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Bread - Retrospective
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In their own understated way, Bread defined the sound of the early 1970s as much as any group of their era. Anyone who tuned in to U.S. Top 40 radio during those days couldn’t help but hear their signature songs: “Make It With You,” “It Don’t Matter To Me,” “If,” “Baby I’m-A Want You,” “Everything I Own,” “The Guitar Man.” Bread was a staple on the AM airwaves well into the middle of the decade, purveying a romantic variety of pop rock that was unmistakably their own. Their music was an appealing counterpoint to the harder-edged rock and R&B of the Nixon/Ford Years, earning them an impressive string of certified gold albums and singles.
Smoothly blended vocal harmonies and finely crafted songwriting were the essential ingredients that went into the making of Bread. Founding members David Gates, James Griffin and Robb Royer brought considerable talent and experience to the group when it was launched in the summer of 1968. With the addition of drummer Mike Botts and bassist/keyboardist Larry Knechtel (who replaced Royer in 1971), the level of expertise increased still further. A close listening to their work reveals much subtlety and attention to sonic detail.
Bread emerged at a time when pop music was veering away from psychedelic excess and toward more acoustic-based sounds. Homespun combos like The Band and Crosby, Stills & Nash brought the decibel levels down and emphasized words and melody once again. Bread’s music had a similar slant, though its members’ songwriting roots were more in mainstream pop than rock ‘n’ roll.
As they gained notoriety, Bread was tagged with the “soft rock” label, which became a source of annoyance for Griffin and Royer. “We never saw ourselves as avatars of the great new soft trend,” Royer says. “As far as I was concerned, I was trying to prolong the ‘60s for as long as I could. But all of us were parts players, rather than screaming lead guitar players, and that lead us in a certain direction.” From Gates’ perspective, the labeling was inevitable: “Ultimately, ‘soft rock’ was what we did best, and you can’t really argue with success. So that’s fine.”
Bread was always more complex than its easy-flowing, unabashedly sentimental hit singles would indicate. As time went on, Gates took the spotlight as the group’s balladeer par excellence, while Griffin and Royer (who generally wrote songs as a team) tried to pull the band in a quirkier, more upbeat direction. It didn’t help the group’s team spirit that Gates’ ballads – beginning with the chart topping “Make It With You” in 1970 – were accepted by radio programmers, while Griffin’s more rock oriented tunes did less well. This divergence eventually undermined Bread’s unity and contributed to their initial breakup in 1973.
Looking back, it’s fair to say that Bread was more than the sum of its ingredients. While the solo work of Gates and Griffin had merit, it could not duplicate the chemistry of the group (even if that had been the goal). Bread was never an underground band and was meant to be a radio-friendly, commercially successful venture from the start, but there was an elusive magic to their best moments that went beyond mere craftsmanship and calculation.
A certain amount of ego-clashing and artistic disagreement within the group was probably inevitable. In the end, Bread may have been a case of too many cooks (or bakers) for one band to handle. All three founding members had pursued individual music careers prior to joining forces and brought their own particular strengths to the partnership.
Of the three, Gates had the most extensive résumé as a songwriter/session player/arranger. Born December 11, 1940, he was a product of the same vibrant Tulsa music scene that nurtured Leon Russell (a future West Coast colleague and sometime rival) and J.J. Cale. Among his first recording efforts as a teenager was “Swinging Baby Doll,” a rockabilly-style single that Gates admits was “not an outstanding piece of material.”
Moving to Los Angeles in the early ‘60s, he quickly became an in-demand musical jack-of-all-trades. His best known credit as a writer/producer was The Murmaids’ 1963 hit “Popsicles And Icicles”; he also placed tunes with The Monkees, Johnny Burnette, Shelly Fabares, Connie Stevens and others. His assignments as an engineer were even more diverse, bringing him projects with Glenn Yarbrough, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Bobby Darin, Pat Boone, and Rod McKuen, to name only a few. His involvements ranged in extremes, from production work with avant-garde rocker Captain Beefheart to the founding of a short-lived R&B label, Planetary Records. Gates kept busy behind the scenes throughout the decade, though he continued to dream of making his own records as an artist.
Griffin was also active in the L.A. music scene at this time. He had relocated from Memphis in 1962 and scored a recording deal with Reprise soon after. He released a cover version of Lennon/McCartney’s “All My Loving” in ‘63, followed by an album, Summer Holiday. None of Griffin’s releases on Reprise or, later, on Imperial and Viva had much impact on the national charts. Still, he enjoyed some success as a songwriter, placing tunes with artists as disparate as Lesley Gore, Bobby Vee, Ed Ames, and Rudy Vallee.
