{"id":681961,"date":"2026-05-20T01:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T01:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/681961\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T01:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T01:12:10","slug":"americas-dewey-bunnell-on-keeping-the-band-alive-for-56-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/681961\/","title":{"rendered":"America’s Dewey Bunnell on Keeping the Band Alive for 56 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRolling Stone\u2018s interview series Last Man Standing<\/a> features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and musicians who are the last remaining members of iconic bands. In some cases, they are the only classic-era member in the current touring lineup. In others, they are the only ones still alive. In either case, the task of keeping the torch lit has fallen onto their shoulders, whether they wanted that responsibility or not.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the dawn of the Seventies, three U.S. Air Force brat teenagers living abroad in England decided to form a rock band and call it America<\/a>, modeling their sound after Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and other acts over 5,000 miles away in California. Group members Dewey Bunnell, Gerry Beckley, and Dan Peek were all gifted songwriters and harmony singers, and they racked up an impressive string of hits in quick succession, including \u201cA Horse With No Name,\u201d \u201cI Need You,\u201d \u201cVentura Highway,\u201d and \u201cSister Golden Hair.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Peek left the band in 1977 and found a new career in contemporary Christian music before dying from uremic pericarditis in 2011. Beckley quietly stepped away from the road in late 2023, retiring with his wife to her native Australia. This left Bunnell as the sole original member in the touring lineup.<\/p>\n

\n\tA one-man version of America might have been tricky to pull off with either of the two other founding members, but Bunnell is the voice behind many of the group\u2019s most beloved songs, including \u201cA Horse With No Name,\u201d \u201cVentura Highway,\u201d and \u201cTin Man.\u201d And with help from singer Andy Barr, who tackles Beckley\u2019s signature songs, including \u201cSister Golden Hair,\u201d \u201cDaisy Jane,\u201d and \u201cI Need You,\u201d the shows have been stellar.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is my third year doing it without Gerry, which I never expected in my wildest dreams after 50 plus years,\u201d Bunnell tells Rolling Stone via Zoom from Southern California. \u201cBut you never know in life what happens, and it\u2019s been going really well. I\u2019ve got a great support team, a great band.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tBunnell grew up in Los Angeles and was ironically given the nickname \u201cDewey\u201d after surf legend Dewey Weber: The man born Lee Merton Bunnell was completely inept in the ocean. Bunnell did, however, love surf music, especially Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, the Surfaris, and, of course, the Beach Boys.<\/p>\n

\n\tEverything changed when his father was transferred to an Air Force base near London in 1967, where he not only made friends with Peek and Beckley, but also had the chance to see Pink Floyd, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelin, and other major acts of the time. \u201cIt\u2019s only when you step back and decades later you see how intense and rich the times were,\u201d he says, \u201cand how fortunate we were to be right there.\u201d He was also fortunate to discover an incredible music chemistry with his two buddies and to start a band that he\u2019s still fronting nearly six decades later.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first few times you sang with Gerry and Dan, did you feel the chemistry?
Yeah. Gerry and I graduated from high school, got our diplomas, and Dan went back to the U.S. for one semester of college. But Gerry and I still hung around the base. We would go to shows and do things, but it was never in our mind\u2019s eye that we were going to become a band.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut when Dan came back, the timing was everything. He\u2019d apparently been writing some songs. I was out of school and working at the base. I was living with another family because my parents had moved to Northern England, and I had a lot of time in my bedroom with a guitar.<\/p>\n

\n\tI started writing a couple songs, and Gerry started writing a couple of songs. Dan burned out on the first semester of college, and came back to England. None of us knew what we were doing. And the three of us got together and said, \u201cHey, I got a song. You got a song?\u201d And we arranged them vocally.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat happened from there?
I\u2019d never really sung harmony. I\u2019d been in the school choir, and I guess that was singing harmony, of course, you\u2019d learn your part. But the three of us sat in a little bedroom\u2026and in a car too. We used to rehearse in this old car that my dad had gotten for me, an old Morris Minor, and the sound inside the car was really great, and really tight.<\/p>\n

