Stories behind memorable albums of the 1970s as told by the artists

Author: Mike Morsch Page 1 of 16

Mike Morsch is a 37-year veteran of the newspaper business, most recently as executive editor of Montgomery Media in Fort Washington, PA. He has been writing about music for the past 10 years and is also the author of "Dancing in My Underwear: The Soundtrack of My Life," also available at Biblio Publishing.
Among his favorite bands are the Beach Boys, Hall & Oates and America and he's also a supporter of local artists in the Philadelphia music scene.

Doobie Brothers share the backstories of their 1970s songs and albums

Between recording their second and third albums, the Doobie Brothers had been on a roll. The band’s 1971 debut studio album, self-titled The Doobie Brothers, wasn’t met with great success, selling maybe 40,000 to 50,000 copies, according to guitarist Pat Simmons.

But their second album, Toulouse Street, released in 1972, was the band’s entry into the national marketplace, and secured the Doobie Brothers their first major national tour, opening for Marc Bolan and T. Rex.

Pat Simmons

“That was a big moment for us because we were sort of the new kids on the block and that introduced us to a much larger audience,” said Simmons, one of the original co-founders of the band. “We had these hits off Toulouse Street — ‘Listen to the Music,’ Jesus Is Just Alright,’ and ‘Rockin’ Down the Highway,’ — that got played quite a lot.”

Simmons and fellow original Doobie Brothers co-founder Tom Johnston had each written quite a few songs, even prior to recording Toulouse Street, that didn’t make the cut for that album, so they were looking forward to getting back into the studio and recording their third album in late 1972.

One song that didn’t make the cut for Toulouse Street was “Long Train Runnin’,” a song that the band had played many times onstage that had no real structure to it. It didn’t have any lyrics, either.

“Tommy would get up and just kind of scat through it and sing the blues. He’d take a guitar solo and I’d take a guitar solo and we’d just play it out as a funky groove, sort of a Latin funk. And we’d just sort of jam along,” said Simmons.

Producer Ted Templeman would offer direction. He suggested that words be put to the jam before the band recorded it at what was then called Amigo Studios, a division of Warner Brothers, in North Hollywood, California.

“The solo itself became a harmonica solo, which was kind of cool,” said Simmons. “We didn’t have that in the original arrangement, which was a lot of guitars.

“I sat in with Ted for a while, while the guys were working on the track — bass drums, guitars — and then I went into an adjacent space in between the walls and I took my acoustic guitar and I started playing around,” said Simmons. “And I came up with my part while the guys were cutting the track. As soon as the track was cut, I went in and laid down my track.”

Simmons said the song was kind of a straight-ahead, blues-rock tune.

“It was something we could all sink our teeth into,” he said. “We had been playing the tune for the better part of two-and-a-half to three years on and off in our club sets, but we really didn’t have this creative arrangement. It really came to life not only as a studio track, but as a live tune. We got something really cool out of it, and to this day, we still play the track. It’s the highlight of our set, I think.”

“Long Train Runnin’” peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1973.

Tom Johnston

Another song from The Captain and Me that ended up as a Top 20 single — reaching No. 15 — was “China Grove.”

According to Johnston, the band was touring in a Winnebago in 1972 and had just started to get national recognition. While driving through Texas, they passed a road sign that read “China Grove.”

“But I didn’t see it, or if I did, I didn’t remember it,” said Johnston. “We were headed into San Antonio at the time and my thinking was that I saw the name ‘China Grove’ without having it really register in the frontal lobe.”

Johnston wrote the song in early 1973 based on a piano lick by Billy Payne.

“And I made up all these ridiculous lyrics about sheriffs and samurai swords and all that kind of stuff,” said Johnston. “But at that time, I still believed it was a completely fictional place.”

In 1975, Johnston got into a cab in Houston, Texas. He and the cabdriver struck up a conversation, and once the cabbie realized that Johnston was a member of the Doobie Brothers, he posed a question.

“He said, ‘What made you write a song about that little old town, China Grove?’ I said, ‘What town, China Grove? I’ve never heard of a town called China Grove.’ He said, ‘Yeah, it’s right down there, like the song says, right outside San Antonio.’ That blew me out of the water, it really did,” said Johnston.  “That was a trip. I thought he was pulling my chain.”

Although none of the other songs on The Captain and Me charted as singles, the hidden gem may be the Simmons-penned song, “South City Midnight Lady.”

Simmons said that the band had a sense that some songs — like “Long Train Runnin’” and “China Grove” — had commercial appeal and the potential to get wide play on the radio. But “South City Midnight Lady” was what the band members called an “album track,” and not a commercial type of song.

The song is about living in Los Gatos, California, which is at the southern end of the bay area. Simmons was living with his girlfriend at the time and was trying to write a romantic song.

“I don’t necessarily look at it as that personal, but it probably is,” said Simmons. “I was up all night writing that song. By 4 or 5 in the morning, I was pretty much finished with the song and I had the arrangement idea pretty much together.

“It was interesting because a friend of mine showed up in the morning and knocked on my door. It was pretty early, around 7 a.m., and I was surprised that he showed up that early. And he was surprised I was awake that early, but in fact I had been up all night,” said Simmons.

John McFee

“I remember playing the song for him and him liking it and then I think I went to bed. I can’t even remember if my girlfriend liked the song, but I’m sure she thought it was OK.”

There is one song on Side Two of The Captain and Me that seems to be an odd fit. It’s a 48-second guitar instrumental track titled “Busted Down Around O’Connelly Corners.” The song is listed on the record between “Evil Woman” and “Ukiah,” but one has to actually look at the record itself to know that the song is there. It’s not listed on the back of the album cover.

“That was a tune that a friend of mine had written,” said Simmons. “There’s actually more to it than what’s on the record.” 

Before he joined the Doobie Brothers, Simmons hung out in southern California perfecting his craft. After playing club gigs, Simmons and his friends would oftentimes head to another friend Mike O’Connelly’s place, in an apartment building on Main Street in Los Gatos to relax, play their guitars, and sing.

“We’d sit around and somebody would play a song and the rest of us would sing along. It was kind of like a poor man’s Bluebird Cafe,” said Simmons, referring to the famous club in Nashville, Tennessee, that attracts singers and songwriters to its intimate setting.

They’d hang out at Mike’s place so much that they started referring to the apartment building as “O’Connelly Corners.” 

“One time Mike had walked outside the apartment building and was getting in the car to go someplace,” said Simmons. “He had a joint on him or something, and the cops arrested him.” And that was the inspiration for the song “Busted Down Around O’Connelly Corners,” written by James Earl Luft.

By the time the Doobie Brothers were recording The Captain and Me, producer Ted Templeman had become a big fan of Simmons’ “traditional ragtime guitar picking.” 

“So Ted said, ‘Hey, Pat, you got something else you can put on this album,’” recalled Simmons. 

And that’s how the first 48 seconds of “Busted Down Around O’Connelly Corners” made it onto Side Two of The Captain and Me.

Album covers of that era were oftentimes considered works of art that complemented the songs on the album, and The Captain and Me is no different.

Simmons said the band members used to sit around and conceptualize ideas for album covers. Doobie Brothers drummer John Hartman was always an idea guy, according to Simmons.

“He was a little eccentric and he liked to come up with crazy concepts, musically and visually,” said Simmons. “We were brainstorming one time — we used to sit around and smoke …  something … well into the night.

“We had several ideas floating around and we came up with the idea of the coach and the outfits — sort of the Old English or early American formal wear, that really didn’t mean anything. We just thought, ‘What would that be like?’”

Luckily, the Doobie Brothers were under contract to Warner Brothers, a company that, in addition to producing music, also produced films. 

