HUNTINGTON – You can count on one hand the number of rock bands forged by high school friends still making a living in music decades later.
Iconic rock acts such as: U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Boyz II Men, and Radiohead are some of the few and the proud. One of the longest running units is America.
America was formed up in 1970 by Dewey Bunnell, Gerry Beckley and the late Dan Peek – three high school buddies and sons of U.S. Air Force soldiers stationed in London, England. America struck gold out of the gates. The first song they released “Horse With No Name” shot to No. 1 and is still their biggest hit. Crowned the Best New Artist at the 1972 Grammys, America has been riding around the globe on a string of hits ever since.
Equally influenced by The Beatles and The Beach Boys, America, known for their melodic, cinematic songs and distinct harmonies, has recorded more than 20 albums, with six going gold and platinum, and has notched 47 singles including such sing-along FM radio staples as “Sister Golden Hair,” “I Need You,” “Ventura Highway,” “Don’t Cross the River,” “Tin Man,” “Lonely People” and “You Can Do Magic.”
As part of the 85th Marshall Artists Series season, Mountain Health Network Presents America in concert at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 1 at the historic Keith-Albee Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $76, $87. $98 and $109. To purchase tickets call the Marshall Artist Series at 304-696-6656, or order tickets online at ticketmaster.com. You may also visit our box office location in the Joan C. Edwards playhouse on Marshall University’s campus anytime noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Back Out On the Road For The 50th Anniversary Tour
Speaking by phone, America founder, Dewey Bunnell, whose teenage-written hit “Horse With No Name,” put the British-birthed band of Yankees on the map, said they are ecstatic to be back out on the road on their 50th Anniversary Tour after it got derailed by Covid shutdown nearly all music tours around the globe in 2020.
“This show was supposed to be the kick off for the 50th anniversary tour before the whole Covid crisis shut us down so it feels good to finally be able to get back and bring this thing full circle,” Bunnell said of the 17-month touring hiatus was the longest of their half century career. “It’s definitely the longest break we have ever had in our career,” Bunnell said. “We started the band in 1970 right out of high school and have worked ever since. We were a trio in the beginning. Our third member (Dan Peek) left in the late ‘70s and sadly passed away in 2011. In that entire 50 plus years we have never been off the road and have never taken a lot of breaks. This was different, scheduling was impossible, and it was a real ordeal as it has been for everyone in the world not being able to work. But you make the most of your time.”
While Bunnell said everyone enjoyed the unexpected time with their families that everyone in the band was more than ready to get back together to connect with each other, the music, and the fans.
“We never look the gift horse in the mouth,” Bunnell said. “We always have a lot of gratitude for what has happened in our lives and careers. I had no ambition to be some big music success. Things clicked for us in a way that has been wonderful. We have had our share of ups and downs and personal strife, but Gerry and I focus on this is as what we do. We don’t have another profession. It’s still exciting. It is still fulfilling, and we still have something to offer. We don’t live in each other’s pockets. We have wives, kids and grandkids and when we come together to do this it was such a great reunion. To start this up was fantastic. What about this, wouldn’t we be excited about?”
America began tour rehearsing in July, resumed the tour on Aug. 13, and are now on a run of shows from Nov. 18 up through their final 2021 date, Dec. 10 at the storied Town Hall in New York City.
“When you’re off you make the best of your time but as far as the music and connecting with our guys, we’ve been having a wonderful time,” Bunnell said. “We’ve got 40-plus shows under our belt so we’re a real well-oiled machine and ready to go.”
Known as a die-hard road band and racking up a hundred or more dates a year for decades, America has gotten choosier with touring as they have aged, Bunnell said.
“I remember one year we were booked in Anchorage Alaska in January,” Bunnell said laughing. “You remember the commercial, geez Mikey will eat anything. Well, we were the band that would go places. Our band is very compact and for an international band we tread very light, eight guys and we can get in and out. We play any number of indoors and outdoors venues, casinos and theater and you name it. It’s great. We are really enjoying it and the people are coming out and we are grateful for that. We didn’t know what to expect and if crowds would come out, especially for our demographic. We are old guys, but we are taking care of ourselves and doing one show, one day at a time. We know that if anyone of our band tests positive for Covid, it shuts it down for 10 days.”