\n\tGerry was the great arranger. He\u2019d say, \u201cYou sing this part, and Dan, you\u2019re going to sing this.\u201d Dan was equally good at that. I was a Johnny-come-lately to any kind of music theory or any kind of arranging of songs, but we\u2019d pick out those parts.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yeah, you\u2019re right. When those three voices hit our ears, we both went, \u201cWow, that sounds great.\u201d And we started taping it and listening back, and that\u2019s when you realize you\u2019ve got something, there\u2019s a blend there. Of course, we were all Beach Boys fans and Beatles fans and all the other harmony singers. But for your readers that don\u2019t know, singing harmony is a very special sound.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou recorded your first album at Trident Studio in 1971. That place fascinates me. Right around that time, David Bowie, Elton John, Genesis, T. Rex, and so many other acts recorded there as well.
Bowie had just left [after recording The Man Who Sold the World] when we were there. We had the same engineer, Ken Scott. We\u2019d been in one other demo studio before that, a place called Chalk Farm, a small, funky little studio to demo a couple of songs. But by the time we were now getting traction with Warner Brothers Records, they were interested.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019d shopped those demos and settled on a deal with Warner Brothers. It was all happening pretty fast. Then we went into Trident and now it was the real deal.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tDo you remember the moment you sat down and wrote \u201cA Horse With No Name?\u201d
I can, actually. We were living with another family, and there were two single beds in the bedroom I shared with a guy named John Alcazar. We\u2019d come and go out of the house because we were working at the base, and John had a different job and his parents worked, so I could be there alone sometimes.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd it was sitting on one of those single beds writing songs. I\u2019d already written a few. \u201cRiverside\u201d from the first album was the very first song I ever wrote. And that was the first song that we started arranging. As I remember, Gerry had \u201cI Need You.\u201d And Dan had written \u201cNever Found the Time.\u201d They\u2019d come over to Alcazar\u2019s house, but it was sitting on that bed that I wrote that song. And it was pretty stream of thought.<\/p>\n

\n\tI had a strange little new tuning. I\u2019d learned these tunings from Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and stuff. So we were already into them as singer-songwriters, and most definitely emulating them. We\u2019ve always been considered sort of CSN light or whatever, but there\u2019s no doubt that was a reality, that music had really taken the place of the earlier British bands that had influenced us, and Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds and that thing is what we wanted to hitch our wagons to. So we arranged the songs in ways that emulated that. I mean, it\u2019s not like harmony and acoustic guitars were anything brand new, but there was a vibe that we wanted to join.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat put you in the mindset of the desert living so far away in England?
Yeah, good question. I was pining for warm weather for one thing, because England\u2019s weather is a bit damp and rainy and a little bit chilly. So my family had moved around in the Air Force to various bases in the U.S., and my uncle and his family, he was Army, and they lived in New Mexico. So we\u2019d spent time down there in the Southwest desert area a lot.<\/p>\n

\n\tMy brother and I, in our pastime as kids from as far back as we can remember on bases, would go poking around in the wilderness, whatever was around, forests, deserts, whatever, and catching snakes and lizards and things. We loved doing that and we were animal freaks.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo there we were back in England, not so much wilderness, not so much adventuring around the environment. I was just reliving one of those days hiking in the desert. We used to go out there all the time. Vandenberg Air Force Base in California had a lot of open space too, because it was a missile base. So there was a lot of undeveloped land and sagebrushy, desert-esque terrain, but that was the inspiration completely.<\/p>\n

\n\tDo you get annoyed that so many people are under the impression that it\u2019s about heroin?
That came out of left field. All of us, when we heard that, I never had heard the term \u201chorse\u201d for heroin. Not that we were living in heroin circles, but I heard it was called H or something. We were frankly hash smokers in England. In this day and age, THC and marijuana are pass\u00e9, but in those days it was a little underground.<\/p>\n

