June 14 – Martin Helped America Make ’70s Magic

One of the smoother, laid-back hits of the ’70s had it’s shining moment on this day in 1975. “Sister Golden Hair” by America hit #1 on Billboard; the second chart-topper for the band which curiously enough was founded in Britain. Their first was their debut single, “A Horse With No Name.”

America was, as we said, technically at least a British band but one whose heart (and soon bodies) was always in the country they took the name of. The trio of Dewey Bunnell, Gerry Beckley and Dan Peek met in the UK, all sons of American military personnel stationed there. They formed the band in 1970, determined to not sound like the popular British acts of the era, and before long would relocate to California. Just as the country is known for its industriousness, so to have been the band. America is still rolling (as a duo of Beckley and Bunnell) and have put out 20 studio albums, but were most active in the early days. “Sister Golden Hair” was the lead single off Hearts, the fifth album they’d put out in under four years. Two names connected to the album remain interesting: George Martin and Phil Hartman. Hartman, later on the famous comic actor, designed the album cover (with the trio standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge); he also drew the cover of a Poco album and came up with the concept for Steely Dan’s Aja cover.

Martin of course, was world-famous by then for being the producer for The Beatles. It was the second America album Martin had worked on, evidently he was impressed by the band as he even left his traditional studios in the UK to record it with them in San Francisco. George’s touch might help explain the Beatle-esque tone of many of their songs including “Sister Golden Hair.” the effect is enhanced by the striking steel guitar on the single, played by Gerry Beckley who wrote it. He says that George Harrison, and in particular “My Sweet Lord” influenced his sound on the single.

Beckley wrote the single (as well as the next one off Hearts, “Daisy Jane”) and sang lead on it. Besides Harrison, he says the sounds of Jackson Browne were an influence on him at the time. “Sister Golden Hair” wasn’t one real person; he says he wrote it with “poetic license” and it was an amalgam of various girls he’d known and dated. It was not he stresses, about his real sister although his parents thought it was! “The must not have listened to the lyrics,” he notes, adding “John Lennon famously said ‘We don’t know what the songs are about ’til people tell us,” which also applied to America’s songs.

Whatever or whoever it was about, it was a great easy-listening summer song that spent the week at #1 before being dethroned by that year’s biggest single, “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain and Tennille.

America’s status dropped off somewhat after “Sister Golden Hair.” Hearts was their last top 10 album of new material and the single, their last top 10 until they’d have one more #1 with “You Can Do Magic.”

November 15 – America Went To…America

If you’re going to call yourself America and sing songs of the desert and California, you probably should live in America. That seemed the logical thinking of the soft rock band who released their second album, Homecoming this day in 1972.

Although their parents were American, the group had formed in England a year or two earlier and found great success with their debut album earlier that year. That one had put them on the charts with the prototypical sort of America song, “I Need You” and the oddball “A Horse With No Name” with its cryptic lyrics and Neil Young-sound-alike vocals. The platinum success of the album let them do what they aspired to – move to California and produce their next LP themselves.

Homecoming more or less picked up where America (the first album) left off, with lots of soft rock-cum-folk tunes, and vocals generally split between Dewey Bunnell (who’d sounded Neil-like on “A Horse With No Name”) and Gerry Buckley (who’d done “I Need You”) and the pair, as well as Dan Peek working on a variety of instruments. All three seemed capable on guitars and keyboards; they supplemented their sound with members of the legendary “Wrecking Crew” session musicians: Joe Osborn on bass and Hal Blaine’s drumming.

The album didn’t quite match the success of the first one, but it did fine in building up their name and reputation to the point where they won the Grammy for best new artist of ’72. Allmusic graded it 4-stars, tied with the predecessor for their best. It considers it “breezy” with a “tighter more forthright” approach to the songs than the previous one, and all things considered a “rewarding listen.”

