My Peaceful Easy Feeling

When I was 10 years old, my first 8-Track was Eagles 71-75.   That 8-track lasted for 8 years, and formed the soundtrack of my teenage years.  No telling how many copies of that song I’ve owned over the years, but I’ll never forget that 8-Track my Mom bought me.

I had been vacationing in Mexico in the winter of 1991 and had been missing my girlfriend Keri while down there.  On my Walkman I had Eagles Greatest Hits and Peaceful Easy Feeling  always reminded me of her. Needless to say, I had come up with the idea of proposing to her when I got back.

After arriving back LAX I got in the car to head out.  I got to an intersection where going straight meant going to the jewelry store to get an engagement ring and turning right simply meant heading home.  Indecision and jitters were getting the best of me.  A that moment, at that light signal the song Peaceful Easy Feeling came on the radio and I knew what I had to do.

We have been married since 1992 and have two beautiful children.  PEF always has a special place in my heart.

I would like to say that at various times in my life, a variety of songs have healed me.  This is definately one of them - it brings a ray of hope, and accessibility of the dream of calmness and total happiness in the midst of dealing with life’s many chaotic moments and events.  I absolutely love this song, it has been an inspiration for me as a songwriter, an actress, a girlfriend, a daughter and a person.

I am happy to have the opportunity to tell my “Peaceful Easy Feeling” story.  I experienced the most peaceful easy feeling of my life singing this song with Jack at his tribute last weekend at Anthology.  He invited his friends to sing with him on stage at the end of his show, and my friends were mad at me for not going on stage, because they know what a musical inspiration Jack has been for me.  I found solace in simply moving chairs  to be a little bit closer and sang with all my heart with Jack and the audience “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and flashed peace signs and smiled with all my heart after singing.  I later saw Ringo flashing the same peace signs on his “Love and Peace Tour” on television.  I guess we’re all connected through the music.  Jack has been a musical inspiration to me throughout my life, as I was raising 3 sons in Solana Beach for the last 20 years.  I first ran into Jack 20 years ago at a local Chinese restaurant where he was performing.  I was the only person in the restaurant, and I was running to escape the intensity of single motherhood.  I listened to Jack and had dinner, and I went home and wrote songs all night long.  Through the years, I continuously would randomly run into Jack as he was performing at local venues.  It was inevitable that I would run into him at moments when I needed the release of writing a new song, and he musically inspired me.  I remember he said 2 things on stage that night at the Chinese restaurant that I never forgot and that gave me strength and courage through the years as I raised my sons alone.  He said something to the effect of “you’ve got to show up” and “songwriters are people that things happen to and then they write about them.”  Now 20 years later, my 3 sons have grown into very fine young men who are working hard to make their dreams come true, and I have the best job I’ve ever had.  I guess you could say I’ve landed on my feet in a certain sense.  20 years ago Jack listened to one of my demo tapes and commented that he liked my song, “Diamond in my Mind”.  I’m happy to report that like my sons who have grown into people I am proud of, my songs have also developed over time.  I am now playing for fun with a band of 3 guitars, drums, and I am on piano and sing.  The same songs that Jack listened to 20 years ago, have grown into complete songs with a full ensemble of instruments to enhance the music.  Of course, after listening to Jack and other homegrown musicians at Anthology, I have been musically inspired one more time.  I have songs dancing in my soul that are about to be born.  I want to thank Jack one more time for helping me find that “peaceful easy feeling” that is so hard to find. 

My story about Peaceful Easy Feeling is something I won’t ever forget. It started about three years ago,when I was introduced to the Eagles’ music by a good friend of mine. I was at a concert which my friend was at to raise money for a school and he was playing acoustic guitar while his friend was singing. They sang “Old Flame” by Alabama and then my friend says to the audience,”we better play a song by the Eagles because I know how much Katie likes the Eagles” and everyone in the audience went “awwww.” He played “Peaceful Easy Feeling” for me and that was the very first time I heard it. My face I’m pretty was bright red and to this day if I hear ”Peaceful Easy Feeling” my face goes red, thinking of that day when my friend played that song for me. This song has got me though many times in my life and it’s also sad for me because that friend and I are not as close as we used to be. I play this song a lot and it’s my all time personal/favorite song that the Eagles sing. The Eagles by the way are my all time favorite band and there is never a day that I don’t play their songs and sing along with them. My biggest dream right now is to meet/see them in concert. Thanks so much to Mr.Tempchin for writing this AMAZING song ! Also a very special thanks to my friend Bruce for introducting the Eagles music.

Jack:

My name is Rod Crosby.  I’m 65, have lived here in El Paso, Texas since ’59 when I was literally ejected out of  Corona, California, and landed here.  I was in my first band “Rod Crosby & The Intruders” by ‘ 60, played full time for 20 years till ’ 80.  Quit, got a job, went to self-employment till present time, but always found time to make music.

Please bear with me.  This letter is a little long, but I’m going somewhere with it, cuz it’s ultimately about that incredible song that wrote you, I mean, you wrote !!.

Just wanted to give you a little background on me so, hopefully, what I write will have more meaning when you read the rest.  At 13, I was inspired by Johnny Cash’s “I Walk The Line”, became a rocker by learning to sing and play an entire Buddy Holly album, played here in EP when native El Pasoan Bobby Fuller, of the Bobby Fuller Four was alive, a friend of mine, who made “I Fought The Law And The Law Won”, a Sonny Curtis tune, into the rock icon that it has become.

Speaking of icons, all that above said, here’s why I wrote you.  I find it difficult to put into words how much I love “Peaceful Easy Feeling”, just hearing it, over and over and over again, as I came to know it via the Eagles, but love even more, performing it over, and over, and over again, full blown band on stage, or on an acoustic, singing it for friends, or just playing it for myself.

