Welcome to A Breath of French Air with Sandy Kaye. Hi, how are you today? I hope your answer is great. Will you do me a favour and cast a vote for A Breath of Fresh Air in the Women in Podcasting Awards? If so, just head to womenpodcasters.com forward slash vote.
I’d be really grateful to you. That’s womenpodcasters.com forward slash vote. Now, most of us know that the first half of the 70s was the heyday of introspective songwriting and close harmony singing.
The band America lay at the commercial end of this movement, releasing a string of hit singles that are still played on radio today. Vocalists, guitarists Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peake and Jerry Beckley met while they were still in high school in the late 60s. Today, Dan Peake has passed away.
Dewey is still on the road and Jerry Beckley, while having quit the band recently, is concentrating on putting out solo records. He picks up the story from here. Hello, how are you? I’m pretty good.
You currently live in Sydney. I’ve been here for eight years. Love it, of course.
We have a home in Venice, California. We go back and forth maybe five times a year. I’ve been coming here professionally since the 70s and it has always been the gem that it remains.
Talking about the 70s, Jerry, you recently celebrated the band America’s 50th anniversary. Can you believe that 50 years have passed? It’s an amazing number, 50. When I tell this story, I think of people who talk about their family or somebody they know that was in a job for 20 years.
Numbers like that are thrown around because they are a long time. But when you jump to like 50, that’s like your grandparent’s anniversary numbers. I’m shocked.
I’m just immensely pleased, but I’m as amazed as anybody. Of course, you were very young when the band first got together, weren’t you? I was 17 when I started. How did you handle all the fame and fortune that came your way at that tender age? Well, I’d like to think that we had somewhat of a level head about it all, but to be honest, it’s incredibly challenging.
I don’t want to sound negative. It was an amazing experience, but it truly was like a rocket ship for the first decade or so. Then when the smoke cleared and we still were together and still had a career, my God, how did we make it through that? But mostly great memories.
Obviously, if you had a number one album and single with your first ever record, that’s not the kind of you can go to the book to read how you handle that. The ground was dry, but the air was full of sound. I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name.
It felt good to be out of the rain. In the desert, you can’t remember your name, because there ain’t no one for to give you no name. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.
Look on the story and talk. You see, I’ve been through the formed in London in 1970 by American-born Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peake, and Jerry Beckley. The three young men met at an Air Force base because that’s the life they led at the time.
Yes, our dads were in the Air Force and we all just happened to be stationed in England. Dewey, my partner now, the last 40-some years, both he and I had English mothers too, so it got a little bit more complicated in that we were both half English. But the band formed in London.
Then we signed to the Warner Brothers offices in London. Because the album and single were a hit in England, they immediately scheduled it for release around the world, and that’s what happened. Why do you think that first album was such success? Well, I think it’s a pretty good album.
For beginners, I suppose, you know, the cliche is that you have your whole life to write the first album, and if you’re fortunate enough to have some success, you got 12 months to write the second one. And there’s some truth to that, but I think the strength was in numbers. There was three of us who each wrote and sang, so it didn’t fall on anybody’s shoulders.
We were all pretty inspired at the time. And the first single was Horse With No Name, which was written by my partner Dewey and sung by him. And then the follow-up single was a ballad called I Need You, which I wrote and sang.
So right at the start, we kind of established, this is a ball we’re gonna kick around a bit. This isn’t gonna be just one guy. And I think that was a good, you know, I’m not saying that was part of any grand plan, but I think that that helped us a great deal because it kind of shared the pressure.
♪ Used to laugh, used to cry ♪ ♪ Used to bow our heads and wonder why ♪ ♪ Now you’re gone, I guess I can laugh ♪ ♪ You make the best of what you left to me ♪ ♪ Left to me, left to me ♪ ♪ I need you like the flower needs the rain, you know ♪ ♪ I need you, guess I’ll start it all again, you know ♪ ♪ I need you like the winter needs the spring, you know ♪ ♪ I need you, I need you ♪ Do you think if you wrote and released those songs today, would they be met with the same reaction or was that peculiar to the times that were the 70s? Well, it was certainly of the era, but we are still in singer-songwriter territory. There are some wonderfully successful artists now that that is still basically their genre. Ed Sheeran is a great example of a guy that fills Wembley Stadium and stuff with just him and his guitar.
