Dan Penn – I Cut Myself Loose and I Try to Get Out of the Way
IV: I DON’T MIND BEING A SINGER-SONGWRITER, BUT PUT THE EMPHASIS ON SONGWRITER
ND: You’ve had so many great singers cover your work, but I’ve got to ask you about a couple that got away. Is it true that shortly before he died, Elvis Presley wanted to cover one of your songs?
DP: The tune that he was going to cut was “Nobody’s Fool”, which was written with Bobby Emmons. I had put out the single, and it was kind of a baby hit in Memphis. Elvis heard it, and he liked it . [Presley’s] friends would come in to me and say, ‘Elvis is gonna cut that song. He sang it again last night around the swimming pool. He loves it!’ And they were going to record it, but he got drunk or passed out or whatever or got sick or something. They never did cut it.
ND: “Nobody’s Fool” would have been a great song for Elvis.
DP: Oh man! Elvis would have killed it!
ND: The other is, weren’t you asked to write a song for Bette Midler’s movie, The Rose?
DP: The movie company had Spooner and I in L.A., paying our expenses, keeping us in the hotel and feeding us and all. And we were trying to come up with these songs for this movie that we have never seen. Bette Midler was dropping by, and she was kind of a friend of ours. Nobody would tell us much about the movie. We were left on our own to dream up songs. So “Zero Willpower” came up in that particular time. We made a tape and gave it to them, and they didn’t care for it. We said we’ll keep that one and cut it on our own. I produced it on Irma Thomas back around ’79 in Muscle Shoals. She sung it on the new record in Memphis, too. [Penn cut his own version on Do Right Man.]
ND: You started off as a performer, but then decided to work behind-the-scenes. Your records have been infrequent, and you don’t perform live often.
DP: In 1965, I just kind of slammed the door to playing live. I didn’t play live really for 25 years. I never did want that, particularly, after I got into the studio and got into writing seriously and cutting records, and I still don’t. I don’t mind being a singer-songwriter, but put the emphasis on songwriter. I don’t mind putting out records, I like to do that, but it’s whether I am going to show up to play or not that’s debatable. What that does is take up your time. When you are out there on the road, you are not getting many songs cut and not many songs written.
I love to play, and I love the feedback. After not playing for 25 years, I immediately saw the benefit to songwriting from playing out. There is something you get back from the audience that, if you stay away from it long enough, you will be starved for it. Looking back, if I had been playing, I would have been doing better as a writer. It helps. You don’t have to be a performing songwriter to write good, but I get something back that the next song might benefit from.
I really never did want to be an artist. In the very beginning I did. Now, it is not part of the plan. I guess I am a little bit…I have got a life. I would like to keep it.