Walter Egan: Staying Young At Heart Through Music

(originally posted on the blog about Erie County Fieldhouse Concerts at https://eriecountyfieldhouse.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/walter-egan-staying-young-at-heart-through-music/)

Interviewed Tuesday March 10, 7:00 pm

In 1974, you could find many aspiring singer/songwriters and luminaries of the burgeoning country rock scene hanging out at The Troubadour nightclub in West Hollywood. On this particular night, Dan Fogelberg, Don Henley, and Glenn Frey were all there when 25-year-old Walter Egan walked through the door.

Egan was there to meet with Henley and Frey whom he had befriended when the two Eagles had been part of Linda Ronstadt’s backing band about four years earlier. “When I heard that Bernie Leadon was leaving the Eagles, I wrote a letter to Glenn saying, ‘Hey, I’m coming out; hold the spot open for me. Linda says she wants me to play for her, but I would rather play in the Eagles,’” Egan told me during our nearly hour-and-a-half-long phone conversation. “I went in all fresh and shiny and ready to take my place among the pantheon of country rockers. But, I was a few months too late — Don Felder had recently joined the band.” Disappointed, Egan recalls Frey consoling him by saying, “Perseverance is the key. Stick with it. I know you’re going to make it here.”

Oh, and that job playing guitar for Ronstadt? Egan had just missed out on that on

e, too. Andrew Gold (“Lonely Boy”, “Thank You for Being a Friend”) had taken the spot before Walter could get to California.

Of course, we all know now that Egan did “make it” eventually with his 1978 gold record “Magnet & Steel.” But he did write other songs you’ll probably remember once you hear them, songs like:
“Hot Summer Nights” (made famous by the band Night)
“Only The Lucky”
“Fool Moon Fire”
“Hearts On Fire” (recorded by Gram Parsons, featuring Emmylou Harris)

Egan played the Erie County Fieldhouse in 1977 as an opening act for Heart. Aside from Marty Lee of Donnie Iris, he was the only musician I contacted who remembered his performance at the Fieldhouse (described in the book). When I reached out to him again recently, he suggested we talk on the phone instead of emailing back and forth.

The now 66-year-old Egan is divorced (although he says he and his wife are very close friends), has two grown children, lives outside of Nashville and has essentially never stopped being a professional musician. He has recorded 10 albums, the most recent, Myth America was released in 2014. A review on AllMusic.com by Stephen Thomas Erlewine says, “…Egan stays true to the SoCal pop/rock ideals he had in the late ’70s. … these songs, along with a handful of others, cry out for the lushness of the ’70s that this essentially homemade production can’t match, it’s nevertheless gratifying to hear that he retains his songcraft all these years later.”

Egan also has played in the band The Malibooz for 50 years with his long-time friend John Zambetti.

And when he’s not playing music, he uses the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree he earned from Georgetown University to create paintings. In January 2015 his “Martyrs of Rock” series of 45 paintings were on exhibit at the famed Mr. Musichead Gallery on Sunset Blvd in LA. He and Zambetti performed songs made famous by the subjects in his paintings. Dean Torrance from Jan and Dean even joined in on the song “Dead Man’s Curve.”

That January exhibit and gig were important considering Egan had just gone through a serious health scare. “I never had health insurance all my life, but I got Medicare last summer,” he explained. “So, I decided to check out why my hip was hurting, and I found out I needed a hip replacement. But I needed to get my high blood pressure checked out before I could have the surgery. Once the cardiologist looked at me, within a week I was having triple bypass surgery [early November].” At the end of January he played at the Grammy Museum one night and had the art gallery opening the next night. A week later he got that new hip, and now he said he feels “ready to rock.”

Similar Sounding Songs – And Eminem?
It was clear from talking with Egan that despite his age and recent health issues, this is not a guy who is easing into anything remotely called retirement. He always has some type of project in the works, some of which, understandably, are connected to his success in the ’70s. For example, our interview was delayed because he had been on a phone call with a filmmaker who was making a documentary on John Stewart, who had played with the Kingston Trio in the 1960s and had also written the Monkees’ hit “Daydream Believer.” Egan explained his relationship with Stewart started late in 1978 (after “Magnet & Steel” had been on the radio for awhile) when he was standing in line at the musicians union waiting to pick up or cash a check. “John recognized me and came up to me and said that he loved my record, especially ‘Hot Summer Nights,’” Egan told me. That meant a lot to him because he had taught himself to play guitar from a Kingston Trio songbook back when he was a teenager. Stewart told him that he wanted his new record to sound like Egan’s, which had been produced by Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. “He asked if I could introduce him to Lindsey, and he asked who my drummer was,” Egan recalled. Eventually, Egan connected Stewart with the musicians, and in 1979 Stewart released the album Bombs Away Dream Babies which included the hit “Gold.”