Your song lives and breathes in the core of my musical soul.  I am more of a live performer than I am a songwriter, but I have written a couple of really good ballads, and anytime I think of writing another one, my dream and desire is to write one as incredible as “Peaceful”, exactly like yours, but completely different.

For me, your song is as a beautiful lady. Like my beautiful Goddess wife, not only do I never get tired of her, I just love her more and more everyday.  Musically, I feel the same way about “Peaceful”.  It is, without doubt, a genuine Masterpiece.  I’m sure you get multitudes of compliments on that song, but I bet you never saw, or got, a love letter sent, not to you, but to your song.  She Is A Musical Work Of Art!

Lastly, I wanted you to know that there are other reasons why the song means so much to me.  I never referenced to the song from the “boy / girl” standpoint.  Quite the opposite!  My mother, when she was young, was drop dead beautiful, her skin, so brown, and her sparkling earrings lay…….

Long story short, my parents divorced when I was 5. I adored my beautiful mother, as all little boys do, but due to extenuating circumstances, never got to be with her much from that time on.  I missed out on all that, forced to be with my dad and stepmom almost all of the time.  She tried to send for me at times, but hardly ever succeeded, broke, single, and down on her luck.

All my dad ever did, rest his soul, was hate her so, and tell me, over and over, “she let you down, she let you down. She doesn’t love you!   If she loved you, she would have you with her!”

But I never saw it that way.  I loved her too much.  When I was little, all I ever wanted was to be with her, and just sleep, slumber with her, as you wrote, in the peaceful, easiness of the desert, with a billion stars all round, not bothered by all the hatred and bitterness.  But, as I said, all that was lost.

What a woman can do your soul!  She did a number on me, for sure, as the beautiful entity she was, and still is.  She also did a number on my dad’s soul, and she never did a thing to him.  He did it to himself, because he couldn’t get past the power of her beauty, and the undying, indestructible love I had for her.   But now, I have a peaceful, easy feeling about all that was lost.  You said it so well.  Amazing!

Your song has more meaning to me than probably anybody you know, probably even you.  I wrote to thank you for creating it.  I get chills up my spine every time I perform it.

Sincerely & Respectfully Yours,

Rod Crosby

Jack Tempchin

“Peaceful Easy Feeling”

Written by Jack Tempchin

Recorded by the Eagles

“I was playing the coffee house circuit, folk music clubs, in San Diego where I grew up. A friend made a poster with quotes about me, all lies that he made up and attributed to various famous people. The poster found its way to a coffee house in El Centro, California. I guess the owner believed it, because he hired me.

It was a small club in a mini mall. It was my first time in the desert and the view of the stars was amazing. I was attracted to a waitress there, but unfortunately I guess she didn’t feel the same way about me because she went home — without me. I wound up sleeping on the floor in the club with my guitar instead of the girl. It was then that I started writing “Peaceful Easy Feeling” on the back of the poster my friend made. Some verses weren’t good at all, but I did get the phrase “peaceful easy feeling.”

I went back to San Diego where I was living in a big house with a lot of other guys, music hippies like myself. We’d sit in front of the picture window and watch the beautiful girls on the bus stop bench and fall in love with them until their bus came. We talked in those days about how love never seems to show up until you stop looking for it. But, as young guys, we were unable to stop looking for love even for one day.

I went to a street fair in Old Town and saw a girl with turquoise earrings against her dark skin. I never spoke with her but I put her in the first line of the song. I guess I was trying to distill the beauty of every girl I saw into words on paper and then into a song.

In those days I carried my $13 Stella guitar (that I bought in a pawn shop) with me everywhere I went. I wrote the last verse of the song in the parking lot of the Der Weinerschnitzel fast food restaurant on Washington Boulevard in San Diego, which is still there today 37 years later.

Jackson Browne, Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther were helping me to hook up in L.A. I was staying at Jackson’s and sitting in his piano room playing my new song. Glenn Frey heard it and asked what it was. He said he had a new band (the Eagles) that had only been together for eight days and he wanted to know if I’d mind if they worked it up.

The next day he brought me a cassette of what they had done with it. It was so good I couldn’t believe it. A few months later, they went to the UK and recorded their first album. When they got back, Glenn played some of the cuts for me, “Take It Easy,” “Witchy Woman,” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” I knew it was the best record I had ever heard.

That same year, in 1972, my girlfriend and I traveled in a Volkswagen bus across the U.S. Halfway up the California Coast, in somebody’s kitchen that we met on the road, I heard “Peaceful Easy Feeling” playing over the airwaves for the first time. It was coming out of a small transistor radio that was sitting on top of the refrigerator.

Since then the song has found a life of its own in the big world, like a kid who leaves home and does great things.”

“Peaceful Easy Feeling”

Lyrics and Music by Jack Tempchin

I like the way your sparkling earrings lay

against your skin, it’s so brown

and I wanna sleep with you

in the desert tonight

with a billion stars all around

’cause I gotta peaceful easy feeling

and I know you won’t let me down

’cause I’m already standing on the ground.

And I found out a long time ago

what a woman can do to your soul

Ah, but she can’t take you anyway

You don’t already know how to go

and I gotta peaceful, easy feeling

and I know you won’t let me down

’cause I’m already standing on the ground.

I get this feeling I may know you

as a lover and a friend

but this voice keeps whispering

in my other ear, tells me

I may never see you again.

’cause I get a peaceful, easy feeling

and I know you won’t let me down

’cause I’m already standing on the ground

’cause I’m already standing…

on the ground.

© Warner Bros Publishing/Jazzbird Publishing