\n\tPeople also fixate on lines in the song like \u201cthe heat was hot.\u201d
Like I said, it came out verbatim. I hardly changed the line. I think I\u2019d written another verse and canned that because I already had a ton of words in there. But yeah, there\u2019s a couple of odd lines, but I was also taking on a persona. I don\u2019t speak like \u201c\u2018there ain\u2019t no one for to give you no pain.\u201d It was almost like I was taking on a hick desert rat kind of a persona, and that was the way I figured I\u2019d talk if I was out there poking around looking for old gold mines or something.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s pretty crazy that your debut single shoots to Number One. That doesn\u2019t happen with most bands.
Yeah, there\u2019s no accounting for that. Obviously, the strength of the song was much stronger than I ever expected. I\u2019ve said it before, and it\u2019s in print, that I thought of it more as a novelty story song that wasn\u2019t full of nice bridges and fancy chord changes. So it was doubly surprising that it did so well. In England especially, a brand new band, and with the plethora of bands that were coming up then and the great releases going out at the same time\u2026.I\u2019m sure Warner Brothers Records were equally surprised.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey did their best to get us on the BBC, and we did some trips over to Europe, went to Radio Luxembourg, which had a big listening audience around Europe, and it got played on there. But nothing like in the U.S. where there\u2019s thousands of radio stations, and you can blanket the country. So it just had some kind of effect, thankfully. It really got traction right away.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat a wild twist of fate that it knocks \u201cHeart of Gold\u201d off the top spot.
Yeah, go figure that one too. We\u2019d seen Neil alone onstage at the Royal Festival Hall [on February 27, 1971], which was fantastic. And we\u2019d seen Joni Mitchell and we\u2019d met Joni briefly. But we didn\u2019t meet Neil. As we all know, Neil\u2019s pretty private, but we just were enamored by that. We never saw CSN until later in life. And of course, we then met Jackson Browne and we were ultimately managed by David Geffen\u2019s office, who managed all those guys, and the Eagles were just coming up.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was strange that there was Neil climbing the charts at the same time, and he wasn\u2019t known for big hit singles. We loved his albums, his first solo album, and we loved all his work with Buffalo Springfield, every song. Neil is a very special artist, and I\u2019m still drawn to his work. But yeah, to knock him off as it were, it sounds like we\u2019d beat him up or something. We were just the next new thing.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was it like arriving in Los Angeles when you have this huge hit and they booked you at the Whisky?
Again, this was all on-the-job training. We\u2019d never done this. We\u2019d never traveled very far. We\u2019d gone to some different American schools and played just because of the connection with the U.S. military. And we had played in Holland. We\u2019d gone over on the ferry and [our manager] Jeff Dexter at that point was able to work with some promoters over there and we did half a dozen shows in half a dozen cities. And did we play somewhere in Belgium? I think, but that was our big international touring at that point.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, now the record is doing well in England. Warner said, \u201cWe won\u2019t release it in the U.S. unless you\u2019ll back it up with a tour.\u201d And of course, we were like, \u201cYeah, sure, absolutely. We\u2019re there, man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYou didn\u2019t have a band yet.
It was just the three of us on stools with acoustic guitars, and a bass guitar that Gerry and Dan would trade off on certain songs. They\u2019d reach over and pick up the electric bass and the other guy would play a 12-string or six-string. So it was stripped down, three vocals and three guys playing an instrument, no keyboards, no drums, or percussion of any kind.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike you said, we ended at the Whisky. But we had the better part of a six-week tour to really hone our chops in the U.S. We played in Philadelphia at the Main Point, and the Bitter End in Greenwich Village there in New York. That was really an eye-opener because none of us had been to New York City, and we were dropped in the middle of that. Everybody was going, \u201cWow, this is what you see in the movies.\u201d And the Bitter End had a huge history. We were following in some big footsteps there. And we sold that out every night too. We were actually opening for Robert Klein, the comedian.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe did about 40 minutes and he\u2019d come on. And from the first show, there were a lot of young people in there and it became pretty evident that\u2026Well, there were Robert Klein fans, but they were coming to see us. And by the end of the week, he was making jokes about the people in the audience. \u201cYeah, we know who you came to see.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tTell me about writing \u201cVentura Highway.\u201d
I actually wrote some lyrics while we were still in England, before we moved out. And it was based on the time that my family lived in California before we went to England. We would drive down into L.A. sometimes because my dad had some business, and we\u2019d turn it into a family trip or sometimes just to go to Disneyland or whatever.<\/p>\n

