The soft-rock peak of the late 70s and early 80s accepted all comers. It didn’t matter what kind of history you had before that point as a band or artist. As long as you pulled it together for a song or two with smooth sounds and heartfelt lyrics, you were in the club and, usually, the charts. Pure Prairie League stands out as one of those bands where you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, so often did they change members and artistic directions. But the bottom line is that Pure Prairie League pulled off a yacht rock classic with “Let Me Love You Tonight”, which featured a soon-to-be-famous lead singer named Vince Gill at the beginning of his career.
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Pure and Not-So-Simple Lineup Changes
If you were to try and chart the comings and goings of the various members of Pure Prairie League over the years, you might end up with something looking like a chalkboard from A Beautiful Mind. They started as a trio. However, the number of band members was constantly shifting throughout their original heyday in the 70s.
They released their debut album in 1972. The album cover featured a cowboy with a slightly befuddled expression on his face. This character, “Sad Luke”, appeared on every Pure Prairie League album from that point onward, even as band members changed willy-nilly from one album to the next.
Later that year, their second album (Bustin’ Out) included a song filled with fancy fingerpicking called “Amie”, written and sung by the band’s then-lead singer Craig Fuller. The song didn’t immediately make an impact. But after they aggressively toured for the next few years, “Amie” started to catch on. It earned the band their first US Top 40 hit. Their second would come five years later, by which time things had changed dramatically for PPL all over again.
Craig Fuller’s tenure in Pure Prairie League ended in 1973 when he was sent to jail for trying to avoid the military draft. In other words, he was no longer in the band when his most famous song hit it big. By that time, the band was employing multiple lead vocalists to take his place.
Gill Arrives
The momentum of “Amie” had largely sputtered as the 80s approached. In 1979, Pure Prairie League held auditions to replace a guitarist who left. The guy who got the gig was an Oklahoman who had briefly considered joining the band a few years before. But he stayed away at that time to concentrate on his love of bluegrass.
That guitarist was none other than Vince Gill, years away from dominating the country music world. By Pure Prairie League’s 1980 album Firin’ Up, Vince Gill was not only handling most of the vocals and playing lead guitar, but he was also writing much of the material. It was one of the few songs he didn’t write, “Let Me Love You Tonight”, that returned the Pure Prairie League to the spotlight.
PPL Guitarist Jeff Wilson wrote that track in conjunction with Steve Woodard and Dan Greer. To make the song soft-rock radio-friendly, David Sanborn played a silky saxophone part. With Gill handling the sweet yet seductive lead vocal, “Let Me Love You Tonight” soared to no. 10 on the pop charts in 1980.
Behind the Lyrics of “Let Me Love You Tonight”
“Let Me Love You Tonight” features the narrator trying to convince a girl to join him in a night of passion, a not uncommon topic on pop radio at that time. There’s another guy in this picture that needs to be weeded out.
“Dark clouds are blowin’ in the wind,” Gill sings. “He’s crossin’ your mind again.”
The solution: Leave it to the heavens and let romance take its course.
“They say once in your life, you find someone that’s right, someone who loves you like me,” Gill sweet-talks. “There’s a million stars in the sky / Let me love you tonight / I’ll make everything all right.”
Gill used the song as a springboard into his wildly successful solo career. Pure Prairie League still is out there fighting the good fight, even if they’re on about their zillionth iteration. Like we said, it takes just one winner to get you into the Yacht Rock pantheon. “Let Me Love You Tonight” served its purpose.
Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images
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