Fans thought so too, with the song “Don’t Cross the River” being popular and “Ventura Highway” being their third top 10 single of the year both in the U.S. and Canada. That song introduced the world – and Prince – to the phrase “purple rain” and with its Southern California imagery would go on to become perhaps their signature piece. To whit, their band website is venturahighway.com .

The album got to #9 in the U.S., #21 over in their former home and got them their second straight platinum record in the States. Although the next album, Hat Trick wasn’t necessarily that when it came to giving them three hit records, they’d soon rebound and score three more top 5 hits in ’74-75 with “Tin Man”, “Lonely People” and “Sister Golden Hair.” They were helped along by former Beatles producer George Martin who worked on the bulk of their ’70s albums after this one.

While they had their last hit in the ’80s, Bunnell and Beckley still operate as America and remain popular on the retro touring scene, having just finished up a summer tour now.

March 8 – The First ‘Fifth Beatle’

The “Fifth Beatle” passed away in his sleep at the ripe old age of 90 on this day seven years ago. George Martin might never have become a household name had he not liked John Lennon & Paul McCartney’s harmonies and George Harrison’s wit.

After all, initially he called the Beatles “rather unpromising” when Brian Epstein first played a demo for him in 1962. “They had that idiotic sense of humor that I love too, and that made me want to be with them,” he later explained. Before that he’d produced mainly comedy records for the likes of Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers. And, as he says, back then being a producer meant “I was responsible for the work on that label. I had to choose not only the artists but what they were doing, make sure they were going to make a record that was going to sell.” Back at that point, Martin was largely a fan of classical music and rock & roll was rather foreign to Britain anyway, so he went in to work with them rather “blind.” That helped along the way as he went on to add to many Beatles songs, like adding the strings to “Yesterday” (initially against Paul’s wishes) and “Eleanor Rigby” as well as adding his own piano work to songs like “Lovely Rita.” He was quite a good keyboardist and expert in arranging string sections and in fact whole orchestras, as we also found out on “All You Need is Love”, . Although he was used to working with simple consoles and spoken word before the music of the Beatles, soon he got to be proficient as their producer, with his studio magic including mixing together two different recordings of “Strawberry Fields Forever” to make the single we know and the funky organ on “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite”. After the Beatles broke up, he continued to work with Paul on several of his records, like “Live and Let Die’ (for which Martin composed the movie score) and “Ebony & Ivory” but was distant from John, who said he “took too much credit for Beatles music.” Julian Lennon saw things differently though. “The fifth Beatle, without a doubt.” Although manager Brian Epstein has also been referred to as such , and later Billy Preston who played such big part in their final year as a band and the famed “rooftop concert“, it seems fair to say no one other person had more to do with making The Beatles, well, The Beatles than Martin.

He also produced hits in the ’70s and ’80s for the likes of America, Cheap Trick, Jeff Beck and Little River Band and won one of his six Grammys for his work on The Who’s stage version of Tommy in 1993. Fittingly, Martin was one of the first producers enshrined in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 1999. 

January 20 – Blimey, A Beatles Sequel, Mr. Martin?

A Beatles sequel four years after the Fab Four had folded? Well, not quite but not too far off either. America hit the U.S. top 40 this day in 1975 with “Lonely People”, a song written as a response to a Beatles hit. Not only that but none other than the legendary George Martin, the Beatles producer, produced it for them.

It was written by Dan Peek of the band, with help from his wife Catherine. Peek was probably the most spiritual of the band’s trio, and though a multi-instrumentalist talent, he wrote less of their popular material than bandmates Dewey Bunnell or Gerry Beckley. However, he hit paydirt on this one, which he wrote as a response to the Beatles “Eleanor Rigby.”

Peek said he felt emotionally “lacerated” hearing “Eleanor Rigby” and its chorus of “All the lonely people, where do they all come from?, All the lonely people, where do they all belong?” It resonated with him because “I felt like a melancholy, lonely person” until he got married, at which point “I felt like I’d won.” So he wanted to write a sort of follow-up to the song, but with a much more optimistic outlook for the lonely.

