DON EVERLY: HEARTACHES AND HARMONIES
PCC Talks With The Everly Brothers Legend
Well, I’d forgotten some of the stuff, you know. They started talking about cuts and they were asking me who had written this and who done that and I really had to set down and scratch my head [chuckles], because I hadn’t heard some of these things since the middle-60s. And I was pleasantly surprised, to be perfectly honest. We did a lot of experimenting. Phil and I, we just never bothered with the categories. We just did what we wanted to and sometimes it led us into areas that maybe weren’t so commercial, but it was something we did. PCC: As far as transcending genres, were you conscious at the beginning of bringing some of the R&B and rock influences into the country sound you’d grown up with? DON EVERLY: I think that was just unavoidable. We were working as singers, country musicians, with our Mom and Dad. We were the Everly Family. We were down in Knoxville, Tennessee and it was very country, real country. In fact the boss of that thing, Cas Walker, the “Cas Walker Show” we were doing, he didn’t think we were quite country enough. I guess we were beginning to show those influences. Because the rhythm-and-blues, you could hear it on the radio and we’d turn those stations on. And then our father was really, basically, a blues singer. He played the blues and sang the blues. That was his thing when he wasn’t working on radio, doing the country stuff. And I guess we were influenced by it, as were a lot of kids, growing up. PCC: As far as these tight harmonies, was that the result of endless practicing since you were little or was it something you were born with? DON EVERLY: Our Dad, he was working on radio, when I was about four or five. And I could sing a bit, so when I was six or seven, he worked with me. And Phil came along and he grew to the point where he could understand what was going on. I think I sang harmony first, I’m not sure. But Dad had it in his mind. That was the day, also, kids were kind of a novelty on radio, having kids sing. We started down, on Christmas, to the radio show, Christmas morning, singing Christmas songs. Then, all of a sudden, we had our own radio show. I had little show called called “Little Donnie,” on Saturday afternoons, in Shenandoah, Iowa, for a year or so. PCC: So was there ever any thought of any other kind of career? DON EVERLY: No. Nothin’. It was difficult to make ends meet in the music business then, but that’s all we ever did. That’s all Dad did. PCC: When the rock ‘n’ roll thing took off, so many people thought it was just a fad. Did you have any idea it might be a timeless form? DON EVERLY: Well, I’ve always thought, when I listen to music, and I love something, a piece of music, I don’t care what it is. I don’t fall out of love with it, because I get older. In music, when something touches you, you always have a place for it. There was a time when rock ‘n’ roll was considered high school music and as soon as you went to college, you had to listen to folk [chuckles]. I never understood that, myself, because when I heard Little Richard and Bo Diddley and all that, I knew I’d love it for the rest of my life. And I still do... to this day. PCC: Was your father supportive of that kind of music? Or did he think it was wild and crazy? DON EVERLY: We were working every morning. We were singing together. So when I started writing songs, I was writing real country stuff. I was a big fan of Hank Williams. I was writing real tearjerker, cheatin’ songs, when I was still in high school, 16, 17 years old and didn’t have any experience whatsoever about this. But I was writing from the material I knew. And I was getting to sing Hank Williams songs. And Phil and I did a lot of duets. And so our Dad was always encouraging us. And he didn’t look down on anything. And he loved rhythm and blues. In fact, he introduced me to it, in Chicago. I can remember going with him down to Maxwell Street, listening to some street musicians and things like that. I was really very small at the time. He loved that kind of music, in fact, in early mornings, when he would be singing by himself downstairs, he sounded like an old rhythm-and-blues singer. That was him. He was taught to play the guitar by a black man, Arnold Schultz. PCC: Arnold Schultz? DON EVERLY: He’s really overlooked. He also ran into Bill Monroe, this fella. He was a musician who traveled around, but was very talented, evidently. Dad followed him around and learned chords from him and some other things. But also Bill Monroe did, too. Bill Monroe’s told me that. Up in Kentucky. I never even got to meet Arnold Schultz, unfortunately. PCC: With all the early rockers, the Everlys, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Elvis, Ricky Nelson, was there a sense of camaraderie or competition? DON EVERLY: Oh, no. I mean, you would go out and stage and you’d only do like three numbers. It wasn’t really competitive. In fact, that didn’t really enter into it. But there was camaraderie. I didn’t really know Gene Vincent. But Buddy Holly was a dear friend. And Eddie Cochran was a good friend. And The Crickets still are my dear friends. I got to meet a lot of people. Bo Diddley is a friend of mine, I’m proud to say. And Chuck Berry. And I know Little Richard. [Chuckles] LaVern Baker. I remember Clyde McPhatter. I hung out with these people. And it was the rock ‘n’ roll world. And that’s another thing about the rock ‘n’ roll world back then that people have forgotten. If you were a rock ‘n’ roll singer, you were an outcast. You were on the outside. You weren’t on the inside of things. They hated us. There was not a real big love, universally, for rock ‘n’ roll. PCC: So how did that show up in your life?
