Gerry Beckley of America – The Torchbearer of Memorable Soft Rock (INTERVIEW)

Forty-six years is a long time to maintain a healthy working relationship with someone but Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell have done it happily. Forming America in London in the early 1970’s, the two young Air Force brats were heavily influenced by folk-tinged harmonies and alongside Dan Peek brought their soft-rock melodies to #1 on the Billboard charts with their debut 1971 self-titled album, which featured the #1 single “Horse With No Name,” plus “Sandman,” “I Need You” and “Three Roses.” The 1972 follow-up record, Homecoming, featured the Top 10 hit, “Ventura Highway,” and the band just kept rolling along from there: “Tin Man,” “Lonely People,” “Sister Golden Hair” and seven consecutive albums with the legendary Beatles producer George Martin.

In 1977, Peek left the band but America continued as a duo, enjoying another Top 10 hit with the catchy “You Can Do Magic” in the summer of 1982. Today, they continue to tour, continue to sell out venues. Not too bad for a gossip-avoiding, good-guy imaged couple of guys making music.

Beckley, who released his first solo album in 1999 with Van Go Gan, is readying a new record for September. Titled Carousel, Beckley said the twelve songs “came from a wide scope of inspiration.” Never lacking for creative outlets – he writes, he plays guitar and piano and bass, produces – it’s not a surprise that he did Carousel virtually by himself. “With a solo project I’m really a committee of one,” he said recently. “There’s only myself to please. Having said that, it’s not always easy.” Beckley’s son Matthew helped on production as did old friend Jeff Larson and a few other special guests.

“I come from the era when an album was the normal listening experience,” Beckley continued. “Today, the notion of making a listening experience that’s twenty minutes or longer has been pushed to the side. People think it’s old-school, but to me it’s really valid.” Hence the songs on Carousel flow in musical harmony. From the opening upbeat track, “Tokyo,” through “Minutes Count,” “Lifeline,” “Widows Weeds,” the Gerry Rafferty cover “To Each & Everyone,” to the crescendo of “Serious” and “Carousel,” there is a sense of a story of life going on. “If you write from your heart, it doesn’t matter what other people say. If it’s fastened to some fiber inside of you, you know it’s going to mean something.”

Glide caught up with Beckley in New York City last week on a day off from the America tour and talked with him about his upcoming album, the music of America and if the goody-two-shoes image was really true.

You have this wonderful new album that is coming out in a couple of months. How did you find the time to do this with all the touring that America does?

You’re right, it has to fit somewhat in the gaps. But I’m a writer and I guess writers write so I kind of come from the need to write ten to get two. So I write quite a bit so there is never any shortage of material. I don’t say time is the enemy but time is really the challenge, how to make use of that time. I’ve moved from the house now but I had a studio there up until recently so that helps if you have a studio in your backyard.

Did you just kind of go in when you were home?

Yes, exactly. And I play most instruments so I don’t have to rely on getting the band together to record, although there is quite a few guests on this record. But I am adequate at most of the instruments so if I get a little window of time I can usually put it to tape and get something recorded.

Since you play all the instruments, is that easier said than done?

Well, there’s absolutely no substitute for interaction with other players. I’m still a huge fan of that. And when you tend to have the one mind play things – I’m playing, for example, the bass, the guitar and the keyboards – it’s usually one approach. It’s hard to put into words but it goes together very well because it’s one guy conceiving it all. But there is something to be said for interactions so there is a bit of that too. It’s not just, you know, a completely solo record.

Did you produce this one?

I produced it but I had a couple of additional friends. My son Matthew has helped and also Jeff Larson in kind of an Executive Producer capacity and helped me assemble it, cause there’s always quite a few parts that need to be put together. So I certainly had some help, some very important help.

Is it easy to have that perspective, to know when to edit yourself?

You know, because I’m not really in any rush to do these things, you can sit with things for a while, you can listen for a few months. It isn’t like, oh the whole thing was done in a one or two week session. There is none of that. You tend to become a little overindulgent when you’re your own boss but I’ve got better at that.

The songs that ended up on Carousel, were they mostly newer or older songs?

They are all different. Some are brand new, some were earlier compositions that I maybe just hadn’t finished and finally got around to finishing them. There are three covers. I always like to record a few outside songs, things I’ve kind of learned and loved over the years. So I would say all of the above.

What is the newest song?