Hearing about the band members’ idea of dressing in old formal wear, Templeman’s production assistant, Venita Brazier, went to Warner Brothers’ costume department. Armed with the sizes of each band member, she found the appropriate coats, shirts, hats — everything the Doobie Brothers needed for the photo shoot.

Not only did Brazier gather the clothes, but she also got hold of the coach, the horses, and, along with the band’s then-manager Bruce Cohn, scouted the perfect location for the photo session: Interstate 5 on the way out of Los Angeles, a stretch called “The Grapevine” on the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley.

A few years earlier, an earthquake had knocked down parts of the freeway, and Brazier had somehow secured permission from the proper authorities to use a not-yet-repaired section of the fallen freeway for The Captain and Me photo shoot.

“We thought it was a unique spot, so we got up next to the highest part of the freeway that was being rebuilt,” said Simmons. “Handlers from Warner Brothers brought out the horses and the carriage. It was probably the most expensive album cover ever.

“We shot it in one day. It worked real well, though,” said Simmons. “Tommy had written this song called ‘The Captain and Me,’ which was kind of a poetic, obtuse song. So we looked through the titles of the songs and we thought that it definitely worked in terms of this obscure reference to the captain. Who is the captain? I don’t know. But it worked with the visual somehow and with how it all went down. It was kind of like these guys came in a time machine and landed on the freeway.”

Nearly 50 years after the release of The Captain and Me, Simmons called it “a moment in time when we were hitting on all cylinders.” 

“There are a lot of great tracks on that record that we still enjoy playing live,” he said. “At some point, songs from all our albums are incorporated as we go along into our shows now. But that record always seems to have certain songs that always turn up in the set, simply because they’re more iconic or they’re what people expect to hear.

“And we enjoy playing them because there’s that moment of connection, to see the recognition on people’s faces. That really means a lot to us as performers,” said Simmons.

Things began to change for the Doobie Brothers by the end of 1974. Life on the road had taken its toll on Johnston and by the spring of 1975, his health was so precarious that he was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer.

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, co-lead guitarist for Steely Dan until Donald Fagen and Walter Becker decided to quit touring in 1974, had joined the Doobies that same year as third lead guitarist. 

Baxter had already been working with the Doobies off and on for a few years, contributing a steel pedal guitar on “South City Midnight Lady” for the Captain and Me album and on the band’s first No. 1 hit, “Black Water,” written by Simmons for the What Once Were Vices Are Now Habits album in 1974. 

When Johnston fell ill and couldn’t tour with band, it was Baxter who recommended that fellow Steely Dan songwriter and keyboardist Michael McDonald join the group.

“When I joined, I thought it was going to be a two- to six-month gig. I thought I’d better save my money because I wasn’t going to make this much money for a while,” said McDonald. “That’s how I lived as musician back then. If I was making a good payday for a while, I didn’t spend it all. I was living pretty much hand-to-mouth.”

According to McDonald, nobody knew what was going to come next for the Doobie Brothers. But with the absence of Johnston and the addition of McDonald, the band was changing.

McDonald credits Baxter with playing an integral part in that change. 

“Jeff was a big part of bringing me not only into the band but of the music changing,” said McDonald. “The arrangements of our songs and his guitar style and jazz influences brought a lot to the band and to my songs.”

More importantly, McDonald said, was that Simmons and the rest of the guys in the band were on board with the band’s change of musical direction.

“One of the biggest components in all of this was really the absence of Tommy because he was such a huge influence in the direction of the band up to that point,” said McDonald. “Just by the virtue of him taking a hiatus and being gone from the next recording, that left a big hole, for better or worse. But it was a  collective effort to try and fill that void that was responsible for the band changing.”

Johnston hadn’t actually quit the band at that point; he just needed to get off the road and away from it for a while. Warner Brothers was leery about the next album, Takin’ It To The Streets, released in March 1976, which would be the first album to feature McDonald on lead vocals and take the band in a completely different direction.

Michael McDonald

But the title track, written by McDonald and with him on lead vocals, went to No. 13 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and another McDonald-penned song, “It Keeps You Runnin’” made it to No. 37 on the same chart. The strength those two songs propelled the album to No. 8 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.

McDonald said that the idea behind “It Keeps You Runnin’” — that love can be a traumatic experience — was one that he had written and rewritten many times.

“Every time you go through it, it reshapes you in a different way. There’s post-traumatic growth and post-traumatic stress that comes from love,” said McDonald. “It’s kind of finding that balance between the two as you go on in your life. Learning to be a little more accepting of love on its own terms with each time. And at the same time, not gaining an overall phobia of the thing to where you avoid it at all costs. It’s just kind of learning how to ease back into something that you know has consequences. You don’t want to get too pessimistic about it as you go through life.”

The idea for “Takin’It To The Streets” came to McDonald as he was driving through Southern California on the way to a gig. 

“I just heard the intro in my head and I knew that it had something to do with a gospel kind of feeling track,” he said. “I couldn’t wait to get to the gig so I could figure out on the piano what it was.”

Once at the gig, McDonald set up his piano as fast as he could, plugged everything in and then just sat there for a moment, looking for the chord that he was hearing in his head.

“I just picked at it long enough to where the guitar player said to me, ‘Hey, we gotta start.’ I was lost in looking for this elusive melodic rhythmic song,” he said. “Basically the song kind of happened in those couple of minutes. The rest of the song was pretty simple. It was just trying to figure out what that intro meant and where it was going musically.”

The lyrics for “Takin’ It To The Streets,” followed soon thereafter. McDonald had been talking to his sister, who was a college student at the time.

“She was in a social economics class or something, and she was a typical college student, and the weight of the world’s problems were solvable by those as smart as college students,” said McDonald. “We talked about how in the inner city, the bottom was dropping out for people and they were falling through the cracks. So when I sat down to finish the song once I got home to my apartment that night, it just seemed like that was a natural marriage of ideas and melody.”

McDonald and the Doobies didn’t recapture the magic again until December 1978, when the band released its eighth studio album, Minute by Minute.

It would be the band’s first album without any contribution from Johnston, and the last album to feature Baxter and John Hartman as members of the group.

But it provided the Doobies with their second No. 1 single, “What a Fool Believes,” sung by McDonald and co-written by McDonald and Kenny Loggins; and the title track, co-written by McDonald and Lester Abrams, that reached No. 14 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. 

The album itself would get to No. 1 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart in 1979, spending 87 weeks there. In the spring of 1979, the album was the best-selling record in the U.S. for five consecutive weeks and was eventually certified 3x platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The Minute by Minute album would also win a Grammy for “Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group”; and “What A Fool Believes” earned the band three Grammys, including Song of the Year and Record of the Year.

McDonald and Loggins had never written together — in fact they had never even met — before collaborating on “What A Fool Believes.”

Doobies bassist Tiran Porter had run into Loggins during his travels and Loggins told Porter he was interested in writing with McDonald. So Porter passed along Loggins’ phone number to McDonald.

“I called Kenny and we made a date to get together,” said McDonald. “I had never met the guy and I was kind of nervous. He was coming to my house and my sister came over to clean up because it was usually pretty trashed and because she decided she was going to meet Kenny Loggins and thought that at the very least, I shouldn’t have my dirty laundry in a pile in the living room.”

While his sister was hustling around cleaning the place and doing the laundry, McDonald was sitting at his piano playing around with a riff and verse that had been in his head for a while but hadn’t gone anywhere.

“I knew there was something to it, but I just never had the wherewithal to finish the song,” said McDonald. “I had played the riff for producer Ted Templeman a few times and he said it was something that I should finish.”

McDonald was doodling with that riff when Loggins rang the doorbell.

