AMERICA: Harmony Rock At Its Purest

“Chasing the Rainbow” sounds like a classic America track.

Beckley: In constructing the song I made a conscious effort to build a song in a typical America form. It’s an acoustic song, and I used a pretty signature opening guitar lick, so in that sense it was kind of written by design. Although the song appears light in message I tried to touch on some deeper things. The song’s about how we’re always looking for something better. I used that analogy about chasin’ the rainbow and how you never quite get there.
“This Time” is the album’s only Bunnell/Beckley collaboration.

Bunnell: That’s a real interesting song; it’s a little out of the norm for me. It’s got kind of a show tune feel. I wrote the lyrics and Gerry wrote the music. The theme of this one, lyrically, is the traveling salesman once again hitting the road and saying goodbye to his wife and this time he’s gonna make it. You’re not sure what he’s selling, but he’s getting on the train to head out and make his fortune for the umpteenth time.

Beckley: When I’ve been writing with Dewey lately, I will build a variety of tracks for him to take back to his house and listen to see what he hears and which songs inspire him. “This Time” came about in that kind of collaboration. He completely created the scenario, and it’s almost a movie. As we were recording the song, James [Iha] was envisioning the video. The lyric is a wonderful story about… “We’re gonna get it right, this time.”

Backtracking to the band’s formative years, could you share the genesis behind some of America’s most beloved hits starting with “A Horse with No Name?”

Bunnell: That was our debut single. The song is a fairly straight ahead description of the sights and sounds of the desert. It’s not cryptic. The horse itself is a sort of enigma, but that was basically just a vehicle to get into the desert. The rest of the song is my love of various eco-systems-the desert being one. It has a little bit of an environmental message with the line, “Under the cities lies a heart made of ground/but the humans will give no love.” That was pretty much the whole gist of it. I wrote it in England in the rain, so it was a way to get myself out of the rain a little: “It’s good to be out of the rain.”

“Sandman?”

Bunnell: “Sandman” was loosely based on returning Vietnam vets. “I understand you’ve been running from the man that goes by the name of the sandman” is kind of a reference to quotes from some of the soldiers about how they didn’t want to go to sleep because they didn’t know what was gonna happen. I tried to put myself in that place, at least for that line. It’s morphed into quite an electric song on stage now.