Playing To New Generations of Fans
While the majority of their crowd may be the original LP-buying, bell bottom jeans-wearing crew, Bunnell said they also get a lot of multi-generational fans and families coming out to vibe on their timeless music whether or not the person in the crowd found the band through the 2007 album, “Here and Now” with such guests as My Morning Jacket, Ben Keller and Ryan Adams, or rocked out to “Horse With No Name,” featured on the 2004 hit video game, “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” or discovered the band when they heard “Ventura Highway,” in the 2006 Warner Brothers film, “We Are Marshall.”
They are excited to share their music with students at Marshall and to be a part of the stories Marshall Artists Series 85th anniversary, Bunnell said.
“It’s an honor to know that performers like Marcel Marceau and artists we love like Tony Bennett have played the Artist Series, Bunnell said. “They’ve had a great eclectic bunch of bookings. We feel for fortunate to maintain this generational timeline where our fans are bringing their kids and grandkids. For things like ‘Grand Theft Auto’ or a movie or TV show that’s a bonus and a real compliment. We tend to set the mood in a period piece about the 1970s. We were very honored that ‘Ventura Highway’ was featured in ‘We Are Marshall,’ and when we had to cancel that March show we were as upset as the audience, so we are glad it has come full circle. The Marshall plane crash was a tragedy that is incomprehensible and to have our music in a film that is so poignant is really nice.”
America: In The Beginning
Bunnell said this 50-year celebration, which includes “America 50: The Half Century Box Set,” has caused he and his life-long musical partner Gerry to take a moment to really appreciate their incredible creative life together.
America’s genesis was a deep love of songwriting and vocal harmonies fueled by growing up in the late 1960s during a rock and roll revolution happening on both sides of the pond.
“Only looking back do you get a good perspective of your life, and it was just an amazing thing as these American teens living in London at the end of the 1960s,” Bunnell said. “My parents moved us over in 1966 and it was a golden time for British musicians and getting to see it from the British perspective. The music scene in England was blowing up and we were sponges and go see live music all the time… We were influenced immensely by The Beach Boys and The Beatles, primarily for the songwriting and the vocal harmony aspects which intrigued us. That concept that the sum is greater than the parts… Every voice is unique, like fingerprints, so if you can find two or three voices that blend together it is a magical thing.”
Armed with three songwriters in the band, gave America the ability to create songs that may have come from different places and people but that worked well together for the band.
“I think I attempted to be a real, what you called a cinematic, songwriter from the beginning telling a story that you could visualize,” Bunnell said. “You have three or 3 1/2 minutes to express something, and I always approached songwriting that way and that has been a good complement. Gerry writes the more internal, love songs and ballads and I write these visual, outdoorsy songs. I’ve always been an outdoors guy as we were moving around on these Air Force bases. The one thing my brother and I always had going was trekking around in the desert and going fishing and so that arises in a lot more of my songs.”
Teaming Up With The Fifth Beatle – George Martin
With Peter Jackson’s much-anticipated Beatles documentary “Get Back,” being released Nov. 25, Bunnell said a bit of nostalgia washes over them as they think fondly back on their time creating and making music with iconic British producer, composer, engineer and conductor, George Martin, who from 1962 to 1970 produced 13 albums for The Beatles. His last production with them was the single, “Get Back,” which would be placed on the last Beatles record, “Let It Be,” produced by Phil Spector.
After America gained early success with two Bunnell-penned songs like “Horse With No Name,” – their first and still their biggest hit – and then a top 10 hit with ‘Ventura Highway,” off the second album, the group took home the 1972 Grammy For Best New Artist. With some wind behind their sails, they dialed up Martin, who was coming off his historic run with the Beatles.