“He had driven down from Santa Barbara. When I opened the door, and before I could say anything, Kenny said, ‘You were just playing something on the piano. Is that something new?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I was thinking about playing it for you.’ And he said, ‘That’s the one I want to work on,’” said McDonald. 

Over the next two days, the two worked on the song. They came up with the bridge and chorus and the rest of the lyrics. 

“We got as far as the bridge on the first day and we weren’t sure what to do in the chorus,” said McDonald. “We stumbled into the chorus on the next day and the key change and that seemed to work. The rest of the lyric idea just kind of unraveled for us from there.”

The original Doobie Brothers would dissolve in 1982 and McDonald would go on to a successful solo career and continue to write with Loggins as well as collaborate with other artists. 

The Doobie Brothers would re-establish themselves in 1987 and today have a full touring schedule with original members Johnston and Simmons and multi-instrumentalist John McFee, who originally joined the band in 1979. The band, elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, celebrated it’s 50th anniversary with a tour that stretched over 2021 and 2022, delayed a bit because of the pandemic. McDonald rejoined the band for the anniversary tour.

McDonald fondly recalls his time with the Doobie Brothers the first time around, though.

“It was just an opportunity, a door that opened rather suddenly with the Doobies. Those guys were so open to anything I had to offer and it caught me by surprise, really. I did not expect that having come from another situation with Steely Dan, where Don [Fagen] and Walter [Becker] were the sole source of all the material,” said McDonald. “I learned a great deal from them, however. That was probably my whole songwriting education in a way. I grew up writing songs, but it was a real crash course to learn a different approach to arrangement, chords, melody, working with Donald and Walter.

“So when I came to the Doobies, it was very fortuitous for me to have come from that gig, with all these kind of fresh ideas on how to write a song, what a song structure could be. And then all of a sudden to be surprised at how open — everybody from the producer [Ted Templeman] to the band members — and generous they were in allowing me to participate in the writing.” 

The Doobie Brothers

The song that crossed genres and connected generations

Nearly every school day in 1975, my sophomore year at Pekin Community High School in Central Illinois, I would rush through lunch in the cafeteria with my pals Gary and Jim to get to the “Leeway” where I would plop a quarter into the jukebox for my two favorite songs — “China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers and “My Maria” by B.W. Stevenson.

The Leeway at Pekin Community High School.

The Leeway was a long corridor that connected the “old building” of what was called West Campus and the new addition, which was called the English building or “Red Building” because of its exterior red panels. The West Campus hosted freshmen and sophomores while the East Campus, on the other side of town, was where the juniors and seniors attended classes.

More importantly, though, the Leeway was the social epicenter of the West Campus, a place where students could gather and hang out before the lunch period ended and classes resumed.

And it had a jukebox. That was a big deal then. The key with the jukebox was to get your quarter in early in the lunch period. The songs were played in the order in which they were punched into the jukebox, so if you didn’t get your selections in early enough, classes would resume before your songs were played.

I wanted to hear “China Grove” and “My Maria” every day in 1975 before going back to class. Those songs were just that good.

The B.W. Stevenson album cover that featured the song “My Maria.”

“My Maria” was co-written by Stevenson and Daniel Moore  and released as a single in August 1973. The song became a hit and peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. (Moore also wrote “Shambala,” which Stevenson recorded, but which became a hit for Three Dog Night in 1973 reaching No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles list.)

“My Maria” would find success again nearly 25 years later when country music duo Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn covered it in 1996. That version reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs and won Brooks & Dunn their second Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Vocal Group of Duo. It’s been a staple of Brooks & Dunn’s live shows ever since.

At the time, Dunn had to be persuaded to even record the song.

“I was afraid to even sing it a lot for a while,” Dunn said in an interview for I Miss 90s Country Radio with Nick Hoffman on Apple Music Country. “I was hesitant to do it because I thought, ’Oh man, it’s just that falsetto thing.’ It’s a rock song, in my opinion.”

Ronnie Dunn
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

I, too, thought it was a rock song in 1975. But when I first heard the Brooks & Dunn version, I was hooked. They absolutely owned it, one of those rare instances when the remake was as good, if not better, than the original. And because of “that falsetto thing” in the song, it’s got to be a difficult song for even the best of vocalists. But Dunn, who has one of the best voices in country music, has successfully and consistently pulled it off in the ensuing years. 

Those high school memories were definitely rolling around in my head when I arrived at the BB&T Center in Camden, New Jersey, on Sept. 16, 2021, to see Brooks & Dunn live for the first time. 

I’ve listened to “My Maria” for 48 years now, but never heard it performed live. B.W. Stevenson died in 1988 at age 38 and I never got the chance to see him perform. Brooks & Dunn stopped touring for a decade or so after 2010, but recently got back together for a tour and I wasn’t going to miss the chance to hear the song performed live.

Brooks & Dunn didn’t disappoint. “My Maria” has been a crowd favorite for a long time, and Brooks & Dunn save it for the end of their shows, the last song before the finale, which was “Only in America” for this show.

For the untrained ear, it sure sounds like Dunn can still do “that falsetto thing,” and the audience reacted accordingly — dancing cowboys and yay-hoos throughout the venue, including me. That’s what a good song is supposed to do, invoke a reaction from the audience.

So for three or four minutes that evening, I was transported back to West Campus at Pekin Community High School, rushing from the cafeteria to the Leeway jukebox.

It occurred to me that waiting all those years to hear “My Maria” live was worth so much more than a quarter.

Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn performed Sept. 16, 2021, at the BB&T Center in Camden, New Jersey.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

It’s been a while, but the love still flows from the Bellamy Brothers

There’s a reason for the sun-shining sky

And there’s a reason why I’m feeling so high

Must be the season

When that love light shines all around us

“Let Your Love Flow” — The Bellamy Brothers

Every once in a while, I need a little yay-hoo in my yee-haw. Thanks to the Bellamy Brothers — Howard and David — that itch was scratched for the first time in quite a while.

Howard and David Bellamy perform Aug. 19, 2021, at the American Music Theater in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

It’s been 18 months since I (and the rest of the world) have had the opportunity to attend a concert at an indoor venue (thanks pandemic, you rat bastard) and that’s a long time to go without live music. But I finally got the chance Aug. 19, 2021, at the American Music Theater (AMT) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (By the way, if you’re anywhere near southeastern Pennsylvania, make it a point to see a show the the AMT. The seats are wide, the leg room is plentiful, the tickets are reasonably priced, there’s not a bad seat in the house and the ushers don’t bother non-intrusive picture-takers like me.)

Opening the evening was Gene Watson, whose career has included five number one hits, 21 Top 10 hits, and 48 charted singles. He is most famous for his 1975 hit “Love in the Hot Afternoon,” his 1981 No. 1 hit “Fourteen Carat Mind,” and his signature 1979 song “Farewell Party.”

No disrespect to Mr. Watson, but I was there for the Bellamy Brothers. Just a couple of good old boys from Florida, I’ve liked the Bellamy Brothers since I first heard their hit “Let Your Love Flow” in 1976.

There’s not much between-song banter between songs from Howard and David. Lucky for me, though, I’ve interviewed Howard for The Vinyl Dialogues series and he has shared with me the backstory behind “Let Your Love Flow.”

In the early 1970s, the Bellamy Brothers headed to Los Angeles, not knowing anybody. To make ends meet they worked local gigs and tried to get noticed enough to get a record contract.

In the meantime, they were hanging out with the artists in the Los Angeles music scene at the time — Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Van Morrison — as well as West Coast country rock groups like the Byrds and Poco.

Howard Bellamy
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Eventually, the brothers did get noticed and signed a deal with Warner Brothers Records/Curb Records in 1975. They also started sharing the stage with the likes of the Beach Boys, the Doobie Brothers and Loggins and Messina.