By 1967 Griffin was co-writing songs with Royer, an L.A. native who had begun his career as a folk guitarist. Switching to rock, he helped to launch Pleasure Faire, a Mamas & Papas-esque outfit that recorded an album for Uni Records in 1967. The group’s producer was none other than Gates, who also contributed some uncredited vocal parts as well. When the Faire broke up a year later, Royer remained in touch with Gates as he developed his songwriting partnership with Griffin.
By mid-1968 the time seemed right for these seasoned pros to join forces. Griffin and Royer began to spend time at Gates’ ranch in the L.A. suburbs, trading sounds and working on harmonies. “Groups were popular at the time, and I figured that we had a better chance at success getting together than we had on our own,” Gates recalls. Griffin agreed: “Although I had a solo deal, I liked the idea of participating in a group. David and Robb and I were all writers, and I was so tired of getting my songs recorded by people who’d miss the point. David expressed similar sentiments, so we decided to form a band and have control over our own songs.”
All three writer/performers sensed that the pop music market was ready to swing back to gentler, more melodic sounds. “We all said, ‘Acoustic music is going to happen again,’” Gates recalls. “We felt that people were getting tired of acid rock and that a group like ours would have a chance.”
The still-unchristened combo didn’t have to wait long before securing a record contract. Prominent entertainment attorney Al Schlesinger brought the group to the attention of Elektra Records founder Jac Holtzman, who sent them into the studio to cut some demos. He was pleased with the results, and the deal was finalized by the beginning of 1969.
The name of the band was settled upon after much trial and error – Griffin recalls that Gates was considering such ominous monikers as Dragonwyck (the title of a Vincent Price film). Finally, after a sleepless night driving about L.A. in search of inspiration, Griffin and Royer pulled up behind a Barbara Ann Bread truck at a stoplight. “I went, ‘Bread! That’s it!’” Royer says. “I called up David with the name, and he said, ‘Nah, we’d better keep looking.’ But then at an Elektra meeting, I mentioned it, and Bill Harvey (the label’s art director) jumped up, slapped the table, and said, ‘I like it…everybody’s pretending that they’re so oblivious to money, so let’s have a band called Bread.’”
Sessions for Bread’s eponymous debut album took place at Elektra Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, with the band producing and Bruce Botnick (famed for his work with The Doors among others) serving as engineer. The recording process went smoothly, despite the fact that Gates had suffered a broken leg during a basketball game with his bandmates and wore a cast during the sessions. Royer remembers the freewheeling team spirit that the band shared during this time: “My main instrument was guitar, but I played a little keyboards, some bass, even some flute and recorder. We were like the guys in The Band when they did Music From Big Pink – whatever instrument was nearby, we’d pick it up and play it. It was wildly experimental, and we felt a real optimism and excitement about it all.”
The Bread album turned out to be a mixed bag of hook-laden pop rockers and bittersweet ballads. Despite its title, Gates’ “Dismal Day” was not among the latter – the song’s wry lyric is matched with a catchy, folk-rocking track. “That was ironic, wasn’t it?” he says. “I don’t understand why I did it that way at all. We thought that song would be a smash hit, but it didn’t do that well as a single. It was a good outlet for us to sing all those high harmonies, though.”
“London Bridge” is another Gates tune, expressing a pang of nostalgia. Says David: “I read about London Bridge being auctioned off and moved to Lake Havasu, Arizona, and I said, ‘Is nothing scared anymore?’ It came out of that feeling. There’s a Moog synthesizer on that track, one of the first times it was used on a pop record. Paul Beaver (of the early synthesizer duo Beaver and Krause) came in and programmed it, and I played it on the keyboard.”
Griffin and Royer contributed “Any Way You Want Me,” a slinky tune with a bit of a funk bite. “That song was the first time I had ever played electric lead guitar,” Griffin notes. “I was more of a rhythm player, but as the band progressed, I played more and more lead. There’s some lead parts by me on ‘London Bridge’ and other songs as well.”
Another Griffin/Royer song, “Friends And Lovers,” was co-written with Tim Hallinan, a member of Pleasure Faire who later went on to become a successful mystery novelist. “That’s a real interesting song,” Royer points out. “In a way, we were looking down the road to darker days, and they all certainly came to pass for the group. The whole thing was about how pieces of your life start falling away as time goes on. The song is sort of surreal, full of a lot of little snippets of things you see and hear.”