\n\tI always remember that coast route, Highway 101. For years, I thought there was no Ventura Highway after everybody pointed it out to me. It\u2019s called the Ventura Freeway, but it turns out there was a road there, and I\u2019ve since seen the sign that says Ventura Highway. But I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d seen that or if I just knew that we were driving through the town of Ventura at the time and that sparked an idea for a song about the free wind blowing through your hair, man.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy do you think Hat Trick didn\u2019t do as well as the first two records?
Well, on the first album, we had two big singles in \u201cA Horse with No Name\u201d and \u201cI Need You.\u201d Second album, \u201cVentura Highway\u201d was big, and \u201cDon\u2019t Cross the River.\u201d We\u2019d really saturated. We\u2019d been touring right from that minute on. We were touring like mad all around the U.S. We had Jackson Browne open for us for one whole tour, and J.D. Souther. The Geffen\/Roberts camp kept us moving.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the same time, we were trying to write songs for the third album, which as you note is Hat Trick. I think our plate was so full. I love the album. I still do. But I think also the public moves on. And Geffen did not like the fact that we had decided to pick a cover song, and don\u2019t ask me why. But Willis Alan Ramsey had written this song called \u201cMuskrat Candlelight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd we were still absorbing all kinds of music. We were always going to Tower Records and buying albums. \u201cWho\u2019s this? Who\u2019s that?\u201d And for some reason we all thought that was a nice song. We worked it up, and we changed the title to \u201cMuskrat Love,\u201d and that became the single. Geffen didn\u2019t like the idea we were doing anybody else\u2019s music at all because he wants you to do original material. But I don\u2019t know that there was a better song on the album at that point to be a single, so there you go. And it didn\u2019t do as well. I think our popularity, we were saturating the market, and maybe it was just that step down.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat gave you the idea to write a song about the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz?
I always loved The Wizard of Oz. It\u2019s probably my favorite movie because it was a big part of my youth. We used to have to wait till Thanksgiving every year when it aired on TV. It was always the imagery and the adventure of that story and it was just great. But the lyric to \u201cTin Man\u201d doesn\u2019t adhere to that storyline so much, but I wanted to get that. And again, it\u2019s bad English. \u201cOz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn\u2019t already have.\u201d But it\u2019s basically the theme of The Wizard of Oz in some way.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did George Martin change the way you guys approached your work?
Well, producing is a big job. It\u2019s a bigger job than just saying, \u201cOh, that sounds good.\u201d And in our infinite wisdom, we thought the three of us could produce albums forever, put our heads together and we would know how to do things. But there\u2019s a lot of administrative work involved with recording. You have to book studios, book equipment, and sometimes book session players.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe were the creators. We didn\u2019t want to be signing checks and contracts to book studios and do this and that. Frankly, I didn\u2019t do much of that anyway, but we had an engineer who was coordinating and we had Geffen and Roberts. So it was time for a producer.<\/p>\n

\n\tGeorge Martin was known then, and still to this day, as one of the greatest producers ever, having produced virtually every Beatles record. Phil Spector did a little something in there, but George was responsible for corralling that whole Beatle thing. And he happened to be in town, we found out, doing some work with Paul on \u201cLive and Let Die.\u201d And so we were able to get a meeting with him at Geffen. Geffen was another powerful man getting more powerful daily, and he was able to track down George for us, bring him into the office.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe had a meeting. George kicked off his shoes and sat there very comfortably. He was a great guy, a very regal, gentlemanly, princely kind of a guy. And he said he had listened to our first couple of albums. He liked it. He knew about our history in England, and we kind of had the same sense of humor, British humor being what it is. And he said, \u201cRight, let\u2019s try it. Let\u2019s do this, but you\u2019ll have to come to England and work at my studio.\u201d We said, \u201cGreat, we love going back to England.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was never planned that we\u2019d do as much as we did. We did seven projects with George, and it was going to be a one-off, like \u201cwe\u2019ll see how it goes.\u201d But it went on and on after that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIt must have been surreal to sit with him at the mixing desk and think it was the same guy who made \u201cA Day in the Life\u201d and \u201cTwist and Shout\u201d and almost every other Beatles song.
Yeah. It\u2019s funny. It almost was like living in some strange non-reality. We got along well though. He puts his pants on one leg at a time like everybody else. And Geoff Emerick was the engineer. He was a fantastic mixing engineer, and he knew how to set the mics and drum sounds from the Beatles and everybody else that they worked with. He was just fantastic. They were a team.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m sure it was hard in those years to watch Dan struggle with drugs and alcohol, and just start to deteriorate.
Yeah. We were all in this together, and all on par because we lived in the same apartment building. And when we first got to L.A. and we\u2019d lived together in this little shack in England breathing down each other\u2019s necks. We were tight that way. But when we got to LA and everyone took on their separate lives. Dan got married to his girlfriend. I\u2019d gotten married and moved to Northern California. We were suddenly divided, the three of us having separate lives. Gerry was the bachelor, the last to marry, and there was so much going on in L.A.<\/p>\n

