Q - I don't believe a band could do that kind of touring today.Ī - Yeah. King does 364 dates a year and Willie Nelson just can't wait to get on the road again. Then you couple that in with a tremendous workload of touring. It was not really the best thing for the band. It became the striving for dominance, take no prisoners kind of an attitude. On another level I think it became an unhealthy competition. You really had to shake your booty to make sure that you got your tune. But, for whatever reason, you knew that there were three of you and there might be two, maybe three singles. Later on in the 80s, they smartened up and would release as many as five singles from an album. Back in those days, a lot of labels would promote two singles, possibly three. The company always invested more money in promoting the first single than the second single. It meant a lot ego-wise, money-wise, to be the guy who wrote the song and not just the song, but to have the first single out of the box. We each wanted to be "the one", the guy who had the hit single on that record. I liken it to puppies fighting over a tit on a mother dog. The business really began to intervene in our personal relationships. What again had really started out as a friendship based sort of thing, then we became business partners and then it became very cut-throat, very competitive. I started from the time I was born and went right up to the time I left the band, then some of my solo stuff afterwards. It was just like re-opening an old wound. In some ways there were times after I'd written it that I thought I wish I hadn't done this. Q - In writing your book, you were re-living everything again. In fact, I think Mark Farner has a book out himself called An American Band. Q - And let's not forget Grand Funk Railroad with their song "We're An American Band".Ī - Hey, they used to come to England and play. We're American guys giving you the real American music. We wanted people to know we're the real deal. Hence the title of my book - An American Band: The America Story. We started playing and writing that type of music and pitched ourselves to the labels in London as America, an American band playing American music. That much more acoustic based, harmony based type of sound was starting to become very popular in England. When I came back, this would be 1970 and here it is in London which had been Swinging London, the launching pad for the British Invasion of the '60s and was not becoming really receptive to an American Invasion, or North American Invasion really. I had gone back to the States to go to college. Gerry and I started playing together in a band called The Days. Your whole world really revolves around school because it was such a long day getting to and from school. So, we were very insular and very insulated in some ways from the rest of the world. The three of us met in England of all places, just outside of London. It was like an hour and a half long bus ride to and from school. Dewey and I rode to school together on a bus. Gerry and I became friends in an art class. I had no idea that he even knew anything about music. One leg up that we had was that we were friends when the band started. The golden years of the band really were from "A Horse With No Name" to "Today's The Day". The band was actually together for almost ten years, but from the time we became America, got our deal, until I departed in '78 essentially. It was just like a kid in a candy store with a sweet tooth, for me for seven years. I really was very, very rebellious and really dove head first into sex, drugs and Rock 'n' Roll. I more or less became the Bad Boy of the band. Squeaky Clean", when the week before I had a Jack Daniels in one hand and a cigarette in the other. That whole thing was very much oil and water in terms of the mixture and in sharing with my former band mates - Hey, suddenly I'm this "Mr. I'm not saying that other people made me stumble and fall. I became a Born Again Christian and was trying to walk that walk and was just unable to do it. It was something I felt I couldn't do within the context of the band and very much a spiritual thing too. A lot of it came down to my own personal journey in terms of getting my life on a proper track. Is that why you're no longer a part of America?Ī - To a great degree. Once you're successful, the in-fighting begins. I would guess that the story of America is similar to so many other famous groups. Q - Dan, not having read your autobiography, I may be somewhat at a disadvantage, but probably not much. Dan has written an autobiography about his time with the band - An American Band: The America Story. Dan Peek was once a member of one of the most successful American bands of the 1970s called appropriately enough, America.
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