“Lonely People” was the second single off their fourth album, Holiday, after “Tin Man.” the album itself was a bit of a response to their previous album, Hat Trick, which was anything but for them. That one was something of a flop, and failed to yield a hit single unlike their first couple of albums…although they did have “Muskrat Love” on it, which would be a hit for the Captain & Tennille later. That record had been almost entirely done by them, from writing to playing to producing, and they and Warner Bros. agreed that perhaps the results weren’t optimal. So they were encouraged to get some new blood from outside and they thought big. Who better to produce than Martin?

Luckily, he agreed and recorded with them at his London studios. Peek says Martin “put everybody at ease”. Bunnell added “it was great working with George…we had that British sense of humor.” Despite being American citizens, all three of the America members were born over there. They said Martin helped them with the vocal arrangements, guitar work and came up with lots of all-round useful pointers that helped the album do far better than its predecessor – getting to #3 in the U.S. and Canada.

“Lonely People” made it to #5 in the U.S., their fifth top 10 single in three years. Bizarrely that was higher than “Eleanor Rigby”, which officially made it to just #11 there. Oddly, despite the presence of George and their own origins, it didn’t do much in the UK, failing to make the charts in fact.

America would go on to have a few more hits in the decade and early-’80s, but some of those were without Peek. He quit in 1977 to embark on a solo career in Christian music. He re-wrote this song with a few lines about Jesus added and his version made #2 on the more selective “Christian Contemporary” charts. It was covered later by Jars of Clay, while Rickie Lee Jones did a more conventional cover of the America version.

December 16 – Golden Anniversary For Golden State Songs

People were thinking about the Golden State 50 years back and Albert Hammond proved he was a better musician than meteorologist! His hit “It Never Rains In Southern California” hit the top 5 in the U.S. this day in 1972 (it rode up to #2 in Canada), by far the biggest hit record of his in North America. An interesting artist, he was born in the UK but grew up on the isle of Gibraltar and is fluent in Spanish. In fact his first musical success was playing clubs in Spain in the ’60s and after a bit of success in the early ’70s here, he concentrated largely on playing Spanish music, leading to good success in parts of Europe and the Philippines. Although he did have the one hit single, his real bread-and-butter has been as a songwriter. He’s written, or co-written hit tunes like “The Air that I Breathe” (the Hollies), “When I Need You” (Leo Sayer), “To All The Girls I’ve Loved” (Julio Iglesias) and even is given credit on Radiohead’s “Creep” which a judge thought sounded a bit too much like “The Air that I Breathe.” To top that off, he won an Emmy Award for “One Moment In Time”, a Whitney Houston record he wrote that was used in the 1988 Olympic TV coverage. His son, Albert Hammond Jr., is doing fine in his own right as a member of The Strokes.

The same day another AM radio classic also hit its acme – “Ventura Highway” by America, which was at #8. As with Hammond’s single, it did a little better still in Canada, where it got to #5. It was the first single off their sophomore album, Homecoming and quickly became their third-straight top 10 single. They’d go on to score five more, four of them by 1975. America, curiously enough was formed in Britain by mostly British-born musicians (although they met at an Air Force base so American parents were common.) However, by the time this came out they’d relocated to sunny, never rainy southern California. This hit, like their first (“A Horse With No Name”) was written by guitarist Dewey Bunnell. He says he wrote it from various images of his childhood, including odd-shaped clouds he saw along the road in California (“alligator lizards in the air”) and Hwy.1 there. There is no actual “Ventura Highway” but he was painting a picture of the one that runs through Ventura. I’ve not read an explanation of what the lyrics “purple rain” refer to, but it’s not a bad guess to suggest that one Minnesota musician might have found some inspiration in them a decade later! Bunnell suggests, probably correctly, that “Ventura Highway” has “the most lasting power of all my songs.”

