America’s Gerry Beckley Talks About His New Solo Album
Gerry Beckley was a founding member of the band America, a trio that scored a #1 hit right off the bat with “A Horse With No Name” upon its release in early 1972.
Four of America’s first five album cracked the Billboard Top 10 on the album charts, and six of their singles hit the Top 10 including a second #1 in “Sister Golden Hair.”
While still a member of America, Beckley released his first solo album in 1995, and he continued to both record and tour with America until recently when he announced his retirement from touring.
His 10th solo album, entitled Gerry Beckley, was just released a couple of weeks ago and Jim Monaghan caught up with Gerry to talk about the new record, Tom Petty, his love of harmony singing, the Beach Boys, and more.
Gerry Beckley Interview Excerpts
JIM MONAGHAN – One of the things that struck me as I’ve listened to (your new) album is it reminds me a lot of some of the more introspective pieces from Tom Petty’s Wildflowers album. I’m thinking songs like “Wake Up Time,” “Crawling Back To You.” It seems like it would be a nice companion piece to that record.
GERRY BECKLEY – I should be so lucky. It’s one of my favorite records of all time. And I don’t know how much you know about that album but Rick Rubin produced that for Tom. And one of the things, apart from just being a great start to finish album, but there are so many beautiful layers in that album. Songs that sound incredibly simple but if you get your headphones on and listen to there might be 10 or 20 things that you didn’t realize are going to present what you’re just taking as a nice little tune. I love that record and it’d be an honor to be in that same company.
JM – You mentioned Rick Rubin and not to belabor the Tom Petty point but he talked about the title track and he said that in the documentary he was talking about how it sounds on the surface like just Tom and a guitar like a solo recording. But you mentioned the layering and that is so important because when you listen to it and much the way some of the tracks on your album, the layering of just voices and different instrumentation is incredible.
GB – Thank you. I think that’s the art in the craft. I’d like to think I’m pretty good at that but what I always say is I grew up, Dewey (Bunnell) and I both grew up kind of in an era of listening in headphones. We used to put on “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and just listen to this beautiful stereo pan positioning and all the things that you can really discover by getting the headphones on and stuff. So I’ve always tried to make it a listening experience. That doesn’t let you off the hook about it better be a good song, better be a great lyric, you know. But it’s how do you present it and I think it came out pretty good.
JM – You mentioned headphones I can’t tell you how many hours I spent listening to America records with headphones on trying to pull your three voices apart. Yours was the easiest of the three to pull. Dan (Peek) and Dewey I had a little bit more trouble with but I basically learned how to sing harmony from listening to your records from trying to pick the voices out.
GB – Thank you. And also I’ve heard a lot of people learned acoustic guitar from those early albums. Dewey’s songs in particular on the first album, “Riverside,” “Three Roses,” stuff like that was really, first of all obviously a dream to play and be a part of all of that. But as you know if you sing harmony you know it’s all about the blend. You know you can have three voices all singing the right notes but if they don’t have the blend it doesn’t work.
JM – One of the things I didn’t realize as I was going through some stuff as you started out in surf bands.
GB – Yeah both of us did. We didn’t know each other at the time but Dewey was a big fan of Dick Dale and I was in a group I remember called The Vanguards and I think “surf band” was just a way of saying nobody’s saying. We were all Ventures fans and all of those instrumentals, “Pipeline,” “Walk, Don’t Run,”
all of that stuff was some of the earliest guitar stuff you learn.
JM – I went back to the Billboard chart from November of 1963 and I found a bunch of different artists on there like The Four Seasons, Dion, Jan and Dean, The Beach Boys. So there’s rock and roll in there. A lot of it with that surf element if you will. And then all of a sudden here are the Beatles coming in February of 1964 just a few weeks later and everything changes. How did that night hit you?
GB – Well it hit me like all from my generation, I think it doesn’t matter who you interview they will say that was a life-changing moment. I’ve heard Tom Petty say that in interviews. Andrew Gold, he was a dear friend we lost. But yeah it’s impossible to overstate the impact of that. All of a sudden, I mean and I was a huge music fan. I was a Beach Boy albums and actually some folk records and stuff but it was a game changer.
The way I explain it to kids who obviously were not there at the time was if you can imagine Elvis Presley was the biggest star in the world and stuff. What if you had four Elvis’s in a band? And each one kind of played off the other and they had jokes and harmonies and things. You know I run out of ways to describe it but obviously it charted the course for myself. From that moment on it’s like oh yeah I think that’s what I want to do.
JM – I think Steve Van Zandt in his recent documentary said February 8th nobody was in a band. February 9th nobody was in a band. February 10th everybody was in a band.