\n\tI found out later that he was getting a little heavily involved in drugs, but we were all on par that way, to be perfectly honest. I wouldn\u2019t hide anything. We were from that generation. We\u2019d done acid and dabbled in this or that. Heroin was a no-no. Just seems like we learned that from when we were little kids. But cocaine was around. In fact, cocaine was everywhere. And I never saw Dan slipping as badly because I\u2019d come down for rehearsals and then go back or come down to record and we\u2019d stay in touch on the phone and stuff, but we were leading separate lives at that point.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the end he was struggling badly, was not making rehearsals, and had been up for days. Bless his heart, he wasn\u2019t coping well. And finally\u2026Gerry is a practical guy. He said, \u201cWe can\u2019t keep doing this, Dan.\u201d But it did keep happening and we were missing rehearsals or were working without him.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd so we had to have that meeting, which was a dismissal meeting. We had Dan\u2019s dad fly out, and I sat there on my hands. I couldn\u2019t believe what was happening too. But by the end of that meeting, Dan was out of the band, at least with the concept of \u201cmaybe you go check into some rehab.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThey didn\u2019t even call it rehab in those days, as I remember, going into a facility or whatever. We were like, \u201cWe\u2019ll see where we go from here, Dan.\u201d That\u2019s the way we left it. Nothing was etched in stone, which was true. Who knows? Dan could have come back with a dozen great songs and been all perky and ready to go. And we finally said, \u201cWell, sure, let\u2019s do it all again.\u201d But then of course, Gerry and I started doing this for ourselves. We moved into the next projects without Dan, and that became permanent.<\/p>\n

\n\tDid you see Dan much in the decades that followed?
No. To be honest, we didn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t see him for years and years or speak with him much. It was before email. Things were different. He moved back to his hometown of Farmington, Missouri, where he was from. And then ultimately, he became a born-again Christian and did get records together. He did get himself together. He made albums on a Christian label and pursued his own career.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve read different accounts online. Did he ever even guest onstage with you guys again?
No. As far as I can remember. I think he came to a show, maybe, to see us. I really have blacked that out a little bit. It was a painful, difficult time. And it was awkward going from being joined at the hip, the three of us, three musketeers, to avoiding each other a little like that.<\/p>\n

\n\tGerry and I still bonded, but the Dan thing was just a bad subject and I know he was upset about it. He wrote a book<\/a>, and he made it clear that it was upsetting. But the train had left the station, and we were buzzing along with a record deal and George Martin producing the next and the next and the next album.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWas the period around Silent Letter and Alibi tough since those albums didn\u2019t really connect?
Yeah. Again, we were in our own world, and I always thought we were doing the best work we could do at that time and we were being inspired by whatever the topics of the day were and doing the work that we always did. There were more distractions, certainly. There was probably some attention to detail that we did on our previous albums that we forewent at that point.<\/p>\n

