Gary James' Interview With
Walter Egan



It was back in 1978 that Walter Egan had a big hit with his record "Magnet And Steel". It reached number eight on the Billboard charts. What's the story behind that song? What was Walter Egan doing before that and what is he doing these days? That's what we wanted to know.

Q - Walter, let's start with the present. You are a substitute teacher in Williamson County, Tennessee are you? What are you substitute teaching?

A - Well, I think it's a big name for what I do. Teaching is a very small part of my job. Basically crowd control and passing out work sheets and taking attendance. I do the substitute teaching because it allows me to leave and go on the road and do the music when I need to and then come back and still have the same position I had before I left. The only sub in the one school, so I don't feel as much as a substitute. I feel more like a barnacle that's attached itself to that school.

Q - Are you more of an assistant to a teacher then? Is that what you're trying to tell me?

A - Well, no. You fill in for the teachers that are out. But they don't give you a big responsibility as far as teaching goes. When I pass out these work sheets in this world of technology, these kids soon learn I have another life outside of school and I often find that amusing if not attractive. (laughs)

Q - That was going to be my next question. Does anyone in the district, teachers and/or students know of your singing/songwriting background?

A - Well, they do, especially at the school where I sub. They know I do all these other things. In the curriculum now there's a guitar class which I have subbed for a number of times. I always feel good doing that because at least I feel I can actually teach something to the kids if they're willing to learn. But you know, it's really just a convenient job that I've done for over twenty years now basically. I figured after I had run my game show life, you're only allowed to be on three game shows in your lifetime and I was on a few in the '80s. After that I was wondering where I could find a fairly regular paycheck. Music has it's ups and downs. It's so much a luck of the draw. I've been very fortunate with "Magnet And Steel" the way people gravitate to it basically on their own. I went through a period where I tried to promote it to various advertising agencies and they said, "Oh, that's a great song," and nothing ever really came of it. Most recently it was in an HBO show called Divorce. That was a nice usage. The deal came just before last Christmas (2017) so that was a very fortuitous one. I just learned that it's going to be on the show Champagne Illinois, which apparently airs on the YouTube Red Network, which as far as obscure networks might be as obscure as you can get. It's all part of it. My son is now 33. My daughter is about to turn 24 and I appreciated the fact that when I was working as a sub I could be home when they got home from school and being able to be around for them. In my daughter's case she came to the school that I subbed at for one semester or at least one year. That was nice. At the end of the year she said, "Don't get the wrong idea Dad. In this school I can't be anything but your daughter." (laughs) Okay. Thanks for that.

Q - Early in your musical career you were writing Surf songs while part of this group, Malibooz. You hadn't made the move to Los Angeles yet, so what did you know about surfing?

