the Hold Out album, which directly followed Running on Empty, is TERRIBLE--shows the negative effect cocaine can have on an artist, I think.
On that we do agree. It seemed such a lame attempt to write a bunch of songs that sounded like his previous "hits". I assumed it was record company pressure at the time; I didn't realize it was his coke period.
"It's a helluva drug."
I don't think it was the beginning of that period by any stretch. If you listen to Running On Empty, there are many veiled and not-so-veiled references to cocaine (hell, there's a song called Cocaine on there), but I think it began to affect his creative talents most profoundly after that album was recorded and continued to do so for a good while. He still had hits (Hold Out had several, and Somebody's Baby from Fast Times... was huge) but they weren't of the quality he'd produced in the early to mid-70s.