March 25 – More Famous Than Secretariat

Even better than the real thing?

It’s not that unusual in pop for a song to come along that people think sounds like someone else – radio DJs had a hard time convincing people “Long Cool Woman” was the Hollies, not CCR when it came out for instance. What’s much more unusual though is for the sound-alike to knock the real one out of the top spot. But that’s what happened 50 years ago. That day in 1972 was when new band America hit #1 on the American singles charts with “A Horse With No Name,” a song many thought sounded like a spot-on imitation of Neil Young. Amazingly, it replaced Young’s “Heart of Gold” as the #1 song. To add insult to injury for ol’ Neil, America’s self-titled album did the same on the album chart, replacing his Harvest as the #1 album that week!

America were at the time actually a British trio, albeit one comprised of three young guys whose parents were all American but stationed in the UK on military duty. They were homesick for a land that wasn’t yet theirs and their name and sound echoed the other side of the Atlantic quite well. Take the hit for example. The band’s working title for it was “Desert Song” and it sure evoked more Arizona Sonora than rainy London, something they were going for. Although they at times have said that paintings they saw by Dali and Escher inspired them, writer Dewey Bunnell (who sang it as well) said it was mainly him writing memories of visiting the deserts of the American southwest when his dad was sent to air force bases there. The horse he says, contrary to the popular rumor that it was heroin, was a metaphor for a “vehicle to get away from life’s confusion into a quiet, peaceful place.” He won’t say why he wrote about setting the horse free after nine days. “Listener interpretations are far more colorful than any meaning” he had for it, he asserts. As for sounding like the Canadian rocker, he’s at various times said that he was indirectly inspired by Young creating the song and that he tried to use a different voice “so that I won’t be branded as a rip-off.”

Whether it was the trepidation over confusion about its meaning and the possibility of radio banning it (which did happen on a few stations) , or the worries of it being mistaken for a Neil Young song, their label, Warner Bros. didn’t really want it as the band’s first single. But neither did they think the other candidate for a decent radio hit on the album, “I Need You”, strike them as being the type of thing which would get America noticed right away, so they climbed upon the horse. A good thing, it turns out as it remains perhaps the band’s most-beloved song, both for their fans and themselves. Gerry Beckley, who played the acoustic guitar on this one, said recently it’s his favorite in their catalog because “it represents the start of the journey. It even says it in the song. But that’s what it’s (the band’s career) been – it’s been an unbelievable journey.”

“A Horse With No Name” would spend three weeks at #1 in the U.S., and also go to #1 in Canada, and Finland for good measure, and get them their first gold singles (in both the States and UK) and push the album to platinum status in North America. They’d go on to have one more American chart-topping single, “Sister Golden Hair” , that one sung by Beckley. Bunnell contributed largely to their success in the ’70s, writing and singing other hits of theirs like “Ventura Highway” and “Tin Man.”  However, they’d never again score a #1 album, even though their popularity endured into the ’80s and they remain as a well-loved touring act still.

November 15 – America Had A Homecoming In Different Ways

If you’re going to call yourself America and sing songs of the desert and California, you probably should live in America. That seemed the logical thinking of the soft rock band who released their second album, Homecoming this day in 1972.

Although their parents were American, the group had formed in England a year or two earlier and found great success with their debut album earlier that year. That one had put them on the charts with the prototypical sort of America song, “I Need You” and the oddball “A Horse With No Name” with its cryptic lyrics and Neil Young-sound-alike vocals. The platinum success of the album let them do what they aspired to – move to California and produce their next LP themselves.

Homecoming more or less picked up where America (the first album) left off, with lots of soft rock-cum-folk tunes, and vocals generally split between Dewey Bunnell (who’d sounded Neil-like on “A Horse With No Name”) and Gerry Buckley (who’d done “I Need You”) and the pair, as well as Dan Peek working on a variety of instruments. All three seemed capable on guitars and keyboards; they supplemented their sound with members of the legendary “Wrecking Crew” session musicians: Joe Osborn on bass and Hal Blaine’s drumming.