A - (laughs) What The Beach Boys and Dick Dale and The Ventures had taught me. It's a strange phenomenon, when you are more distant from the source of something it acquires more of a myth, more of an air about it. Growing up in New York, The Beach Boys seemed like the coolest thing and California seemed like the coolest place. My first guitar came on my 15th birthday. At that point it was more The Kingston Trio who were inspiring me and who I had been a big fan of. So rather than get to take guitar lessons I had a Kingston Trio songbook that had the pictures of the chords in it. That summer of my 15th birthday I endeavored to learn the chords. I would know if the song sounded great because I was such a fan of The Kingston Trio. Then, when I went back to school, which would have been my sophomore year of high school, one of my friends there. Mr. John Vanbetti, had already moved to the electric guitar and had taken lessons from a guitarist named Ronnie Lee, he said to me, "If you get an electric guitar you can be in The Malibooz. And the Malibooz was a band. The Malibooz are spelled the way they are, booz, because when they spelled bus, people would say the Malibus. And of course being in high school the illusion to the fact that you're talking about booze had some kind of strange appeal. It started out as an instrumental band when I joined it and by the springtime of that year, my sophomore year, we were playing at a party and someone came up and said, "C'mon, do 'Louie Louie', but do the good words." We really didn't have a P.A. We had a microphone that we plugged into one of our amplifiers and we'd announce the song and put the mic down and we'd play the instrumental song. In this case we grabbed what was a potted palm plant, plastic potted palm plant at that, and set that up in front of the amps and stuck the microphone in it. Even though I really didn't know all the words, I kind of mumbled my way though that song, "Louie Louie". The drunken patron who wanted the song so badly had his ear up against the amplifier and he was digging it as if I were really The Kingsmen singing it or something. It was kind of a moment of truth for me that I realized in Rock 'n' Roll it's pretty much as much attitude as it is certitude as far as whether you get the lyrics right. It's really how you present them and how you stand onstage that seems to have an effect on people. So yeah, it was a Surf thing in New York City and we gradually, over that first year I was in the band, went from saying we were a Surf band to a band that did everything from Surf to English Sound because of course that was the British Invasion time. So, we started doing vocals. We made a demo. We brought it around to the record companies in New York, even to Philles Records, which was Phil Spector's label. After being turned away at most of the places, a very short listen to our very crude demo which we recorded in a radio station, there was a guy there named Danny Davis who was Phil Spector's partner and he actually listened to it while we sat there and he critiqued it for us. "First, where'd you make this? In a toilet?" "No, no. It was a radio station." He said, "Well, get rid of your lead singer and come back with your next record." He was a nice guy actually. We could actually hear Phil Spector in the back room, which was kind of a cool thing at the time 'cause he had a very distinctive high voice. So, that led us to say goodbye to our lead singer who was a year ahead of us in high school anyway and he was about to go to college. Myself and John Vanbetti took over the vocals. Then we made another demo. Other than get us some props in our circle of friends; we would take it to parties and put it on, it never really got too far although we did release it a few years ago. You know the odd story about The Malibooz is after I had my success, John came out to California and he wanted to re-start the band with he and I and some of the players I had been playing with out there. In fact, this later version of The Malibooz lasted much longer then the original version and we've done I think six CDs at this point. We're actually recording the next one. I'm supposed to go back to California in October (2018) to work on it more.

Q - After The Malibooz you were part of this group, Sageworth, which had a great reputation as an original band. Did that group ever get a label deal? Were you ever approached by a label?

A - We were. That was what The Malibooz morphed into as John kind of drifted away and I kind of took over the band. We added this young female singer named Annie McLoon and by this time I had been writing songs for awhile and was very interested in using originals. In Washington D.C. I went to Georgetown University. We were a band at Georgetown and then when we graduated we continued playing. That would have been 1970. We continued playing in the area and further afield. We were approached by a number of labels during that time. Mary Martin at Warner Brothers was interested. Mercury Records was interested. It was one of those things, "interested", and then they never quite followed up and that continued for about the next three years. I left Washington in '71 and moved to Boston and the story of that move is kind of interesting. We had been playing in a club in Georgetown called The Cellar Door. That particular night we were playing across the street at a bar called Apple Pie and just by happenstance Linda Ronstadt happened to be coming to town that week to do a week. Acts usually played a week at The Cellar Door. So, she was in town the night before her stint there was supposed to start. She came in and they were having dinner at this bar we were playing at. She liked us and invited us to come sit down with her. She and Annie hit it off really well. A couple of her guys in the band were Glenn Frey and Don Henley. So, we kind of got to know them on a very basic level and invited them back to our house. We all lived together of course in those days. That was the way to go at the Sageworth house in Georgetown. And they came back and we played Everly Brothers songs. We played George Jones, Merle Haggard songs. We sat around, singing. And it was a great hang. We hung out with Linda all that week and got to be good friends with her. Her tour manager at that point was a guy named Chris Darrow and Chris really liked our band. He offered to produce us if we would come to L.A. Half the band thought that was a good idea and the other half thought it was too risky. So the too risky faction kind of won out and we decided as a compromise to move to Boston and done a few gigs and seemed to be accepted pretty nicely there. So when we got there we were kind of a Folk/Rock band and in Boston at the time the prevalent music was the Boogie and the Blues. James Montgomery Band was going to be the next J. Geils. We kind of fell in with them and learned a little bit of how to hearten up out music so it wouldn't seem to folky at that point. We were up there for a little over two years. By that time we had gone through the paces with Warner Brothers and Mary Martin saying that she was into it and kind of backed off in the end. This caused a riff in the band where we decided we might as well go our separate ways. Sageworth broke up in early '74, end of '73 and I played a little bit longer up there with some friends of mine. But, concurrent with this was a song called "Hearts On Fire", which I had written. I assume you know who Gram Parsons is.