\n\tI still love those albums, and every album can\u2019t be a Number One hit with a huge single. They hold together for me. I don\u2019t listen to them a lot. It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve listened to any of our albums from back to front, to be honest. But with Spotify and various services, you can pull up any song at your fingertips. And if I\u2019m reading something about us or about any era in music, I\u2019ll open some songs from that era and compare one of our songs to something. But that stuff is behind us too. It\u2019s just a part of our history now.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was also a time of disco and punk and new wave. Things were changing very rapidly.
Absolutely, yeah. That\u2019s another reason. Thanks for pointing that out. The times were different. We were in the pocket during the singer-songwriter vocal harmony band days. Now you\u2019ve moved, things have expanded, and there\u2019s a lot of other interesting music to listen to.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did you feel about \u201cYou Can Do Magic\u201d at first? It\u2019s clearly a catchy song, but you guys didn\u2019t write it.
We\u2019d moved on to new management, and that song was brought to us. Our track record at that point was not good. If our music isn\u2019t selling, the ones we\u2019re writing, maybe we need to look at some outside material. We were open to that and that song was written by Russ Ballard. He said he\u2019d written it specifically for us, which made it a little different than going through a bunch of tapes that were sent to the office by anonymous people. And we liked it. We thought we could arrange this. This could be good. It\u2019s got a hooky chorus, and it\u2019s lacking something that I would call us, but it\u2019s still a mainstay in our set.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tSuddenly it gives you an audience in the era of MTV.
That\u2019s another good point. We missed the boat on that. A huge part of the change was music videos, and that element of the scene we didn\u2019t really latch onto because that\u2019s a creative device too. And in retrospect, we could have made some pretty cool videos of our music up until then and later, but we didn\u2019t latch onto that.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tYou made an entire album, Your Move, with Russ after \u201cYou Can Do Magic.\u201d It didn\u2019t do very well. Was that a hard time?
We did less writing even on that one, as I recall. It was with Russ again because, \u201cStick with what you had success with.\u201d But we were writing less. I had a lot more distractions in my life then. I had kids. The touring schedule took up enough time. The rest, I think\u2026any artist that\u2019s lived long enough and gone through life\u2019s changes will say, \u201cYeah, we just didn\u2019t have the time or didn\u2019t make the time to focus on our music with so many other things going on in our lives.\u201d That\u2019s what happens.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe focus really did move to your live show at this point.
Yeah, that\u2019s true. We always seemed to have that. To this day, our music comes off live really well and I think we have a broad pool of concertgoers that come, young people, old people, baby boomers, whatever, because I call it \u201cpalatable.\u201d It\u2019s approachable music, easy enough to understand lyrics and harmonies.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd you and Gerry always seemed to get along. There was never a hint of public discord, unlike so many other duos.
I think there\u2019s different elements. Obviously, every duo or every couple is different, but we had really clung to each other, with Dan, because of that lifestyle of moving as kids, always having to leave friends behind, always having to fit into a new school. I think I was at seven or eight different schools in my life with my dad being reassigned to different bases, and same with a lot of military kids.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo the one thing we had to hang onto was each other, and I\u2019ve never had a relationship with anybody that strong. We\u2019re friends who understand where we\u2019ve come from. And that\u2019s certainly the foundation of Gerry\u2019s and my relationship. Doesn\u2019t mean that he doesn\u2019t have a lot of different things going on, and he always had different interests, but we always knew we were at the end of the phone anytime.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tYou worked with Carl Wilson very near the end of his life on \u201cHidden Talent.\u201d What was he like?
Carl was the greatest. We knew all the boys. Dennis was very erratic and everything. He was a charismatic guy, and Brian was a recluse. We were just happy to be able to rub shoulders with those guys and their band members were always great. But Carl was very friendly, and we really enjoyed offstage time with him. He made himself available singing on our records. I can\u2019t say a bad thing about Carl. He was a sweetheart.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen did Gerry start thinking about retirement?
