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Bards of rock
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Face- to-face Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley of the legendary band America, tell Rakesh Mehar the toughest act for musicians is to remain current for successive generations
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Photo: Murali Kumar K.
Constant sound The duo are comfortable not reinventing themselves
Inspired as they were by The Beatles, the members of America also seem to have retained the late Beatle George Harrison’s Indian fascination. “It’s an unbelievable pleasure after 37 years of touring and performing to find our way he
re,” says Dewey Bunnell, who with Gerry Beckley and former member Dan Peek first shot to fame in 1972 with the song “A Horse With No Name”.
“Of course, the reality is that we have to go where we’re asked. If we could pick where we could go, we would have been here long ago,” adds Beckley.
The duo, in Bangalore for a concert, might not ring many bells for younger generations here. As after their meteoric success in the ’70s, the band faded from the scene. All that changed last year when Dewey and Beckley found respect and support from Adam Schlesinger of the band Fountains of Wayne and James Iha, former guitarist of Smashing Pumpkins.
It started off when Beckley, who liked the music of Fountains of Wayne, got in touch with Schlesinger through a friend. It turned out that Schlesinger was a huge fan himself and wanted to produce America’s next album with Iha. “It all happened in a real organic way, and we just decided to try it out and see how it goes,” says Beckley. Sony, who happened to be in touch with Schlesinger showed interest in the project and the result was this year’s “Here and Now”. “From start to finish it was a good project, completely natural and not in the least bit calculated,” says Beckley. The album, he adds, is an America album: not a compilation of special guest appearances, a comeback album or an “America for the new millennium”. “We’re comfortable in not reinventing ourselves, just letting the audience know we are here in case they want our music rather than chasing after the audience,” says Bunnel.
In fact, explains Bunnel, in all the years that America has been making and performing its music, nothing much has really changed for the band at all. “The core of what the band is has always stayed the same. We believe in the idea of a three-or four-minute song that you fill with imagery. We’ve always respected artistes who’ve done that and that’s what we’ve stuck to. That and the vocal harmonies and the arrangements.”
“It’s strange when you look back… I don’t know why it latched on,” says Bunnel of the unexpected popularity of “A Horse With No Name”. “But we knew that we had to follow it up, as there was a backlash because of its popularity and I hope we did that successfully with the large catalogue of songs we’ve made since.”
In another sense, counters Beckley, getting the number one also helped pave the way for more meaningful work that wasn’t aimed at record sales. “There’s something symmetrical about it and if you start at No 1., that kind of gets it out of the way. You know you can’t go more than No. 1.” Of course, he adds, at the time the band never quite expected to be musicians as long as they have. “Back then, even people like Jagger were saying ‘I can’t be doing this at 40.’ The whole notion of doing this for decades was just not viable.”
It’s a peculiarity of rock ’n’ roll that Beckley finds survives even to this day. “Rock ’n’ roll is so fastened to the design of youth. As you age that is what becomes your biggest challenge. There are few examples of aging rock musicians with the ability to remain current. It’s something musicians address more than everyone else.”
While admitting to their own mortality and the concerns it raises, however, the two folk musicians/ singer-songwriters reject any suggestions that their brand of music is struggling. “There are a lot of good singer-songwriters today. And every era has had other preoccupations. The ’70s were also the time of Led Zeppelin and disco. There are a lot of singer-songwriters still out there, but you have to go seek them out. New tools like iTunes help. But it still depends on you.”
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