“Look At Me” is a haunting waltz-time vignette by Gates, foreshadowing such later ethereal Bread ballads as “Diary” and “Aubrey.” “It’s just another of my moody pieces, not based on any particular individual or circumstances,” he says.
“Could I,” sung by Griffin, was Bread’s second single, following the unsuccessful “Dismal Day.” “Robb came up with the musical idea for that one on piano,” Griffin recalls. “I wrote the second part, that George Harrison-ish middle-C section. We thought it had a real English flavor to it. Jim Gordon (of Derek And The Dominos renown) played drums on it – it was a real hard song for a drummer to pull off, because it had a 3/4 against a 4/4 rhythm. Jim was one of the few who could’ve done it.”
“The Last Time” was written by Griffin and Royer before they joined Bread. “That was my guitar riff, and mostly my chord changes,” Griffin says. “I wrote most of the lyric, I think. It was kind of a Neil Diamond-y thing that I thought of doing as a solo artist.” Adds Royer: “The song goes into a modulation at the end of a chorus, from D to E, and then out in an interesting way. It really expanded when the band worked it up.”
While concentrating on Bread, Griffin and Royer also became involved in a side project that would ultimately turn out to be quite rewarding for them. Not long after the first Bread LP was released, James and Robb were asked to put lyrics to a tune by film composer Fred Karlin. The song that resulted, “So You Say,” was recorded by Bread for a now-obscure film titled Cover Me Babe. (The group also recorded the title tune for the movie, which featured lyrics by Randy Newman.)
This assignment led Karlin to request Griffin and Royer’s lyrical help on another musical piece, intended for the film Lovers And Other Strangers, starring Gig Young, Bea Arthur, and a young Diane Keaton. The pair obliged and the finished work was titled “For All We Know.” Griffin recorded a demo of the song in March 1970, accompanied by Royer and session player David Cohen on guitars. For publishing reasons, Griffin and Royer used pseudonyms (Arthur James and Robb Wilson, respectively) in their songwriting credits. “For All We Know” was performed by singer Larry Meredith in the film – but, more important, the song was then covered by The Carpenters, who turned it into a #3 hit in 1971. “For All We Know” went on to win an Academy Award® for Best Song and remains Griffin and Royer’s most successful collaboration.
In 1970 Bread were under pressure to reach a wider audience. Neither “Dismal Day” nor “Could I” had cracked the Top 100 singles charts, while their debut LP had sold in the disappointing 30,000-to-50,000 copy range. “The first album was a critical success, but it didn’t do real well,” Gates recalls. “We realized that just because you form a group and perform some good songs, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll have a radio hit. The second album had to happen for us – if it hadn’t, we would’ve dissolved the group.”
A few changes were made before the band returned to the studio. Bread became a quartet with the addition of permanent drummer Mike Botts. A well-known studio musician, he had started his professional career at the tender age of 12, backing up such jazz notables as Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith while still in his teens. “Mike was put in control of the drum parts, and he was pretty innovative,” says Gates. “He made a significant contribution on the percussion side, and he sang an occasional harmony.”
The band also switched engineers and recording studios for their sophomore album. “We went back into Elektra Studios (in L.A.) with Bruce Botnick to re-create the first album experience, but the magic just wasn’t there,” Royer recalls. “So we moved over to Sound Recorders and worked with Armin Steiner, who was a semi-legendary, very technically accomplished guy. He’d been working with Neil Diamond at the time and had a lot of hits behind him.” On The Waters, the album that resulted from these sessions, brought Bread the career upturn they had hoped for – though in ways they might not have expected. “We thought that we were going for a harder, punchier, rockier sound with this album,” Royer says. “Ironically, what came out of it was ‘Make It With You’ – we thought that song was a change of pace for us, and it became the model for the rest of our career, practically.”
Composed and sung by Gates, “Make It With You” marked a turning point in the band’s fortunes. “I got goosebumps while I was writing that song,” he confesses. “I knew that I was onto something, that it was better than the run-of-the-mill song, but I had no idea that it would do as well as it did. It was the fourth song that we started for the album, and as soon as Elektra heard it, they wanted to put it out immediately. We had to sprint to the finish line to complete and release On The Waters so we could take advantage of ‘Make It With You’ being such a big single.