The album didn’t quite match the success of the first one, but it did fine in building up their name and reputation to the point where they won the Grammy for best new artist of ’72. Allmusic graded it 4-stars, tied with the predecessor for their best. It considers it “breezy” with a “tighter more forthright” approach to the songs than the previous one, and all things considered a “rewarding listen.”

Fans thought so too, with the song “Don’t Cross the River” being popular and “Ventura Highway” being their third top 10 single of the year both in the U.S. and Canada. That song introduced the world – and Prince – to the phrase “purple rain” and with its Southern California imagery would go on to become perhaps their signature piece. To whit, their band website is venturahighway.com .

The album got to #9 in the U.S., #21 over in their former home and got them their second straight platinum record in the States. Although the next album, Hat Trick wasn’t necessarily that when it came to giving them three hit records, they’d soon rebound and score three more top 5 hits in ’74-75 with “Tin Man”, “Lonely People” and “Sister Golden Hair.” While they had their last hit in the ’80s, Bunnell and Beckley still operate as America and remain popular on the retro touring scene, playing a number of shows this month in Florida.

June 14 – Golden Hair Was In Fact, Golden

One of the smoother, laid-back hits of the ’70s had it’s shining moment on this day in 1975. “Sister Golden Hair” by America hit #1 on Billboard; the second chart-topper for the band which curiously enough was founded in Britain. Their first was their debut single, “A Horse With No Name.”

America was, as we said, technically at least a British band but one whose heart (and soon bodies) was always in the country they took the name of. The trio of Dewey Bunnell, Gerry Beckley and Dan Peek met in the UK, all sons of American military personnel stationed there. They formed the band in 1970, determined to not sound like the popular British acts of the era, and before long would relocate to California. Just as the country is known for its industriousness, so to have been the band. America is still rolling (as a duo of Beckley and Bunnell) and have put out 20 studio albums, but were most active in the early days. “Sister Golden Hair” was the lead single off Hearts, the fifth album they’d put out in under four years. Two names connected to the album remain interesting: George Martin and Phil Hartman. Hartman, later on the famous comic actor, designed the album cover (with the trio standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge); he also drew the cover of a Poco album and came up with the concept for Steely Dan’s Aja cover.

Martin of course, was world-famous by then for being the producer for The Beatles. It was the second America album Martin had worked on, evidently he was impressed by the band as he even left his traditional studios in the UK to record it with them in San Francisco. George’s touch might help explain the Beatle-esque tone of many of their songs including “Sister Golden Hair.” the effect is enhanced by the striking steel guitar on the single, played by Gerry Beckley who wrote it. He says that George Harrison, and in particular “My Sweet Lord” influenced his sound on the single.

Beckley wrote the single (as well as the next one off Hearts, “Daisy Jane”) and sang lead on it. Besides Harrison, he says the sounds of Jackson Browne were an influence on him at the time. “Sister Golden Hair” wasn’t one real person; he says he wrote it with “poetic license” and it was an amalgam of various girls he’d known and dated. It was not he stresses, about his real sister although his parents thought it was! “The must not have listened to the lyrics,” he notes, adding “John Lennon famously said ‘We don’t know what the songs are about ’til people tell us,” which also applied to America’s songs.

Whatever or whoever it was about, it was a great easy-listening summer song that spent the week at #1 before being dethroned by that year’s biggest single, “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain and Tennille.

America’s status dropped off somewhat after “Sister Golden Hair.” Hearts was their last top 10 album of new material and the single, their last top 10 until they’d have one more #1 with “You Can Do Magic.”