So I don’t think it’s a genre that’s gonna go anywhere. But songs like Horse, they’re rare things. I mean, it’s obviously that you got another one like that.
They’re so unique and rare that that’s why they’re not repeated too often. There’s just something special about them. And if we could bottle it, we’d all be better off.
Who was the horse with No Name? Dewey made up this story as a kind of a journey, in his mind, a journey he’d, as a kid, he’d kicked around in the deserts. His dad had been stationed in a couple of remote air bases in California and stuff. And it was just his memories of the sights and sounds.
But there was an ironic kind of end, that it’s not really an end of the story, but a twist in that a couple of years ago, Dewey and his wife, Penny, adopted a wild Mustang and they named it No Name. So it’s No Name. So they’ve actually got a horse now named No Name.
The second album that came out was Homecoming in 1972. And that included the single Ventura Highway. I know there’s a huge story about the meaning behind that one, Jerry, isn’t there? Yeah.
Well, there’s some fascinating things about Ventura Highway. Dewey, my partner, wrote it, wrote it in rainy England, but he was reminiscing about his dad. We were all in the Air Force and his dad had, in the family, had been stationed at Vandenberg, which is on the California coast.
And Dewey had, as a child, memories of this road. And he said, he thinks he was really kind of trying to picture Highway 1, which is the coast road. But there is a Ventura Freeway.
There’s a Ventura Boulevard. There’s no real Ventura Highway. There’s a town of Ventura.
There’s a county of Ventura. But there’s no real Ventura Highway. But that’s what he was kind of.
And in the same way as with Horse, he would, he was bringing back these memories of his childhood, you know, his time out in the desert, kicking around with his brother for Horse and Ventura Highway, the time at Vandenberg. Right, so he just got the name of it wrong. Well, I think he might’ve even known the difference.
I’m not sure about that, whether or not he changed it because Highway sounded better than Freeway to him. Yeah, I think I agree. ♪ ♪ Chewing on a piece of grass, walking down the road ♪ ♪ Telling me how long you’re gonna stay here, Joe ♪ ♪ Some people say this town don’t look good in snow ♪ ♪ You don’t care, I know ♪ ♪ Ventura Highway, in the sunshine ♪ ♪ Where the days are longer, the nights are stronger than lotion ♪ We get to 1974, 1975, and of course, you just having hits all over the place.
Sister Goldenhair was a huge favourite, not only of mine, but of your league of fans right around the world. Was she the real person? No, not, I’ve often, I don’t think I’ve ever verbatim done anything about anybody, but I do combine a bunch of things, throw them in the blender. My mom, because I have a sister who had blonde hair, said, oh, he’s written a song about his sister.
And of course, if you know anything about songs, it better not be about my sister. But no, it was just one of those things. The thing about sister that I often mention is that we’d been touring with Jackson Brown and he was, was, and is such an immense talent.
And one of the things that stood out to me was his ability to write things that sounded conversational. It sounded like somebody talking as opposed to just couplets of rhymes and rhymes and rhymes. And so that was kind of, I was trying to write a story that was a bit more sentences than lines of lyrics.
Where did you take inspiration from then? Well, there’s a lot of things going on in that song, but the intro is, it’s a nod to George Harrison. My Sweet Lord had been a huge hit, which was a lovely recorded 12-string acoustic with a slide guitar over it. So that’s where that combo came from.
And everything else, you know, it’s got, actually, it’s got some oom-bop shoe-ops, got a bit of Beach Boys in it too, in the chorus. So it’s my usual, I always say that I think we’re all a super group of all the things that have been an influence in our minds and lives and stuff. And that’s a good example of it.