“To me, ‘Gold’ obviously owed a lot to my song ‘Hot Summer Nights,’” Egan said. “I remember during that time period, I was in a cab in New York City, and it came on the radio, and I said, ‘Oh, turn that up, I wrote that song.’ But it turned out to be John’s song not mine.”

At the time Egan never thought about suing Stewart or asking for songwriting credit similar to what Tom Petty did in 2014 with Sam Smith’s song “Stay With Me.” But he did have what he called a “karmic payback” for this incident many years later when he got a phone call from Eminem’s publishing company. It was 2009, and he was told that Dr. Dre had been inspired by the bass line to “Hot Summer Nights” while producing Eminem’s song “We Made You.” “When they played it for me over the phone I expected to hear something very obvious from my song, but it was very subtle. They could have snuck that by me and I would have never guessed they had taken that from my song.” Egan would be listed as one of five writers on the song, getting 1/5 of a cut. “That was a nice little run [for me] because he was really selling CDs at that point. My daughter was 16 then, so I got a lot of credibility from her from that experience. Before that, M&M was just my favorite candy, and now he’s my favorite rapper,” he said with a chuckle.

EmmyLou Harris: Reuniting With An Old Friend
Getting back to what else Egan has been up to lately, I ask about the gig he played at the famous Bluebird Café in Nashville about two weeks prior to our call (2/22/15). I had noticed on his Facebook page that Emmylou Harris had joined him onstage to sing “Hearts On Fire,” which Egan had written and Harris had recorded with Gram Parsons. Again, Egan’s remarkable memory kicked in as he explained the long road that led him to that gig and that moment with Harris.

“When I moved to Nashville about 18 years ago Emmylou was my biggest friend here. Phil Kauffmann was her road manager, and he was a good friend of mine, too,” recalled Egan. But soon after settling down in Tennessee, Egan and Harris’ friendship seemed to wither, and the two grew apart. Years later, as Harris prepared to write her book, she, like Egan, wondered what had happened between the two of them. In the spring of 2014, just after the reissue of her album Wrecking Ball, the two old friends had dinner together at Harris’ house and started reminiscing, aided in large part by the detailed diaries Egan had kept during the 70s. “We ended up meeting a few times and caught up on the past,” Egan said. “I reminded her of things like when she and Gram Parson sang together in my kitchen; I even remembered the songs they sang.”

During his years in Nashville he had occasionally been asked to join the band The Long Players, which periodically recreate an entire classic album of one artist’s work. Bill Lloyd, one of the band’s organizers and a long-time Nashville songwriter, musician, recording artist (Foster & Lloyd), and producer helped Egan secure the Bluebird gig.

Speaking of The Long Players, when Egan told me that he had been practicing with the band in anticipation of their performance of Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever (1989) album on March 13, 2015, that lead to a discussion about one of the many ironic coincidences that can be found throughout his career. For instance, Egan had been on Petty’s label for his fifth album Wild Exhibitions (1983), which included the single “Full Moon Fire” (similar in name to Petty’s album Full Moon Fever) “That song was basically about mentally becoming a werewolf,” Egan said. “The actor Michael Landon was also from Forest Hills [Queens NY where Egan grew up], and he had played in the movie “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” I wanted the video for my song to be a tribute to the movie.”

That’s where another one of those strange coincidences – perhaps the biggest of which – happened to Egan. The concept for the video, which Egan storyboarded himself, involved him turning into a werewolf after taking a date to the movies. About nine months later, one of the most famous videos of all time, “Thriller,” debuted showing Michael Jackson turning into a werewolf while on a date. “Sure, I was taken aback when the video for “Thriller” came out. But our budget was about $30,000 and his was about $3 million, and you can’t sue over a video looking similar,” Egan joked.

Where It All Started
Egan grew up in Forest Hills in Queens (New York) on the same block that Joey Ramone ended up growing up on. “Leslie West (Mountain) was from Forest Hills, and Chris Gantry, who I didn’t meet until a few years ago, grew up on my block and went out with the older sister of the girl I was in love with in 7th and 8th grade,” Egan said with a laugh. He admits this was a very fortunate time to grow up in New York. He got to see the Beatles three times. He saw the Stones and Doors multiple times. He remembered seeing Jimi Hendrix when he was still playing with Jimi James and the Blue Flames. “Both of my parents were in advertising, and I was an only child, so I got a lot of support to pursue my music passion,” he said.