The newest might be something called “Serious.” “Lifeline” is pretty new.

Do you ever worrywart over creating songs?

No I don’t because I’ve always got quite a few going on so if I dry up a little bit on one tune I put it aside and if I come back to it a few months later I go, “Oh, I know why I stopped on this one, it needs a bridge.” So time can give you a little bit of a breather. But no, I don’t worrywart about them.

“Widows Weeds” is very different from all the other songs on the record and is almost Appalachian by nature.

Yeah, it was a dream. “Widows Weeds” was actually a dream, one of those things where you actually dream a full song and very often you wake up in the morning and you go, “I’ll never forget that. It was really clear.” And then it’s gone. In this case, I dreamt the lyrics and everything and I woke up in the middle of the night and kind of hummed it into my little iPhone and that’s kind of how I heard it. I did have to make a song out of it. I had to write the bridge and the coda and stuff but the basic gist and the melody, it sounded like the movie Cold Mountain, a film from a few years back that Jude Law starred in where he played a returning Confederate soldier. Jack White had a little part in it and there was some music in there that was kind of Appalachian and I always loved that stuff. I used to live in Virginia so probably a little bit of that mixed in. But the gist of it was a dream, which sometimes happens. A famous dream song, not that it has anything to do with this one, was “Satisfaction,” how Keith says he woke up, played that into the tape and then fell back asleep and he forgot he did it and was playing the tape back and there was “Satisfaction.” It wasn’t quite that drastic but you know what I mean (laughs).

How do most of your songs come together?

Because I write both music and lyrics, they can come from anything. They can start as a melody with absolutely no lyrical idea or they can come from a line of words that just really inspire you. So I do both. I scribble melody ideas into the voice recorder on my phone and I scribble lyrical ideas onto the notepad. So it has become a lovely tool in all ways to get ideas down. Some songwriters are just purely music and they have a lyricist they work with or the other way around. But in my case, it can really come from anywhere.

You cover Gerry Rafferty’s “To Each & Everyone” on Carousel and you’ve said it’s one of your favorite songs. Why did it always appeal to you?

For those who were fans of Gerry, and we lost Gerry [in 2011], but it was a very early album of his. This was his first solo album about 1970 or 1971 and it sounds like such a summation, such a farewell tune for at the time a guy that was very young. It just shows you the power of a song. I’ve loved it since I heard it. His album was called Can I Have My Money Back and the entire album was one of my favorite albums. It’s hard to make a complete listening experience on an album but that album start to finish was one of my favorites and that particular tune, I think, was my favorite from the album. So I’ve always kept it in my head and heart and when I had some time I cut it. And to be honest, my arrangement is virtually his arrangement. If anything, it’s an ad for that album. I always like to point people to that record and it was before Stealers Wheel and before his later solo career when he had “Baker Street” and those hits. But I just loved the tune. And again, he was a young guy when he wrote it and I fell in love with it but it does sound like a much older person’s song now. It sounds like a farewell, you know.

Do you miss the way albums used to sound? How you could take an album and put it on from beginning to end and have this whole experience? You don’t get that anymore.

Yeah, we don’t anymore. Albums on vinyl used to be Side 1 and Side 2. We used to sequence the opening track for Side 1, the closing track for Side 1, the start of Side 2. That was a wonderful thing and I really think it was up to the artist to make a listening experience. When we address this topic now and say, “Oh, the days of the great albums are over,” I think it’s really on the artists’ shoulders to make an album worth listening to. What they normally do is make a collection of songs and they frontload the thing with the most popular so you get the first, second and third songs, which might be the best-responded-to, and then the album kind of dwindles from there. I think it’s still possible but it’s somewhat of a dying art.

Do you see anyone around today who has a chance at having a fruitful career forty to fifty years down the line like you have?

Well, there are a few people. I don’t go see many acts, just because we do so many shows ourselves. But I remember from one period, I’d seen only one band in two years and I saw them twice and it was Wilco. I love Wilco, I love Jeff Tweedy and I know some of those guys. It’s not a new band but it is an active, recording, touring band that I always like to mention if I can. And those are very often really full listening experiences, those albums, and they’re really wonderful.

Talking about the album experience, you start the record with a very catchy tune yet you end on such a very serious vibe. Why did you choose to end it that way?

Well, “Carousel” is kind of a life lesson kind of tune and a carousel goes around and records go around so I liked the kind of thought of that – round and round we go.

