Benmont Tench

In Mudcrutch we all wrote songs, and when it got to the focus on Tom and the Heartbreakers, I kept writing songs, but it wasn't anything that was up the Heartbreakers tree, I didn't think - and I don't think they did, either. So I kept writing songs for the hell of it, but I didn't want to make a record just for the sake of making a record.

Whoever hired me might've just heard 'Refugee.' Well, I'm not the secret to 'Refugee.' The secret to 'Refugee' is the song. But if somebody really good calls me up to play on something because they like the way I played on 'Refugee,' then I wind up playing on another really good song.

I've always written songs since I was a kid - always.

I think we've always been better live.

We started with Denny Cordell, and he was a great record producer. He knew exactly how to take a band that knew absolutely nothing, and guide you without trying to tell you what to do.

Tom would bring in songs, Mike would engineer, and we recorded about 30 songs.

I learned that the songs that mean the most to me are the songs that I write by myself. While there were people I wrote really well with, particularly Gary Nicholson and Delbert McClinton, and I really enjoyed the experience, I came away from it feeling like I need to write by myself.

I loved Mal Evans holding one note down on You Won't See Me from Rubber Soul.

Fortunately, as we all know, it's impossible for anybody but Jimmy Smith to really sound like Jimmy Smith.

Jeff Lynne is an arranger, and I think it's probably much easier for him to go ahead and play a part himself than to try to show somebody else what he wants. But it's hard for me to say; I barely know Jeff.

I'm playing 10 feet from Mike Campbell every night. I look across the stage, there's Howie. Tom's in the middle and we're playing all this stuff I love. It's great.

What a good session musician does is listen to the song, to the artist, and to the other players. That way you can help bring out the song and help the artist express what they want to express. It's never about you stepping out and showing you can play something fancy.

If you call attention to yourself at the expense of the song, that's the cardinal sin.

Besides, I'm fairly incompetent. I can't play that fast.

I try to find little things that you can do to move the song along and things that serve the song.

I was just writing songs because, if a song shows up, you've gotta write it. I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't have any faith in my voice.

I loved working with Bob Dylan.

I think I drift toward sad love songs.

Sometimes you work with somebody you've never heard of because you just feel like working.

Working with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson takes you up another level.

I don't know about five guys against the world. It's more like five guys against these three chords, and we're gonna wrestle 'em down no matter what it takes.

I think that with Bob Dylan around, we're living in an era where we have Whitman presenting new work, we have Dickens presenting new work, we have Yeats and Shakespeare presenting new work. It's that level.

Bob Dylan's not a hype and a haircut: he's the real thing.

I got to play on a couple of records with the Rolling Stones, and that was really special to me.

I quit college and neglected to tell my dad.

You can go crazy and play solos in the right place, and that's great because it can intensify and bring an emotional lift. But the thing is you don't want to get in the way of the song.