Q - Absolutely.

A - Yeah, so I was a big Byrds fan in the '60s. Up to "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" it was one big continuous Folk/Rock psychedelic happening. Then all of a sudden "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" came out, it was a complete left turn, or should I say right turn perhaps. But it was quite a shock in 1968 for a Rock 'n' Roll band to play Country music without sort of making a little joke about it, sort of playing it tongue-in-cheek. They did it as seriously as they could. It was traditional Country music. After their initial shock it was like, "This is interesting. This is good. And who is this G. Parsons guy?" So, I started researching that. Everybody who I would talk to who'd come in from L.A. or anywhere close to the L.A. Country/Rock scene I would say, "Who's this G. Parsons guy?" Gram Parsons. So, I learned about him. In Georgetown we played the same circuit of clubs that Emmylou Harris was playing at the time and so one night we were sitting watching Emmy play at this club called Clyde's, and Chris Hillman of The Byrds came in and Chris Hillman of The Flying Burrito Brothers as well of course, and approached Emmy about his friend Gram Parsons signing with her. At that point she didn't know who Gram was. So I said, "I'll tell you about Gram. Come back to the house." She came back and I played "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo", "Gilded House Of The Sand". Then when Gram came to town the next day they needed a place where they could sing together in private and work out how they would sound. And so I offered the kitchen of that Sageworth house. When they first sang together it was in my kitchen in Georgetown on Wisconsin Avenue. It was a thrill for me 'cause this was like the first contact by this point was looking to as something of a role model for what I wanted to be, what I wanted to do. And so, for Gram to come to my front door and knock on it was quite a thrill for me. I said reverently as they sang together, "Gram, I really want to get deeper into Country music. What should I do? Who should I listen to?" He said, "Well, you should listen to George Jones, Merle Haggard, Harlan Howard and Charlie Pride." So, I picked those cues and went with it and proceeded to get more into Country music. Meanwhile, Gram and Emmy became a duo. I had written this song, "Hearts On Fire" that was done very much in the tongue-in-cheek kind of way. My heart's on fire, give me something, some antacid kind of thing. It had some questionable lyrics. The bass player from my band, Tom Guidern said, "This could be a really good song. Let's change some of the words." And so that's how the co-writer of that song happened. Emmy took it to Gram. Gram liked it and they recorded it on the "Grievous Angel" album. Gram actually sent the lyrics back to me to write the music to, which I did, but unfortunately he had passed away at the time.

Q - You went to L.A. in what year?

A - I went out there in April of '74.

Q - "Magnet And Steel" became a big hit in 1978. So, in those years in between what were you doing? Were you working as a musician? Did you have a straight job? What were you doing?