Covid really lit the fuse because we had to stay off the road for about 15 months, which we\u2019d never done. We\u2019ve always toured every single year of these 56 years we\u2019ve been together. But he said to me afterwards, \u201cWhy don\u2019t we go on hiatus?\u201d And when he said that, I said, \u201cYeah, okay. We won\u2019t do the fall. We usually do a fall, October, November. We won\u2019t do that. We\u2019ll wait till the new year.\u201d And come the new year, he said, \u201cI\u2019m done, dude. That\u2019s it.\u201d And I said, \u201cWhat? I thought this was just a hiatus.\u201d I kind of said, \u201cAll right, this must be it.\u201d I told my wife, \u201cMaybe we\u2019re not doing this anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYou guys did do a series of last shows together in 2023, but it wasn\u2019t billed as a farewell to Gerry, even though you knew at the time. Why didn\u2019t you make it public?
We\u2019d seen so many big farewell tours. We just wanted to slide into the background and see what that felt like. We consciously didn\u2019t want to do that even though management and everybody said we should advertise it as the goodbye tour to get more sales. But no, we consciously said we\u2019re not going to call this the goodbye tour.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat happened after you played your last show with Gerry in August 2023?
Our agent got in touch with me and said, \u201cHey, there\u2019s a stack of offers here on my desk to do shows, and they\u2019re willing to do it without Gerry.\u201d Before that I really thought, \u201cOh, it\u2019s got to be over if it\u2019s just me.\u201d But they were fine with me.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was never my ambition to front the band. Gerry was a very good musical director, good frontman. We\u2019d banter onstage back and forth between songs and chitchat and do what we did. But Gerry was always recognized as the de facto leader, and I was fine with that. I don\u2019t like to be the leader, if you will. I\u2019d rather be one of the guys in the background. But then this happened, and I had to come to the fore because I did want to do it again. I wanted to go back on the road. At least I wanted to give it a chance and see how it felt.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo you didn\u2019t think at all about simply retiring?
I knew all good things come to an end. I\u2019m doing that right now as we speak, things are going to come to an end. I\u2019ll be 75 next year, and frankly, I\u2019m getting tired. It\u2019s a repetitive thing. I do enjoy the show. The road itself gets more and more difficult for me. It was exciting in the old days. You\u2019re going to new cities, seeing new sights. This has been 56 years barring the break during Covid. I\u2019ve been there and done that.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s something happening up on stage every night that\u2019s different. You\u2019re living in real time. I\u2019m inhaling and singing songs live. So there\u2019s an adrenaline and excitement about that. But from the minute I get off the stage to the next day at four in the morning loading into vans and getting into planes and going to the next city and starting it all over again, that\u2019s definitely taking its toll right now.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tHow is Andy Barr doing with Gerry\u2019s parts?
He stepped into Gerry\u2019s big shoes. That was not an easy thing, but Andy had been in the band. As soon as Gerry said that to me, and as soon as I\u2019d made the decision with our agent and manager to accept these offers and take America out, I knew I had to find the right guy. And Andy was the first guy I had in mind. Fortunately, he was available and he said, \u201cSure, I\u2019ll give it a try.\u201d And I said, \u201cYeah, just do this one summer\u201d or whatever it was at that point. \u201cAnd that\u2019s what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat made you add \u201cCinnamon Girl\u201d into the set?
We had done a couple of Beatles songs, and we wanted to do another cover. I wanted it to be an electric song. It\u2019s really powerful onstage. It\u2019s a great song.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow\u2019s Gerry doing? Are you still talking to him a lot?
Oh, yeah, I\u2019ll tell him how the show goes this week. I just talked to him, I think yesterday or the day before. If we don\u2019t talk physically, we do email and texting and all that. And we keep current on current events, musical events. He tells me, \u201cDid you see this?\u201d He lives in Australia half the year, maybe the better part of half the year, with his Australian wife. So there\u2019s a time zone difference.<\/p>\n

