Musician Souther still his own man

John David Souther wrote or co-wrote some of the most definitive country rock songs of the ’70s and ’80s, performed by almost all of the genre’s defining artists: the Eagles (“Heartache Tonight,” “Best of My Love”), Don Henley (“The Heart of the Matter”), James Taylor (“Her Town Too”), Linda Ronstadt (“Prisoner in Disguise”).

Raised in Texas, Souther, 70, moved to Southern California in the late ’60s, and fell in with struggling musicians Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey, with whom he briefly played in the duo Longbranch Pennywhistle.

He dated well (Ronstadt and Stevie Nicks), and released a handful of solo albums. In 1979, he had a hit of his own, “You’re Only Lonely,” an experience he found disquieting. Souther took a two-decade break from recording a few years later. He moved to Nashville, married and divorced, and released an unexpectedly jazz-inspired comeback, “If the World Was You,” in 2008.

Thanks to an extensive catalog of copyrights that includes more recent songs on multi-multi-platinum discs from the Dixie Chicks and the Eagles, Souther can do as he pleases. He tours occasionally and sporadically acts (he played industry insider Watty White on the TV series “Nashville”).

In a recent phone interview from his Nashville home, Souther talked about a variety of topics. Following are excerpts from that conversation:

On whether the prospect of fame made him unhappy

I don’t know if I’d go that far. It was never really a goal of mine. I never really had a Plan B, but if I had one it would probably be: stay at the college I went to and still be teaching music there, and playing drums with a jazz trio on the weekend at the Holiday Inn. I think I would’ve been happy in that life, too, but I struck out for California, as a lot of people do when they have curiosity and ambition. Four or five years later, people were cutting my songs, and I was getting checks in the mail that were surprisingly large to me.

On his semi-reinvention as a jazz musician

I’m not sure they all came with me on that one. The people who were attached to the country rock of the ’70s, which it seems to be called most of the time, I’m not sure they were quite ready for me to make an album with a jazz sextet with 13-minute songs on it, and a lot of complicated solos. But I loved the record. I wish it had sold more.

On his first album with Longbranch Pennywhistle

I listen to it now and think, “That’s not very good.” I think (it lacks) the maturity to know what to leave out, and what’s the appropriate investment for a song of any particular topic. Jackson Browne said to me once, “It’s a big song about a small story,” and I knew exactly what he meant. There’s a way to invest the (big) stories with more detail and more length. It just sounds immature to me. I’d only been writing for a couple years, and that was the first bunch of even decent songs.

On whether he is still close to the musicians he came up with

I’m very close to (Ronstadt), I’m still very close to Jackson, I talk to him all the time. Don and I keep sending each other the same silly emails we always have. Probably the person I saw the least of the last few years, to my regret, was Glenn. It hit us all very hard that he died. I was his first partner, he was my first songwriting partner and best friend. When we were just babies we did a lot of really crazy stuff for no money, just for anyone who would let us play.