“I realized while I was writing the song that it was meant for just a solo vocal and that a string section was appropriate for it. I wanted a fairly bare-bones rhythm track, and we had a hard time getting it to work. I ultimately ended up going in with just Mike Botts, and he sat there playing drums while I played acoustic guitar to start the track off right. Then I added the bass and the electric guitar afterwards, because that was the only way I could control the emotional feel.”
“Make It With You” became the prototype for further Bread ballads to follow, though it would remain their only #1 single. All told, the song enjoyed a 17-week run on the singles charts and sold over a million copies.
For those who delved deeper than “Make It With You,” On The Waters offered other standout tracks. Griffin rendered his own version of a Bread ballad with “Look What You’ve Done.” “That was a song that Jimmy and I wrote before we joined the band,” says Royer. “We tried to cut it on the first album, but for whatever reason, it didn’t fit. We recut it with Armin Steiner, and we liked that version quite a bit.”
“Been Too Long On The Road” combines an early groove with an ambitious, tempo-shifting arrangement. “That song came out of being away from home with the band on tour,” says Gates. “The title hit me first, and then as I started writing the thing, it got more and more complex, and it turned out to be this five-minute epic.”
Griffin and Royer’s efforts to inject more rock ‘n’ roll into Bread can be heard in “Why Do You Keep Me Waiting.” Says Royer: “That song was part of our movement toward finding our own rock direction. I remember that we were trying to improve on the sound you could get with a fuzz pedal, which was a little too raucous. So we pulled the guts out of a radio and overdrove its amplifier to get that mean little buzz you hear on the track.”
“Call On Me” adds a dash of blues-rock raunch to the Bread batter. “That song is like something on The Beatles’ White Album, like ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’” says Griffin. Royer adds: “There were groups like Grand Funk Railroad out there at the time who had their songs with big minor licks, so we wanted to make sure we had one too.”
Going toe-to-toe with the likes of Grand Funk was not in the cards, however. Rather than get behind another On The Waters track as a single, Elektra released Gates’ “It Don’t Matter To Me” as the follow-up to “Make It With You.” This empathetic ballad first appeared on Bread’s debut album in somewhat different form. David tells its history thus: “I wrote that song a year or so before joining Bread, mostly for my personal pleasure. I thought it would be good for the group – it has this unusual bridge that takes off and does some crazy things musically. The version that we did for the first album was in the key of E, much faster and without strings. About a year later, when we were looking around for a song to follow ‘Make It With You,’ I said, ‘Let’s go back and do “It Don’t Matter To Me” the way I really wanted to do it.’” The re-recorded version of the song reached #10 in late 1970 and was included on The Best Of Bread (1973).
Bread seemed to have found its niche in the marketplace with the popularity of these two ballads – a prospect not altogether pleasing to Griffin and Royer. They particularly bridled at comparisons with The Carpenters as purveyors of soft-rock sentimentality. Says Royer: “We had pressure from the label, from our management, from the radio, from everybody to keep putting ballads out. I was sort of resisting that, and after awhile it became a point of contention between David and me. He said, ‘This is really paying off, let’s roll with it.’ Jimmy and I were looking in other areas, exploring, whereas David was just powering down the middle of the road.”
Manna (1971) did little to reconcile the division in the Bread ranks. While Griffin and Royer felt frustrated that the band’s more aggressive side was being downplayed, Gates was pleased to refine his balladry further. “Manna was an extension of our strengths,” David says. “It had a consistent flow to it – we felt that we knew who our audience was by that time. We had an identity and we had more confidence.”
Still, Bread didn’t neglect their up-tempo tunes altogether. “Let Your Love Go,” Manna’s first single, found Gates delivering a credible rock vocal performance. “We thought it was a great radio song,” he says. “It was a lot of fun to do live, and we opened our shows with it for a long time.” Unfortunately, “Let Your Love Go” fizzled out at #28, underscoring the perception that Bread could only make the Top 10 with ballads.
Elektra quickly released a second single, the archly romantic “If.” This Gates penned aria of devotion reached #4 and remains one of Bread’s standards. “I wrote that song one night at the dining room table, after my kids and my wife had gone to bed,” he remembers. “It took me about an hour and a half, with an extra verse left over. If you look at it, there’s a few bizarre lines in there, like ‘You and I would simply fly away’ – that’s kind of an unusual thought. When I was done, I said, ‘That’s the best song I’ve ever written and probably will be the best song I’ll ever write.’ For me, it’s really held up over time, more than any of the others.”