Well, you’d do an interview and most people are so hostile. I hated doing interviews, because they would always tell me how they didn’t like the music to start with, they had to do this. That’s how they would start things off [Chuckles]. These were the music writers who used to be writing about big bands and stuff. And they hated it, because it took over everything. They didn’t like it. PCC: Did you find it baffling when they were talking about it being devil music? DON EVERLY: Yeah, I did. But there was an awful lot of pounding of chests and pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth back then about everything, the length of your hair or the way you would act. Youth was certainly not idolized, like it is today. You shut up and you spoke when were spoken to, until long into your 20s. PCC: Do you think that’s one of the reasons that rock took off, because it was a reaction against those sorts of things? DON EVERLY: Well, there was a bit of that. But I didn’t ever feel it as something against anything. I just loved it. I never felt, “This is something my parents are going to hate, so I’ll do this.” There’s maybe some of that today - “This is a way to shock people.” But I didn’t really think of it that way. They used to talk about the lyrics with like “Roll with me, Henry” and lyrics like that. But that didn’t even faze me anyway. It was the beat and the sound of it. I didn’t think of it as lascivious. I didn’t see it. That wasn’t what I was thinking about. The music was just sort of ear-catching, as far as I was concerned. It touched me. PCC: What about the touring, like the Alan Freed tour? Those were supposedly pretty wild. What were those days like on the road? DON EVERLY: We never actually went on the road with Alan Freed. We did those Christmas shows that he used to have at the Paramount. We did those three years in a row. I used to watch the year come in from my room at the Sheraton-Astor Hotel, while we were doing five or six shows a day. But I went on tour with the Show of Stars, which was Irving Feld, who had the biggest touring company of rock ‘n’ roll artists and stuff. I enjoyed it. We used to fly with Irving. We didn’t go on the buses too much. And Irving taught me an awful lot about good dining and things like that [chuckles]. And I enjoyed my life. New York City was a quite a place back in the 50s. You had Dempsey’s and all of that. I know it dates me, but I’ve been around [laughs]. And that Sheraton-Astor Hotel that I stayed in for weeks on end, it seemed like, the chef and the people working at the hotel were from Ile de France and the menu was in French and I learned all about it. It was quite an education, besides being able to play the music that I did. PCC: And when you played the music, I understand that, like at the Paramount, it could get kind of out of hand with the crowd reaction. DON EVERLY: Well, there some really enthusiastic kids, but nothing really crazy. One time, there were shots going off in the audience, I remember, in downtown L.A. somewhere. But people were different then. I don’t think it was quite as mean-spirited. PCC: It really was a more innocent time? DON EVERLY: I think so. Oh, yeah. PCC: And the whole aspect of being a teen idol, was that a burden at all? Was it just fun? DON EVERLY: Well, it was really kind of crazy. But we were also country musicians and we were on the Grand Ole Opry, at that particular point, also. We would play the New York Paramount with all the kids, the screaming and the yelling and the throwing the lipstick, all kinds of stuff. But then we would come to Nashville, play the Grand Ole Opry to families. They would hoot and holler at the end of this thing and we would do encores and I really felt more at home and more comfortable at the Grand Ole Opry, because we would play with our recording band. The band that we would cut the records with, would be with us on stage. Whereas, in New York, I was playing with a big orchestra and arrangements and things. PCC: Did the Grand Ole Opry, the Nashville establishment, give you a hard time over the rock stuff? DON EVERLY: Well, to get drums on there, we had to hide them. We were one of the first they allowed to have a trap set. They allowed us to have the drums and hide them somewhat behind the bass. PCC: Is it true that Ed Sullivan once introduced you incorrectly? Yeah, I think he did that to everybody, though [laughs]. We were on there quite a few times. One time, I remember, he said, as an afterthought, he said we were from North Carolina. He