Recording - March 2020 - 70

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listener to come in and look at your house. So
what the first thing that the buyer wants to see
is something nice, something grand, something
inviting, right? Give them a reason to stay to see
the rest of the house.
That's Ralph Murphy's classic line: "Invite the listener in."
Invite the listener in. Those kinds of things... I
highly recommend modeling yourself, like, who
do you really gravitate towards? Who do you
think you are close to? And of course, when
Springsteen came out, I felt his lyrics move me.
When I heard his music [sigh]... He made his
neighborhood a temple; he turned it into his
own little temple, and he praised it, and he sang
about it. "I come from, hey, this area in Jersey,"
you know? And I thought, "Yeah, I'm from

You know, we wear cool clothes. We are not yesterday's heroes; we're like the cool stuff."

junky lyric, if you will, and make it exciting.
[John sings the song.]

So I set about to arrange the thing, and I came
up with this real cool intro. We did the track,
and it started morphing into this really rock
anthem. And then, when John got it, I said to
John, "You could do better than that. Why don't
you go home, let's come back, and I want you to
throw these lyrics away and write a new lyric."
And Keith Olson, who was our producer said,
"John, if anybody could do it, you can. This is a
great track, but we're not going to put this lyric
on it." And I said, "And Beau Hill will have to
get over it." And John came back with "Back on
My Feet Again," and that was our first hit. I
mean, it was amazing. That's how good he was.
He was able to just take a song that had a sub-

Was he a natural at lyrics?
Amazing. We would jam in a room, and he
would write a song on the spot, not even writing
it down; he would just think in his head. We
were in North Hollywood with Bad English on
Sunday, just jammin' with Neil, and he writes
this crazy-cool song. And no one was there, so I
produced it; I just started recording. The producer came in, and I said, "That's John for ya."
He's just very poetic. So find someone who's
poetic, is what I'm trying to say. John was a tortured poet, but don't get a tortured poet; find a
happy poet.
Don't miss Part 3 in next month's TAXI Insider.

"When Springsteen came out, I felt
his lyrics move me. When I heard his
music [sigh]... He made his neighborhood a temple; he turned it into his
own little temple, and he praised it,
and he sang about it."
-Jonathan Cain
Chicago; I feel that." So finding your identity
through trial and error, and also looking at the
songs that move you.
Don Henley is a big influence on me. I think
Don is one of the greatest lyricists on the
planet. He has written some incredible, insane
songs, and I studied them. And J.D. Souther,
same thing. "New Kid in Town," wow! Simple
but heartfelt stories.
There's not a wasted word. Not one.
No, and that's one thing. But I also think that
it's good to get with somebody who also writes,
and maybe somebody that's a little more down
the road. Like when I got with John Waite, John
had written rock 'n' roll songs that I had only
dreamed about. Writing with him showed me a
lot of pathways I was missing.
Give us an example.
Spontaneous. He was so spontaneous. OK, how
many people know the song "Back on My Feet
Again"? Well, when it came to us up at Sound
City... Anybody see the movie Sound City? Well,
The Babies recorded their albums there, and they
brought this song in. Chrysalis sent this song
from Beau Hill called "Yesterday's Heroes." You
know, the lyric was very questionable. I heard it
and I was like, "Ah, we are not yesterday's heroes,
we are The Babies. We are young, we are cool.
RECORDING March 2020

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Recording - March 2020

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