When “If” was recorded, the track was enhanced by a mysteriously quavering sound that gave the song a distinctive sheen. “That was created by two Moog synthesizers,” Gates reports. “Paul Beaver came in and set them up – I played a plain old Fender Telecaster guitar through a voltage-controlled amplifier, and he put that into these two oscillators that triggered each other in random fashion. When we were all done he said, ‘I hope you liked that and got it on tape, ‘cause I could never do that the same way again.’”
(“If” was later covered by a number of other artists. The oddest rendition was by actor Telly Savalas of Kojak fame, who scored a #1 British single with the tune in 1974.)
Balancing the airiness of “If” on Manna were tracks like “Truckin’,” a high-octane ode to life on the road. “It was kind of a country-rock song,” says co-writer Royer. “It grew out of the lick to ‘Move Over,’ a song on our first album. Jimmy and I were sitting around trying to write, we were stuck, and he started playing that riff with a different feel. He started singing a new melody to it, and we sort of finished the song on the spot as a gag. Gates wasn’t sure about the tune, but Botts really drove the song when we recorded it and made us enthusiastic about it. Gates played some harmonica on it. It turned out to be the most popular song that Jimmy and I ever wrote for Bread.”
Gates’ “He’s A Good Lad” is a genial number with British pop overtones. “It has sort of a Beatles feel,” he acknowledges. “I thought about my kids when I wrote it, but the song was for any good lad or good person. Of course, I had to bring it around to be more of a universally accepted adult story line. I thought it could’ve been a single.”
“Take Comfort” harkens back to Griffin’s Memphis blues background. “That one is a favorite of mine,” says James. “It shows what we did best: me coming up with riffs and chords and melodies, and Robb writing an intelligent adult lyric. The message of the song is, ‘Don’t be too picky. It’s hard enough to find something that works even halfway right, so enjoy it while it’s there.’ I struggle with that even now, all these years later.”
“Too Much Love,” another Griffin/Royer number, is a breezy country-rocker carried along with a shimmering acoustic guitar line. “Everyone thought that song should’ve been a single, but the intro was too long,” Griffin recalls. “David set up a good mood at the beginning with his guitar playing. But it was just too much to get on the radio.”
“She Was My Lady” gives Gates a chance to show off his rock ‘n’ roll side. “I played the guitar solo on that one,” he says. “It probably wasn’t that good of a song, but it was fun to do.”
Griffin and Royer’s “Live In Your Love” is a piano ballad somewhat along the lines of Gates’ work. Both of its writers express reservations about the song today. Says Griffin: “I wasn’t crazy about that one. I started it on piano, and I don’t think we worked long and hard enough on the lyric. I think the lyric is kind of whiney. I wouldn’t have used those sentiments if I’d really been in that kind of situation.”
Manna continued the gold certification streak that began for Bread with On The Waters. It was also the last album to feature Royer as a bandmember – by the fall of ‘71, he had exited the group as a player, though he continued on as Griffin’s songwriting partner. For his replacement, the group recruited bassist/keyboardist Larry Knechtel, one of the West Coast’s top rock sessionmen.
Born in Bell, California, Knechtel was actively performing with combos in nightclubs by his late teens. His early involvements included stints in bands with twang-guitar king Duane Eddy and R&B pioneer Johnny Otis. By the mid-‘60s, his multi-instrumental expertise had brought him to the front ranks of L.A.’s session elite. His sure touch on bass and/or keyboards can be heard on such tracks as The Doors’ “Light My Fire,” The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas,” and all of the hits by The Mamas & The Papas. Knechtel’s exquisite piano playing on Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” may be his most famous studio credit.
By the early ‘70s, Knechtel was looking beyond his lucrative session work for something more fulfilling. “I’d been doing sessions for eight or nine years, but I always had a live gig or a jam session to go to as well,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to turn into a stereotypical bored, burned-out studio player. That was one of the main reasons why I joined Bread.” Some rock critics faulted him for signing up with Gates and company: “I got nailed for that by reviewers quite a few times. They wondered what I was doing with them, and I told them, ‘Hey, I’m working.’ One guy wrote, ‘It must be for the bread,’ and that hurt.”
