways, to reach an audience. The Internet is potentially an effective tool for me, in that people will come to my web site to hear new music or to read something new that I've written. The same way with the Songbird Foundation's Web site--you can find people who sell coffee on line, and you can find out something about the birds and why the issue is important.
Actually, being able to get out there on the road--the real reason I go out and play, 'cause there isn't much money in it--is to be able to play in front of people. That's really what it's all about. If what you have doesn't work, it doesn't work there. If it does, it doesn't matter if radio plays it or the record company promotes it. You know it works if you play a song and the audience gets very still and someone comes back to you later and says "God damn it, that song made me cry..."
Besides having your own career and accomplishments, you've worked with some people who have significantly influenced the course of popular music, like producer Arif Mardin. Do you still see him?
I don't see him much, but when I do he's still the same wonderful person. He's so busy that we never have enough time. It's one of the luxuries of writing with people--a lot of time they're people whose company you really enjoy and you couldn't spend time other than in that creative moment.
You and Bonnie Raitt are pretty close friends. How did that relationship come about?
Bonnie's longtime partner was my manager, and we used to see each other a lot then. We did a lot of benefits together, and as we got to know each other we came to respect each other's work and like each other's senses of humor.
Bonnie is one of the strongest and toughest people I know, but completely open in that strength. She has standards that she doesn't deviate from. She knows you can't just be a chick with a guitar--you have to make that sucker talk. And her style is deceptively simple--deceptive because it's so graceful and eloquent. I fully expect her at the age of 65 or 70 to walk onstage and slide that sass around just like she does today.
Her music is so well structured, and always in service to the song. A lot of blues and bop players just use the framework of the song to jam on. But if you're a singer you tend not to think that way but in terms of the song, which gives your voice more resonance. Whether it's the human voice or the voice of the slide guitar, when you sing you tend to value the places where you need to breathe.
I don't know of anyone who has done more for environmental and social justice causes than Bonnie. If anyone ever added up all the money that she and Jackson Browne have generated for causes they believe in, it would be an amazing number.
Who would you say has most influenced you as a songwriter?
I don't think of other songwriters very much. I think of people who have influenced me musically. I think of John Hurt--he's a constant source of delight and awe whenever I hear him. His work, like Bonnie's slide playing, is deceptively simple. A lot of times, the things that seem most simple are the most difficult to play. Space is sometimes the hardest thing to play.
One of the most epiphanous moments I ever had was when I was, I think, a junior in high school, and some hip college freshman played Miles Davis' Kind of Blue for us. It was extraordinary. It connected me to all the jazz that my father had loved, which was really pre-1940s jazz, and it still does. It's a record that I have never tired of--and I can't really say that of anybody else. Also, Nino Rota's music from the Fellini films.
It's not necessarily other songwriters, but other writers. It's essentially driven by ideas. I don't really listen to other songwriters that much. I don't find that it really does me any good.
What about those people who push the envelope? Joni Mitchell, for example?
Well, when you're pushing the envelope, you're generally not as successful in a commercial sense. "Circle Game" and "Both Sides Now" and songs from Hejira are the more popular. The Hissing of Summer Lawns--other writers may think great, but...
I think Joni's Mingus record is an amazing work of genius, and it's still not recognized as such. That record wasn't really appreciated by either jazz aficionados or Mitchell's audience. Who else could have taken on Charlie Mingus? There are none now and there were none then in the jazz world who could have done that honor and justice to him, and Mingus knew it. That record really stands alone, and will be discovered by another generation. But that's alright, too.
The real key is to be appreciated by at least 3 generations, ideally 3 successive generations. For example, there are people in the next generation who will rediscover Louis Armstrong and have their minds blown.
Do you ever hear other artist's interpretations of your work and think of it as the ultimate evocation of the song? One that comes to mind is Judy Collins' version of "Angel Spread Your Wings," which she recorded about 3 years after you did with the same producer--Arif Mardin--and even some of the same players, like Hugh McCracken on guitar.
To be honest, no, not really. But sometimes I'll hear something that I really admire. For example, I really like Waylon Jennings' version of "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues," because it's really Waylon. He plays it just like he would of one of his own songs. He knew what my arrangement was, but he didn't bother to make it his. I thought that was a great thing--I really liked that.
I don't know if everyone is aware anymore of what a great picker of material Judy Collins was--maybe still is, I don't know. She had a really good ear for hearing a great song.
A group that isn't listened to very much anymore but had a wonderful ability to appreciate a good song was the Kingston Trio. Listen to The Kingston Trio Live at the Hungry I for some great material.
