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Play it For Your Friends

 

Written: 1974

Writers: David Jenneson, Alan Hovden

Status: Published and recorded in 1974.

Genre and Style: Pop

Comments: Dave: Play It For Your Friends had a Beatles feel and flew in the face of everything every record producer had told us. Their first piece of advice to us or any songwriter was never judge the hit potential of a song by playing it for the people around you. Friends will invariably tell you it’s a wonderful song because they are being polite and in any case are not experts. Play It For Your Friends joyfully contradicted this mean-spirited rule and is ultimately about the pleasure of writing and sharing songs for their own sake. By some measure it showed we had come full circle – gone through the minefield of the recording industry and returned to what we loved most and did best. It caused a sensation at the Burner Revival and was recorded and released in 1974 by Stoney Productions.

 

Play It For Your Friends 

       Vocals - Al Hovden

 

I’ve been writing such inviting

Songs for all these years

For yellow birds and cheating words I’d

Cry a million tears

How do you tell if it will be a million seller

If it really casts a spell and this is it?

 

Play it for your friends

And if they really say they like it

If your friends say they like it

This is it

Play it for your friends

And if they really get the feeling

If your friends say they like it

It’s a hit.

 

They won’t hide it if they like it

Although your future’s all a dream

Of laughing ladies and they say he’s

Best songwriter’s ever been

Though your own guitar

Has taken you about as far

About as far as you’re concerned you’d like to quit

 

Play it for your friends

And if they really say they like it

If your friends say they like it

This is it

Play it for your friends

And if they really get the feeling

If your friends say they like it

It’s a hit.

 

Hey L.A., you seem so far away

And pity ain’t a New York City game

It seems like fortune’s wheel

Can spin without you, just the same

If your friends say they like it it’s a hit.

 

If you’re new and kind of blue at

Looking up the road that leads to fame

Look around you’ve maybe found you’ve

Got no cause to live in shame

When you find yourself with friends

And the song you’re playing ends

And you’ve somehow made them happy just to sit

 

You’ve played it for your friends

And if they really say they like it

If your friends say they like it

This is it

Play it for your friends

And if they really get the feeling

If your friends say they like it

It’s a hit.