For their part, Bread was delighted to have Knechtel on board. “It was an incredibly different band after Larry joined,” Gates says. “He brought such fine musicianship, in terms of his time, his rhythm, and his overall spark. We were almost embarrassed to go on stage before, but when he was with us, it was great. He could really solo, and he added a tremendous credibility to us.” Griffin concurs: “We were more of a band on stage with his addition. It freed us up and took David off of the bass quite a bit. With all of us switching back and forth between instruments, Larry was able to pick up the slack. He was our all-around utility player.”
Baby I’m-A Want You (1972) was the first album to feature Knechtel’s contributions and may be Bread’s best-realized work overall. There’s a more consistent sound here, making Griffin’s blues-rock pieces and Gates’ mid-tempo tunes seem less far apart. It also became the only Bread album to yield four Top 40 singles.
Sessions for the album began in mid-‘71, while the group was still in transition between Royer and Knechtel. The first tune to be released as an advance single was “Mother Freedom,” a spirited rocker by Gates. “My recollection is that I played the bulk of the instruments on that,” David says. “I did the two electric guitars, and James played the solo guitar part. I remember writing the song the night before a session – we were supposed to record a new single the next day. I sat down in the living room about seven o’clock that night, and by ten ‘Mother Freedom’ was finished, and we recorded the track the next day. James and I sang it together to give it a little more punch and power.”
When “Mother Freedom” faltered at #37, Elektra released another Gates tune, “Baby I’m-A Want You.” This warm and mellow number reached #3 on the charts, making it Bread’s strongest single since “Make It With You.” David recalls that the song didn’t immediately come together in the studio: “I had written the song on piano, and when we recorded it on piano, the track had no life. I went home demoralized, because I knew it was a good song. So I tried it on guitar and raised it a whole key, then went back into the studio a few days later and re-did it. That made all the difference in the world.”
Bread started off 1972 with the release of “Everything I Own,” among the more personal songs Gates has recorded. “That was written in memory of my father,” he explains. “I worked on the lyric so that it could be taken in a general sense and not be real obvious. I didn’t tell anybody the story behind it for about two years after the record was out, and then I started telling audiences, and it made quite a bit of difference. Recording the song went really well – I was quite motivated to get that one done right. Larry played a real interesting and complicated part on the harpsichord. And we doubled the kick drum to get that thick sound. I just tried to put as much emotion into it as I could.” “Everything I Own” charted at #5 and went on to become hit material for reggae artist Ken Booth in the ‘70s and for Boy George in the ‘80s as well.
“Diary,” a love ballad of almost Victorian gentility, continued Bread’s chart success by rising to #15. “I just made that one up,” says Gates. “A lot of people asked my if I’d really found a diary, and I’d say, ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t.’ I probably would have turned it in without reading it, anyway. There’s an unusual word in there: ‘disconcerting.’ It just fit. In the studio, I used a guitar run through a synthesizer of some sort on the track.”
Spurred on by the popularity of “Everything I Own,” “Diary,” and its title track, Baby I’m-A Want You easily went gold. The album also contained a number of choice album cuts, among them “Down On My Knees,” a rollicking pop rocker co-written by Gates and Griffin. “David and I wrote that at the Royal Lancaster Hotel during our first trip to London,” says James. “All I had was the title phrase, and David helped me to write it. The lyric doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me – I think we were each writing about different things. But the song got a lot of airplay, and people seemed to like it.”
“Daughter” finds Gates offering some fatherly advice, accompanied by Knechtel’s old-timey piano stylings. “I have two daughters, and they were sort of inspirational for it. The point was, ‘Don’t pick the first guy and run to him – be selective.’ I really like the song’s groove; we didn’t have anything else like it.”
“Just Like Yesterday” is a ballad with gospel overtones that rank among Griffin’s best Bread moments. “I wrote that one by myself. I had a piano, and it came out of messing around with it. That’s David playing that real strange sitar-sounding guitar on the track.”
Baby I’m-A Want You was barely on the record racks before Bread released a new single, “Guitar Man.” This Gates penned tribute to the archetypical traveling musician made it to #11 in the summer of ‘72. The swooping and soaring lead guitar lines are courtesy of Knechtel. The task fell to him by default, Gates recalls: “James went out and tried to play a solo that wasn’t sounding right, and I went out and tried it and didn’t have any luck either. Larry plays a little guitar, so I asked him to try it. He hooked up a little wah-wah pedal, and he came up with all those things on the spot. I’ll bet that wasn’t more than two hours of work on his part.”