Among the early friends the brothers made in Los Angeles were a record producer named Phil Gernhard and members from Neil Diamond’s band, most notably Dennis St. John, Diamond’s drummer. A roadie for Diamond, Larry E. Williams, had written a song for Diamond, but the singer declined to record it. 

Johnny Rivers, who had a string of hits in the 1960s, including “Secret Agent Man,” “Poor Side of Town” and “Baby I Need Your Lovin’,” and had followed that in the 1972 with another hit single, “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” also passed on the Williams song.

St. John, however, thought it was perfect for the Bellamy Brothers.

“He [St. John] came over to our house one night and said he had a song that really sounded like something we would do. That’s just kind of how it happened,” said Howard Bellamy.

The song was “Let Your Love Flow.”

“And I thought it was the best song that I had ever heard,” said Bellamy.

The Bellamy Brothers did indeed decide to record the song, but they weren’t the first. Despite the fact that Diamond and Rivers had passed on “Let Your Love Flow,” not everybody did. Singer-songwriter Gene Cotton — who had four Top 40 hits between 1976 and 1978, including “You’re a Part of Me,” a duet with Kim Carnes — had recorded the song but had not secured the rights to it.

David Bellamy
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

“We’d written most of our own songs, but this song just felt like our song when we heard it,” said Bellamy. “It’s so important to have the right marriage between a song and an artist and this one was just the song for us.”

But not everybody was as excited about the song, especially record company officials.

“We really had to push to get it out. I’m still surprised that we won out on that. We didn’t win many battles in those days. They [record company officials] really didn’t want us to record the song. They weren’t as hot over it as we were. But we kept on and kept on and finally we talked them into it.” 

The persistence paid off. Not only did Curb Records officials relent and let the Bellamy Brothers record “Let Your Love Flow,” but the company also decided to release the song as a single.

“I was so pumped about the version that we had,” said Bellamy.

And his instinct was right. The song took off like a rocket, first in Europe, and then back around in the United States.

The Bellamy Brothers had a monster pop hit on their hands. And it had created a few more complications for them.

First, the record company wanted an album on which it could place the big single. Secondly, the record company really didn’t know how to market the Bellamy Brothers. “Let Your Love Flow” had raced up the pop charts to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles, but had also made it as high as No. 21 on the Billboard Hot Country singles.

Were they a pop group or a country group?

As for an album, the Bellamy Brothers were nowhere ready to make one. 

(Photo by Mike Morsch)

“It was like, oh my, we’ve got a monster record, what do we do now? The song had made such an impact, we had to scramble to put our career together to go with it,” said Bellamy. “In those days, singles were the big thing. You’d get these producers that put more emphasis on singles — and the situation that we were in was kind of that way. We were more album-oriented, but we were in a big head-butting situation with the label. We didn’t really agree with them on anything.”

Finally, though, the Bellamy Brothers’ debut album, also titled “Let Your Love Flow,” was completed in 1976. 

“We got the other songs done, but we scrambled to do them. No one could imagine the battle we were going through with the record company at that time. It was unbelievable,” said Bellamy. “We were just two farm boys from Florida saying ‘What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?’ Thank goodness there were two of us. We just battled through it and somehow survived.”

Produced by their friend Gernhard, the album contained 10 songs, including the song “Inside of My Guitar,” co-written by David Bellamy and Jim Stafford that had been on the B side of the “Let Your Love Flow” single.

David and Howard wrote all the other songs on the album with the exception of one, “Satin Sheets,” the first song on the A side of the album written by Willis Alan Ramsey. In 1972, Ramsey wrote and recorded the song “Muskrat Candlelight,” covered in 1973 by the band America, which had a minor hit with it, and again in 1976 by The Captain & Tennille, both with the revised title “Muskrat Love.” 

Still, the label didn’t know didn’t know what to do with “Let Your Love Flow.” In fact, one of the most popular songs of the era that followed “Let Your Love Flow” to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in 1976 was “Disco Duck,” a satirical novelty dance song performed by radio personality Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots. 

“We didn’t start out as a country act, even though we were country. The people that we were involved with, they didn’t know what in the hell we were,” said Bellamy. “That was one of big problems. And people still don’t know what the devil we are. We’ve never fit into any particular mold.”

While the “Let Your Low Flow” single was a chart-topper, the album itself didn’t do nearly as well. It got to No. 21 in the United Kingdom, but only to No. 69 in the U.S. and No. 75 in Canada. 

Over the course of their 40-plus-year career, Bellamy estimates that he and his brother have performed “Let Your Love Flow” more than 8,000 times onstage.

“One great thing about our careers — and there are a lot of great things, even though it’s been as crazy as anybody’s career how it happened — we have songs that have had long lives,” said Bellamy. “And people still get excited. When you go and do one-nighters with new faces, I can honesty say that singing ‘Let Your Love Flow’ has never gotten old.”

(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Looking back 50 years: Jim Messina revisits a better sounding Poco album

As a producer, Jim Messina became very aware while working at CBS studios that most of the engineers at the Epic Records label there were quite competent at what they had been doing, which was jazz, pop and classical music. 

But when it came to rock and roll, Messina believed it just didn’t register with those engineers. They had been educated in a different way.

So when Buffalo Springfield split up in May 1968 before the release of its third and final studio album, Last Time Around a few months later, Messina and Richie Furay — who had been members of the Springfield at the end — joined with Rusty Young, George Grantham and Randy Meisner to form the band Poco.

Jim Messina
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Poco’s first album, Pickin’ Up the Pieces, released May 19, 1969, on the Epic Label — which Messina would produce — was one of the earliest examples of what we now know as the “country rock” genre, but didn’t make a huge splash upon release, peaking at No. 63 on the U.S. Billboard 200 Albums chart.

Messina believes that one of the reasons is that it just didn’t sound as good as it could have. (Another was that the record was “too country” for rock radio stations and “too rock” for country radio stations.)

“I was extremely disappointed with it (Pickin’ Up the Pieces),” said Messina in a recent telephone interview from his home outside Nashville, Tenn. “The engineer was a nice person, but he was just all thumbs when he was in the studio.”

Originally, Messina was signed by Epic Records as an “engineer-producer-artist,” but it wasn’t until after the deal was signed that Messina realize he was not allowed to touch the board because of a collective bargaining agreement with the union that stated artists could not touch the recording console. If they did, a portion of the artist’s royalties would go to the union.

“My hands were tied at what I was really good at and able to do pretty intuitively. And that was suddenly cut off,” said Messina. “Then to try and explain to somebody who’d never really done it before why I wanted leveling amplifiers on overheads or why I wanted to compress the snare or the bass. Or why I wanted a distorted guitar sound and how to get that without hurting their equipment was confusing to them.”

So when Poco went into the studio to record its second album, the self-titled Poco, Messina, who was once again producing, wanted to work with an engineer who understood what it was the band was trying to accomplish.

“I met an engineer named Alex Kazengras. He was a new engineer there and had been working in rock and roll, and he had a great feel for sounds,” said Messina, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the release of that album. “He understood. So when I said we’re going to create a fuzz tone guitar distortion, he knew we were creating it in the studio and that he would pad the microphone with a 20dB pad, and record correctly. It became really wonderful to be back in the studio with an engineer who understood.”

Poco, from left, Richie Furay, Rusty Young, Jim Messina, Timothy B. Schmit and George Grantham.
(Photo courtesy of Jim Messina)

Getting the right sound with the second Poco album — a sound that was something different than what Buffalo Springfield had done — was critical to Messina. For example, when Ahmet Ertegun produced the Springfield, he put the kick drum on one track, then put the other drums on one track. That didn’t create a very good stereophonic sound, according to Messina.