You say you tend not to listen to other songwriters, but are you familiar at all with the tribute album Lyle Lovett did a few years ago to all the Texas songwriters who influenced him? It's an amazing collection, called Step Inside This House.
Only as I've heard them played by him on Austin City Limits or Studio on West 54th. That's a tradition, going back to your roots to acknowledge and make people aware. For example, who's aware of Townes Van Zandt? Most people don't know about him, and he probably would have been a difficult artist for them to watch. But there's a bunch of those guys--and they're not just in Texas, they're all over the place. It's a really great thing for an artist to focus on them--Bonnie's done it, and other people have done it--to make someone aware of the prior generation that is the substrate of one's own creativity. Because it's that continuity of music that is history.
You can go back and listen to Louis Armstrong and whoever from the 20s and 30s--like Art Tatum. There's so much to learn that has something to do with now, because people still borrow from what he played.
Do you have recording equipment in your home?
I've done that in the past, but for me it's more trouble than it's worth. I have good friends that are reasonably priced and very skilled, and I find it easier to go to the studio and let somebody do it right.
Studio time is now incredibly cheap compared to what it was 15 to 20 years ago. I pay between $25 and $45 per hour, and to my ears the $45 an hour is just as good as it was at Wally Heider's for $150 per hour. For less than $50,000, you can have a very competitive studio. That same studio would have cost 5, 6, maybe 7 times as much 10 years ago.
Seattle had a 3 track studio when I started recording. An 8 track Scully was like science fiction in Seattle, and Atlantic had sold their 8 track Scully machines to Muscle Shoals, which is where I went to record. Atlantic had just gotten in MCI 16 track machines, and nobody could imagine how we could fill 16 tracks.
Do you feel that the advances made in personal recording technology affect the way you think musically?
It's affected the whole business. Look at what happens on the Internet. A lot of that is made possible--musically--because of the decentralization of the process, whether it's people with studios in their home, or independent labels, or people putting their own music up on the Web via MP3 technology or whatever.
As you decentralize anything, you take the centers of power away. There's a huge issue right now, with Napster and Gnutella and everybody else jumping on that bandwagon, of how to deal with the protection of intellectual property rights. It's huge.
What's your take on that? Is it safe to say you've made a pretty good portion of your living over the last 30 years from "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues?"
Yes, that and "The Road" and a few other songs.
What do you think of people listening to your music without paying for it? Well, they don't pay for it on the radio, unless they pay by being forced to listen to the ads. They pay for it on DMX by paying their cable subscriptions, and I receive percentages of that based on whatever deal BMI works out for me. If they buy a CD, I obviously make some money from that. But if they buy a CD and put it on their hard drive, and then boot up to Napster and send e-mail that says anyone can have this if they want it--that isn't the same thing. They're taking away potential sales, which means no royalties would be paid.
There's a classic misconception that people who create art aren't doing it for the money and therefore don't need to be paid. The idea that when I write a song I'm not really working as hard as someone who's shoveling a ditch--I take offense at that, because if that guy knew how to write that song he'd be writing it, and it would make his life more valuable to him.
The idea that you shouldn't have to be paid for your art is no different than you shouldn't have to be paid for your patent, or your copyright, or your drug, or whatever you've created. However, you can question the value of the artist or the scientist or the patentholder--that's a debatable issue--and the rates songwriters are paid, which is an arbitrary thing.
A lot of the lawsuits that organizations like BMI and ASCAP and SESAC are pursuing nowadays are with people who don't want to pay anything. They think that because they're running a business they should be able to use your music for free in order to make money for themselves. And I think if you pose the question effectively to anyone, they'll admit that stealing is stealing, however you do it. You're stealing in a sense when you flip your cigarette butt out the car window, because it's an act of not caring, an act of abuse. When you steal someone's work, you're abusing them by lack of care. It's a lack of responsibility.
I don't want to get too prepostrous about this, but I think the key to freedom and liberty is a personal thing that involves responsibility. To the degree that you take responsibility for yourself and your actions, you have the potential to develop your own liberty, your own freedom. And in doing so, you develop someone else's.
As far as Napster and MP3 are concerned, it's hard to draw too many conclusions about the meaningfulness of a particular moment, when a business or phenomenon is expanding. All the old pyramidal structures of the music business are being challenged by structures that are more global, like the Internet. The structure is becoming more dynamic. It's more decentralized, and any of the points within that context can be the sources of direction for the whole. That's a unique thing, an historical development.
How you protect someone's investment is really essential, in the same way that developing effective policing measures to catch hackers is essential. You protect what you have to protect as a qualifier for effective participation. If it makes money and you participate and you don't get any or you don't give any, it won't work. Money and electrons are still the common denominators that make things run.