On “No Way I’m Gonna Lose You,” there is some very fine guitar on that one. Did that start off as a guitar riff or melody?

No, it was Dan Wilson and it was one of the only co-writes on the album. Dan Wilson is a wonderful singer/songwriter who was in Semisonic and has written for Adele and the Dixie Chicks and it’s the only thing I’ve co-written with him. But he brought the germ of that song and then I ended up recording it over a few weeks. Although I’m not playing all of that, there’s a lovely Hammond Organ on that track, but I love that it sounds like a live thing. That’s me playing all those different guitars and stuff but to me when I listen to it, it just sounds like five guys bashing it out in a studio. So I think it was successful in that regard. And also, I love the tune but I’d rather tip my hat to Dan in that case cause it was his seed there.

I don’t think people realize how good of a guitar player you are. When did you first start playing?

I started playing guitar when I was ten. I started piano when I was three. So I’ve been playing a while but I would label myself as adequate on most of these instruments, meaning I never spent too much time getting beyond the need of my own writing capabilities. Once I could play the chords and licks that my mind was telling me to write, I never really had any desire to cram more notes or technique into it. My favorite guitarists are very often ones with the simplest of things – Jeff Beck, Joe Walsh, people who are far more melody-based than shredders.

Do you prefer an acoustic over an electric?

You know, I think both. Fundamentally, we grew up as Beatles fans and from a very early stage, The Beatles were writing with acoustic. Certainly from “Hard Day’s Night” through “Help” and stuff, some of those great pop tunes, three minute masterpieces, were based on acoustic guitars. And I love that combo. But of course there would usually be an electric solo over the top or something. So I think both. I don’t prefer one over the other.

What do you remember most about recording the first America album?

We were very excited. We did the whole thing, I think, in a week or two. It was basically our live performances that we co-produced but those songs were the gist of what we performed live: “Riverside,” “I Need You,” “Three Roses,” “Sandman.” We had a high school buddy come in and do some drums, which of course we didn’t have in the show at the time. But both Dan and I overdubbed the bass. It was a very simple album and I think to it’s credit it’s really held up. Also Ken Scott, the engineer, who was at the time on a roll with doing David Bowie’s Hunky Dory and shortly after, Ziggy Stardust and stuff. So we were very fortunate to fall in with the right people.

You’ve been real lucky on that end. You had George Martin. Could you ask for anyone better?

In that case, we had been producing ourselves for a few records and it was becoming a bigger and bigger job. So we thought, okay, let’s turn it back over to somebody to steer this ship. We looked at the top of the list and said, “Well, let’s start at the top and work our way down.” We called George and we didn’t have to make another call. He was into it and again very blessed, seven straight projects we did with him, including a live and a greatest hits. We had a great deal of fun with George and a great deal of success: “Tin Man,” “Lonely People,” “Sister Golden Hair,” some of our biggest hits were produced by George.

In your opinion, what do you think his genius was?

There was no doubt he was an invisible hand throughout all of the Beatles projects, as different as every one of those albums was there just seemed to be somebody steering the ship, keeping it on course. So when I am asked, what did we learn from George, I usually say focus because by this time we were twentysomething year old kids with the world at our feet and you could really kind of get lost in your choices. And George taught us how to focus again. “Where are we headed with this?” “What are we after?” Things like that.

How different was it making your first solo album?

The first solo album was a very simple album, it was intentionally simple. The great thing about a solo record is you are a committee of one. You know, America has been many things professionally for us, but most of all it’s been a democracy where we always, when there was three of us and now when there’s two of us, it is a committee that you work together and nothing is more important to me than my partner’s opinion on certain things. So when you go off and do something on your own it works both ways. The good news is you’re your own boss; the bad news is you’ve only got yourself to please (laughs). I like that and I certainly can’t imagine doing it all the time, just being my own writer, producer and all that stuff. I love having a partner and I think the success we’ve had over forty-six years speaks for itself.

Did you ever mind being called soft rock?

No, not at all. Of course there’s a myriad of titles and now I slip into that very handy term Classic Rock, which fits. If you’ve been around as long as we have you get to wear that mantle and I proudly use that one now.

And you’re selling out shows so there’s nothing bad about it

No, no, in fact our show is better than it’s ever been

What did you think about people thinking “Horse With No Name” was a Neil Young song?

