America
In Concert

THE REVIEW

They don't have the country rock flair of the Eagles, nor the lyricism of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. They lack the delicate grand melodies of the west coast of James Taylor or perhaps the depth of Joni Mitchell's lyrics. The problem in the end, I discovered much later, is just one: they are called America but they are English. It's this discrepancy that has lasted 50 years that makes this musical anomaly have a history that's fascinating in its own way. Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek are children of American military personnel stationed in England. Two were born in America, but well, they don't even remember it. One was actually born in England.

It goes without saying that for three young students trying to write great melodies of American spaces in the English countryside around Watford High School in the early '70s wasn't all that easy. And if in those particular years, you make the timeless choice of not wanting to include current or political themes, the undertaking becomes even more difficult. In those years, perfidious Albion was the homeland of the hard rock triumvirate par excellence. The proto-metal tirades of Deep Purple, the doom gloom of Black Sabbath, the electric blues of Led Zeppelin were emerging. In short, trying to make songs with vocal harmonies and little road movie stories wasn't easy. However, I came across America at the end of their second life. The first, that of great success, almost inexplicable, spans from 1971 to 1977.

It coincides with the contract with Warner Bros. It's the series of albums that all start with the letter H (except for the first self-titled one), which sees them collaborating with none other than Sir George Martin, who produced a couple of their albums. A story that started with a stroke of luck. Because the first album, America, initially came out without the hallmark song. Yes, because "A Horse with No Name" had been ignored. Actually, it was just a draft, and it was titled "Desert Song". It was a little tune all based on an E minor and D 6/9 strumming, two very simple chords. It was Ian Samwell, singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer of the first album, who understood the piece's potential and reissued the failed debut with the song, changing the three guys' history, who quickly hit number 1 in America (kind of like returning home, to a home never seen, indeed the second album would be titled Homecoming). A bit like what happened with "Sound of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel, but that's another story.

And another story is also how I came to America, falling in love with perhaps one of their most useless albums. That In concert, released in 1985 to honor the end of the contract that marked their second life, the Capitol contract, that with two voices instead of three, because they had lost Dan Peek along the way, who had kept a promise made to God and turned to Christian music. The fact is that America, not having a real country throughout their history, had bursts of success here and there around the world. In Germany, for instance, with the soundtrack of The Last Unicorn, it was quite a success. But between 1982 and 1984, success smiled at them in Italy. The reason is quite simple. Two songs, truly beautiful, were used by Mamma Rai as themes for television programs. One is "You can do Magic," which was their real last success even in the United States, and the other "Survival," which was the main track of Alibi, their 1980 album, which perhaps made its biggest impact in Italy. It must have been pressed in hundreds of thousands of vinyl copies in the beautiful country. There's no used vinyl stall where you don't find it for a few euros, often consulted by users with that cover that wants to be unsettling but is only kitsch, a doll's head detached in the foreground in a great desert.

That's where I stumbled upon America. When they were acting as themes for evening programs on Rai 2 hosted by Sammy Barbot, the "Aria di casa mia" guy, yes him. Programs that also used "Every little thing she does is magic" by The Police as a theme at one point. In 1985, to close the contract with Capitol, they released this useless In concert. A live album I found on cassette at an illegal vendor's stall. A very short record, 33 minutes. Recorded at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara on June 1, 1985. It has a couple of peculiarities, it's the first America album to be released on CD but also their first release since 1971 not to enter the American charts. No single was extracted from the album, and it doesn't even feature the entire concert in question, leaving out at least one song that should have been included: "Sandman". Ten tracks. The two that introduced me to America, the Warner Bros era hits like "A Horse with No Name", "Ventura Highway" (another iconic track, which gives its name to their website), the catchy "Sister Golden Hair". And then the beautiful and delicate "Tin Man", "Company", "I Need You", and "Daisy Jane" and finally the adrenaline-pumping (speaking of America naah) "The Border", which was at the center of a case with their producer at the time, Russ Ballard, who co-signed the track. The producer, in fact, got carried away and wrote a large portion of the tracks that were supposed to comprise Your Move, a 1983 album.

But especially in "The Border", like a good Englishman, he strung together a series of clichés about the American myth, forcing Bunnell to rewrite the lyrics. Even the album cover was quite anonymous. A series of red stripes, like concert hall neon lights, forming the background for America's characteristic logo, the band's name traced in an ellipse with a swooping A and the title In concert written at the top in small print.

And yet years later, when I found the worn-out vinyl at a used stall, I picked it up on the fly as if it were a collector's pearl, in reality, the stall guy handed it over to me for 5 euros, quite happy to get rid of it (making sure to let me find more of their records on subsequent visits... cunning). I listen to it very often. The idea for the review came from listening to it these days, alternating it with the 1975 compilation that brings together all the Warner period hits. The band's career continued, amidst deaths, falls, and comebacks, very anonymous albums, various record contracts. The last studio album is titled Lost & Found and it's a collection of discarded tracks from the 2000s albums.

You always find them touring in venues of a few hundred seats in the States, and anyone who has picked up a guitar has attempted to strum the two basic chords that make up "A Horse with No Name", often not even knowing whose song it was. A curse that befalls those who write songs that go beyond the true reach of the author. That of never really being remembered.