“So with Alex Kazengras, I said I’d like to do something different. I’d like to keep the kick drum on a separate track, but I’d also like to keep the snare drum on a separate track, the high-hat on a separate track and then everything else as far as overheads and tom-toms, goes on two tracks, which will make a stereo track,” said Messina.

Messina said that when one listens to Pickin’ Up the Pieces and compares it to the Poco album, the drums sound bigger and more dramatic on the second album. 

“In those days, we had stereo, but we didn’t have pan pots early on,” said Messina. (Panning is the distribution of a sound signal, either through monaural or stereophonic pairs, into a new stereo or multi-channel sound field determined by a pan control setting. A pan pot, short for “panning potentiometer,” is an analog control with a position indicator that splits audio signals into left and right channels.)

“So what happens is you would put something in the center, especially if it was two tracks, and it would jump up 3DB (decibels) in the center,” said Messina. “We had to learn how to place those faders in a way where we wouldn’t get a huge bump in the center. Now with overheads, they’re going to pick up the snare a bit, which was good because it helps to get that balance in a drum kit. By bringing the snare a little underneath it, you get the definition. And with the high hat on one side, I’m able to bring the high hat up into that mix. And I was able to create a really nice, wonderful drum sound on that album.” 

One of the songs on the album, the Messina-penned “You Better Think Twice,” would eventually go on to become one of the band’s signature songs. It was the first single from the band that got any attention, making it to No. 72 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Messina said the song is about a girlfriend he had at the time.

“I was smitten with her and she had a boyfriend, but she was in and out with him. Then again, she was in and out with me, too,” said Messina. “I was kind of going through a little bit of an abandonment issue there with her. The song came out of wanting her to care for me and be with me. It was a little bit of a love song, but also a little bit of angst and frustration about somebody not wanting to necessarily be with me.”

The Poco album, released on May 6, 1970, got favorable reviews at time, getting to No. 58 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

Timothy B. Schmit
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

It would also be the first album featuring bassist Timothy B. Schmit in the place of Randy Meisner, who had quit the band over a dispute with Richie Furay — that Messina said he was unaware of at the time — during the mixing of Pickin’ Up the Pieces.

“Jimmy and Richie were in the studio. We’d finished the recording and had started the mix,” said Meisner in a Rockceller magazine interview with Ken Sharp in 2016. “I called down and said, ‘I’d like to listen to it.’”

But according to Meisner, Furay said no, only he and Messina were going to mix the record.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute, I made the music, too. I’d like to listen to the mixes.’ But Richie said, ‘No, just Jimmy and I are going to do it.’ So I said, ‘If you’re not gonna let me down there, I’m just gonna quit.’ And it was simple as that,” said Meisner. 

Schmit, who was in a Sacramento, Calif.-based band called New Breed that had changed its name to Glad in 1968, had interviewed for a spot in Poco during its formation. (Messina and Furay also auditioned Gregg Allman and Gram Parsons — of the Byrds and later the Flying Burrito Brothers — for spots as well, but didn’t choose either of them.)

“I had a friend, this girl, who knew some of  guys from Buffalo Springfield,” said Schmit in a 2017 interview for The Vinyl Dialogues. “She put it in their ear that I was around and I auditioned for them. They seemed to really like me and they asked me to come back in two days. It turned out they had somebody else come in the following day.”

That somebody else was Meisner, who recalls the story a little differently. Buffalo Springfield’s equipment manager, Miles Thomas, had tipped Meisner that Furay and Messina were looking for a bass player. 

“After Miles told me that Jimmy and Richie were starting a group, they wanted me to do a tryout,” said Meisner in the Rockceller magazine interview. “I went out to Laurel Canyon and here’s Timothy Schmit just walking out as I’m going in. I played for a while and they said, ‘You’re in.’”

Schmidt believes he didn’t get the gig initially because Rusty Young, George Grantham and Meisner were all from Denver, Colo., and they already knew each other. 

“The other thing was, there was a Selective Service issue on my part. So it was questionable as to weather I would be available,” said Schmit. 

So when Meisner quit Poco — he would eventually go on to join  the Eagles soon thereafter — Schmit was available and became the obvious replacement choice.

“Richie especially wanted me int he band, so I knew there must be something there,” said Schmit. “It was exactly what I wanted to do at the time and it was doubly sweet because I had been originally turned down for the gig. I thought that it was my only chance to really do music at that level and that I blew it.”

The original members of Poco, with Randy Meisner, front left.
(Photo courtesy of Poco)

Messina liked Schmit as well.

“He was a great fit. Timmy brought some life, he brought some balance and creativity, had a good voice and the willingness to try new things,” said Messina.

When the band went into the studio to record the Poco album, Schmit said the other band members were looking for not only someone who could play bass, but who also was a good singer and songwriter.

“I hadn’t been much of a songwriter to that point, but I always wanted to be,” said Schmit. “I told them I was good at all three — bass playing, singing and songwriting — so I started writing songs.”

Of the seven songs on the Poco album, Schmit ended up co-writing “Keep on Believin’” with Furay.

“We just got together a few times and threw around some ideas for that song,” said Schmit. “I learned a lot from Richie.”

Although the Poco album did better than Pickin’ Up the Pieces on the charts, the band still hadn’t caught fire like its members and record company had wanted it to.

And there was some continuing internal strife that exacerbated the lack of record sales. In addition to that whole “too rock for country and too country for rock” thing, Messina thought the band hadn’t shown enough diversity in its music.

“Richie at the time was starting to get a little bit uptight, probably because the first record really didn’t happen for us,” said Messina. “I kind of felt squeezed a little bit by that as well. Richie had issues with Randy, so there was that stress going on as well.”

Epic Records loved the band, though, and wanted to see it succeed. But Messina was looking to get out.

“I don’t want to be critical because we are what we are when we’re there. For me, one of the reasons I wanted to leave was that musically, it wasn’t growing in a way where I felt things were going,” said Messina. “Look at Leon Russell, Bonnie and Delaney, Dave Mason, John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival — that music had some energy to it that I just didn’t think we were getting. I tried to do it with ‘You Better Think Twice,’ tried to move things, to do something that was a little more rock and roll, but still stayed with a country vibe.”

Messina believes that may have frustrated Furay.

“He really wanted to be successful and wanted his songs to be successful,” said Messina. “And he worked hard. But when you’re in a group, it takes a whole team to make things work and it means supporting each other. It just felt like Richie — I don’t know if it was envy or disappointment — but those feelings began to happen with me. I thought, well, I don’t want this thing to turn ugly. I’d rather just go back to producing and spend time with my wife.”

Messina went to Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records, and told him he wanted to leave Poco. 

(Photo courtesy of Poco)

“He was kind enough to say, ‘Look, get the next record finished and then find somebody to replace you who is good for the group and then you can leave the group in good standing so that they can be as successful as they can be,’” said Messina. “All of which I wanted to do anyway, but I thought it was great advice and it gave me incentive to stay there, deliver an album, make sure everybody was OK.”

Messina finished producing and mastering Poco’s third album, its first live album called Deliverin’ — and then left the band before its release in January 1971.

Paul Cotton was chosen to replace Messina. 

“I roomed with Paul for a few weeks to teach him parts and make sure he was comfortable before he went onstage. I found him to be a gentleman and a great replacement for me,” said Messina. “So when I left, I left feeling good about having done it in a way where it wouldn’t cripple Poco. I’m not so sure they felt that way about me, but you can only do what you can do.”

Fifty years later, Messina is at peace with that decision.