“That was another magical thing of having been in England. We had co-produced our first three albums ourselves but when the time came to really need a producer we said let’s shoot for the top and at the time George wasn’t doing a lot and we had some steam behind us and we got a meeting, and we hit it off right away knowing the British sense of humor and it was run and right away a great relationship. We made seven records with him and remained friends right up until his passing (2016). We really didn’t pick his brain about The Beatles, but we met them all individually and I remember we used the instruments they used on ‘Penny Lane’ and Yellow Submarine’ that were just in the studio storage room and that was great. We’re like, ‘oh this is the ‘Yellow Submarine’ bell.’ It got used once but it being The Beatles was never out of our minds any time being around George. He was such a regal and fantastic personality and we looked up to him like a father figure. He ran a really tight ship and was sensitive to our songwriting and played the keys on some of the songs and it was a wonderful period of our career.”
Their fourth album “Homecoming” and the first with Martin, cut at AIR Studios in London and released in 1974, produced two songs they still sing every night, “Tin Man,” and “Lonely People,” both which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary Charts.
During the following years with Martin, those gents that had grown up on a string of U.S. Air Force bases, did what they did best, stay in motion, and with Martin producing their records through 1979, recorded in California, at Caribou Ranch, outside Nederland, Colorado, in Kauai, Hawaii and in Montserrat, West Indies. The California sessions produced three songs still in their 50th anniversary set lists, “Sister Golden Hair,” “Daisy Jane” and “Woman Tonight.”
“He really wanted to travel,” Bunnell said of Martin. “He had worked in England at Abbey Road and EMI and when he blossomed out, he was in a position that he could carry his comfort zone with him always using Geoff Emerick (his audio engineer), and his right hand man and so Gerry and Dan and I we were those transient kids and transient adult virtually traveling all of the time and you work wherever you are… when we were working in Colorado it was in the mountains at Caribou Ranch and the air was thinner and it was in the cold of winter. Then after that (1976) we recorded a whole album on the Hawaiian island of Kauai and they didn’t have a studio, George had a mobile studio barged over from Honolulu and parked it. We spent a lot of Warner Brothers money on that. Interestingly, we had never recorded in New York until ‘Here and Now’ (2007). We were always a West Coast band by virtue that when we left England after the first album, we parked ourselves in L.A. because that was where it was at and we worked at the Record Plants in L.A. and San Francisco and we were traveling already at that point. I understand that some bands like all of their work to come out of one room for that drum sound and that vocal booth, but I loved the traveling, and every production was a postcard in our mind.”
Riding On As a Duo Into The New Century
Although Peek would depart in 1977 to become a Christian rock artist, Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell have motored on as a duo and in the 1980s chalked up a smattering of charting hits including their 1982 smash single, “You Can Do Magic.” It would be the last of their run of 11 top 40 singles in the U.S. during the 1970s and 1980s.
While they have still scored a number of Top 40 hits abroad in the years since, America has stayed on the road and have been in recent years getting accolades for their enduring legacy. They were inducted into the Vocal Music Hall of Fame in 2006 and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012.
As anniversaries have been notched, Bunnell said they have taken the time at each juncture to celebrate the occasion with eight thoughtful curated and extensive compilations since 2000 including a 40 Years box set and one celebrating their string of hit records for Warner Brothers. Bunnell said for the 50th Anniversary box sets, they have been really blessed to have one of their colleagues Jeff Larson go back through the Warner Brothers vault and dig out some incredible nuggets from past recordings, including a to-be-released recording with the late George Martin conducting and performing.
“Jeff is a great musician and really took it upon himself to do some archive raking,” Bunnell said. “We gave him the reins and Warner Brothers opened the vault up for all the masters. He was a real bird dog about this, and he sniffed out every track and outtakes and like there would be six vocal tracks and he would pick out something different and a lot of gems for the listeners who are really into it. He found a lot at the Poison Oak sessions which is the only time I had a home studio up in Northern California and we had a bunch of songs that I had completely forgotten about. I was personally really excited to hear and hopefully some of the listeners will be interested too. Right now, we just finished up a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl in 1975 with George Martin as the opening act, playing some of his arrangements of songs from the Beatles era. I hope that gets to be included. It’s heady stuff… Jeff pulled it out and got some great stuff. So hopefully that is coming out, and there will be songs that people have never heard because they have never been available.”
