JD Souther, country-rock songwriter behind the Eagles hits, dies at 78

JD Souther, the singer and songwriter who, along with the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt, wrote hits with twangy yet elegant melodies that defined the Southern California country-rock sound of the mid-1970s, has died. He was 78.

His death was confirmed by an Eagles spokesman, who said Souther died at his home in New Mexico, without giving a cause or time of death. The musician was scheduled to start a tour in Phoenix next week.

Souther – whose best known songs included the Eagles’ “New Kid in Town” and “Heartache Tonight,” Ronstadt’s “Faithless Love” and his own song “You’re Only Lonely,” which gave him a top 10 pop hit in 1979 – was also an actor, with roles on the television series “Thirtysomething” and “Nashville” and in films such 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 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 turned to in the ’70s “when we were stuck on a song or trying to do new material.” He added that Souther was partly responsible for three of the Eagles’ five No. 1 singles, including “Best of My Love,” a tender, harmony-rich ballad about a guy “lying in bed holding you in his dreams / Thinking of all the things we said and bursting at the seams.”

John David Souther was born in Detroit but grew up in Amarillo, Texas, where he played jazz drums before taking up guitar. In the late ’60s he moved to Los Angeles and met Frey, with whom he formed the short-lived duo Longbranch Pennywhistle; the group built a following at the Troubadour in West Hollywood and released a debut album in 1969 before disbanding the following year.

Souther then launched a solo career, while Frey took a gig backing Ronstadt, with 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 to form the Eagles. David Geffen, whose Asylum label released the Eagles’ first LP in 1972, “more or less” asked Souther to join the group, Souther told the Times in 2008.

“I thought about it, and we rehearsed a set and played it one afternoon at the Troubadour for David (and Eagles managers) Elliot Roberts and Ron Stone,” Souther recalled. “Honestly, it took me a whole minute afterward to say, no, the band was as extraordinary as it was, and I was quite happy to stay home and write. I think they were relieved, too.”

In 1973, Souther formed the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band with Chris Hillman of the Byrds and Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield, which produced two critically acclaimed country-rock albums. Souther resumed solo work in 1976 with Black Rose, which included a duet with Ronstadt on “If You Have Crying Eyes,” and in 1979 with You’re Only Lonely, the title track of which topped the Billboard 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 success — the LP was “that unfortunate oddity that was later called a ‘critical success,'” he said in a 1990 Times interview, “meaning nobody bought it” — Souther took a recording hiatus, partly discouraged by the music industry’s growing dependence on MTV. “I wasn’t a big fan of music videos because I thought they encouraged excessive production rather than really focusing on the essence 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-winning “The Heart of the Matter,” which he co-wrote with the Eagles star and 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 member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame who leaves behind two sisters and an ex-wife and her daughter, later moved to Nashville and returned to record production in 2008 with the jazz hit “If the World Was You.” Several more albums soon followed, as well as a recurring role as a graying country music supervisor on the ABC soap “Nashville.”

When asked what prompted him to start making records again, he told the Times: “I probably stopped making records because I thought making records would drive me crazy. It turns out I was crazy anyway.”