Well, I tried to make it Sunday But I got so damn depressed That I set my sights on Monday And I got myself undressed I ain’t ready for the altar But I do agree there’s times When a woman sure can be a friend of mine Well, I keep on thinking about you Sister golden hair surprise And I just can’t live without you Can’t you see it in my eyes I’ve been one poor, poor spartan And I’ve been too, too hard to find But it doesn’t mean you ain’t been on my mind Will you meet me in the air Will you meet me in the air Will you love me just a little Just enough to show you care Well, I tried to fake it I don’t mind saying I just can’t make it The next track that you had a hit on in the same year, in 1975, was Daisy Jane. Yeah. Not a real person.
Not a real person. And not only that, I’d never been to Memphis when I wrote it. The opening line is, Fly me back to Memphis.
But I do recall that I certainly got Daisy Jane from Hazy Jane, from Nick Drake’s wonderful track, Hazy Jane. And I combined that with Daisy Chain, I guess, and ended up with Daisy Jane. Which, of course, is, I suppose, a girl’s name.
That’s one song that I remember the entire process because I wrote it, I had a second home in Sussex in the South of England in a little, beautiful 16th century cottage in the country. I had a little upright piano there and I used to go there to unwind and kind of detox and clear my head when I was single. And I remember sitting at the piano and basically writing the song in the time it took to play it.
It’s just one of those that fell out. And I know you’ve spoken to a lot of very talented songwriters. You might hear that on occasion.
Certain ones just occur. Other ones take a decade to hone and fix and stuff. Daisy Jane was one of those that just dropped.
And I remember playing it for Eric Carman, Rest in Peace, but Eric Carman was a friend of ours and we toured together. And when I played it for him, it was basically the same half of a song repeated once. So it’s the same thing twice.
And I had the re-intro in the middle and he said, well, what’s gonna go on there? And I said to him, George, George will come up with something. And I was a friend of George Martin who was producing this at the time. And that was one of his true gifts.
And he had many gifts as a talented steer of the ship. But one of them was he was the arranger for all the beautiful strings, the Yesterday String Quartets and the Eleanor Rigby biting quarter notes and things. And I knew that I could just turn over eight bars of basically space to George.
And he wrote a beautiful viola part for it. ♪ Flying me back to Memphis ♪ ♪ Gotta find my Daisy Jane ♪ ♪ Well, the summer’s gone and I hope she’s feeling the same ♪ ♪ Well, I left her just to roam the city ♪ ♪ Thinking it would ease the pain ♪ ♪ I’m a crazy man and I’m playing my crazy game ♪ ♪ Does she really love me, does she really love me? ♪ ♪ I think she does, like the stars above me, I know because ♪ ♪ The sky is bright and everything’s all right ♪ ♪ Bring me back to Memphis ♪ ♪ Can we keep the oven warm? ♪ ♪ The clouds are clearing and I think we’re over the storm ♪ ♪ But I’ve been picking it up around me ♪ So George Henry Martin, of course, was an English record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, and musician, who was commonly referred to as the Fifth Beatle because of his extensive involvement in each of the Beatles’ original albums.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. After the Beatles called it quits in 1970, George Martin found himself closely associated with America.
He came on board for 1974’s Holiday and stuck around for another six albums. George Martin passed away at the age of 90 in 2016. He was right up there and I’ve worked with everybody.
And I’ll tell you an interesting thing about George, because we, of course, we did seven straight albums with him. And much as we all loved the Beatles, and we knew quite a few of the Beatles, and our time with George was not to pick his brain. Also with George, George was the producer, but the engineer was Jeff Emerick, who did Abbey Road and Sergeant Pepper.
So we could have just spent, every day, eight hours of picking their brain about, tell us about the time, you know. Which we didn’t. But one time we had a dinner, and it was a lovely dinner in London, and it was George Martin and also the composer, Elmer Bernstein, who wrote Magnificent Seven and a lot of famous film scores.
And George in dinner said, let’s each name, he had a little parlor game, let’s each name our respective, who we idolize in the business, you know. Jerry Dewey, you know, your favorite songwriter. And Dewey said, well, okay, I’d probably go with Neil Young.