His first electric guitar was a new ’64 Strat, but unfortunately, he doesn’t have it anymore. “I got into SGs for a while. I traded a blonde Rickenbacker 12-string for a VW bus. I wound up trading the VW bus for a Super Reverb. Then I had a ’59 Strat that I played from ’79 to early ’92 when it was stolen when I moved to NYC. So I bought a ‘68 Strat with Seymour Duncan pickups, and I still have it; that’s still my favorite one to play out. I also have a Martin D-35 that I bought in ’74.”

Not surprisingly, our discussion of equipment leads to another story – one in which he has a vivid memory. Before moving to California in ’74 he was robbed twice while in Boston. The first time was when his band had left their equipment in their van after a gig. The van was stolen, but luckily the members had kept their instruments with them. “The second time I was robbed I remember it was the middle of the day at my apartment in Allston [a neighborhood in Boston]. Apparently, a drug dealer lived on the floor above us, and these guys came to the door thinking it was the drug dealer’s apartment.” While holding him at gunpoint, they stole his Gretsch Tennessean. “I also had a Gibson Hummingbird, but they must not have thought it was worth taking, so they put their foot through it,” he lamented.

The Unlikely Path To Meeting Buckingham & Nicks
Egan admits that some of his success is due in part to serendipity. For example, he explained that when he first went to LA he met Chris Darrow who offered him a place to stay. (Darrow had been in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band among others.) After two weeks in CA, Darrow asked Egan to play in his band that was touring in England, which he did. During that time Egan met Andrew Lauder who was the A&R manager at United Artists. Fast forward to a few years later when Egan is back in LA doing a gig with a new band he had put together. “I was the guitar player and the main writer, but I only sang one song; I didn’t consider myself a singer.” After that gig, Lauder offered him the opportunity to record three singles on his own. “We had done a few demos at Sound City, which at the time was a funky little studio that was just starting to get some notoriety. The engineer, Duane Scott, who had handled my demos, suggested Buckingham/Nicks as the producer, who I didn’t know at the time. Lindsey and Stevie had only been in Fleetwood Mac for about a year or so, and they wanted to keep their identity outside of the band, too. I went to Lindsey’s house and played my songs. We had a few things in common: We were both Kingston Trio and Beach Boys fans, and my middle name is Lindsey. I was very insecure about being the leader of this session, but they made it easy for me and gave me a lot of confidence. We basically formed a band for that record [Fundamental Roll]. I was just very lucky and fortunate to meet up with them at a time when they were really taking off as one of the biggest acts in the world. To this day, that connection with them [Buckingham & Nicks] has carried its way through my career.”

Of course that album produced his biggest hit “Magnet & Steel” inspired by Nicks whom Egan actually dated for about a month during the recording of the record. “Lindsey and Stevie were going through their big breakup. I remember her as still being a little insecure at the time. I would tell her she was a great singer, and she would say, ‘Really? Do you think so?’ Sometime near the end of our month together she said, ‘You’re so much like Lindsey.’ Later, sometime during the ’70s, I remember being in a club in NYC and sitting between Nancy Wilson of Heart and Stevie thinking, ‘It doesn’t get any better than this!’”

While on the topic of Fundamental Roll, I ask what the idea was for having the cheerleaders on the cover. Egan explained that the photographer was Moshe Brakha who was the hot photographer at the time for rock. He had just shot a photo essay for Rolling Stone called “High School USA” and had photographed some cheerleaders at Beverly Hills High School a few weeks before the shoot for the album. “He had the idea to use cheerleaders, so I borrowed Stevie’s little Mercedes.” The girls weren’t real cheerleaders, by the way. And those photos of Nicks wearing the cheerleader outfit during the recording of that record? “That was just her way of goofing around [because of the photo shoot concept],” Egan said.

When he’s not playing gigs, Egan helps with “Kids on Stage” and “The Jam” two Nashville-area programs that allow him to mentor kids who are aspiring musicians. “My best advice to younger musicians is to write your own music, try to be original, and hold onto your publishing rights. To be able to play music that you love is a great gift. I’ve been very fortunate in my life to make a career out of something I kind of made up as I went along. I don’t feel my age. And I think music and my interest in music keeps me young.”