Is he happy in retirement?
Yeah, he seems to be. I think he does a little musical event at a local pub or club or something in Australia with some friends. So he plays a little bit, and he works on his solo albums. Gerry\u2019s always done solo albums.<\/p>\n

\n\tIs there any chance he\u2019ll make a guest appearance at a future show?
Well, I never say never. He knows he\u2019s always welcome. But I think he made it pretty clear to me he didn\u2019t want to do that. He\u2019s pretty well done with it. I respect him for that. I wish I could say that because I do need to put a finish line on this thing, and I\u2019m leaving it this year till late in the game to decide myself.<\/p>\n

\n\tMy wife and I have our family commitments. We have a horse and four cats. I do have a life that I really enjoy off the road, and it\u2019s going to happen, could be this year. I\u2019m not going to make that announcement to you or anybody until I\u2019m absolutely sure. And I certainly first have to talk to the rest of the band and our agent and manager, but they know it\u2019s around the corner.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe guys in our band have other commitments to various things. They do sessions and have outside bands, but this is their primary job. We\u2019re only doing 41 shows this year. In the old days, we\u2019d do 100 shows a year. It was really crammed, but 41 shows, you could practically double that with travel days.<\/p>\n

\n\tI would love to see you guys finally join the Hall of Fame.
Well, we got in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Gerry and I both really were excited about that because that\u2019s a real feather in our caps as songwriters. As far as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I\u2019ve always said, \u201cI\u2019m not holding my breath.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWe weren\u2019t really innovators or we didn\u2019t do something that nobody else had ever done. I do think we\u2019ve got\u2026 You can check all the other boxes as far as selling a lot of records and longevity and charts and projects we\u2019ve been involved in with other artists and things. I think we probably qualify depending on your criteria.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tHow do you feel at the end of every night when you sing \u201cA Horse With No Name\u201d and thousands of people sing along to something you wrote as a teenager?
Well, it\u2019s really hard to put that into words. It always surprises me, and I\u2019m always grateful that people still know the song or still care. When I see younger people, I go, \u201cWow, these folks weren\u2019t around in the Seventies and Eighties.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI couldn\u2019t describe it. It definitely is the defining stamp of acceptance, I guess. I hate to do the Sally Field thing, but they like me. It\u2019s definitely a rewarding experience to get up there at the end of the show. They respond to a lot of our songs and a lot of people like songs that other people don\u2019t like. And nobody comes to a show for one song anyway, but it\u2019s very nice to know that that\u2019s the cherry on top at the end of the show. And it was the first single, and it was the first Number One, and it wraps everything up in a nice package.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo you don\u2019t envision any sort of America farewell tour even if you decide to call it a day soon?
Not at this point, no. I\u2019m going to take some serious convincing to say, \u201cWe\u2019re going to go out, and you\u2019re going to say goodbye to everybody every night.\u201d I don\u2019t know about that.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s so common though, and bands sell so many more tickets when they do that.
Yeah, I know. Hell, going back to Cream. Cream made an album called Goodbye. I know every band does it. Well, nothing\u2019s off the table. That\u2019s all I can say about that.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you retire, will America just be over? Can you imagine Andy leading the current band and calling it that name?
I don\u2019t foresee that. I don\u2019t know why. I mean, it would be a tribute band, of course. But if it was the band that was actually up there, I don\u2019t know, what do you call that? Tribute Light or something?<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t know if the music is going to be played by a sanctioned tribute band or if the guys wanted to do that. That\u2019s a discussion that\u2019s not been had, and I don\u2019t even foresee\u2026 In fact, you just brought that up. I\u2019ve never thought about it.<\/p>\n

\n\tI think when I go, that\u2019ll probably be it. But the listening public, who knows what they want. There\u2019s so many great tribute bands. We played a cruise ship recently, and saw a bunch of these bands, and they were really good, and it\u2019s fun to listen to that music that you grew up with or that you have found and like as a new listening experience. And the only way you can hear it live is another band.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s amazing is you\u2019ve really kept your voice. Gerry too. That vocal blend was there up until the very end.
Yeah, maybe we\u2019ve got to get Gerry out again a little bit this year, but I doubt it. You can\u2019t look back though. You\u2019ve got to say, \u201cThis is what we are now. This is how we\u2019re doing it.\u201d And if some tribute band does it in the future, that\u2019s going to be the closest you\u2019re going to get to America. The music is still there.<\/p>\n

\n\tRight now, it\u2019s no tribute band. If you\u2019re on that stage, it\u2019s America.
Yeah. This is America. I\u2019m waving the flag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rolling Stone\u2018s interview series Last Man Standing features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and musicians who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2095,64,63,134,273694,136],"class_list":["post-681961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-america","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-last-man-standing","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}