I think he’s probably near the top, which is not a surprise. And I picked, I remember, Jimmy Webb, who’s a dear friend and one of my heroes. And Elmer Bernstein picked a composer named Jerry Goldsmith, who I’m familiar with, but, you know, he’s one of those guys, look him up.
He did an amazing body of work for film. But it came to George who instigated this little game, and I realized I didn’t know what he was going to say, because he was the one who triggered this, the whole thing. And I thought, is he going to say Bach? I know he studied classical, you know, John and Paul, whatever.
And he said right away, Brian Wilson. And I thought, well, that’s fascinating, you know, because he, it’s almost like he needed to tell us how highly he regarded Brian and the work that they did, which just goes to confirm what we’ve all heard about that back and forth between them, between, you know, Pet Sounds and Revolver. For those of us who may not have heard about the influence that the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album had on the Beatles, the Fab Four have freely admitted that that album had a major effect on them when they were making their 67th Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
In fact, according to George Martin, without Pet Sounds, Sgt Pepper’s would never have been made. He’d apparently played it to John so many times that it got right into his head and under his skin. It was 20 years ago today Sgt Pepper taught the band to play They’d been going in and out of style But they guaranteed to raise a smile So may I introduce to you The active number of his years Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band applause & cheers We’re Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band We hope you will enjoy the show Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Sit back and let the evening go Jerry, Dan left the band in 1977.
Why did that happen? Dan was having a harder and harder time integrating our professional life with his personal. He was just not in great shape. He was getting out of it all the time.
We found that much as we all loved to party, we somehow managed to get it out on the road and do the shows and stuff. But it was actually becoming a situation where our hands were tied. We’d book a month of dates and Dan would be in no shape to go do it.
And we didn’t have an alternative. Well, let’s go out and so-and-so will sub for it. We didn’t really have that in play.
So it turned into a kind of a survival thing because it was not doing Dan any favors to allow him to carry on in this way. So we basically said he’s going to have to go sort his private personal life out because first of all, that’s priority number one. But also it freed Dewey and I up to carry on.
So we then became a duo. And Dan did sort his life out. He went on for quite a successful gospel contemporary Christian career, nominated for a Grammy.
We sung on those records, supported him and stuff. But to answer your question, he left because it was a necessity at that time. Sometimes late when things are real And people share the gift of gaps between themselves Some are quick to take the bait And catch the perfect prize That waits among the shells But pause never did give nothing to the tin man That he didn’t, didn’t already have And cause never was the reason for the evening Or the topic of Sir Galahad So please believe in me When I say I’m spinning round, round, round, round Smoke blasts stay like a Image going down, down, down, down So sad and green like a Ooo Did the prospect of going out as a duo frighten you? I don’t say it was frightening.
If anything, it kind of was exhilarating in a way because, OK, now we can go back to work. Oh, what’s that going to mean? And we had to kind of wrap our head around it because it was never part of the game plan that at a certain point, one of us is going to drop out. We hadn’t really wrapped our head around that.
But now it was a necessity. So I remember the first year, we didn’t replace him. We thought, well, both Dewey and I can play some lead guitar.
Let’s just go out and wing it. And within the first year, we thought, well, clearly it’s missing the lead guitar part. We don’t really want to add a new third guy as some guy that didn’t go to school with us that had just been kind of cherry picked.
We’re dear friends. Ironically, we’re dear friends with Timothy B. Schmidt. And we had spent the 70s touring with Timothy because Timothy was with Poco.
And there would have been a perfect example of, well, we should ask Timothy because what he did eventually, he did virtually that with the Eagles. He took Randy Meisner’s place in the Eagles. So it wasn’t like we hadn’t considered it.
We just made a decision to not, not a good idea to replace him. And you and Dewey were always on the same page with stuff like that. Yeah.
Yeah, fortunately. Yeah, absolutely. Still are, actually.
