His name may not be a household name, but John Hiatt is the force behind many popular singers and bands – and Mike Elliott has written a book of the singer-songwriter’s life.
For longtime WIZS listeners, the answer is yes, OUR Mike Elliott. The Oxford native and former program director and operations manager of the radio station, who spent more than a decade on the local airwaves, got caught up in a different medium – writing stories, reviews and now a book which chronicles the life of someone he has admired for many years.
The biography, Have a Little Faith: The John Hiatt Story, is set for release on Sept. 14, but pre-orders can be made now, Elliott told Bill Harris on Wednesday’s Town Talk.
“It’s great to be back on the radio,” Elliott said. He left in June 2001 to continue his career, which ultimately took a turn to print media on sort of a whim.
“I’ve always written for fun,” Elliott said. Then one night while writing, he decided to submit a story to Bitter Southerner, a nationally known online publication. A few months later, he got word that the story he’d written about growing up around music and loving music would be published as part of its folk life collection. That was a few years ago, and Elliott said he branched out from there to include album reviews, among other things.
The research for this biography was done by phone and Skype, Elliott said, thanks to COVID-19. Which turned out to be sort of a blessing in disguise – everyone he wanted to interview would normally have been on the road and hard to catch up with. But not during COVID-19.
“It made people slow down, take stock and reassess,” Elliott said of the pandemic. “And they were home – not touring. So they said, yes, they’d talk to me.”
Elliott was a teenager when he first learned of Hiatt. He said he was probably watching the music video channel VH1 when he took note of Hiatt’s voice – it was an “amazing raspy, soulful voice,” Elliott recalled.
The more he listened and learned, the more he was enamored of this man called John Hiatt who was writing songs for the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Suzy Boggus and many others.
“The man is a powerhouse – he’s writing all this stuff,” Elliott said, adding that the song “Have a Little Faith in Me” has been recorded by many singers and is considered a current standard.
And it’s that song that Elliott said encapsulates Hiatt’s story of resilience, hitting rock bottom and coming back better and stronger.
His first two records weren’t great, Elliott said, and his record label dropped him. From there, he got gigs playing at colleges – even standing atop a table in a cafeteria singing for students eating all around him.
There were some other twists and turns that brought him to seek treatment for substance abuse and addiction – read the book to find out details – and that’s when he wrote “Have a Little Faith in Me.”
Hiatt, sober since 1984, was writing it about himself, Elliott said. “(That song) gave him the strength he needed to go forward.”
Big-time names like Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy all have recorded Hiatt’s songs. And although his name may not be a household name, Hiatt’s songs are probably familiar to many.
Hiatt’s story isn’t the typical rags-to-riches type story of a musician who hit it big, lost it all, then climbed back up the ladder of success. No, Elliott said, Hiatt’s story is about someone who was “kind of fair to middlin’, cleaned up and became artistically huge.”
Elliott said he was very pleased when Hiatt’s management team helped clear the way to talk to the artist himself. “I was planning to write the book without him…but I did want his personal take.” He said he was indebted to the 69-year-old for his contributions to the book
“When he started opening up about his life, he gave me stuff that he’d never given anyone before. He felt like it was time to just tell it,” Elliott recalled, for which he is grateful.
You can place pre-orders for Elliott’s book from online retailers or visit michael-elliott.com to find a link to purchase. The book also will be available on Audible. Listeners to the audio format may recognize a familiar voice – Elliott will be reading the introduction.