GB – Everybody’s combed their hair different and yeah I know it was really great. And you know one of the things about being my age or near my age is that we have memories of that. I mean memories are a wonderful thing. They’re not always as beautiful as that. There’s some tragic things that were occurring at that time and so they’re all in the mix with it. But I can tell you I knew about the Beatles because I’m half English. My mother is English. We would go back and forth to England every summer and it was obviously you know six months earlier it had blown up wide in the UK. So we were kind of just waiting for it. Well how come we don’t know about this? Well, believe me, it’s coming. And as you probably know many many years later we ended up with George Martin who was at the helm for all of those albums. So yeah I’ve got some amazing memories.
JM – One of the other things we’re talking about the comparison I thought between the Wild Flowers Tom Petty album and your album. And I hear a little bit, speaking of the Beach Boys and surf music, I hear a little bit of Holland and the Surf’s Up album. And again going back to the layering I know you had worked with Carl Wilson and I believe Bruce Johnston. How much of an effect did the Beach Boys have on you when it came to songs like what are on this new album?
GB – Well obviously a major effect. You know I cut my teeth on all of that stuff. They sang, Carl and Bruce sang on our third album I think. And then I sang on Beach Boys stuff. I was doing an interview with Endless Summer one of the Beach Boys fan things. And they were asking me what it was like to be on “Sail On Sailor.” And I said you know I don’t think I’m on that. I knew I was on Holland. You know we went to the studio in Holland but we didn’t sing with them at the time but we knew them all very well and we were in the studio. Record wasn’t finished. They came back. They went into the Village Recorders in Santa Monica and we were cutting some of Ricky Fataar’s and Blondie’s (Chaplin) stuff. And I’m kind of spaced out and they said no you’re on “Sail On Sailor.” I had the track sheet right in front of me and there’s like Billy Hinsche and there’s my name. So now what I listen to I go yeah I am. But it’s just an indicator of how hectic those times were. You know you can be on something that monumental and kind of forget it.
JM – That song in particular and “Long Promised Road” are two of my favorite Beach Boys songs from that era.
GB – Back to Carl quickly. On Surf’s Up. Two of his true masterpieces you know “Feel Flows” and “Long Promised Road.” You know, obviously I think you know my connection with Carl, that I can never tire of listening to that. It’s just beautiful stuff.
JM – I love the choice that you made of all of the songs on here when you stepped away from your own material of Fred Neil’s “Everybody’s Talkin’.” Why that song?
GB – Well it’s you know it’s very close to being one of those “you don’t touch stuff like that.” You know Harry’s (Nilsson) is of course the definitive version. We all knew, we loved Harry. I was just messing with it one day and there’s some lovely little subtle things that happen in the inversions of those chords. And before you knew it I had kind of a track going and I’m singing along. So I don’t think anybody will question that I’m coming from the right place to do that track. But there’s not a part of me that’s saying, “Oh okay, do think that’s great. Wait till you hear MY version.” There’s no way that I would ever attempt you know Harry was the great voice of our generation. Anyway it’s a lovely song and I’m happy I included it.
JM – One of the things that has always amazed me, Gerry, about songwriters is they’ll write a song and then it’ll disappear for a while. They’ll put it away and maybe they even forget about it. The Smithereens did an album 30 years ago and just released it a couple of years ago. “Oh yeah we forgot about this.” Your first single off this album sat around for 10 years and then all of a sudden, “Hey wait a second!” How does that happen where you just all of a sudden feel well it’s not right 10 years ago but now it is.
GB – You know what, first of all a nod to Jeff Larson who’s my co-producer on a lot of these projects but he started out as our archivist and what that meant was we all had all masses of computers and he said well let me clone them all and I’ll start going through and just make sure that we file everything in the right… you know this is America stuff, this is some demos that Dewey did. And there were numerous times when you’d be on the road and you might be out for two weeks and you finally come home on a Monday and you might not be flying again till Thursday and I had a full studio in my house at the time, and you go in and you get all enthused and you cut something and you’re a little bit jet lagged and tired and stuff.
This is exactly what happened with “Crazy” and then you go out on the road for another three or four weeks and you’ve forgotten about it. Come home you do something else you work on another five songs. “Crazy” is one of those ones that just kind of slipped between the cracks and Jeff you know last year said, “I found this… this sounds pretty good you know like that’s awesome you know and so obviously it was nowhere near done. We had a lot of work to do with it and and our dear friend Brian Eichenberger from the Beach Boys Band he he helped massive amounts of vocal harmonies and stuff so I’m really really happy with how it came out.
MORE ALL MIXED UP – Interviews and Playlists
