Songwriter Gave Up “Living In The Fast Lane” And Turned To Racing
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Aug 08, 2008
Even if you don’t recognize the name, which is unlikely at this point, surely you know the songs.
They’ve been covered by some of the biggest artists in the business. The best known among them would have to be “Thing Called Love,” the sly, funky number that sent Bonnie Raitt’s career into high orbit.
But that just scratches the surface.
Songs of Hiatt’s have been recorded by musicians such as Three Dog Night ("Sure As I’m Sittin’ Here") and Willie Nelson ("The Most Unoriginal Sin,” which Nelson called “the best song I’ve ever heard"). Other Hiatt compositions that have made an impact in various musicians’ hands include “Angel Eyes,” a Top 10 hit for the late Jeff Healey, and “Riding With the King,” which B. B. King and Eric Clapton anointed the title track for their collaboration.
The list of artists who have covered Hiatt is seemingly endless. On the female side are Roseanne Cash, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Jewel and Paula Abdul. Two highly disparate icons, Bob Dylan and Iggy Pop, each have had a go at a John Hiatt song. Even Disney’s cartoon bear band sang a Hiatt tune in the 2002 film “The Country Bears.”
It’s no accident that John Hiatt has won a Songwriter of the Year award, a Lifetime Achievement in Songwriting honor and been proclaimed “the poet laureate of Nashville’s inner circle.” His appeal extends to rock, folk, blues, Americana and even country-music fans and musicians.
By the mid-1980s, about the time he released “Warming Up to the Ice Age,” a good album that he claims not to remember much about making, a lifetime of living in the fast lane caught up with him.
“Drinking and doing drugs were very much a part of my life,” he said. “I lived my life in bars.”
Hiatt confronted his excesses and completely turned himself around. He thereupon embarked on a rewarding, new chapter, doing his best work while fully embracing family life. These days he lives on a horse farm south of Nashville, Tenn., where he tinkers on race cars. He says there’s always music in the air. Hiatt’s musical tastes are eclectic, as befits a singer/songwriter who defies pigeonholing.
“You’ll hear Merle Haggard out of one corner and jazz out of another, and I’ve usually got the country station on in my race-car shop,” he told me in a 2001 interview. “It’s a beautiful cacophony that goes on out here on the farm.”
Having beaten back his demons, he channeled his predilection for the edge into oval-track auto racing. And he has won some trophies on the track, too.
When Hiatt isn’t touring, he follows “absolutely no routine” beyond a passionate pursuit of oval-track auto racing (none of his music awards are on display at the house; all of his racing trophies are).
Like the cars he sings about on the new album’s “Cherry Red” and the previous album’s “Thunderbird,” Hiatt is an American classic.