A - Yeah, I was working as a musician. When my band broke up in Boston, I sat down with my mother one night and she said, "Well now, what are you going to do to get serious? You've had your fun." I said, "Well, I'm going to Los Angeles to make a record." And she said, "Oh, okay." And me being a only child, I guess she was like "Good luck" kind of thing. And so I went out there. Chris Darrow who wanted to produce my band in the first place, years previous to that, he offered me a place to stay. So, by the time I got there he was going to release his latest album on United Artists, "Chris Darrow". United Artists withdrew their tour support for his tour of England. Well, there I was on his doorstep. He said, "Do you want to be my companion on this tour?" I said, "Well of course. Why not?" Even though I'd just driven across the country to be in Los Angeles. Sure, I'd like to go to England. So, we went for a month long tour in the British Isles and we opened for this band called The Mann Band, who were kind of like the Welsh Grateful Dead. They were a really great band actually. Deke Leonard was the lead singer. So, we did this tour with them and they were on United Artists. They were handled by an A&R guy named Andrew Lauter and I got to know Andrew a little bit while I was there. We hung out. Well, flash forward to about a year or so later, when I got back from L.A. from being on this tour with Chris he put me together with some of his friends and we formed a band of basically three songwriters. We called ourselves The Ghost Writers. We played around Claremont. I thought I was in L.A. when I drove out there, but it was actually Claremont, which is about thirty, forty miles east. Anyway, Chris produced some demos of that band. I had run out of money by the end of 1974 and I drove back to New York and was trying to figure out what I was going to do next when I got a phone call from David Lindley, who happened to be Chris Darrow's brother-in-law with whom I had also hung out with in that year in Claremont. He said, "I'm calling to tell you Jackson Browne wants you to come and play guitar with him on the "Late For The Sky" tour. I said, "Oh, great. Okay. Let's go." So I went back in January and rehearsed with Jackson for another three months or so. At the end of it my role had switched from being a rhythm, electric player with occasional harmonies to being an acoustic player with a lot of harmonies. At that point I didn't have a lot of confidence in my own voice. I'd always been in bands where everyone sang better than I did. So, when it got to that, I felt uncomfortable. I felt unsure. Both of us looked at one another and said, "Okay, this isn't really going to work out. Thanks. We'll see you later." So, from there I joined a group that was being formed around a songwriter named Jules Sheer. It was on A&M Records and it was kind of a an in-house project where they paid us to rehearse for about three months. Ultimately the passed on their own project. It was a stumbling kind of approach that I had to keep going through. I really want to do this. What's the next thing? The next thing was getting back with those guys who I formed The Ghost Writers with. We played a Hoot Night at The Troubadour in February of '76. That was like an open mic thing and you got to play six or seven songs. I had written just about all the songs we had performed that night, although I only sang one of them. At the end of the performance I had an offer from that same Andy Lauter from England to a contract to do three singles, which meant six sides, an A and a B side. And so that was exciting. With that in hand this man named Greg Lewert, who had been managing Chris Darrow, offered to manage me and to help me to do this. So, I took advantage of that and from his contact with a guy named David Krebs of Lieber-Krebs that managed Aerosmith in New York City and were also responsible for Beatlemania, the Broadway show, he had good contacts at Columbia (Records) because of Aerosmith. And so during that process of having the deal in hand and looking for a producer that would suit the project, I originally thought, let's get Brian Wilson. Well, he's kind of out of action. Well, how about Todd Rundgren? Well, we might not be able to get him. How about Buckingham-Nicks? Is that a relation to Don Nicks, the Southern rocker? No, no. Listen to this record. And I listened to Buckingham-Nicks and I realized how much that was like Sageworth with Annie McLoone on the east coast where we were, and Buckingham-Nicks on the west coast. From that I was like, "Okay, let's meet them." So I met Stevie and Lindsey at one of the Fleetwood Mac concerts in '76. In fact, it's on film, not me meeting them, but that concert. It was at the V.C. Santa Barbara. At that time I wasn't sure which was Stevie and which one was Lindsey. The magazine article I read about Fleetwood Mac had their names mis-labeled under their pictures. Basically that's how the whole thing came about. At that time Fleetwood Mac had just started to take off. With them in my camp as producers we were able to secure a six album deal with Columbia Records.

Q - How long did it take you to write "Magnet And Steel"?

A - (laughs) Well, I came about writing that song in a funny kind of way.

Q - I know you really liked Stevie Nicks.

A - Well, I was well taken by Stevie as far as lyrics went, yeah, and the fact of it being kind a '50s throwback that was consciously in my mind. I was trying to write a song that had the Stroll beat, which is the snare hits every other one, that kind of 6/8 feel. So I basically had written the structure of the song, but the lyrics I had for it were kind of boring and I didn't really feel good about the lyrics. This was during the recording of "Fundamental Roll", my first album which Stevie and Lindsey were the producers as well as me and then engineer. The chrysalis of that song happened one night when Stevie was singing the background vocals on my first song called "Tunnel Of Love", where she does her wild Banshee wail on the background of it. For whatever reason it stirred some things in my that night. I was living out in Pomona at the time and on my way home I got on the 101 Freeway and this car got in front of me. It was just one of those completely customized Continentals with the lights under it and the diamond window. We called it the Pimpmobile in those days. I couldn't help but notice the license plate said Not Shy and for whatever reason I took that as a message and I ran with it. In the thirty to forty minute drive to Pomona I had put the rest of the song together. So ultimately it took me about a half an hour once I sat down with a pen to write out those lyrics.

Q - So, how did life change for you when that song became such a big hit?

