Get Closer

In this song, Ronstadt is giving a guy some helpful advice: If he wants love, he'll have to open up his heart and get closer. Like many of her hits, it was written by a guy, in this case Jon Carroll, who was a member of The Starland Vocal Band ("Afternoon Delight"). Soon after the group broke up in 1980, Carroll wrote the song and recorded a demo - it works for either a guy or a girl to sing, improving its chances of getting recorded. Starland leader Bill Danoff was Jon's manager, and one night he found himself enjoying some time with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. When Harris asked what he was up to post-Starland, Danoff pulled out a cassette tape with three demos, including Carroll's rendition of "Get Closer." He played it, and when "Get Closer" came on, Ronstadt asked if she could have it. She brought it to her producer, Peter Asher, who agreed that it was a great song. They made it the title track of her 1982 album and the lead single.

The song has an unusual piano riff in a 7/4 time signature. That riff is similar to the one heard in "Fire," the 1978 Pointer Sisters hit written by Bruce Springsteen, but with the last quarter note of the second measure chopped off.

In a Songfacts interview with Jon Carroll, he told the story behind this song. It started with the riff, which he came up with during a session at Bias Recording in Washington, DC. "There's all these different types of songs that come to you, but sometimes the nugget of them just comes from somewhere," he said. "In my head, I was hearing a kind of Leiber and Stoller shout, a call-and-response type of thing. I'm sure other songwriters do this as well, especially in R&B, but when you're grooving on something and you know where you want the vocal to be, you just start chiming and hollering phonetical things that aren't words. I was hollering and I started recording it the next day on a hand-held. 'You want love,' that was the dog-bark of the tune, and then 'Get Closer' was just because it felt good phonetically. It started from there." He added: "The riff was something I didn't want to depart from because it felt so good, so I figured I'd depart by just changing the key and having the verses in a different melodic rhythm but have the bass stay the same rhythm. It brings it down to another key - it goes to the key of C from F, so that way it brings the melody out from that upper wheelhouse into more of a narrative. It's got that thing that good party records have, which is starting with a chorus and then departing to the verse - the second act kind of starts with the first verse when you start with the chorus like that."