What do you think about the argument that the rise of Napster and MP3 is similar to when blank cassettes were introduced in the late 1960s? At the time, everybody said it would bankrupt the record companies, and it didn't. The argument continues that while it may be negative for the record companies, it helps the artist because more people will be inclined to buy their music and/or to see them in concert.
I think it remains to be seen. If someone's making the assumption that we've reverted back to the old days when your records were only used for promotion...
Take Little Richard, for example, who never made anything to speak of from his records. He had his publishing bought out from underneath him, he was playing a lot of one night stands, probably 250+ nights a year, burning himself out. Is that what you want to return to? Well, you can't. You can't work the road like that anymore, and you don't have that small number of artists to maintain that kind of uniqueness.
The most difficult part of dealing with the amount of music that's available now is how to wade through it to find something that's interesting. That's sort of the position the record companies took--they were there to shout about something that they believed was great product. A lot of times they were fooling you, but they couldn't fool you too long. Eventually, it would be discovered, whether it was the Dead or Michael Jackson. If it was good it would get out, and if it wasn't good, you ultimately were going to reject it. You have to have an organizational capability in order to promote something. Otherwise it's just a sea of chaos.
It appears that you're trying to draw conclusions about some big questions in some of your recent work, like in "Can't Outrun the Years" on your new CD. Are all the songs on the new CD recent songs?
"All My Friends" is from the 70s, but everything else is pretty much from the 90s.
There's a thread of melancholy running through your music. Some call it haunting, some depressing, some fatalistic.
It certainly might be.
Is that a conscious reflection of your demeanor?
Writing for me is a form of therapy, and I do exorcise demons with it. It's hard to write songs of joy, although a lot of times the investment that you make in the performance of a song that's moving--not necessarily sad--generates a powerful enough emotion for it to become liberating. And it's liberating for the audience, too.
I don't really think of my songs as sad. They're descriptions of life and living, particularly the songs on this record. I was raised a Catholic, and although I'm no longer a Catholic I'm still running from the devil. Someone asked me "Who's the devil?" Well, the devil's time. There's a great quote in James Gleick's book Faster, although I'm not sure who said it: "Time is the devil, and God is speed." The ability to be instantaneous is to be all-powerful.
You sort of develop an economy, and it's an emotional economy as well. I don't want to blather as much. I want to be able to get right to the heart of the matter. I make an assumption that may or may not be valid--that what has moved me will have connection to the other and will move them. And that's all I really care about, the moving aspect.
I have some "entertaining" songs, but they're deeper than they appear. "In Northern California Where the Palm Tree Meets the Pine" (from the 1977 Warner Bros. album American Roulette), for example, is an easily misunderstood song. I don't perform it too often, because I'm concerned that someone might have their feelings hurt by misunderstanding it. It's about transformation, and the person singing the song is the one transformed by the humanness of the one that's supposedly deformed.
I used to sing "Louie the Hook vs. The Preacher" (from the 1972 Cotillion album O'Keefe), and the guys in the white shoes and belts and the plaid polyester pants would get up and walk out. I didn't see that as a victory.
Does the song "You Could Have Been Eva Braun" (from the 1984 release The Day to Day, available on Miramar Recordings) ever get misunderstood? I think that's a fall-down-on-the-floor funny song.
I thought it was funny too. It helps when you explain it, and I have an introduction that explains it in terms of the power of women. The quote that I use is "Any man who doubts the power of women probably hasn't been properly toilet trained." Because anyone who's had any kind of a relationship with a woman, whether it's a grandmother, a mother, a wife, a daughter, or even a sister, knows that they can usually get you to do what they want you to do.
The whole point of that song is that if Hitler had only had a real woman, all this shit might never have happened.
One of your songs that has long haunted me is "Just Jones" (from the 1977 Warner Bros. album American Roulette).
The voice is a marvelous instrument
so is the heart and brain
so's the fire and so's the wind
and especially the rain
Was that about a particular person, or more about a general feeling you were trying to convey?
There are masks that you use. My father's definitely in it, although it isn't about him. It's about the emotion of his death, but I don't know if I succeeded with that song as well as I'd have liked. It was also about the older couple, looking up at the ceiling, not being able to speak to each other. That was Jones in the song, looking down at me, not being able to speak to me. It's that inability to communicate that walls us off from ourselves and others.
My daughter, on her graduation, recited a piece from Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending: "Take me up to Cypress Hill in your car, and we'll listen to the dead people talk. And they do talk up on Cypress Hill--they chatter like birds. All they say--the only advice they have to give--is 'Live. Live. Live.'" Sounds simple, don't it?
If you're only waiting for death to reveal the wonderfulness of what's waiting for you, then you're not alive.