All the leaves are brown And the sky is grey I went for a walk On a winter’s day I’d be safe and warm If I was in L.A. California dreamin’ On such a winter’s day I stopped into a church I passed along the way You know I got down on my knees Then I began to pray Oh, the preacher likes to call He knows I’m gonna stay Oh, California dreamin’ On such a winter’s day You had this string of hits and returned to the top ten in 1982 with the single You Can Do Magic. Were you surprised by that success after kind of falling back a little? Did you think that your run had come to an end? It was certainly contemplated, but if you consider that there was a combination of things. First of all, I’d become a duo right as we were wrapping up our Warner Brothers contract years.
And Warner’s, I think, there’s always a live album at the end of a contract, you know, to kind of squeeze another product out of them. But there was no real talk of staying with Warner’s. So we ended up in negotiations and ended up signed with Capitol, another major label.
But they were all new. And all of a sudden we were two guys. We weren’t the three guys that everybody knew and loved and stuff.
So I think they really had a hard time deciding what to do. The music biz had moved on. There were new younger producers, new acts taking our place.
All very legit and predictable. I’ve never felt that the arc of a creative act or a person is an endless. I mean, they obviously go up and it comes down at a certain point.
So that wasn’t a shock. If anything, having a hit, you know, four or five years later, a major hit around the world was like pretty kind of far out and, you know, much needed, to be honest. Must have made you feel pretty good.
Yeah. And we didn’t write that song. That’s the only hit of ours that we didn’t write.
And it was written by Russ Ballard for us. And one of the things that Russ insisted, he was not only a very talented songwriter, but he was also a producer. And that was part of his contract.
So that one track had to be produced by him, of which he played every instrument. So Drew and I just kind of sat around and waited to sing, you know. But it all added up to a hit, which is, I guess, the end of the game.
Absolutely. There’s another one. Yeah.
Well, there was certainly plenty of them. There can be no doubt. You can build magic.
You can have anything that you desire. Magic. And you know you’re the one who can put out the fire.
You know darn well when you cast your spell, you will get your way. When you hypnotize with your eyes, a heart of stone can turn to clay. The 80s saw you guys a little quieter, didn’t it? Because you were focused more on your live shows rather than on producing new songs.
You know, once the Capitol deal was kind of tapering, they couldn’t really follow up, we couldn’t follow up. We had a hit with The Border, which was another Russ Ballard co-written with Dewey, from the next album. But after that, the hits had kind of stopped.
The good news was we had built a huge live following. And so that machine doesn’t really stop. As long as the phone keeps ringing, you think, well, if we don’t have a record deal, we’re certainly going to go out and do.
So it was during that mid 80s that it truly did morph into a live touring. You know, like a lot of these groups today, no matter how great, what’s left of the Eagles. I mean, it’s very hard to get something on the radio and charted and stuff, which we understood.
But the good news was there was no shortage of offers. So we carried on and we did for, I think, like 53 straight years of touring, which is pretty amazing. Phenomenal.
Absolutely. And when did you decide to start doing your own solo stuff? In the 90s, when we no longer had a deal, I just started amassing tunes. I had, you know, I didn’t stop writing.
It wasn’t, do was always a little bit more of a, I’ll write when there’s a need. And if there was an album due, that would be what motivated him. But he was never the kind of guy to just sit around, certainly would have a guitar nearby and just kind of what he called nurdle around.
But he was never a guy to be calling me saying, I’ve got these five new tunes or something. I, on the other hand, every spare minute was, you know, writing down something. So I ended up with a lot of material and that’s what started the solo records.
I thought, well, if in the time. And then also the advance of home studios, you no longer had to book the record plant or Wally Heiders or something at a thousand a day. And I’ve, I had a studio in my house from the very early seventies.
I just, the equipment changed as the technologies advanced. It went from a four track tape machine to an eight track tape machine to eventually ADAT digital tapes. You know, I had it, I had every version of what you would call a home studio.
And now like the entire industry, I’ve got it all on a Pro Tools rig, you know. Yeah, it’s become a whole lot easier, hasn’t it? But I’m interested to hear you say that Dewey wasn’t perhaps as motivated as you to keep up the writing. How was he spending his free time when he wasn’t on the road? He was very, was and is very much a family man.