“Having left Poco with one studio album that sounded that good, and with a great live album that had lots of spirited performances on it, I felt I was able to come back after a bad first-sounding album,” said Messina. “Pickin’ Up the Pieces has some good tunes on it, I just don’t think the engineering department allowed us to make the best record we could.”

Schmit, too, would leave Poco in 1977 to join the Eagles, once again replacing Meisner as the band’s bass player.

“We didn’t have a hit record with Poco, but this new thing (country rock) was Poco, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Pure Prairie League, that was kind of the evolution,” said Schmit. “We knew a lot of people weren’t doing it, but we also knew there was an audience for it. There was a lot of hype around Poco. We were going to be the next really big thing, but it didn’t quite pan out that way. I was fortunate to sort of grab onto something that was already happening.”

The traumatic experience that inspired the hit ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’

I was supposed to be at a concert this weekend, one that I was really looking forward to — a triple bill featuring Pure Prairie League, Poco and Orleans.

Sherman Kelly onstage in the 1970s.
(Photo courtesy of Sherman Kelly)

But that didn’t happen because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, there’s still a question here in early May 2020 if we’ll get back to having any concerts at all this year.

Nevertheless, in the weeks leading up to this show, I had been watching YouTube videos of all three bands, particularly the Orleans cover of the great King Harvest song, “Dancing in the Moonlight.”

That song, written by Sherman Kelly, has always been one of my favorite tunes from the 1970s. Released on July 9, 1972, it became a big hit for King Harvest, reaching No. 10 on the Cash Box Top 100 singles chart, No 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and No. 22 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart.

Normally, I often read the comments on those YouTube videos, and I noticed on one Orleans video of “Dancing in the Moonlight,” there was a comment by Sherman Kelly from about five months ago.

Wait. What?

Since I love the stories behind the writing and making of songs and albums — the very foundation on which The Vinyl Dialogues book series is based — my first thought was, “Can I find Sherman Kelly and ask him if he’d consent to an interview to share the story behind “Dancing in the Moonlight?”

Well, I did. And he would. And you’re not gonna believe the story.

King Harvest in 1972.
(Photo courtesy of Sherman Kelly)

Kelly and some friends were running a nightclub in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, in 1969. One day, they decided to rent a 65-foot yacht and travel to St. Croix for the day. Unbeknownst to him at the time, Kelly was prone to seasickness, and he and his girlfriend got really seasick on the crossing.

When the group arrived in St. Croix, those onboard took a dingy to shore to look for some dinner. But Kelly and his girlfriend were both still sick and weren’t interested in eating at that point.

The group got its food and decided to head back to the boat to spend the night. Kelly and his girlfriend looked out into the harbor and saw the boat’s mast swaying back and forth, and instead opted to stay in town overnight rather than risk more seasickness on the boat.

There was only one problem: Due to his extreme seasickness and disorientation, Kelly had left his wallet on the boat and had no money or credit cards for a hotel. The two went to a small inn, explained the situation to the innkeeper and offered to settle up in the morning when Kelly could return to the boat to retrieve his wallet.

“And he said, ‘Sure, you can stay here if your girlfriend will sleep with me,’” said Kelly in a telephone interview from his home in the Finger Lakes region of New York. 

Boffalongo, circa 1970.
(Photo courtesy of Sherman Kelly)

After being turned down at a second inn, Kelly’s girlfriend said, “It’s a beautiful night. Why don’t we just stretch out on the beach?”

“So we did,” said Kelly. “And that’s all I remember very clearly.”

What happened after that was pieced together through bits of Kelly’s own memory and the recollections of other people. According to those accounts, while sleeping on the beach, Kelly and his girlfriend were the victims of a vicious St. Croix street gang. Kelly was severely beaten by five gang members wielding baseball bats. His girlfriend was raped by the gang leader and the rest were in line. But Kelly’s girlfriend later reported, that Kelly regained consciousness during the attack and fought back, making enough noise to scare off the attackers. 

With Kelly drifting in and out of consciousness, the two managed to follow the lights along the shore, eventually making their way to the only St. Croix hospital. Kelly and his girlfriend were thought to be among the first victims of the notorious Fountain Valley Gang, who in 1972 murdered eight tourists and wounded eight more thereby devastating St. Croix tourism for many years.

“I woke up to the sound of my hospital roommate screaming in pain. Finally the screaming stopped and I heard two doctors talking about him. ‘That’s it, he’s gone,’ said one doctor about the other patient. ‘What about him, you think he’s gonna make it?’ And the other doctor said, ‘No, I doubt it.” I realized they were talking about me,” said Kelly. 

Kelly did make it, though. He spent several days in the St. Croix hospital, eventually returning to St. Thomas, where he stayed at a friend’s house while he recovered. Eventually he was healthy enough to get back to New York, where doctors at New York Hospital were able to re-break and re-set the bones in his face and address his other injuries. 

Returning to his home in Ithaca, New York, still in pain and with constant headaches, Kelly was in no shape to be in a band. But that didn’t prevent him from writing songs.

And it was during this period of convalescence that he began to write some verses for a song, verses that would later become the lyrics for “Dancing in the Moonlight.”

“I envisioned an alternate reality, the dream of a peaceful and joyous celebration of life. It was just me imagining a better world than the one I had just experienced in St. Croix,” said Kelly.

An unspeakably traumatic experience that almost cost him his life had turned into a beautiful song. 

“It was amazing. People liked the song right from the start. I liked it, but I wouldn’t have predicted that it would become a big hit,” said Kelly.

Sherman Kelly, left, and Larry Hoppen, who would go on to form the band Orleans.
(Photo courtesy of Sherman Kelly)

King Harvest wouldn’t be the first to record the song, though. In 1970, Kelly joined a band called Boffalongo, with his brother, Wells Kelly, guitarist Larry Hoppen, bassist and keyboardist Dave “Doc” Robinson and Peter Giansante. “Dancing in the Moonlight” would appear on the 1970 Boffalongo album “Beyond Your Head,” with Sherman Kelly on lead vocals, Wells Kelly on drums and Larry Hoppen on lead guitar. 

His vocal on that version of the song is horrible, according to Kelly. 

“The first time I was in a recording studio for that version, we had these producers who thought it was a good idea to give me cocaine. That was probably the worst idea,” said Kelly. “I found myself in the vocal booth, where there were a lot of people distracting me. And the producers would give me more cocaine to keep me doing takes until my voice was so distorted and so weird.”

But that version was popular, and Boffalongo had a regional hit with it. The song was also recorded by a group called High Broom and also released in 1970 on Island Records, but failed to reach the charts.

When Boffalongo broke up, Wells Kelly joined the then Paris-based French-American group King Harvest, whose lead singer was Doc Robinson, also formerly of Boffalongo. It was Wells Kelly who introduced “Dancing in the Moonlight” to the band.

The King Harvest version of “Dancing in the Moonlight” features Robinson on lead vocals. It was released as a single, with “Lady Come Home” on the B-side. 

Once the song became a hit, King Harvest invited Sherman Kelly to tour with the band in the summer of 1972. During live shows, Robinson handled the lead vocals on the song and Sherman Kelly provided harmony. 

“Doc had a pretty good voice, better than mine,” said Kelly. “I remember one critic said about me, ‘As a singer, Sherman Kelly is not too bad of a songwriter.’ That was amusing, and true.”

But life on the road with King Harvest wasn’t for Kelly. He lasted just that one tour with the band.

“Imagine yourself in your twenties and you’ve written a hit song, you have some chart action and you’re traveling around. It was fun for a while,” he said. “But life on the road is ridiculous. I didn’t really care for it after awhile.”

