Sister Golden Hair Lonely People A Horse With No Name America

Sister Golden Hair Album: Hearts (1975)
Lonely People Album: Holiday (1974)
A Horse With No Name Album: America (1972)
by America

America's first single, "A Horse With No Name," went to #1 in 1972. That song was written by Dewey Bunnell, who formed the band in 1970 with Gerry Beckley and Dan Peek (the group became a duo when Peek left in 1977).

In 1975, they scored another #1 with "Sister Golden Hair," another enigmatic track with lots of harmony. It was written and sung by Beckley, who says that it was based on a composite of different girls. When asked if it was written to anyone, Beckley said: "No, this is all poetic license. With 'Sister Golden Hair,' as far as my folks were concerned, I was writing a song about my sister, and I couldn't quite fathom it; they must not have listened to the lyrics."
In an interview, Gerry Beckley remembered writing the song by starting with the first line:

Well I tried to make it Sunday, but I got so damn depressed

"I'd like to point out that you can have a #1 record with a line that enters that darkly," he said. "That's kind of my thing: I try to mix these emotions and I think 'Sister' was a great example. Pretty good message in there. John Lennon famously said, 'We don't know what these songs are about till people tell us.' So all of our songs, including 'Horse,' are open to interpretation. But 'Sister' was a relationship song and there is a variety of elements. We always combine them as songwriters so that they're not verbatim, word for word, for a particular circumstance. Poetic license we call it."
In our interview with Gerry Beckley, he explained that he made a demo of this song before America recorded their fourth album, Holiday, but he was happy with the songs they chose for that album so "Sister Golden Hair" sat on the shelf for a year, making the cut for their next album, Hearts.

"I can't really tell you if it was a lack of faith in the song or not, but it was interesting to see," he said. "It shows you that songs can have a life of their own - they might just need the right time and circumstances to surface."
This song was used in a bloody scene in the 2001 episode of the TV series The Sopranos, "Another Toothpick." After a mobster kills two people, the song plays on his car radio as he drives off. When he has trouble breathing and can't reach his inhaler, he crashes the car and dies, but the song keeps playing.

"Sister Golden Hair" also appears in the movies Cherish (2002), Radio (2003) and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006).
George Martin, who was The Beatles producer, produced this track and the rest of the Hearts album (he started working with America on their previous album, Holiday). It was Martin's 20th US #1 as a producer, and his first away from The Beatles (by this point, each former Beatle had reached #1 outside of the group). Martin would have three chart-toppers: "Ebony and Ivory," "Say Say Say" and "Candle In The Wind '97."

Sister Golden Hair was recorded at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California. The engineer on the session was Geoff Emerick, who worked with George Martin on much of The Beatles output.

Phil Hartman, who was a graphic designer before his star turn in Saturday Night Live, designed the cover to the Hearts album.

Beckley played lap steel guitar on Sister Golden Hair. He said that the musical influence came from George Harrison. "I very openly tip my hat there to 'My Sweet Lord,'" he said. "I was such a fan of all The Beatles but we knew George quite well and I just thought that was such a wonderful intro."

The group recorded a version of Sister Golden Hair in Spanish called "Hermana de Cabellos Dorados." Gerry Beckley doesn't speak Spanish, so he did it phonetically.

Lonely People was written by Dan Peek, who along with Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley, was one of the three original members of America. Many of Peek's compositions show a very spiritual and searching side and "Lonely People," a call for the lonely and despairing to seek God, is one of those songs and easily his best known.

Peek left the band in 1977 to focus on his faith; after leaving America, he performed Lonely People live, altering the lyric to leave no doubt of his intention, singing "Don't give up until you drink from the silver cup and give your heart to Jesus Christ."

Peek died in 2011 at age 60.

Peek explained to Circus magazine that on Lonely People, he was "thinking about what it would be like to wake up and not know anybody."

Famed Beatles producer George Martin helmed Lonely People along with the rest of the album in London. Peek recalled to Circus: "Gerry (Beckley) had been in England, and we'd talked about using George Martin as our producer. He's such a hot arranger, thinking about all the stuff he's done. There were several other people we wanted to use, but that idea sort of flashed and George was available. Gerry had a house outside of London where we knew we could rehearse."

The trio met with George Martin in Los Angeles, at the offices of America's managers, Geffen-Roberts. Peek remembered with a laugh: "The first thing he did was take his shirt, sweater and shoes off. He said it was too hot in L.A. He put everyone at ease, and we just got along well from the first second. He has a very musical mind, and as we began working we bounced ideas off of him quite a bit, with things like vocal arrangements and guitar parts. It was an amazing experience working for a mind-producer."

Dan Peek worked on the lyrics to Lonely People with his wife, Cathy, who is listed as a songwriter on the track along with her husband.

All three members of America wrote songs, which they would do separately. In the studio, the other two members would help hash it out, and the writer would sing lead.

"Lonely People" was Dan Peek's biggest hit with the band, but his songs "Don't Cross The River" (#35), "Today's The Day" (#23) and "Woman Tonight" (#44) also charted.

