"Hearts" by Jesse Barish

Wikipedia

"Hearts" is a song written by Jesse Barish and performed by Marty Balin in 1981, included in his debut solo album Balin.

It reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100, #9 on the U.S. adult contemporary chart, and #20 on the U.S. rock chart in 1981.

The single ranked #41 on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 1981.

Mill Valley Oral History Program

A collaboration between the Mill Valley

Historical Society and the Mill Valley

Public Library

JESSE BARISH

An Oral History Interview

Conducted by Debra Schwartz in 2018

(excerption)

1:01:00 Debra Schwartz: How about “Hearts?” What’s the story behind that song?

1:01:05 Jesse Barish: “Hearts?” I was living in Mill Valley in the late ’70s and it was at the height of my Quaalude addiction. I had a really bad Quaalude habit, and my girlfriend at the time — we were living in that house on Lovell that you saw — she said, “You need to clean up your act. You need to go to L.A. and clean up your act, ’cause I can’t deal with you anymore.” I was really quite a mess at the time. And so I went to a L.A. I drove to L.A. and stayed with my mom. This is how screwed up I was. I was going to clean up my act, but I took a hundred Quaaludes with me. A typical Marin County musician, right? [chuckles]

1:02:08: Anyway, I ended up in L.A. and I guess I hit one of many bottoms that I hit in my life. I was at my mom’s and I remember waking up in the middle of a night. I flushed all the Quaaludes down the toilet. I had really long hair like I have now and I cut it all off by myself in the middle of the night. I gave myself like the worst haircut you could ever imagine. [chuckles] And I stayed in L.A. for another month. I was visiting a friend before I went back to Mill Valley with my new look, ’cause people knew me as the long-haired guy, right?

1:02:50 Debra Schwartz: Mm-hmm.

1:02:50 Jesse Barish: Now, I was gonna come back with this like, I don’t know — it was like a bad Mia Farrow-do or something. [laughs]

1:03:02 Debra Schwartz: And you have a long narrow face.

1:03:04 Jesse Barish: Yeah. And people knew me as this — that’s the look I had cultivated. I was kinda like the John Cipollina look-alike. [chuckles]

1:03:16 Debra Schwartz: Tall, thin, long hair.

1:03:17 Jesse Barish: Yeah. Tall, thin, long-haired guy. So I stayed in L.A. another three or four weeks before I went up. I was really depressed ’cause I’m coming off all these Quaaludes that I had been taking and I was staying at my mom’s in the Valley. And I was visiting an old friend of mine, who I had played with many years before, a drummer who had passed away a few years later, whose name was Kevin Kelley. He actually was in The Byrds and his cousin was Chris Hillman. He was in the “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” version of The Byrds, which was a seminal album in folk rock, you know, what started the whole Eagles kind of vibe. Country rock was like the first of that kind of album. I was visiting him and I remember, for some reason, I had a little parking stub from a parking lot, and I started writing, “Is everything alright? I just called to say — ” I started writing “Hearts,” and I never really write the lyrics first. I always write the music first. I still have that piece of — I found it years later and I framed it and I have it on my wall. I went back to my mom’s house that night with the little fragment of a lyric and I wrote “Hearts.”

1:04:46 Debra Schwartz: Which Marty Balin put out onto the airwaves.

1:04:50 Jesse Barish: Right. That was his first big hit of his solo career, his first big hit on the EMI album, Marty Balin. When I wrote “Count On Me,” I thought it was really commercial. I thought it could be hit song. When I wrote “Hearts,” I didn’t necessarily think it was a hit, but I thought it was really unique, something about the way the melody played off the chords. And I played it. I can remember being excited to play it for Marty, and he went, “I don’t know, Jess. I don’t know if that’s one of your better songs.” [chuckles] You were wrong, Marty. [chuckles] But anyway, see, not everybody knows everything, right?

1:05:36 Debra Schwartz: No, it’s hard to know everything, but you can pretend you do.

1:05:41 Jesse Barish: Yeah, but I gave him the song, and then he ended up recording it and they did a magical version of it. It became one of his signature songs, and people to this day love that song, you know?

1:05:52 Debra Schwartz: Yes. It’s kind of one of those iconic songs.