And when, when I say when we weren’t on the road, our touring schedule basically over the years morphed into not just going away for June, July, August. We would go on a Wednesday and play Thursday, Friday, Saturday, come home on the Sunday. So you might do a hundred shows in a year.
And a hundred shows is actually double that, is usually about 200 days of work. Because if you fly on a Thursday, play Friday, Saturday, come home Sunday, four days of work. But so in theory, 200 days of work allows you 164 days off, which sounds like an immense amount of time.
But these days off are a Tuesday, Wednesday, where you’re in a coma from just having flown halfway around the world. It’s not a, you know, I mean, it was basically just recovery. You’ve blown your voice out the previous weekend.
I totally understand the dynamic of the last thing you want to do is get back in the studio. But having said that, I did write a lot and I still do write a lot. I’m just chipping away at it.
Sounds like a lifestyle for a young, fit man. Yeah. Thank you so much.
I’m trying to actually take it down a bit. This whole solo, as you might know, this is with a couple of greatest hits. This latest one is a 10th solo album.
It is. Your first one came out in 1995. It was entitled Van Gogh Gan.
Can you explain the title? Well, I was thinking of the obviously Van Gogh is Van Gogh, if you really want to be correct. But it was a morphing of, and they were quite good friends. I don’t know if you know the story of Gogh Gan.
They were competitors in a sense and worked together. And so I was using it as an artistic metaphor. And it was such an odd thing.
It was like, what does that mean? And I thought maybe that’s a good idea as a title because it catches people’s ear. From this day on, I’ll watch the setting sun As if it might be my last And as I view the change in color here I see the long shadows pass Van Gogh Gan Van Gogh Gan Peter Cripp Van Gogh Gan Van Gogh Gan Peter Cripp Gerry Beckley’s first solo work is a very clever play on the names of those two Impressionist painters. And as for catching people’s ear, enough said.
Gerry, by the way, wrote all the tracks bar one.
This is a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. Gerry Beckley has just released his 10th solo album.
The self-titled album boasts 12 tracks and Jerry says his greatest influence was Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. Incredibly, Jerry’s continuation on the musical path is now in its 7th decade and he’s eternally grateful that both record labels and audiences still want to hear what he’s got to offer. I’ve never had to twist anybody’s arm.
These albums come out when they call me and say, would I consider doing another one? That’s when I have to dive into the barrel and go around and say, OK, let’s see if we can polish up some of these. Are you still the solitary man you’ve always been? I am. I’m pretty anti-social, but I’m really doing my best to get out and about a bit.
Obviously, living in two continents kind of doubles the circle. And it’s my loss if, you know, I’m isolated and stuff. I would be out there more if I could.
I just I think from growing up in the service family and moving every couple of years, you just start to become insular and just do whatever is needed to get by. And I found that that kind of grew roots in my life. I’m getting a bit better at it.
She has to drag you kicking and screaming into things. No, not necessarily, but it’s actually hard for me if I sit down for a table with eight or 10 people, really have a very hard time. I can’t hear them.
I can’t concentrate. It’s just a few kind of biochemical things that go on. And I wish it wasn’t that way.
People who would get to know me because I would basically run the live show, a big portion. I count off every song. I did the majority of the talking on stage.
And they would get to know me and say, that’s a completely different guy on stage, you know, that I can do. But there’s a certain amount of I know it’s 90 minutes and it’s a finite exercise. No, you’d never know.
And I miss you like crazy. No matter what I do. And it’s getting much harder.
To forget about you. No, you really don’t love me. But you try to make me do.
You try to make me do. Cause it’s better than wondering. About me and you around me.
I hear you say sitting around a table trying to hear people, all the background noise is pretty difficult. I think that there are many people our age who are suffering from that. It’s pretty frustrating, isn’t it? Nothing much you can do about it.
No, and also the other side of that, just isolating. That’s not the answer either. I saw a picture of when Brian Wilson was touring.
One of his crew had put a lovely tape across his piano where he sits for the whole show. And it said, Brian, we love you. It’s so great that you’re presenting your music to the people.
