America - A Fifty-Year-Long Dream

"We've been together for 50 years and we still have fun playing. We're lucky, we never broke up, so we never even had to do one of those terrible reunions!". Gerry Beckley – voice, guitar and keyboards of the America – answers the phone from the other side of the Ocean with the same gentle tone that made hits like "I Need You", "A Horse With No Name", "Ventura Highway" and "Survival" immortal. He tells us plenty of anecdotes about the band's history, from its beginnings suspended between American dreams and London life, up to the encounter with George Martin, the legendary Beatles producer, and the pop evolution of the 80s. And he can't wait to come back to Italy, for the three shows scheduled in October (October 13 – Rome, Auditorium Conciliazione; October 14 – Bologna, Teatro Auditorium Manzoni; October 15 – Milan, Teatro Dal Verme).

What will you be playing at your live shows?

Plenty of hits, first of all: they'll make up the main part of the show, but there will also be room for other material, including songs from our latest album "Lost & Found", released in 2015.

Your sound has always been very classic and impervious to trends. Have you changed anything to adapt to the new millennium?

What's changed is essentially the technology: moving from analog to digital changes the way you make a record. But writing a song, with your mind and your heart, is still the same process it was when we started. The core of our music, in other words, has stayed exactly the same.

You were sons of American servicemen stationed in the UK. Was your America more dreamed of or real?

When you're the child of servicemen on assignment, you're always moving around the world and struggle to put down roots in one country. But you end up with plenty of stories to tell. I, for instance, was born in Texas, but they took me to England when I was only one year old. So I had no memories of Texas, just a few family recollections. Then a few years later I spent some time in Nebraska. "Ventura Highway", for example, was based on the memory of a period I'd spent in California.

And then there was the music that connected the two sides of the Atlantic…

Right. They loved American bands like Beach Boys and Buffalo Springfield. I, on the other hand, worshipped Neil Young: "Horse With No Name" undoubtedly owes a lot to him, and "After The Gold Rush" is one of my all-time favorite albums. It was funny: we lived in London, but we were soaking up memories and sounds from the other side of the Ocean.

Folk, rock and pop have always been the three coordinates of your music. Three ingredients always kept in perfect balance: is that down to rationality or instinct?

Maybe it's chance, even more than instinct (laughs). I think a band is always the product of the minds and influences of each of its members. I, for example, grew up between country and classical music: my earliest musical memories are tied to my mother, who was passionate about Russian Romanticism, so Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky... I was little, I didn't even know what it was, but those sounds stayed with me. Then as a teenager I got into the British Invasion, so I gorged myself on pop, but also on blues in the style of the Animals.

Was "I Need You" the first song you wrote?

Maybe not quite the first, but definitely one of the first. I was only 17. As a Beatles fan, I knew a song by George Harrison called exactly "I Need You" (from the album "Help!", ed.), but I only borrowed the title, because the musical reference was really the Bee Gees' "First Of May", an old hit of theirs from 1969: that's where the inspiration came from.

But I can hear George Harrison's guitar in your songs. For instance, in one of my favorites: "Sister Golden Hair".

It's no coincidence. I met George Harrison personally in London, back in the Sixties. I actually asked him if we could use the title "I Need You" for one of our songs, and he told me there was no problem. And yes, he was always one of my favorite guitarists. He wasn't a virtuoso, not lightning-fast, but he knew how to use the guitar to express exactly what he had in mind, he had great pop sensibility. For instance, George Martin, the legendary Beatles producer we made seven albums with, told us that "And I Love Her" was entirely built around his guitar arpeggio, those four notes were the song's trademark.

What was it like working with a legend like George Martin?

It was a great gift for us. We always considered him a genius, so we tried asking him if he'd be interested in working with us. He was absolutely thrilled. It turned into a highly fruitful collaboration for everyone, and thanks to his work as well, songs like "Tin Man", "Lonely People" and "Sister Golden Hair" itself came about.

And of course you can really feel the Beatles' influence in your songs from that period...

Well, that was George Martin's signature, a producer who was one of the great architects of that sound.

His son Matthew is also a musician, but he's worked in decidedly different fields: he's toured with Katy Perry and collaborated with pop stars like Ke$ha and Britney Spears. What's it like talking music with him? Would you like to play together?

He's more of a producer really, he also worked on a Camila Cabello hit, "Havana". He specializes in vocal parts in particular.

Vocal parts that have always been important for you too...

He jokes that I ruined him by making him listen to our music and getting him to notice every little detail, taking away the pleasure of just listening to it. He's become a perfectionist.

In Italy you also appeared at the Sanremo Festival, in 1982, with "Survival". What do you remember of that experience?

That was a pretty crazy thing… "totally pazzo"! (laughs). I also remember Sanremo, that lovely little town on the coast, where you'd sit down at the table and not have dinner before midnight.

Those were golden years for Sanremo back then, with guests like you, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Depeche Mode…

That same year Van Halen and the Stray Cats were there with us too! Van Halen made for a strange sight in that context. It was crazy, exactly.

Resorting to the most obvious of puns, how does America see America today?

We've always voted Democrat, so... But that's not really the point. Up until now, whoever was running the country - whether Republican or Democrat - had always tried to represent everyone, including those who hadn't voted for them. That's no longer the case with Donald Trump, unfortunately. These are times of deep division, and not just in the United States. Hard times, in short, full of anxiety and worry.

Let's try to lift our spirits: how will you celebrate 50 years of activity?

There will be a TV documentary about us, and after the concerts in Italy we'll do more shows in Europe. Meanwhile Warner is putting together a celebratory box set for the 50th anniversary, and Capitol, who we worked with in the '80s, is also preparing an anthology. So, there's a lot to celebrate!

(07/10/2018)

(Extended version of an interview published in the newspaper Leggo)

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