was quite a character anyway. He was Ed Sullivan. And that’s just the way he was. PCC: When the huge crest was happening, in the late 50s, were you thinking about the future and how long this might last? DON EVERLY: Well, I think I was just callow as any youth, man [laughs]. So you don’t think about those kinds of things. Sometimes there was a serious side of me that used to worry about the future. I’ve since figured out you can’t do anything about it anyway. So you just try not to be too foolish. You can wreck your life, real early, real easily, especially in the music business. Too much notoriety. Too much money. And too many people notice that you’ve got a lot of money. And too many people notice that you’re famous. They didn’t have the things that are available to young people starting in the business now. You were at the mercy of the business. The people running the business didn’t really love rock ‘n’ roll. They didn’t really look at it like, “Gee there might really be some gifted people amongst these people.” Their attitude tended to be, “Let’s use this and, while it lasts, get as much as we can out of it.” There was a lot of that. But there were some people that loved it, too. PCC: With all the pitfalls that come with the success, how did you manage to survive all that? DON EVERLY: Well, I didn’t almost [laughs]. A lot of luck. You can get killed traveling to a gig. Sometimes you get killed because of drugs. There’s a lot of pitfalls. I’ve had my close calls, of course. Most everybody that I know has. That particular edge of rock ‘n’ roll. Living on the edge. PCC: In the mid-60s, the British Invasion driving American artists off the charts, did you find a touch of irony there, the fact that so many of those bands had been influenced by the Everly Brothers? DON EVERLY: Well, yeah, it was strange. But it just sort of seemed inevitable. But one thing, I was working in England about that time. I spent an awful lot of time there. I was still working. The thing, it’s funny how the English accent and the hair really turned Americans’ heads. And they also thought that, if you had an English accent, you were extremely educated. They didn’t realize it was Liverpool where this started, not Oxford. PCC: Is it true about you being offered some of The Beatles material before they broke in the U.S.?
Well, first of all, what they did was good and everything. But we didn’t want to cover someone anyway. It was not my forte. not the thing that I did. We did “Lucille,” but long after Little Richard’s hit. It was a year or so afterwards. But we never recorded something that somebody else had just released. That almost happened to us, actually, with “Bye Bye Love.” A couple people tried to cover us, in the country field. And I thought our career was over. They had done it before to other people. I thought, “Well, you cut something wonderful, you get this break and somebody comes along that’s famous already, cuts the same thing, copies everything you do, and releases it.” That happens a lot in rock ‘n’ roll. Pat Boone had a career of doing that. [Laughs]. And that wasn’t what I did. It wasn’t what Phil wanted to do either. A record’s a record. We interpret things, always did. PCC: What happened to the “Bye Bye Love” covers? DON EVERLY: Well, they went by the wayside. We made it to number one in country and the pop field. PCC: You also heard “Lay Lady Lay,” long before Dylan released it? Did you not want to record it then? DON EVERLY: We were all sitting in this dark room, in Greenwich Village, just talking. It really wasn’t a business meeting. [Laughs] “Oh, give me that song, I want to do it.” It wasn’t that kind of atmosphere. But actually, we did do it later in life. Bob was around at that time, came to the Bitter End, where we were playing. And my favorite album that he ever did was “Nashville Skyline.” PCC: In the later 60s, you were doing a lot of great material that wasn’t getting a lot of airplay. Was that terribly frustrating? Or did you just accept it as the nature of a career arc? DON EVERLY: Well, it wasn’t what I wanted. I would like to have been a part of that particular thing. But I felt, and I still do, that it had to have that edge of danger at that particular point, it had to be cool. And it was that period of “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” And they wanted to die young, before they got old. Of course, any rock ‘n’ roll that happened before that was nothing they cared to hear about. Rock ‘n’ roll had been reinvented. ‘64. Strangely enough, 