And it was a little motivational thing that one of his minders had put on the piano. So when I saw that, I decided I’m going to give some shit to them. Some of my guys said, where’s my tape? I don’t get a tape.
And the next day when I went out there, there was this tape across my piano. And it said, don’t worry, Jerry, all these people will be gone soon. But you do love getting up in front of live audiences, don’t you? You turn into a different person.
Yeah, I did. I don’t know if you know, I’ve retired. At the end of last year, I announced that I was not going to do it anymore.
Having said that, I was asked recently, Brandon Flowers from the Killers is a dear friend of mine. And they were playing in Sydney. And he asked would I get up and do a song.
So I got up and did Sister Golden Hair for 18 or 20,000 people right in the middle of a Killers show. And I suppose had I dwelled on that a bit, I could talk myself out of it. But it really went well.
And the minute I just did those opening chords, the place went nuts. And it was great. And I tell you, boy, they really know how to play Sister Golden Hair.
I’ll never lose all that. I have all of those memories. But there’s nothing like when I think, ah, get back up there and do it again.
I don’t have that. You don’t need any more applause? I don’t, you know. And I have found now that I made that announcement that all my musician friends are usually one of those two schools.
One is there’s a few like me say, I’m with you, boy. I’m ready to do. But more are the other side, which I would say like the McCartneys at 81, I think, and Jagger and stuff.
They certainly don’t need the money, but it’s what they’ve done their entire life. And they’re bringing pleasure or joy to thousands of people. So do they get to that? Of course they get to do that.
That’s not me. Was it a difficult decision for you? No, it wasn’t. It was kind of leaning in that direction.
Harder and harder to sing. All of us struggle with voices and hitting the note. So five shows a week was boiling down to two.
And it was starting to become a pressure. And I thought, you know, 50 years is a lovely number. 50 years.
Nobody could say, oh, come on, you’re just getting started. But 50 years put us right in the middle of COVID. And in the middle of COVID, we had 100 shows on the books that we hadn’t played.
So that stretched the 50 to 53. That’s how that happened. And you’re enjoying yourself regardless.
Yes. Yeah. And as you said, you’re still writing.
So you’ve still got your sense of purpose and your creative outlet. I delivered this album to Blue Elan a few months ago. And I was very happy to wrap it up and really pleased with how it came out.
And I’ve written 30 or so things since. I mean, they’re not all complete songs, but they’re just ideas and stuff. So that’s what’s kind of not forcing me, but giving me pause is the term, you know, to kind of at least take it down a notch.
You know, just give that a little bit of a breather. Red and blue. I watch the TV news.
Makes it all so clear. Might be opposing news. But they don’t live around here.
Around here. They see no Hollywood. They see no movie.
They see the first day party too. And there’s no one conceiving. It’s just the two before the two.
How did you take that announcement from me? Was he okay with it? He was good. In fact, at the time, he was right there with me. But he did six months off and was kind of of the other school, was having a little bit of a challenge.
And his wife was saying, his suitcase is right by the door, you know. And so he’s going to go out and they’ve got a, there’s a lovely, he’s a friend of ours, a guy named Andy Barr, who’s going to take my place and sing my songs. Andy toured with us for a few years as a lead guitarist.
And he has a beautiful voice. And I just think it’s so, we’re so fortunate to have him. So they’re going to go out and do, I think, 30 or 40 shows.
But I will not be there. But I am there in spirit and support. Excellent.
Tell us a little bit about Jerry Beckley, the album. It’s your first self-titled album, isn’t it? Yeah. And I wish there was a deeper story to the titling.
Sometimes I pick a song title that’s in the playlist of tracks. Other times there’s something that kind of defines the journey of that album. In this case, there was just nothing that was coming forward as the obvious title.
And so because I hadn’t done a self-titled one, but there’s nothing beyond that. There’s no, this is the definitive statement. It’s just the next one.
I’ll have a title for the next one. I promise. And how would you describe the album, the collection of songs that are there? I’ve listened to it and they’re sensational.