Wells Kelly would eventually leave King Harvest and reconnect with John Hall. Wells Kelly, Hall and Harvey Brooks had been in a band called Thunderfrog in the late 1960s. Along with Larry Hoppen from Boffalongo, Wells Kelly and Hall formed the band Orleans, which would also record its version of “Dancing in the Moonlight.” The current incarnation of Orleans, which still includes Hall, and Larry Hoppen’s brothers, Lance and Lane Hoppen, still has “Dancing in the Moonlight” in its set. Larry Hoppen died in 2012. 

Sherman Kelly today.
(Photo courtesy of Sherman Kelly)

As for Sherman Kelly, he graduated from Cornell University in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and English. He went on to study at Alliance Francaise in Paris, the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and the New School for Social Research in New York City, all before writing “Dancing in the Moonlight.” 

After the tragic death of his brother Wells Kelly in 1984 — who died on the front step of a London apartment after a night of partying while a member of Meat Loaf’s band — Sherman Kelly  found it too painful to work in music and pursued other interests, including getting his master’s degree in social work and psychotherapy from Syracuse University in New York. For many years, until his retirement, he worked as a psychotherapist. 

In 2008, he released an album called “Burnin’ the Candle,” which included some unfinished work that he and Wells Kelly had written together. 

In 2000, Toploader covered “Dancing in the Moonlight,” which became a hit for the band. The song has been featured in various films and on television shows. In 2017, “Dancing in the Moonlight” was featured in the video game “Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Signs” and serves as the opening song for the second episode. 

An inside look at the humility and humanity of Carl Wilson from one of his co-writers

Robert White Johnson’s parents had a cottage on a lake about an hour away from where he grew up in Moline, Illinois. On those weekend drives in the 1960s, Robert and his brother Gary would pass the time in the car listening to Beach Boys records on a battery-operated 45 rpm record player, singing harmony along with the voices on the records.

Carl Wilson
(Photo courtesy of the Beach Boys)

Two decades later, Robert would be writing songs with Carl Wilson, who along with his brothers Brian and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and high school friend Al Jardine founded the Beach Boys in the early 1960s.

Two songs that were co-written by Johnson and Carl Wilson — “It’s Getting Late” and “Where I Belong” — ended up on the Beach Boys’ 25th studio album titled The Beach Boys, which was released on June 10, 1985. The album got to No. 52 on the U.S. Billboard 200 Albums chart, making it the group’s highest-charting album since the release of 15 Big Ones in 1976. The single “Getcha Back,” written by Love and longtime Beach Boys collaborator Terry Melcher, a singer, songwriter and producer and son of actress Doris Day, made it to No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart and No. 2 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.

The album is notable for a number of reasons: it’s the first one the band recorded after the accidental drowning death of drummer Dennis Wilson in 1983; produced by Steve Levine, it was the band’s first album to be recorded digitally; it was the last album released  by Caribou Records, a label owned by James Guercio — who managed the Beach Boys in the 1970s and had also managed and produced the band Chicago as well as the Buckinghams and Blood Sweat and Tears; and it was recorded at a time when Brian Wilson — who has little to do with the recording of the album but contributed two songs for it, “It’s Just A Matter of Time” and “Male Ego,” co-written by Love — was suffering from long-term drug abuse and mental illness and was in the clutches of Eugene Landy, a psychotherapist who would become known for his unconventional treatment of, and control over, Brian.

“The Beach Boys,” released on June 10, 1985, was the band’s 25th studio album.

It was into this world that Johnson entered in the early 1980s to collaborate with Carl Wilson, who at the time had become the de facto leader of the Beach Boys due the aforementioned series of circumstances.

“I think the thing – outside of what an amazing human being Carl Wilson was – was his artistry, his music. Every note mattered to him when we wrote,” said Johnson in a telephone interview from his home in Nashville, Tennessee. “When we would work on a song, he wanted to make sure that everything was right, all the little nuances, the melody and the phrasing.”

The story about how he and Carl got together to write features a unique set of circumstances as well, according to Johnson.

After spending a lot of the 1970s on the road, playing every small nightclub and Holiday Inn he could as a member of a cover band, Johnson was discovered by country star Dottie West and her husband Byron, who convinced Johnson to move to Nashville to advance his career. Johnson wrote songs for other artists, like Ronnie Milsap, and eventually formed another band of his own called RPM in 1981. RPM, featuring Johnson as lead singer, released two albums and had a modest hit single titled “A Legend Never Dies.”

The band RPM, including member, left to right, Mark Gendel, Tommy Wells, Robert White Johnson (in hat and sunglasses), Jimmy Lee Sloas, along with manager Jerry Schilling, second from right, and Carl Wilson.
(Photo courtesy of Robert White Johnson)

At the time, a tape of the band’s music made its way to the office of attorney Peter Paterno, a top music business lawyer then, who happened to be listening to it the day that Jerry Schilling, a music industry professional who had been a member of Elvis Presley’s “Memphis Mafia” — a group of friends, associates and relatives who accompanied and protected Elvis from the beginning of his career in 1954 until his death in 1977 — was in Paterno’s office.

Schilling was also managing the Beach Boys and Carl Wilson’s solo career at the time and he loved the RPM sound. It was Schilling who would eventually introduce Johnson to Carl Wilson.

“Jerry said, ‘You need to get with Carl. You guys would really connect.’ So at a Beach Boys show in Nashville, I met Carl,” said Johnson. “We just immediately connected. There was just this thing. I felt like he was family. He said, ‘Let’s work out some time to write together.’ So over the next couple of years, he would come here [to Nashville] and we would work at a studio. I had a studio that RPM had recorded some recent demos called The Castle – it literally looked like a castle — in Franklin, Tennessee. Beautiful facility, world class. They just let Carl and I go crazy.”

Johnson said that the first time he sang backgrounds with Carl, it was life-changing.

“He had such power and strength in his voice. And I was like, ‘Man, I gotta step up to the plate.’ He encouraged me and we had fun doing it. It was one of those moments in your life where a light goes on and you go, ‘OK, I get it,’” said Johnson.

When the two first started writing together, Carl and his second wife, Gina Martin, daughter of crooner, Hollywood legend and Rat Pack stalwart Dean Martin, had a place in Nederland, Colorado, near Caribou Ranch, where the label Caribou Records recorded the albums it released. Johnson and Wilson would write at Wilson’s home and at the ranch as well.

“I remember Carl put me up the first time in one of the cabins out there [at Caribou Ranch] and I went to have breakfast in the studio area,” said Johnson. “There was this nice guy welcoming me to breakfast. He said, ‘Hey, if you get a chance, sign the book over there. Everybody that comes I have them sign the book.’ After breakfast I went over and opened up the book and there’s names like Elton John and John Lennon. Turns out the guy I was talking to was Jimmy Guercio. Jimmy created this amazing environment at the ranch that probably has never been duplicated anywhere else. It was just a moment in music history.”

For The Beach Boys album, Wilson and Johnson had written “It’s Getting Late” in a Los Angles writing session with Myrna Smith, Schilling’s ex-wife who had been a member of the Sweet Inspirations, the all-girl background singers for Elvis in the 1970s. Wilson and Johnson would write another of the album’s songs, “Where I Belong,” at Wilson’s house in Nederland, Colorado.

Robert White Johnson and Carl Wilson at Wilson’s home in Nederland, Colorado.
(Photo by Gina Wilson, courtesy of Robert White Johnson)

“I knew almost every Beach Boys song. I grew up on their music. It was in my heart, my mind, my brain. I always wanted to write a song like that, with Carl,” said Johnson. “I had the basic idea on it. I remember sitting in his living room in his place in Nederland. There was this huge, all glass living room that faced the Continental Divide. It was just such an inspiring place to hang out. This song didn’t take very long. I think I worked a little while longer on the lyrics, but it came together fairly quickly. I had a feeling about that song, if it had a chance it could really do well. The vocals on that song are crazy incredible.”