10 years into building a career, you couldn’t get arrested, almost. PCC: Some of the 50s rockers tried anything to fit into the changing times. You and Phil stayed true to your basic sound, even as you experimented, musically. DON EVERLY: Well, we didn’t succumb too much. I had my hair changed and our clothes changed. But everybody’s in the world changed. PCC: But your music always maintained its integrity. DON EVERLY: I wonder, I look back sometimes and wonder if I should have done something differently. But I followed exactly where I thought I should go. We wrote together. Phil and I wrote some of our best material together in the 60s. PCC: The decision to split... DON EVERLY: Well, it’s a terribly frustrating thing, you find yourself on this treadmill that’s not going anywhere. Actually, The Beach Boys and I were talking. I said, “The 70s, we took 10 years off.” They said, “We should have. There was disco!” PCC: Was that a reenergizing period for you? DON EVERLY: Yeah. When you consider that we’d been working together since we could remember. You need some time alone to find out who you are, yourself. PCC: You did excellent solo work that didn’t get the attention it deserved either. DON EVERLY: Well, the public didn’t want to hear us solo. First question they would always ask, “Where’s Phil?” [Laughs] It’s like being a twin, in a way. But I’m okay with it. PCC: Are you really okay with that? Don’t you hate that after a while? Well, you know what? You can only hate something so long and then you get over it. People are that way. They’re not going to change. I’m sure McCartney always heard the question, “Well what about you and John?” It’s going to happen. That’s the way life is. People are curious about that. People start talking about me and my brother, I always say, “Do you have a brother or a sister?” [Laughs] They say “Yes.” So I say, “Well, then you understand.” Everybody has a family. And I think we did quite well to survive this long. Actually, I think we’re singing as good now as we ever have. And that, to me, is the most important thing, to be able to go out there and still come off stage and feel like we’ve done it. We’re not recording right now, but we’ve had a good year. And we’ve had some of the best dates ever. I’ve played these places a lot of times before and I thought, “Well, gee, the crowd seems to be better. It’s more rewarding, more fulfilling. I have a great band. I really can’t complain.” I could be doing a lot of things that would be a lot less interesting. PCC: Off-stage how does the relationship work? DON EVERLY: Oh, it’s fine. He lives in California and I live here in Nashville. [Laughs]. No, he’s going to get a farm down here. We’re talking about getting some horses and things like that. It’s fine. PCC: When you came back, had the big reunion triumph in England, did you expect more commercial success from the subsequent recordings? I really felt that “Born Yesterday” was one of the best albums of recent years. DON EVERLY: [Laughs] Well, thank you. Well, “Born Yesterday” [the title song became a big country hit] gave me an inkling that we really should have gone into the country market. We should have pointed it towards that, instead of the rock. I mean, we should have gone country. But I’m still a bit of a rock ‘n’ roller. Phil is. But now you could get away with it. Maybe 10 years ago, when we started back, you couldn’t have. But I thought we did some good stuff there. PCC: Now country has moved so much in the direction of roots rock. And so many country acts sound a lot like early Everly Brothers. DON EVERLY: I know, it’s amazing to me, too. Some of it I like. Some of it, I don’t. It’s beginning to look soap opera-ish to me, some of it. There’s not much difference sometimes, between one and the other. But it sounds like sour grapes, if I say that. I like country music. Vince Gill is wonderful. Clint Black. I like all that. PCC: You’ve achieved so much through the course of the career, do you still see room to move forward, to accomplish more? PCC: I write now. I was writing quite a bit a couple of years ago. And I’m still sitting on that. I don’t know quite what to do with it. I thought of doing some basement tapes here at the house. I don’t know. We’ll see. Buddy Emmons and I are talking about working together in that area. I’m doing a gig here in Nashville with a group of musicians. We were called The Dead Cowboys and we were around 10, 15 years ago locally here, when I wasn’t working with Phil. And we had a lot of fun playing