A - Well, it changed considerably. Doors that had been previously closed started opening. People started telling me they were in there from the beginning. You know, my first album did pretty well. It got good reviews and the first single, which was called "Only The Lucky" in 1977, peaked at around 50, 51, mid-chart on Billboard. So, there was a little bit of buzz gong on about me. Of course there was a huge buzz as Fleetwood Mac ascended to the greatness they happened to find. I was incredibly fortunate to be in that milieu at that time, to be connected with them. While they were working on "Rumours" there was the absence of any new Fleetwood Mac and all of a sudden there was my record with Stevie's voice all over it and Lindsey's very precise production and playing on some of it, and so it was noticed because of that. But it was a funny thing because it came out in March. The single was released in March. By the summertime the stations had already liked it and played it a lot and were looking for something new and it was obvious to most of us that the next single would be "Hot Summer Nights", which was the closer on the album. But Columbia milked that single until the middle or end of October that year. It peaked in September. It got to number eight as a million seller, but they released "Hot Summer Nights" basically as Fall and Winter came in and it just kind of mis-fired. The stations that had already played it didn't go back to it so much. But it did change a lot of things, actually more so in the long run than in the short run at that time.

Q - After "Hot Summer Nights" what was going on with your career?

A - When we came to the end of that year (1978) and "Hot Summer Nights" hadn't sold but "Magnet And Steel" was still the highest ranking single on Columbia Records at that time, there was the Columbia Convention, which was held at the Century Plaza Hotel and I requested a meeting with Walter Yetnikoff, who was the president of the CBS group, and Bruce Lundvall, who was the president of Columbia at that time. I had a nice talk with them. It was eye-opening in a lot of ways. They promised, "We'll make the album sell through. It took us four albums to break Billy Joel. It took us four albums for Springsteen, Les Dudek, Boz Scaggs." The famous quote from Walter Yetnikoff to me was, "If CBS can't live up to it's bullshit, nobody can," which I took as an odd way to put it. (laughs) That was the day you kind of feel more like meat than an artist. You're like a product. You get this window when your record comes out of attention. Maybe a month, maybe two. Maybe promotion. Maybe only so much promotion. It always helped to have an independent promotion to kind of kick it along. But yeah, I never wanted to be a One Hit Wonder. I don't feel like I have been as far as "Hot Summer Nights" was stillborn in 1978. Richard Perry used it the following year for his first single from his label, his new label and his band Night, which was very much in the Fleetwod Mac mold. And they had a Top 20 hit with it around the world in 1979. In fact, that generated a French version, a Swedish version, a German version, a Japanese. Basically all the participants in World War II were taking versions of "Hot Summer Nights". It's one of those songs. I only wrote "Hot Summer Nights" and it goes back to another strange little story. After my initial infatuation with Stevie during the making of "Fundamental Roll", she played this song for me and said, "Fleetwood Mac doesn't want to do this song, but I think it's a good song." She played it for and me and I said, "Well, I'll do it. I'll be happy to play it." And so I incorporated it into my set during 1977, my first tour. It was called "Sisters Of The Moon". Fleetwood Mac ultimately did record it, but at the time as I came in to record the "Not Shy" album, the second album, we were running it down in a big studio at Sound City, the now famous Sound City, and Lindsey came out and said, "Whoa! What are we playing here?" "Well, you know it's Stevie's song. I thought it was a cool song" He said, "No. I don't think you should do that. Why don't you go home and write a song to end the album." Of course with a newer album you had Side One and Side Two and you always tried to give your big punch to the last song on the second side and that's where "Sisters Of The Moon" was supposed to have gone. So, I went home. It was the middle of August in '77. It reminded me of the days when I was in high school when The Malibooz would play music, five days a week during the summer as opposed to only a few days when we were in school. So, I started to write a song about being in bands, which is what I did. "Hot Summer Nights" is about the camaraderie and the all-for-one kind of thing of being in a band as it was then. There were no sidemen. Everybody was pulling together and everybody was part of it. So, I made a three chord song that I thought was kind of catchy. Lindsey liked it. The next morning we recorded it. So, it's funny that that went on to be the most covered song I'd ever written. All these different versions. Of course, I even re-wrote the lyrics for The Malibooz when we recorded it on one of our albums. Beyond that I got a call from EMI in 2009 who had the publishing on it at that point, asking if I would approve this song that was based on my song. They played it for me over the phone and I expected it to be a needle drop of the hook, the guitar riff and the vocal hook. As it turned out, it was basically the Night version of the song in their key, with their feel and the chords. It was an Eminem song, "We Made You", which was his big comeback song in 2009. I always feel like they were upright people for coming to me and not trying to sneak it by. For all I listened to Eminem or for all I could tell. It wasn't the way I expected my song to sound when Eminem used it, but ultimately it was a wonderful thing. It was a Top Ten song for him and it certainly helped me with my catalog.