The first time that Johnson heard a recording of  “Where I Belong” was at West Lake Studios in Los Angeles. 

“They were in the process of overdubbing. It’s where I met Steve Levine, who was producing the album. I remember him pulling me aside and telling me it could be huge.  He had fun playing it. He played it for me a couple of times,” said Johnson. “It wasn’t totally finished but was pretty far along by the time I first heard it in the studio. It brought tears to my eyes. All the elements had come together. Here was Carl doing the lead and the guys [the Beach Boys] doing the backgrounds. Steve wanted to get the song right, as far as production, and I thought he did a marvelous job.”

Producer Levine, according to Johnson, was excited about releasing “Where I Belong” as a single off the album, but the record company officials didn’t agree.

“I think if they [label officials] would have followed up with ‘Where I Belong’ as a single, I think it could have been a bridge, and Beach Boys fans would have been into it,” said Johnson. “I think younger people, maybe newer fans, would have liked it as well. Levine was excited about releasing it as a single, but it wasn’t his choice.”

There seems to be some agreement on that. In their book Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys: The Complete Guide to Their Music, authors Andrew G. Doe and John Tobler single out “Where I Belong,” describing the song as “simply magnificent, with block harmonies of almost chilling power.” Doe also praises “Where I Belong” in the liner notes of the album’s 2000 CD reissue as “achingly beautiful” and “the album’s undisputed highlight.”

Robert White Johnson still lives in Nashville and still writes songs. He owns his own music publishing/production company called RadioQuest.
(Photo courtesy of Robert White Johnson)

Johnson and Carl Wilson remained close until Wilson’s death in 1998. For the album Like A Brother — a collaboration of Wilson, Gerry Beckley of America and Robert Lamm of Chicago — Johnson co-wrote the song “I Wish For You” with Wilson. The album was recorded before Wilson’s death but not released until two years later in 2000.

In addition to his work with Wilson, Johnson has contributed songs for Peter Wolf, lead vocalist for the J. Geils Band; B.J. Thomas; Lynyrd Skynyrd; 38 Special; Van Zandt; and Celine Dion, for whom he co-wrote the hit single “Where Does My Heart Beat Now,” which reached No. 4 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and No. 1 on the Radio & Records Adult Contemporary chart. 

In 1995, Johnson formed his own music publishing/production company RadioQuest. He also won a Dove Award in 1996 as producer of the Inspirational Album of the Year, Unbelievable Love, by Larnelle Harris.

But it is Johnson’s time with Carl Wilson that still resonates to this day.

“He was one of the most lovely humans to ever walk the Earth. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. And the fact that he was that way with all that he’d been through, with all the fame that he had experienced, there was always this humility. He was kind to everybody,” said Johnson. “And I don’t think Carl ever got the accolades that he deserved for his musical contributions, instincts and abilities. If it hadn’t been for him, the Beach Boys would have died a long time ago. He kept it together, he kept it going. He was the heartbeat, he kept it real, vocally and artistically. He was a true inspiration to me, even with his regard to his humanity. It doesn’t take me much to get teary-eyed thinking about him. I was honored to be his friend.” 

The Beatles took the U.S. by storm, and then almost got taken by a storm themselves

The Beatles – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr (pictured here during a solo show at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, in 2015) – first appeared in the United States on Feb. 9, 1964, on the “Ed Sullivan Show.”
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

In February 1964, a snowstorm had blasted the northeast. The region was paralyzed and air travel had virtually shut down.

Sandy Yaguda was at his home in Brooklyn, waiting out the storm. 

Yaguda — stage name Sandy Deanne — was one of the original members of the group Jay and the Americans, which by winter of 1964 had recorded a couple of hit songs, most notably “She Cried,” which reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1962.

And then the phone rang Feb. 10 at Yaguda’s house. It was the band’s manager.

“He called and said, ‘Listen, you guys have to find a way to get to Washington, D.C. You’re playing with the Beatles and the Righteous Brothers tomorrow night,’” said Yaguda.

The Beatles had taken America by a storm even bigger than the one that had rocked the northeast that week. They had made their U.S. debut on the Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964, in New York City, and their first live concert in the U.S. was scheduled just two days later, on Feb. 11, at the Washington Coliseum in the nation’s capital. 

Because of the heavy snow blanketing the region, all flights had been canceled and the Beatles had taken a train to D.C. for the gig. Originally scheduled to appear with the Beatles at the Coliseum were the Chiffons, an all-girl group from the Bronx who had the hits “He’s So Fine” and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” in 1963; and Tommy Roe, who had a No. 1 hit with “Sheila” in 1962.

But because of the storm, neither The Chiffons nor Roe could make it to D.C. Instead, the call went out to the Righteous Brothers and Jay and the Americans to fill the bill.  

“We had seen the newsreels of the Beatles, with girls screaming and fainting in Germany. The hype was on but they hadn’t really been here yet. They were just starting,” said Yaguda.

Jay and the Americans made it safely to D.C. the day of the show and upon arrival were immediately greeted by the marquee on the outside of the Coliseum that read, “The Beatles . . . and others.”

That didn’t sit too well with Jay Black, the lead singer for Jay and the Americans.

“Fuck this! Turn the car around! We’re leaving!” Yaguda recalled Black saying.

“And me being the voice of reason — the Ringo of the group — I said we can’t do that, we signed a contract, we’ll get sued for twice the money. We have to play the show,” said Yaguda. 

Black calmed down and the group unloaded the car and went inside the Coliseum.

A pre-show press conference with the Beatles was about to start and the members of Jay and the Americans wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So they sat in the grandstand of the Coliseum, close enough to hear what was going on between the reporters and the Beatles.

“One of the reporters said, ‘How did you find America?’ And Ringo said, ‘We made a left at Greenland.’ We all looked at each other, and we said you know what, these aren’t silly little kids. These kids are sharper than they’re getting credit for,” said Yaguda.

The show itself was a madhouse. During the performance of the Righteous Brothers, the crowd of mostly young girls chanted “We want the Beatles!” so loudly that it nearly drowned out the performance of the opening act.

Once again, that wasn’t acceptable to Black. When the crowd continued chanting “We want the Beatles!” during the Jay and the Americans set, Black reacted, but not in anger.

His instincts turned out to be right this time.

“Jay, being who is he, went out and said, ‘Hey, man, I’m glad you all came out to see us tonight,’” said Yaguda. “And they all cracked up. That won them over, so they shut up and listened to us and when we were done, gave us a big round of applause.”

When Jay and the Americans finished its set, the band members returned to their dressing rooms in the basement of the Coliseum. 

“About three minutes later, a noise went up the likes of which I’ve never heard in my life, not when the Yankees won the World Series, not when Elvis performed. Because it was an enclosed building, the sound couldn’t escape; it just kept reverberating,” said Yaguda.

The Beatles had taken the stage. 

“It didn’t die down. It was continuous. We all had to cover our ears with our hands and we just looked at each other in amazement,” said Yaguda.

“When it finally stopped, we said to each other, ‘Something just happened.’ We saw Elvis and we played with Roy Orbison; we played with a lot of people. And we’ve seen great ovations and we’ve gotten great ovations. This was something entirely different. This was mass hysteria. And we knew without even seeing it. We heard it and we knew it,” said Yaguda.

It would be the only time Jay and the Americans would share the bill with the Beatles.

Jay and the Americans, seen here in a 2017 show in New Brunswick, New Jersey, were a last-minute fill-in to open for the Beatles in their first U.S. concert on Feb. 11, 1964, in Washington, D.C.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

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