together. We even did some Everly stuff, but did it with different arrangements and things. PCC: But no touring for The Dead Cowboys? DON EVERLY: [Laughs] No, it’s sort of for our own amusement and amazement. PCC: New records with Phil on the horizon? DON EVERLY: There are no plans at all at this point. I think it would take a producer with an idea of how to approach it. I’ve sort of been wanting to cut a country album. But I don’t even know if I’ll do that. PCC: Well, you’ve got more than 100 cuts on this Rhino collection and it just leaves the listener hungering for more. DON EVERLY: [Laughs] Well, I appreciate that. I really do. I’m happy that Rhino did this. It’s kind of a look back. And it’s good. Everybody else seems to have had one out there, a box set. So it’s nice that Phil and I have one. And I like the people at Rhino. They seem to be devoted to the material that they’re working with. It isn’t superfluous. They really do put some thought into it. And they’re excited about it. PCC: The shows you do now, there are classic rock acts who seem to be going through the motions, your sets sound so fresh and vibrant, how do you manage that? DON EVERLY: Well, I think it’s the band we have. We have a real band. Phil and I also, regardless, we grew up in that business and when you walk out on stage, you’re supposed to do your best. It would be embarrassing to not be up to par and snuff, because they’d say, “Gee, they’re getting too old to do it, aren’t they?” [Laughs] As long as the audience is saying to me, “Gee, it sounds really good and I felt so good experiencing the show,” then I’ll continue. Right now, it seems okay. We’re not opera singers. But our voices, when we’re singing together, are strong. I like the way it sounds. And when I get discouraged, I look over and there’s Buddy Emmons, there’s Albert Lee and the rest of these guys that have been working with us for years now. And we have a crew and sound people that have been with us for 10 years. Everybody’s devoted. And I love going on the road with them. It’s like a field trip with your best friends, driving on the buses and flying. I’d rather go on the bus, to be perfectly honest. I enjoy it. PCC: So you’re never too old to rock ‘’n’ roll. DON EVERLY: I don’t think so. I really don’t. Especially, Phil and I, because we love to do country. We could call ourselves the old Blues Brothers. PCC: A lot of people complain about the rock world having become too corporate. Is that the way you feel? DON EVERLY: Well, I think it has. To launch a career takes an awful lot of power and money. I don’t know, I don’t have to mess too much with a corporate structure. We’re pretty much self-contained. We don’t have a manager or anything like that. We have a nice agent. We don’t need a bunch of lawyers involved in our life. PCC: In the 50s and 60s, there was so much creativity happening in rock. Is that still out there now? DON EVERLY: Occasionally I hear stuff coming through. But now you read about in People magazine before you hear it on the radio. There’s so much media stuff going along with it. And you’ve got to have a video. PCC: For you, is music still rewarding in the same ways? DON EVERLY: I don’t know. You get a little jaded, as you get a little older. Don’t you? I think so. But there are times I still enjoy it. Some of my best times are working. It’s not that I just love being on stage. It’s just once I psych myself up, get out there and do it, I always feel like I’ve done something, which is an important thing. You feel that you’ve accomplished something, doing something that you’ve done so long and it still works. That makes you feel good about yourself. PCC: With all the artists who have been influenced by your work, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, the box set, does it make you feel like an institution? DON EVERLY: [Laughs] Well, sometimes I do. Then I get to thinking, “Well, I don’t want to feel old and over the hill.” I don’t know. I appreciate the people who make my day sometimes by coming up and telling me how much they’ve enjoyed the music, the songs. Like you say, “Born Yesterday,” that makes me feel good, because it’s something I had written more recently. Maybe that’s the appeal of walking out on stage and taking them back. Because you know, some of them are skeptical sometimes. I think maybe the audience at the reunion was more nervous than we were. They wondered, “Oh, God, will they still be any good?” [Laughs] When the audience likes it, I come out of there feeling so good. |