Q - The follow-up to "Magnet And Steel" was or would have been "Hot Summer Nights" then?

A - I felt like I had the follow-up to "Magnet And Steel", "Hot Summer Nights". If it had been released as they do release things these days it would be out that summer and been a double play I think for the rest of the year, those two songs.

Q - You participated in this industry seminar with Bill Danoff of The Starland Vocal Band at Georgetown University. What did you two guys talk about? What were the students asking you?

A - Well, that's almost a fact what you said. Bill also went to Georgetown. He was two years ahead of me at Georgetown. In fact, he was in Bill Clinton's class at Georgetown. Bill (Danoff) was a great friend. He had a band called Fat City during those years. This would've been '68, '69. '70, '71. They played the same circuit as Sageworth did, so we hung out a lot together. So, Bill and I were friends for many years as far as that went. Fat City broke up and Starland Vocal Band came about and they had the huge hit, "Afternoon Delight". Meanwhile he had written another famous song, "Take Me Home Country Roads". So, he had a pretty good thing goin' on there. Whenever it was, 2004, maybe 2000, I don't know. Somewhere around there this thing called the Georgtown Entertainment Media Alliance was started by the alumni. They started these yearly concerts of Georgetown graduates or students performing. Bill and I were the headlines for those first few shows. One of the music teachers at Georgetown, Anna Celenza, asked us if we wanted to teach a seminar at Georgetown, but this was separately. Bill got the songwriting seminar. He had a songwriting class at Georgetown which continued through a number of years. His writing may still be going on for all I know. Then as far as semester 2008 I taught the music business seminar which essentially was teaching my life to these twenty kids at Georgetown, teaching my life in music. And so, we never were in a seminar together. We had separate seminars and we did these shows together. It was quite interesting. I had the kids start by how you write a song. I put a little bit of that in there. How do you make a band? How do you put on a show? How do you record? And so each of these aspects of my career I tried to teach them. And so they asked the normal questions that anybody who wants to get in the business would ask. How do I be a star? How do I achieve what you achieved? Too often I think the answer to that is perseverance and the luck of the draw. Certainly through my life I feel most fortunate for the way that it all fell together for me. On one hand I feel it should have been more, but on the other hand I see a lot of amazingly talented people who have been frustrated and given up trying to make it. You know, I don't have the answer. Here's another little aside to my move to L.A. in '74. At that time The Eagles were about to lose Bernie Leadon, their original guitar player they had. Since I knew Glenn and Don, I wrote a letter to Glenn saying I plan on moving to L.A.. In fact, Linda Ronstadt had asked me also to play in her band during that time, so I felt like I had these prospects when I moved out there. I met with Glenn and Don and also Dan Fogelburg at The Troubadour one night. Glenn was all, "Hey man, great to see you. We filled that spot already." Don Felder had joined. But he was like, "I know you're gonna make it. All you need to do is persevere." And I really took that as words of wisdom. Really, perseverance is a big element in making it because you get so much rejection and you get so much rejection in trying to achieve any kind of artistic success I suppose. You know, you're putting yourself on the line with your creation. You're putting it out there and people can ignore it or people can pick up on it. So, you've got to be able to deal with the rejection. You've got to believe in yourself and keep doing it. And also enjoy what you're doing to a great degree, which is the advice I gave to my students at Georgetown when I had that seminar. I've continued that to this day. I've put out my tenth CD last summer called "True Songs" and I still write as much as I ever did. Every year I try to record an album on my home recording just because that's what I do. I feel if one song can succeed, why wouldn't another one? So, it's really hard to give up a dream if you enjoy doing it anyway, if you have that kind of payoff. That's kind of my approach to the business as I go into my golden years here.

Official Website: www.WalterEgan.com

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