INTERVIEW: ‘Goldbergs’ has love for 38 Special tune
Photo: The Goldbergs recently featured the hit 38 Special song “Hold On Loosely.” Photo courtesy of ABC / Provided by press site with permission.
Don Barnes, guitarist and vocalist for the classic rock band 38 Special, may not have had the chance to meet his fans this past year, but he still wants to throw a party. What’s the occasion? Well, the band’s most successful album, Wild-Eyed Southern Boys, featuring the hit song “Hold on Loosely,” turns 40 years old this year.
Barnes and company celebrated the milestone in a fitting way: They watched The Goldbergs on ABC, which featured “Hold on Loosely” on a recent episode. “It’s been a long road,” the singer said in a recent phone interview. “I was just reminiscing with someone else about how much you listen back on these records, and you can hear the younger guy and how hungry and desperate we were. I don’t think people hear that, but I hear it. I hear the attempts. It’s a daunting task to try to keep yourself relevant in the music business for 40 years. I hear the desperation.”
Barnes even admitted that at the end of the song, there’s some over-singing, which four decades later, he simply laughs off. “I hear that because we had to have it,” he said. “We were behind the eight ball. We had three albums that went over the cliff. ‘Hold on Loosely’ was on our fourth album. People think it’s our first one.”
The band’s official biography boasts of more than 20 million record sales, no doubt thanks to “Hold on Loosely” and a string of other hits, including “Rockin’ Into the Night,” “Caught Up in You” and “Fantasy Girl,” among others. The band, which used to also feature Donnie Van Zant, tours the world on a regular basis, at least in the pre-COVID-19 days. Of their many successes, “Hold on Loosely” has stuck out above the rest.
“Every time we would go into the studio, we would have a stack of songs, and that was one more,” Barnes remembered. “I thought it was a little too simple. Sometimes the beauty is in the simplicity of something. The verse is the same chords as the chorus.”
Four decades ago, Barnes, Jim Peterik and Jeff Carlisi met together at a house in Chicago. They sat at the kitchen table, and this hit song ended up becoming the first song they ever wrote together. Barnes said that Peterik had mapped out little pieces of the tune, but he was unsure if it was going to fly. “Songwriting is a very insecure thing,” he said. “You meet someone you don’t know, and they’re saying, ‘What do you have?’ You pull out your little sketches, and you have this and that. It’s kind of an insecure thing. You don’t really know what can happen.”
At this time in Barnes’ life, he was going through a rough relationship. As he put it, he was trying to be somebody, but it wasn’t working out. He had written down a note about people seeming incapable of celebrating one another’s differences and learning tolerance. Partners are always trying to change their loved ones rather than accept them for who they are. Then the words “hold on loosely” came out, and another person finished the sentence with, “but don’t let go.”
“It was a perfect couplet for that song,” he said. “We were off to the races, talking about how that can spoil a relationship by clinging too tightly, being overprotective, that kind of thing. It was a simple bit of advice, and people commented all these years that it was a good piece of advice. I look at it as just a little, tiny view into a personal relationship and how things can be different if you think about it.”
Barnes said it was fun to watch the song climb the charts 40 years ago, especially because the band felt like they had paid their dues with their previous albums. “By the time success comes your way, you’re kind of tired from trying so hard and being that desperate,” he said. “It was fun to watch it climb the charts and get played everywhere. It’s become an anthemic song for the band. We save it for the end because it’s the best one.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
38 Special, featuring Don Barnes, recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of their hit song “Hold on Loosely.” Click here for more information.
