They're Playing My Song is a column by Bruce Pollock, where he focuses on the one song that had the greatest impact on a particular artist or songwriter's career. Here, he speaks with Michael Des Barres.

Michael Des Barres:Holly Knight and I were signed to Mike Chapman, who produced my solo album, I'm Only Human, and Holly was in a band called Spider. She was then a fledgling songwriter and Mike thought it might be cool if he put us together. I had just gotten off heroin and was the obsessive person that I remain to this day - it's just that now I'm obsessed with good vibes and wheatgrass, so my obsessions have changed, but I'm still a compulsive. In those days I was getting off narcotics, so the word obsession was being thrown about a lot in my life. How do you deal with an obsession? Which gave me the idea for this lyric. But I knew I couldn't just write about drugs, because I wanted to write something that would reach a wider audience than just junkies - which wasn't true of my earlier career. So I tied in the idea of romance and a love story. I'd seen a movie called The Collector about this man who kidnapped a girl and kept her. So hence the line, "I will collect you and capture you. Like a butterfly."

We were working at Holly's house, rather than Mike Chapman's office. I've never worked in an office. I try to avoid offices. Orifices, yes, offices no. What's interesting about a new collaborative effort is that you bring your best game. It's like a first date. You want to be the best you you can be. And that's what I brought to the couch. I was going to say table, but in this case it was a couch. We really started to work right away. The niceties of life - the small talk - was not the mood one wanted to set for that song. As a writer, I'll write down a couple of notes each day. Hopefully every hour. Preferably titles. And then I expand it when I collaborate to include the intricacies of the story. In this case I had an outline of what I wanted to say, but it just so happened it coincided with what Holly had also in her vault of ideas. So we put this together real quick. It was the first thing I laid on her and she picked it up. If she hadn't, we would've gone somewhere else.

I was on guitar; she was on the keys. She's also a very interesting guitar player because when she does write on guitar, she'll just play the bass string, the low E-string. So she just gets a beat. She played the bass line on the low E-string, I played the guitar, and we got that groove, which is so catchy. There was no struggle, no argument. None of that. I think the best work I've ever done as a singer or an actor is in one take. Because you're not thinking, you're just doing it. And as a result there's a great deal more honesty and authenticity to that song and that moment and that feeling. With the spoken word aspect I wanted it to have a certain drama to it. I wanted it to be listened to. So we put it on the phone right away to Mike, and I think we were in the studio within hours, because it's an obvious piece. It's "Who do you want me to be to make you sleep with me?" I mean, how codependent is that?

Unfortunately, even though Holly and I put it out as a single, there was no entity that would support just one song. "Ladies and gentlemen, here he is, singing his one song..."

But our version came out on the soundtrack for a movie called A Night in Heaven. By the time I heard about the cover, a year later, it was almost #1. I was in the Power Station [The band, not the record studio - they had a hit with "Some Like It Hot" and played Live Aid] and we were kind of busy, but it shot up so fast. I felt very happy about it. I never got to meet Astrid Plane, but Bill Wadhams [of Animotion] and I have crossed paths. He's a beautiful guy, very grateful to the band. And they did a terrific job. The song gave them a career, which I was also very happy about. They got a significant reputation, and they had a couple years on top. That's a wonderful feeling, to be somehow responsible for that.

Holly went on to have a great career as well, but it was as if our relationship began and ended with that song. As for me, the phone has never stopped ringing. The phone has been ringing since I was 16. You could say "Obsession" played a part in it. You could also say that playing Murdoc on the biggest show on television played a part in it. You could say that my performance at Live Aid played a part. Look at the IMDB. There's the impact. The proof of the pudding is in how much work I've done.

March 18, 2015.
You can pre-order Michael's new album The Key to the Universe at iTunes.
Get more at michaeldesbarres.com.

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