Bruce Johnston
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Bruce Arthur Johnston (born Benjamin Baldwin and then adopted, on June 27, 1942 in Peoria, Illinois) is a member of The Beach Boys and a Grammy Award-winning songwriter for penning "I Write the Songs." Johnston was not one of the original members of the band. He joined in April 1965 after Glen Campbell (who was in turn replacing Brian Wilson) decided to embark on a solo career.
[edit] Biography
Bruce Johnston grew up on the West side of Los Angeles in Brentwood and Bel-Air. His adoptive father was president of the Owl Rexall Drug Company in Los Angeles after moving from Walgreens in Chicago. Bruce attended private school in Los Angeles and also studied classical piano in his early years. In high school, Johnston switched to contemporary music. He performed in a few 'beginning' bands during this time and then moved on to working with young musicians such as Sandy Nelson and Phil Spector. Soon Johnston began backing people such as Ritchie Valens, the Everly Brothers, and even Eddie Cochran. In 1959 while still in high school, Johnston arranged and played on his first hit record called "Teenbeat" by Sandy Nelson. The single record reached the Billboard Top Ten chart. The same year Bruce made his first single under his own name, "Take This Pearl" on Arwin as part of the Bruce & Jerry duo.
In 1960 Johnston started his record production career at Del-Fi Records, overseeing five singles and an album - Love You So - by Ron Holden (for good measure, all but two of the album's 11 tracks were written or co-written by Bruce). In 1962 and 1963 Bruce resurrected his recording career with a series of surfin' singles (vocal & instrumental) and an album, Surfin Around The World, credited to Bruce Johnston and another 'live' album, The Bruce Johnston Surfin' Band's Surfer's Pyjama Party. In 1963 came the first collaboration with his friend Terry Melcher, a mostly instrumental covers album credited to The Hot Doggers. The first artist the pair produced was a group called The Rip Chords. Johnston and Melcher were now working as staff producers at Columbia Records, Hollywood and by the time they were producing the million selling "Hey Little Cobra," a knockoff of the Beach Boys car song vocal style, they also wound up singing every layered vocal part for the recording. The two of them made a few recordings as Bruce & Terry, or The Rogues, but Terry Melcher began to focus more on his production career (The Byrds, Paul Revere and The Raiders). On April 9, 1965, Johnston joined the Beach Boys replacing Glen Campbell who was playing bass on the road and singing Brian Wilson's vocal parts. Johnston didn't start playing bass until his first tenure with the Beach Boys, and the very first vocal recording Johnston made as one of the Beach Boys was California Girls.
Johnston subsequently would decide to leave the band after the Carl & The Passions - So Tough album, then return. However, throughout the 1970s he would assist and guest on each album the band released, with the exception of the dismal M.I.U. Album. At Brian Wilson's request, Johnston officially rejoined the band for the L.A. (Light Album) sessions in 1978. He also was asked to produce many of the tracks for the L.A. (Light Album).
Johnston is frequently credited as one of the original greatest supporters of the Beach Boys' 1966 signature album Pet Sounds. He flew to London in May 1966 and played the album for John Lennon and Paul McCartney. He wrote several Beach Boy songs, notably, "Disney Girls (1957)" (1971, a favorite of Brian Wilson), which was covered by both Captain & Tennille and Art Garfunkel. As a songwriter, he wrote the Billboard number one, Barry Manilow hit ("I Write the Songs") for which he won a Grammy. "I Write The Songs" has been recorded by over two hundred artists (including Frank Sinatra) and it currently has a cumulative singles/albums worldwide sales figure of twenty-five million copies. In addition, Johnston wrote backing vocal arrangements and also sang on the recordings for Elton John's "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" and Pink Floyd's album The Wall.
In 2006, Johnston is still a member of the touring version of The Beach Boys, performing 170 concerts a year. Despite Bruce's long involvement with the band he no longer has a full membership in BRI having traded his shares (but not his artist royalties) back in 1972. Johnston still retains his equal ownership of the band's ASCAP publishing company, Wilojarston, and is the only member of the band to have earned a Song of the Year Grammy.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Bruce Johnston biography provided by Musicmatch
- Bruce Johnston at the Internet Movie Database
- Bruce Johnston solo discography (very basic)
