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.
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'll 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
Though 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.
L.A. is so far away
You wish you'd never came
And pity ain’t a New York City game
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 maybe found you
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.
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