You know, it’s a funny thing. It certainly sounds like Neil Young. My bass player is always fond of pointing out that it actually came out before “Heart Of Gold” and Harvest, Neil Young’s big success. But Dewey was clearly influenced by Neil by previous albums but “Horse” as a single actually was released in 1971 in the UK so it wasn’t quite the one-two thing of “Heart Of Gold” followed by “Horse With No Name” that appeared on the US release. So I think that kind of stoked that particular storyline, if you know what I mean.

I know it’s a Dewey song but what can you tell us about “Sandman”?

We were living and working around on the base – our dads were in the Air Force at the time – and a lot of our friends or older brothers of friends were involved in the Vietnam conflict and they would come back and say that they had never slept a good day since that. It’s just basically this thing about these guys coming back from this unbelievably horrific experience and not being able to get a night’s sleep anymore.

But you know, it’s a big part of our show, second to last song, and there’s a big video, we have video onstage, and there’s a montage behind us during that that is not just war footage, although there is quite a bit of Vietnam footage. But it’s a summation of that era, which really was our era, it was our coming of age time. We were seventeen, eighteen, nineteen around that album and these are formative things, you know, moments you’re never going to lose, for better or worse.

What song in the America catalog do you think should have gotten more recognition than it did?

I don’t know, we’ve had a lot of hits and a lot of recognition. But we did have a song called “Survival” that we featured on the Alibi album that we wanted to be the single but they didn’t put it out here. It was released in Europe and went to #1 in Italy. So we thought, that’s a shame that it didn’t have an audience in the States when that album came out.

When Dan decided to leave, how did you feel and how did it change the band?

At the time, the reason he left was he had a lot of things he was focusing on in his personal and private life that really made it hard for us to work as a band. So the actual step of him stepping aside was a real plus cause we could then go back to performing and working and stuff. We weren’t just waiting on him all the time. But to his credit, he made some adjustments in his life, he went through a religious conversion and stuff and sorted out a lot of things, and we were very, very happy for him. As much as we loved the original shape and sound of the band, it was just that time and I think Dewey and I within a few years had another big hit with “You Can Do Magic” and we got through that and didn’t look back, to be honest.

Many people saw you as these All-American, almost goody-two-shoes guys. Is that true or is there a story you can tell us to dispel that image?

No, you know, we try and keep the personal stuff just personal but I think the truth probably falls somewhere in the middle. It’s never quite as clean as some people might have imagined and never as debauched, it never got Spinal Tap, if you know what I mean (laughs).

Your son Matthew is in the music business. What’s he up to at the moment?

He’s producing. He’s working with a guy named Brian [Dales], who is in the band Summer Set. He’s been working on tracks with him for the last month. He’s worked with a variety of different artists. He’s still playing a lot of guitar. He toured for quite a few years with Katy Perry but his real love is producing and whenever I can get him available, I love to work with him. But he’s a busy man.

Who was the first real rock star you ever met?

Jeff Beck. I met Jeff Beck when I was very, very young. I lived in the same town, Wallington, outside of London, where he lived and I met him in that town. I was a kid and he was in the Yardbirds, mid-60’s. Then I ended up in a video of his. I can’t remember which one but there was a music video and they had a lot of quirky, strange connections of people and I was in the video (laughs). We’ve worked with him off and on over the years. He’s a fantastic influence.

Can you tell me what it was like working with Dan Fogelberg?

A fantastic album [Souvenirs], produced by our dear friend Joe Walsh, a beautiful album. I’m honored. I play on a song called “There’s A Place In The World For A Gambler,” which is one of my favorite songs of all-time. It’s of course sad to lose Dan so early, which unfortunately is a subject that seems to come up more and more lately as we all get a bit older. But Dan was taken from us way too soon [2007 at age 56].

So what happens with you for the rest of the year?

I’m going to do some what we call promo on the Carousel project, which I’m very happy to talk about. I think I have a showcase show, there’s not any solo dates to speak of yet, but I’m going to do one show with some guests in September around the release. Then I’m off to Sydney for a month off, for most of September, and then back at it for October and November, and then we usually break a few weeks before Christmas. Just more of the same, a lot more concerts.

Are you going to slip one of your solo songs into the America show?

We might. The guys have to learn them, as I’m using most of the same band anyway, so once they’ve learned it, I might impose that on Dewey. We’ll have to see.

 Live photographs by Mary Andrews