John Hiatt, singer and hitmaker ... for other singers

by Gary Graff

2001 Entertainment News Daily

"I'd love to say I've got some kind of rhyme or reason or some big plan to my career," singer/songwriter John Hiatt says, "but I'm afraid I don't. It just happened."

The Indianapolis-born troubadour has been far more successful as a songwriter, the guy behind the hits, than he has as a performer. Hiatt songs have been recorded by the likes of Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Guy, Emmylou Harris, Don Henley, Jewel, Willie Nelson, the Neville Brothers, Iggy Pop, Three Dog Night and even 1980s dance-pop superstar Paula Abdul. Bonnie Raitt had the most successful Hiatt cover, launching her Grammy-winning 1989 comeback with the hit single "Thing Called Love," which had previously been a track from Hiatt's masterful album "Bring the Family" (1987).

Canadian guitarist Jeff Healey put Hiatt's "Angel Eyes" in the Billboard Top 5 that same year, while last year Eric Clapton and B.B. King used Hiatt's song "Riding with the King" (1983) as the title track to their Grammy-winning blues collaboration - though Hiatt says that, when Clapton called for permission to use it, "I thought it was one of my a--hole friends pulling my leg."

On his own, however, Hiatt has never hit the Top 40. His most successful album, "Perfectly Good Guitar" (1993), made it only as high as No. 47 on the album chart. To many people he's better known as the host of the now-defunct PBS musical series "Sessions on West 54th." But among his peers Hiatt is anything but overlooked.

"He's just great," Raitt says in a separate interview. "To try to say anything more about his songs seems trite, in a way. John's just one of those guys who writes these songs, and when you hear them you say, `I want to do that one!"'

Nick Lowe, who backed Hiatt on "Bring the Family" and played with him in the short-lived group Little Village, calls Hiatt "the cornucopia."

"If you need a song, you can ring John up, and he's always got a great one," Lowe says in a separate interview. "And if for some reason he doesn't, you can call him two days later and he'll have written one."

Naturally, Hiatt appreciates the praise - and the royalties the hits bring him. But he emphasizes that he's no Tin Pan Alley songsmith writing to order.

"It's always pretty much for me," says the 45-year-old Hiatt, who this year released his 23rd album, "The Tiki Bar Is Open." "I write for my voice and my style of playing. If that works for somebody else, more power to them - and to me, I guess."

Hiatt, whose first job in music was as a $25-a-week staff writer for a Nashville publishing house, likens the process of songwriting to two of his extramusical passions, driving race cars and riding horses.

"When you're first learning to drive, you can try too hard," he says. "The results are ... "

Smashing?

"Yeah, potentially," Hiatt says with a laugh. "But when you get a certain confidence through learning how to do it, then your own attempts to control it sort of fall by the wayside. You get in and go with it.

"Similarly, it seems easier for me to get inside the music now," he says. "I trust the process more ... I know something's going to turn up, so I'm not worried about things like writer's block or deadlines."

Hiatt, who lives with his family outside Nashville, lately has enjoyed a similarly pressure-free environment in the business side of his career, as well. In the late 1990s he parted ways with Capitol Records, whose executives had reacted coolly to the material that became "The Tiki Bar Is Open." After protracted negotiations to attain "free-agent status," Hiatt wound up with Vanguard Records, the venerable folk label whose music had influenced him when he was growing up.

"Yeah, all the cool folk people were on Vanguard," Hiatt says. "When I was a kid, Vanguard was the s--t. There was nothing better, so what a great place for me to be now.

"Plus, I own the masters now for these records," he adds. "That's the first time in my career I've been able to say that, and it's a pretty great feeling. We do a deal for each album with them, so I'm not contractually obligated for some long-term stuff. It's been the best relationship I've ever had with a record company."

Hiatt's first Vanguard outing was the stripped-down, critically acclaimed "Crossing Muddy Waters" (2000), which was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Traditional Blues Album category. But "Tiki Bar" was waiting in the wings.

It's an important album because it reunites Hiatt with the Goners, slide-guitar hero Sonny Landreth's group that backed Hiatt on tours during the late 1980s.

"I just called Sonny up and said `Y'know, it's 1999. The century's running out - we'd better play together,"' Hiatt recalls. "Once I got them back together, they inspired some material. I think I wrote four new songs right before we went in to record."

"Tiki Bar's" title track, however, was inspired by a recent trip to Florida for an auto race in Daytona Beach. Driving through town one night, Hiatt spotted a hotel with "a humble little sign that said `The Tiki Bar Is Open.' I started singing that, sort of a gospel kind of chant, almost.

"What can I tell you - I work in tiki bars," he adds with a laugh. "I've worked in them all my life. It's still there where we play more often. But I thought the tiki bar being open was more of a metaphor for a little piece of Americana I saw down there. It hasn't been turned into a Kmart yet, or a shopping mall."

Hiatt's next project is something new and different - he's written several songs for "The Country Bears," a 2002 Disney film about a band of bears he likens to The Band - "They start out sort of country but embrace all forms of American music, and they influence everybody" - and about a young bear, voiced by Haley Joel Osment, who goes in search of the group.

"It's basically `This is Spinal Tap' with paws," Hiatt says with a laugh.

The film includes cameos by several musicians, including Clapton, while Raitt and Henley provide the singing voices for a couple of the bears. But don't cock an ear for Hiatt's voice coming out of any of the furry creatures.

"I could've been one, as it turned out," he says. "I missed out. I was so sort of lazy I didn't try out for the part in time.

"So what else is new, right?"

(Gary Graff is a Beverly Hills, Mich.-based free-lance writer.)