J.D. Souther, the singer-songwriter who co-wrote twangy, stylish hits for the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt that helped define the Southern California country-rock sound of the mid-1970s, has died. He was 78.
His death was confirmed by a representative for the Eagles, who said Souther died at his home in New Mexico without specifying the cause or saying when he died. The musician was scheduled to begin a tour next week in Phoenix.
Souther, whose best-known songs included the Eagles’ “New Kid in Town” and “Heartache Tonight,” Ronstadt’s “Faithless Love” and his own “You’re Only Lonely,” which gave him a Top 10 pop hit in 1979, was also an actor, with roles on TV’s “Thirtysomething” and “Nashville” and in such films as “My Girl 2” and “Postcards From the Edge.” Other artists who recorded his songs included Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor, George Strait and the Dixie Chicks.
In January, Souther performed onstage with the Eagles at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, where Don Henley introduced him as part of the “tight-knit community of songwriters and singers” that he and the Eagles’ Glenn Frey would turn to in the ’70s “when we’d get stuck on a song or try to start some new material.” He added that Souther was partially responsible for three of the Eagles’ five No. 1 singles, which also included “Best of My Love,” a tender, harmony-filled ballad about a guy “lying in bed, holding you tight in my dreams / Thinking about all the things we said and falling apart.”
John David Souther was born in Detroit but grew up in Amarillo, Texas, where he played jazz drums before taking up guitar. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1960s and met Frey, with whom he formed the short-lived duo Longbranch Pennywhistle; the group made a name for themselves at the Troubadour in West Hollywood and released a debut album in 1969 before breaking up the following year.
Souther embarked on a solo career while Frey opened for Ronstadt, whom Souther was dating; Henley joined Frey in Ronstadt’s band along with guitarist Bernie Leadon and bassist Randy Meisner, laying the groundwork for the four eventually forming the Eagles. David Geffen, whose Asylum label issued the Eagles’ first LP in 1972, “sort of” asked Souther to join the group, Souther told The Times in 2008.
“I considered it, we rehearsed a set and played it to David. [and Eagles managers] “Elliot Roberts and Ron Stone at the Troubadour one afternoon,” Souther recalled. “It actually took me a minute after that to say no, that the band was already great and I was very happy to stay home and write. I think they were relieved, too.”
In 1973, Souther teamed with Chris Hillman of the Byrds and Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield to form the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, which recorded a pair of well-regarded country-rock albums. Souther resumed his solo work with 1976's “Black Rose,” which included a duet with Ronstadt on “If You Have Crying Eyes,” and 1979's “You're Only Lonely,” the title track of which topped Billboard's adult contemporary chart and reached No. 7 on the all-genre Hot 100.
James Taylor, left, and JD Souther perform in Atlanta in 1981.
(Rick Diamond/Getty Images)
After 1984’s “Home by Dawn” failed to match that commercial performance (the LP was “that unfortunate curiosity that’s later called a ‘critical hit,’” he said in a 1990 interview with the Times, “meaning nobody bought it”), Souther took a break from recording, discouraged in part by the music industry’s increasing reliance on MTV. “I wasn’t a big fan of music videos because I thought they encouraged an overproduction rather than a real focus on the heart of the music,” he told the New York Times in 2012.
As a songwriter, however, he scored a hit in 1989 with Henley's MTV-approved song, “The Heart of the Matter,” which he wrote with Eagles star Mike Campbell of Tom Petty's Heartbreakers. That same year, he appeared in his first film, playing a singer who sings “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” at a party in Steven Spielberg's “Always.”
Souther, a two-time Grammy nominee and Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee whose survivors include two sisters and a former wife and daughter, later moved to Nashville and returned to recording in 2008 with the jazzy “If the World Was You,” quickly followed by several more albums and a recurring role as a grizzled country music repairman on ABC’s soap opera “Nashville.”
Asked what inspired him to start recording again, he told The Times: “I probably stopped making records because I thought making records was driving me crazy. Turns out I was already crazy anyway.”
