When I married Marjorie, along with her, I got this very large family and a bunch of family friends. It's a dynamic I've never been around. I've always been kind of a loner, and my attempts at domestic life failed miserably. So the family dynamic is a great thing.
The one that achieved the greatest amount of success is the Eagles. And because it was really successful, it was a lot more fun. It still is. We get a chance to play music that a lot of people really relate to, and to play places all over the world. That's fun.
I enjoy my solo career because I get to play smaller places like clubs and theaters, and the interaction with the audience is much higher quality. It also sounds better than a baseball stadium. Everybody has a good seat, and I don't have to play a specific part like I do in the Eagles.
I love Las Vegas, but I never get a chance to play a club like the House of Blues. I guess we've graduated to a bigger scale than that. When the Eagles come in and play, that's on a grand scale.
In 1980, we just ran out of steam. After about 15 years, Don Henley and Glenn Frey came to me and said, 'We have been thinking of starting the Eagles back up again, and we can't do it without you, and we can't do it unless you're sober.' I was just about homeless.
I was a fan of the group. I thought they were great - loved The Eagles - but I thought that their beautiful harmonies would sound amazing with some rock guitar behind them.
My wife was the part of me that was missing. And I got that whole family that came along with her in the deal. It's an extended family, and they're very close, and it's a dynamic that's never been around me before.
I have some fond memories - a couple of the nights on the town ... a couple of songs I wrote when I was messed up that I'm sure wouldn't have come out of me unless I was messed up. It's kind of happy-sad about those days - I could do anything I wanted to. I did. And now I don't want to do any of that.
I used to throw stuff out of the window and trash hotel rooms - and superglue all the drawers shut and superglue the toilet seat down and superglue the phone to the nightstand - and all kinds of stuff. I had a chain saw for a while. I didn't really use it but once or twice.
I relate with military families and Gold Star families. Gold Star families are families where somebody didn't come home. My father died in 1949. He was a flight instructor in the Army Air Corp.
'Turn to Stone' was written about the Nixon administration and the Vietnam War and the protesting that was going on and all of that. It's a song about frustration. Also, I attended Kent State.
I was a student at Kent State University in May of 1970. I was also a musician in a regionally popular band called the James Gang. I was still going to class and stuff, but I was in and out because we were playing a lot.
My wife one time got a fishbone stuck in her throat and had to fly back to L.A. from Monte Carlo to have it taken out. I thought, 'Wow, what a great blues song!'
I've always written observations on the world, and now there's two of them. The virtual world is a new thing, and it doesn't really exist, but people are in it a lot.
I've been able to meet a lot of vets at different functions and events, and it just hit me that I should step it up a notch, and I have a lot of peers who feel the same way.
The best part of success is that it got me past the basic survival level of existence so that I was comfortable. I didn't have to worry about stuff pertaining to survival. Once that was taken care of, I got the chance sit down and create and work at what I do.
You used to make records, record companies sold them, and people went to record stores and bought them. That's all gone now.
There's no more record companies, so I have to get on the Internet and let people know the album is out there. I don't know if we're working for it, or if it's working for us.
Ricky Washington is from a Baptist church in Miami, Florida, and he can pretty much sing anything. We just started working it up at soundcheck, and holy smokes, it's just great! The audience gets to singing. So there's that stuff to do - find some old obscure R&B stuff - because we can do it justice.
'Band Played On' is a good one. Barbara Orbison, who was Roy's wife, was involved in publishing in Nashville because she oversaw Roy's publishing, and she had a company in Nashville. She had a whole bunch of writers assembled, and they got together every day and wrote, and they write for everybody in Nashville.
