Jude Warne - America, the Band

America, the Band

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Name: Warne, Jude, author.

Title: America, the band : an authorized biography / Jude Warne.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: Celebrating the bands fiftieth anniversary, Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell share stories of growing up, growing together, and growing older. Journalist Jude Warne weaves original interviews with Beckley, Bunnell, and many others into a dynamic cultural history of America, the band, and America, the nationProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019044066 (print) | LCCN 2019044067 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538120958 (cloth) | ISBN 9781538120965 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: America (Musical group) | MusiciansUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC ML421.A457 W37 2020 (print) | LCC ML421.A457 (ebook) | DDC 782.42166092/2 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044066

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044067

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Billy Bob Thornton

Jude Warne has written a very articulate, informative, and entertaining biography of the band America. It tells you all youll want or need to know about these magical cats. If youre a longtime fan, or even someone who is only casually acquainted with their music, this book will be a great read. So my job is not to blather on about my nerdy fascination with and knowledge of Americas history or its music. That is what this book is for, and it does a much better job than I could ever do. My only contribution is to impart my personal experience with them as people, and my feelings of how the music and songwriting have affected me.

My pals and I as teenagers, like many others, became aware of America upon hearing A Horse with No Name and on the first listening thinking, Wow, Neil Young has written a very different kind of song. But we very quickly realized that, even though Dewey cops to admiring and being influenced by Neil, it wasnt Neil but a new, beautiful sound. Spooky, mystical, breezy, and just downright mysterious. The radio DJ informed us this was a band formed in England called America. Pretty clever. Then of course we went about finding everything we could on them. Stuff youll read in this book. Of course we saved our pennies, and before you knew it we purchased the record and wore it completely out.

Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek burst on the music scene with a chemistry that just worked. The singing, the playing, everything about the songs seemed so effortless that they just breathed their own special thing. They had the beautiful harmonies, three distinctly different voices as lead vocalists, but a beautiful blend together. Gerry had the youthful voice, singing pop songs but with a melancholy and sometimes a darkness in the subject matter. Dewey had the trippy lyrics that we all tried to figure out... and that lonely, faraway voice. Dan Peek, gone too soon, contributed songs such as Lonely People and Woman Tonight in his own beautiful, haunting way. They were, and are, unique in their sound and writing, and yet you still hear their idols in there: the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Neil Young, etc.

Okay, heres the thing about Americatheres air around the songs. You feel it. The desert, Ventura Highway, the late night, Memphis, Sister Golden Hair. The songs take you there and put you in the same air with them. And though formed in England, we can claim them here in Southern California. Theyre a Southern Cali band through and through. You put the top down and drive the 101 from L.A. to Pismo Beach someday, and pop in an America record. Youll see. Its perfect.

These days music has been compartmentalized like almost everything else. Bands like America, Bread, and many others are considered soft rock. In my days as a teenager and in my twenties, you had Black Sabbath and James Taylor and America and Yes all on the same station. It was all just rock n roll. It still is. Labels have just been put on. America has a high place in rock history as a magical combination of singing, songwriting, and sound.

When I got to know Gerry and Dewey years ago, we became fast friends, and I finally realized theres no mystery. I know who they are: great guys who love music and know how to make it. Now read the book and find out how it all happened.

Thank you first and foremost to Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek, who created a world-changing legacy that I was honored to try to articulate and analyze. Thank you to Gerry and Dewey for their time, candor, insight, and grace. Thank you to my agent, Alice Speilburg, in particular for her editing throughout the project. Thank you to the Rowman & Littlefield team: Natalie Mandziuk, John Cerullo, Michael Tan, Kellie Hagan, Garrett Bond, and Megan Manzano. Thank you to Jim Morey and Kyle Whitney at Morey Management Group and Peter Raleigh at Raleigh Music Group. Thank you to everyone in the America story who sat for interviews during this project: Jimmy Webb, Timothy B. Schmit, Al Jardine, Bill Mumy, Willie Leacox, Michael Wood-z Woods, Jimmy Calire, Tom Walsh, John Hartmann, Phil Galdston, Jim Morey, Rich Campbell, Ryland Steen, Steve Fekete, Jeff Larson, David Peek, and Matt Beckley. Thank you to Henry Diltz, Gary Strobl, Eric Halvorsen, and Lew Walkeras well as the Bunnell, Beckley, and Peek familiesfor contributing photographs. Thank you to Billy Bob Thornton for his beautiful and thoughtful foreword. Thank you to Robert Lamm. Thank you to Greil Marcus and Lester Bangs for inspiring me. And thank you to my parents, Mary Jane and Stephen Warne, two of the most rock n roll people Ive ever met.

Peace, Love, and Success in the Seventies

Theyre such nice guys.Everyone interviewed about America the band

By the end of the 1960s, nearly every American was exhausted. The far reach of changes madepolitical, societal, artistichad left all affected. The 1970s arrived just in time, a feel-good remedy ready-made. The country wonderedwhat would happen to the work and progress of the previous decade? Where would it go? What would its torchbearers do with it? Would it all be forgotten?

And what would happen to the music?

In late 1971, a strange and spooky single began to rise to the forefront of the radio airwaves. It sounded like Neil Young and was sometimes accidentally credited to him by radio DJsbut it wasnt his song. It belonged to a new rock group, a mostly acoustic trio of teenage guys, called America. They came out of London, but they werent British. They were American, more or less: each of them had lived in dozens of different cities and countries during their childhoods due to the frequent relocations of their Air Force families. In the coming years the band would be known as a quintessential California band and hold onto that identity for its entire career. Americas debut single A Horse with No Name told the story of a man who had abandoned society because it had failed him and his ideals. He was a man who had been forced to retreat into nature. It told a true story, summing up the sentiment and desire of the youth of the United States and much of the world: disgusted and disappointed.