Speaking to Peter Beckett of Player, I got such insight into the L.A. scene of the early 70s. He shared what it was like to be part of a premier, melodic and hit-making band of that period, and how it feels these days shepherding Peter Beckett’s Player.
With mega hits like “Baby Come Back” and “This Time I’m In It For Love, Player were superstars of their time. Beckett, who was born in Liverpool, England, has carried on, playing solo and with Player, as well as forever writing songs for what he calls his “bag of tricks.”
In 2018, Peter Beckett’s Player released the wryly titled Baby Don’t Come Back, the eighth Player album. Over the years, Beckett has really written songs for Janet Jackson, Olivia Newton-John, the Temptations, and Kenny Rogers, as well as for film and television.
I spoke with the singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer just as he was surfing the rains coming through California, trying to keep his home studio safe in the onslaught. In the midst of dealing with this, Beckett was also preparing for a slew upcoming Player shows for 2019, including a date (March 6) at the world-famous Whisky A Go Go in Hollywood.
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Seems like it is raining a lot there.
It’s just flooding everywhere, and then everything gets weak from all that water seeping in from underground, all under the houses up on the hills.
If it’s not rain out there, it’s the fires.
I went out to get some coffee during the fires and couldn’t come back home for five days.
Well, at least know you have some immediate dates planned with Peter Beckett’s Player, right?
Yes, we have about 15 dates set right now. I stay pretty busy with the band or solo and also on the Yacht Rock Revue tours. I mean I have a wife and a child, so I do what I can.
The Yacht Rock Revue has really taken off.
I think I was in at the beginning of that to tell you the truth. About nine years ago, I was at my kid’s baseball game and my phone rang. This guy introduces himself, says he is in a 70s cover band called Yacht Rock Revue out of Atlanta, and they are doing pretty good. He proposes for me to come out and do four songs at this big concert he is promoting. He’s got Little River Band on the bill, Robbie Dupree, Ambrosia. I figured what the hell, it was decent money, so I fly out and there are 3,000 people gathered in this huge car park with big tents and a big stage, all wearing captain’s hats and shirts, shit-faced drunk singing along with all these bands. Since that show, I have done lots of their tours.
The music you have been involved in I’d say pretty much spans the generations.
I say three generations actually, that’s what I see at our shows. Older people are really not into music made today; they liked it better when people could play and sing. They not really not into machines. So they come and bring their kids, and their kids bring their kids to our shows.
At one time, you had a very healthy career writing songs for other people or getting cuts in movies and TV.
Well, I always have a bag of songs, my bag of tricks at the ready, but I think of it in two ways. You can be a corporate songwriter, which I was back in the day. I had all the contacts, was getting cuts in movies and TV as you say, and for lots of other artists. I’d get up at seven in the morning, have a strong cup of coffee, turn on the machines and get at it for six to seven hours a day.
I don’t do it that way these days. The creative side of it, which is how I regard it now, a song can come to me while I am mowing the lawn. Although anything I record, even for myself is pretty straight down the road and pretty much anybody could record it if they wanted to.
What was it like coming to the U.S. in the early 70s, traveling from the UK, fresh out of a pretty successful progressive band (Paladin) and landing in LA?
It was wild really. There I was overweight, hair down to my ass, heavily into the English blues. I was put in a condo right over sunset, and within a month I was skinny, tanned, running on the beach, not drinking beer anymore, writing songs.
And having the successes with Player, starting with “Baby Come Back,” can you describe your own sense of what that kind of a ride is like?
Having a hit single is like lighting in a bottle, indescribable really. We were actually in a rehearsal, about to go out with Gino Vannelli when the single came out, and our manager came running in to tell us that “Baby Come Back” had entered the Billboard chart at Number 80! By the time we went out with Boz Scaggs, it had gone to Number One, but I don’t think I had ever had a thrill like that initial one when we cracked the Billboard charts. From there, we toured with Clapton, managed to play all those amazing arena rock shows.
As fun as it was crazy?
Oh yes, it was crazy — the 70s, the time of excess. Some of us just got a little crazier than others. I never really got all that crazy.
You even were a member of Little River Band for a time.
Eight years, actually. I had been doing that corporate songwriting thing for about 10 to 12 years by that point, had made some good money, gained tons of credits when the band’s manager called and asked if I’d like to stand in for Graeham Goble. They were going on an Australian tour. I didn’t want to go on the road again, but he said just come down to shoot the video, which they were doing right then, so I did. Then I was offered to go on the tour, so I packed up my boots and leather pants…and was out with them for eight years.
So through all these changes, Peter Beckett’s Player and managing solo shows, writing, recording, producing — how do you see yourself after such strong stint in a business that has changed so much through the years?
I like to think of myself as a triple threat — writer, singer/player, and producer. kind of like Jeff Lynne, just not as well known (laughs). I mean none of us are as young as we used to be, but I’ll keep doing what I am doing as long as I can.