This went to #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, one of three America songs to do so (the others: "Tin Man" and "Today's The Day").

Christian outfit Jars of Clay covered Lonely People on their 2003 album, Who we Are Instead. The band say they would have recorded it years previously if they had known the cheer that rises from the audience when they sing, "This is for all the lonely people."

Rickie Lee Jones covered Lonely People on her 2019 album Kicks. She made a video for the song re-creating her various incarnations over her career.

America was formed in England by sons of US servicemen who were stationed there. Lead singer Dewey Bunnell wrote "A Horse With No Name" when he was 19. Although the song is commonly misinterpreted about being on drugs, it is not: Bunnell based the images in the lyrics on things he saw while visiting the US.

A Horse With No Name was originally titled "Desert Song," since Bunnell wrote it based on the desert scenery he encountered when his dad was stationed at an Air Force base in Santa Barbara County, California.

The song tells a rather abstruse tale about a trip though the desert. While the landscape is unforgiving, the singer also finds comfort in that scenario.

According to Dewey Bunnell, the "horse" represents a means of entering a place of tranquility, and this tranquil place was best represented by the desert, which sounded pretty good to him while he was stuck in rainy England.

As for why the horse had no name and why it went free after nine days, Bunnell doesn't have any answers - it seems the various listener interpretations are far more colorful than any meaning he assigned to it.
The group's self-titled debut album was released in the UK in late 1971, but didn't contain this song. When they were contemplating a single, they considered "I Need You," but decided to come up with a new song instead. The group went back to the studio and recorded "A Horse With No Name," which Bunnell had written.

A Horse With No Name released as a single in the UK, it shot to #3 in January 1972, prompting the group's label, Warner Bros., to issue the single in the US and also release the album with the song included. On March 25, both the single and album hit #1 in the US; the song stayed at the top spot for three weeks, the album for five.

The album was recorded in London where the band was located. In February, when the song started climbing the charts in the US, the group embarked on a tour of the States, playing club shows before supporting the Everly Brothers as the opening act on their North American tour.

"I Need You" was released as the follow-up single, reaching #9 US. The group would become one of the most successful acts of the '70s and score another US #1 hit with "Sister Golden Hair."

Many people thought A Horse With No Name was a Neil Young song when they heard it, and many rock critics pointed out the similarities. In a strange twist, "A Horse With No Name" replaced Young's "Heart of Gold" at #1 in the US.

Dewey Bunnell explained that he was well aware that he sounded like Neil Young on this song, but claimed he wasn't trying to imitate the singer. He told Rolling Stone in 1973: "I try to use a different voice so that I won't be branded as a rip-off. It's such a drag, though, to have to not sound like someone when you can't help it in the first place."

America remained active into the '10s, typically playing about 100 shows a year. Gerry Beckley in 2016, said: "I'm always asked, 'What's your favorite song?' And I usually default to 'Horse' because the song itself represents the start of the journey. You know: 'On the first part of the journey.' It actually says it in the song. But that's what it's been - it's been an unbelievable journey."

"Horse" is slang for heroin, leading to myriad rumors (denied by the band) that the song was about drugs.
Dewey Bunnell played 6-string acoustic guitar on this track; his bandmate Gerry Beckley played 12-string acoustic, and the third member of the group, Dan Peek, played bass. Session musicians rounded out the instrumentation: Kim Haworth on drums and Ray Cooper on percussion.

A Horse With No Name appears on a fifth-season episode of Friends called "The One With Joey's Big Break." In it, Joey and Chandler go on a road trip to Las Vegas (hence, "through the desert").

Other TV series to use the song are:
Parks and Recreation
The Simpsons
Six Feet Under

Movies include:
Air America (1990)
Hideous Kinky (1998)
The Trip (2002)
American Hustle (2013)

A 2010 episode of the TV series Breaking Bad is titled "Caballo sin Nombre," Spanish for "Horse With No Name." At the beginning of this episode, the main character, Walter White, sings along to the song on his car radio, and then at the end he sings it again.

The San Francisco band The Loud Family named their first album Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things after a line in this song.

A Horse With No Name found a new audience when it was used in the video game Grand Theft Auto. The band had some reservations about letting the song be used in the violent game, but Gerry Beckley's son Joe helped convince them to do so. "And now, almost weekly, we'll have some kid come up to us and say, 'I learned about your music through Grand Theft Auto,'" Beckley told us in 2016.

On the '90s sitcom NewsRadio, Dave Nelson (Dave Foley) records himself singing A Horse With No Name, and the tape is discovered by Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman). In real life, Hartman designed three album covers for America while his brother John was the band's manager. Before venturing into comedy, his graphic arts business led him to design for other bands, including Poco and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

In 2017, Michelle Branch and Patrick Carney, who married two years later, recorded "A Horse With No Name" for the Netflix series BoJack Horseman. Carney, who also wrote and performed the opening theme for the show, said: "It was a lifelong dream of mine to write a theme song for an animated horse who drinks too much and is constantly struggling with depression."