Singer, songwriter, guitar player best known to ‘60s music fans as founding guitarist/backing vocalist of The Buckinghams, a pop rock group that had seven national chart hits, 15 singles, and eight acclaimed albums, including the distinction of three singles on the national charts simultaneously. In 1967, Billboard proclaimed them "The Most Listened to Band in America.” While he continues to perform with The Buckinghams, present day he continues to write, record, and perform both with other artists as well as for his own projects.
“You have to be creative all the time. The Buckinghams keep me really busy. We’re still playing quite a bit. But when I’ve got some down time, I just have to do other projects that keep me excited.”
“If you’re going to do a cover song, then I think it’s really important to give it something new and something that listeners will find interesting. A new twist on the song.”
“It was something that I really enjoyed doing and … it was very encouraging and made me feel good that maybe I was doing something to lift somebody up and help them in their life.”
“After having so much success with The Buckinghams in the late ‘60s – ya’ know, ’67, ’68 – the music scene was changing too. And it seems like overnight radio went from AM to FM. And there was starting to be a heavier, more underground sound happening, after Woodstock and Monterey Pop.”
“I was losing interest with The Buckinghams and I believe Dennis Tufano was too. We wanted to do something different. We were starting to become songwriters, singer/songwriters, and we wanted to expand on that, and we were really interested in the whole singer/songwriter movement that was happening in the very early ‘70s.”
“We got (Lou Adler) the demo and the next thing we knew was he wanted to sign us… He brought us out to L.A. and listened to our whole repertoire of songs. And I still remember being in the studio… and different people were coming in and out of the studio at the time… I remember David Geffen was there. I remember I used to see Joni Mitchell all the time.”
“I’d say from around 1976 or ’77 until about ’82, I probably sang on over 300 different commercials.”
“I could read a chord chart when I was playing guitar, but I was really not a reader. And I realized really early on when I got into jingles that it’s really important to be able to sight read.”
“I’m gonna just continue making music as long as I can.”
“We’ve been a part of that tour seven of the twelve years it’s been around. And it plays all over the country for three months. This year it was 58 one-nighters. It’s a grueling schedule ‘cause you’re in a different city every day.”
“The new way of recording too is, um, I miss the old days a little bit where you have five guys in the studio together cutting a basic track and working off of each other.”
“99.9”
“Whisper and a Sigh”