A Pop Zelig On Screen and Off: J D Souther on 'Nashville' and His Colorful Career If you're going to create a series with a savvy take on the music business, it helps to have someone on hand who's seen it from just about every angle. Exhibit A: J D Souther, the singer, songwriter and sometime actor who currently can be seen lending a graceful believability to Watty White, the country music sage he plays on ABC's "Nashville." Mr. Souther recently discussed the role for a feature about scene-stealing characters in new series this fall. But the conversation also veered into his time in the peaceful easy country-rock scene in 1970s Los Angeles, where he wrote or co-wrote hits for the Eagles ("Heartache Tonight," "New Kid in Town," "Best of My Love"), Linda Ronstadt ("Faithless Love") and himself ("You're Only Lonely"), among others, while enjoying an enviable lifestyle in L.A. bohemia. Mr. Souther says he had people like Cheech Marin and Kris Kristofferson for neighbors, dated Ms. Ronstadt and spent nights jamming with his band in the "Hollywood Hideout" - a house in the hills above the Chateau Marmont that he bought from the actress Susan George. "We drew the police up there a few nights, playing with the windows open," he said. But Hollywood police are pretty understanding of stuff like that. Now living in Nashville, Mr. Souther began releasing albums a few years ago after taking off nearly 25 years from recording (his latest, "Midnight in Tokyo," came out last month). For his next album, Mr. Souther planned to return to Los Angeles this month to write songs with Burt Bacharach and Arthur Hamilton ("Cry Me a River"). "I have no idea what it's going to come out like," he said. I'm just letting it go where it wants to go. Mr. Souther, who was nominated last month for the Songwriters Hall of Fame, spoke by phone from his farm outside Nashville. How did you get involved in "Nashville"? I was in New York a few months ago playing Jazz at Lincoln Center and had dinner with a bunch of people. [The series creator] Callie Khouri was there with T Bone [Burnett, Ms. Khouri's husband and the music director for the series]. Callie said she'd written a show about Nashville and I said, "Oh great, when the time comes to cast it I'd love to see it." So they sent me a script and I really loved this part. You've described Watty White as a Greek chorus - what did you mean by that? He kind of shows up occasionally and provides some perspective and some clarity. I don't think it's based on any one person but the way I see it, it's sort of a composite of possibly Harlan Howard, Cowboy Jack Clement and I think my friend T Bone, too. As a Nashville resident, did you have any concerns about how the show would portray the city? If it had been anybody else, possibly. But Callie used to live here and she knows Nashville very well. And of course she's married to T Bone, who knows a much more sophisticated side of country music than has been portrayed in the past. I had a feeling it was gonna go down right. Past evocations of the city haven't been popular down there. Obviously it's not New York or L.A., but it's becoming a pretty metropolitan little place. We're really fed up with the "Hee Haw" stereotypes. What about Robert Altman's film "Nashville"? No, people hated it here. Listen, I'm a huge Robert Altman fan and don't take issue with his filmmaking, as eccentric as it is. But I just think Nashville was a world he didn't know. But people around the city are pleased with the series so far? Everybody seems just tickled with it. First of all, it has this great soap opera element that people find sort of irresistible. But also, T Bone and Buddy Miller have been pretty scrupulous about all the music being exactly what it needs to be. The music that [Hayden Panettierre's] character, Juliette Barnes, performs is exactly appropriate to where her character is right now. And even though it's kind of teeny-bopper stuff, compared to some of the other stuff on the show, it's good. It's well done. Are you writing any songs for the show? I wrote one - actually I gave it to them, I wrote it a couple years ago - that I thought would be great for Deacon [played by Charles Esten] and Rayna [Connie Britton]. Whether the storyline is gonna take it near where that song makes sense, I don't know. And then one of the actors, Sam Palladio, who plays Gunnar, and I are working on a song. There are a lot of songs in the hopper right now because everybody in town wants a song on this show. Some of your most well-known songs were written for the Eagles. You and Glenn Frey were longtime musical partners before he co-founded the band - is that what led to you writing with those guys? I met Don [Henley] through Glenn. Linda was my girlfriend then and she was always assembling odd combinations of people to back her, including me sometimes. Glenn and Don hit it off like a house afire - they're both very ambitious, very talented guys. And they had a vision for a larger band. When Glenn and I broke up our little duo I just wanted to do what Jackson [Browne] was doing: I wanted to stay home by myself and write songs and get better at it. Linda was touring sporadically and she needed a backup band. One night we were all at a health food place in L.A. called the Nucleus Nuance - is that a '70s name or what? I can remember being there with Linda and Glenn and trying to talk him into going on the road with her and putting a band together. It would solve everybody's problems at once. And that's the way it worked. Note: the Eagles sprang from Linda Ronstadt's backing band. Was there an epicenter of that whole country-rock scene? All of us hung out in the Troubadour. We lived in all those canyons. We had friends living all the way to the beach; I spent a year at Trancas, right on the beach. I lived next door to Cheech - neither one of us worked a lot that year. I stayed in Laurel Canyon for a little bit, but I never had a house there, probably because everybody else did. Don and Glenn had a house there on Kirkwood, which was the Eagles rehearsal house. I lived further east in Beachwood Canyon and we had our own gang, the Beachwood Rangers. Harry Dean Stanton lived up there and Kristofferson lived there. Why did you stop recording in the 1980s? It would take all day to tell you the reasons and I wouldn't even be sure of all of them. I had plenty of money coming in and there were a few things I hadn't done that I really wanted to do - I wanted to go to New Zealand and ski; I wanted to spend more time in Hawaii. I wanted to build a house - I built my dream house in the Hollywood Hills. You've talked about the rise of MTV being a factor. The album I put out in '84, "Home by Dawn," we made a video. I got a great director, Martha Coolidge, and I got great people in it - Madeleine Stowe, Harry Dean Stanton. It was pretty a cool little video. But I wasn't a huge fan of music videos because I thought they encouraged an excess of production as opposed to a real focus on the heart of the music. And at that point videos were becoming the priority. People I knew were thinking about the videos while they were writing the songs, and it didn't appeal to me. Did you keep writing for other people during that long hiatus? I had a couple very big records during that period. Mike Campbell and Don Henley and I wrote "The Heart of the Matter," which was a huge hit for Don. A song of mine called "I'll Take Care of You" was on that "Wide Open Spaces" Dixie Chicks album. A few years ago you started recording again. Why did you start back up? There wasn't any one thing - I just felt like I had something to say. I had moved to Nashville and, to tell you the truth, I was really getting lonesome for hearing jazz because that's what I grew up playing. I was a jazz drummer and a tenor sax player when I was a kid. There are so many good jazz musicians here; Music City is not all country music. You described your new album, "Midnight in Tokyo," as "saloon music." Well that's for want of something to say but yeah, I always liked it when Sinatra said that. Not only a type of song but also a vibe as well, a way of playing things that's dark and casual but still a little bit off-hand, masking the tragedy.