But in your words, what have you put together? Well, I do know it’s the first time that I’ve assembled one of these with a really free hand. And when I say that, what I mean is that the other ones, when my schedule was as thick as it was with travel and performing, all of the recording had to fit in between the gaps. I don’t mean that there wasn’t on occasion a month off where I could actually sit down and really do some focus, find focus.
But a lot of it was done on a day here and a day there. And actually since COVID, I started to have more time where I could really start from scratch with an idea and not put it on the shelf for a month while I went away. And this album is the first one I’ve done where a lot of this, some of it is still older stuff that wasn’t finished.
And I had to, now I had the time and focus to finish. There’s a lot of new stuff, a lot of new tracks that are virtually from the last two or three years. Do you have some favorites you can talk about? I love Amnesia.
Well, I like the whole album. My Life, the opening track, is autobiographical. Lovely way to start an album.
It’s a huge production number, a lot of pretty thick wall of sound. Amnesia is a fairly new song that I wrote when we were traveling. I was in Paris.
We were in Paris at a friend’s house. And it’s one of those stories where you’re awake in the night with an idea. And I’m sure you’ve heard this and that what we all learn is you better write it down because when you think, oh, I’ll never forget that.
It’s great. And of course, in the morning, it’s gone. So fortunately, there’s friends of ours that where we were staying, they had a piano.
So I was at two in the morning scribbling down Amnesia. And I’m really happy with how that came, but it was one of those examples of where does that come from? You know, it’s clearly it’s in your subconscious somewhere. Because it’s enough to kind of wake you out of a sleep state.
Anyway, it came out nice. I really loved it. I was afraid.
Amnesia. Amnesia. Where are you hiding now? I can’t forget her.
God knows I am a child. Written in sand at the edge of the tunnel. Amnesia.
Amnesia. Amnesia. Amnesia.
Where are you now that I need you? Amnesia. Amnesia. Where are you hiding now? I still remember every beat of your love.
You say you do things in layers. That you’re influenced by Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. Yeah.
Ahead of this album. In what way? Well, layers is a lovely kind of element in production. And the reason that I mention Petty and the work, that album was done by Rick Rubin, is that it doesn’t necessarily mean mass.
It doesn’t just mean now there’s 60, wait till the strings come in. And you think that’s something. The horns are going to join for the final chorus.
I mean, I know all those gags, as I call them. But the thing about Wildflowers is, and that song in particular, the whole thing appears to be so light-handed. And in your face.
Tom was never a fan of reverbs and stuff. So everything was pretty bone dry. But if you get the headphones on and you listen, there’s just beautiful little pump organ will come in for this verse.
Or just a little shaker and things. And to me, those are things that I think, I don’t like to belabor the point, but most people just listen to a song and go, yeah, and I can’t. I hear when the hi-hat goes from eighth notes to 16th notes and stuff.
To me, those are the building blocks of what makes a great record. That album, Wildflowers, is a classic example of just a masterpiece. If you had your time again, would you do anything differently? I don’t think so.
I wouldn’t want to mess with anything. You know, the departure of Dan certainly was a hurdle that we had to navigate because it was a three-legged stool before, was kind of our analogy. That’s the least number of legs you can have on a stool.
You can’t have a two-legged stool. So we had to learn some hurdles. The whole involvement of George Martin was because it was becoming harder and harder for us to wear every hat and be our own producers.
But had we not struggled with that, we wouldn’t have made that call to George. And that turned into being seven consecutive albums. Put him back at the top of the charts.
Sister Golden Hair was his first number one in a year since The Beatle. So all of these steps led to where we are today and I’m in a good place. So no, I wouldn’t change anything.
Oh, awesome. From struggle comes growth, doesn’t it? Yes, of course. Gerry Beckley, an absolute delight chatting with you.
My pleasure. Congratulations on this, your 10th solo album. We’ll look forward to what comes out of you next.
And with a bit of luck, maybe one day we will still get to see you live on stage. You never know. But anyway, good to see you again.
Thank you for your time. Beautiful day You’ve been listening to A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Beautiful day Oh, I’ll be there any day That you’re gone away It’s a beautiful day