December 16 – Albert, America Helped Public Do Some California Dreamin’

People were thinking about the Golden State 48 years back and Albert Hammond proved he was a better musician than meteorologist! His hit “It Never Rains In Southern California” hit the top 5 in the U.S. this day in 1972 (it rode up to #2 in Canada), by far the biggest hit record of his in North America.

An interesting artist, he was born in the UK but grew up on the isle of Gibraltar and is fluent in Spanish. In fact his first musical success was playing clubs in Spain in the ’60s and after a bit of success in the early ’70s here, he concentrated largely on playing Spanish music, leading to good success in parts of Europe and the Philippines. Although he did have the one hit single, his real bread-and-butter has been as a songwriter. He’s written, or co-written hit tunes like “The Air that I Breathe” (the Hollies), “”When I Need You” (Leo Sayer), “To All The Girls I’ve Loved” (Julio Iglesias) and even is given credit on Radiohead’s “Creep” which a judge thought sounded a bit too much like “The Air that I Breathe.” To top that off, he won an Emmy Award for “One Moment In Time”, a Whitney Houston record he wrote that was used in the 1988 Olympic TV coverage. His son, Albert Hammond Jr., is doing fine in his own right as a member of The Strokes.

The same day another AM radio classic about California also hit its acme – “Ventura Highway” by America, which was at #8. As with Hammond’s single, it did a little better still in Canada, where it got to #5. It was the first single off their sophomore album, Homecoming and quickly became their third-straight top 10 single. They’d go on to score five more, four of them by 1975. America, curiously enough was formed in Britain by mostly British-born musicians (although they met at an Air Force base so American parents were common.) However, by the time this came out they’d relocated to sunny, never rainy southern California.

This hit, like their first (“A Horse With No Name”) was written by guitarist Dewey Bunnell. He says he wrote it from various images of his childhood, including odd-shaped clouds he saw along the road in California (“alligator lizards in the air”) and Hwy.1 there. There is no actual “Ventura Highway” but he was painting a picture of the one that runs through Ventura. I’ve not read an explanation of what the lyrics “purple rain” refer to, but it’s not a bad guess to suggest that one Minnesota musician might have found some inspiration in them a decade later! Bunnell suggests, probably correctly, that “Ventura Highway” has “the most lasting power of all my songs.” His bandmates agree it would seem – the band’s official website is www.venturahighway.com .

November 15 – Trio Were Coming Home To America

If you’re going to call yourself America and sing songs of the desert and California, you probably should live in America. That seemed the logical thinking of the soft rock band who released their second album, Homecoming this day in 1972.

Although their parents were American, the group had formed in England a year or two earlier and found great success with their debut album earlier that year. That one had put them on the charts with the prototypical sort of America song, “I Need You” and the oddball “A Horse With No Name” with its cryptic lyrics and Neil Young-soundalike vocals. The platinum success of the album let them do what they aspired to – move to California and produce their next LP themselves.

Homecoming more or less picked up where America (the first album) left off, with lots of soft rock-cum-folk tunes, and vocals generally split between Dewey Bunnell (who’d sounded Neil-like on “A Horse With No Name”) and Gerry Buckley (who’d done “I Need You”) and the pair, as well as Dan Peek working on a variety of instruments. All three seemed capable on guitars and keyboards; they supplemented their sound with members of the legendary “Wrecking Crew” session musicians: Joe Osborn on bass and Hal Blaine’s drumming.

The album didn’t quite match the success of the first one, but it did fine in building up their name and reputation to the point where they won the Grammy for best new artist of ’72. Allmusic graded it 4-stars, tied with the predecessor for their best. It considers it “breezy” with a “tighter more forthright” approach to the songs than the previous one, and all things considered a “rewarding listen.”

Fans thought so too, with the song “Don’t Cross the River” being popular and “Ventura Highway” being their third top 10 single of the year both in the U.S. and Canada. That song introduced the world – and Prince – to the phrase “purple rain” and with its Southern California imagery would go on to become perhaps their signature piece. To whit, their band website is venturahighway.com .