The end of ‘72 saw the release of the Guitar Man album, a song collection that stuck close to the Bread recipe perfected on Baby I’m-A Want You. By this point, consumers knew what to expect from the group, though audience tastes seemed to diverge along gender lines. Knechtel used to notice this during the band’s concerts: “I’d look out into the first three or four rows of the audience, and I’d see these romantically enchanted girls, and next to them would be their boyfriends, sitting there with their arms folded, kind of pissed-off. We’d usually close the show with ‘Mother Freedom,’ one our best rockers. But a lot of times, I don’t think the girls wanted to hear that. As far as they were concerned, we didn’t need to put any up-tempo things on our albums at all.”
“Sweet Surrender” (#15, 1972) added a bit more of a rhythmic pulse to Gates’ winsome way with a melody. “I wrote that while out on tour,” he recalls. “It’s kind of a peppy, upbeat thing, and it’s not too serious. It has a nice feel.”
Those yearning for delicate Bread balladry were pleased by “Aubrey,” an impressionistic piece that reached #15 in early 1973. Gates says that it started with the title: “I hardly ever write any ‘name’ songs, but I loved that name and the way that it flowed in that particular melody. That may be the best melody that I’ve ever written. I had been watching the movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s, a very moody, sensitive picture that I didn’t totally understand. When it was over, I wrote ‘Aubrey’ – even though it had nothing to do with that film, the moodiness that it had kind of set me up to write that song.”
Guitar Man was not entirely given over to such serene heartfelt fare. “Fancy Dancer” was a bluesy portrait of a femme fatale, delivered by Griffin with a definite swagger. “That came from Botts’ riff,” says James. “He’d worked on this one lick for a long time – we heard it so much every time he’d pick up a guitar that David said, ‘Get with him and write to that.’ So I started playing rhythm guitar along with him, and we wrote the lyric together in an afternoon.”
Gates describes “Yours For Life” as “sort of a country song about permanence in a relationship, making a commitment, that sort of thing. But once again, it’s not a real, real serious song.” In concert, Gates and Griffin would do this tune as a duet, sharing vocal harmonies while playing acoustic guitars.
Guitar Man signaled the end of an era for Bread. Various factors, artistic and otherwise, caused them to disband in 1973. Gates puts it this way: “As we went in to do our sixth album, we found that our songs just weren’t as potent as they previously had been. We’d done successive albums once a year and a lot of touring, and we hadn’t had any chance to recharge our batteries. Rather than put out some album that would compromise the reputation that we’d built up, I decided that it was done.”
“The tensions of being on the road and our personal relationships took their toll,” Griffin feels. “I think the joy was going out of it for me. As I remember, David wanted to go solo. I don’t think the rest of us wanted to hang it up.”
After four gold albums and nine Top 20 singles, Bread crumbled and its members embarked on separate careers. The year 1973 was rife with solo singer/songwriters releasing albums, and Gates and Griffin both joined the fray by the end of the year.
Gates’ solo debut – appropriately titled First – was fairly similar to his work with Bread, though the production approach was more stripped down. “I saw going solo as a continuation,” he says. “I had been producing and arranging the Bread albums and writing my percentage of the songs, so it didn’t seem very different to me. But I did try to have a little more flexibility.” Participating in the First sessions were Breadmates Knechtel and Botts, along with drummer Jim Gordon (who had played on the Bread debut LP), guitarist Louie Shelton, sax player Jim Horn, and other West Coast session notables.
The expansive “Clouds” was the first single, taken from a lengthy suite heard in its entirety on the album. “That song came out of all the time I’d spent flying,” says Gates. “I’d flown a great deal, and I found it really pretty up there, looking down on the clouds. But it also had to do with traveling and being away from home so much.” Despite its airily appealing melody, “Clouds” only rose to #47.
“Sail Around The World” came next, reaching #50 before running out of wind. Gates remembers that this was originally meant for inclusion on Bread’s aborted sixth album. “I had a big sailboat back then, and I used to go from L.A. to Mexico and Hawaii. All sailors dream of taking a trip around the world, but you’re hemmed in by your job, and you can’t take that kind of time. That’s what the song is about.”
“I Use The Soap” is a buoyant country ditty with a lost-love theme. “We recorded that with an acoustic Earthwood bass,” he recalls. “It looks like a big guitar, and Larry Knechtel played the heck out of it. It didn’t fare real well as a single, but it’s a fun song.” Country singer Joe Stampley enjoyed some success with a cover of the tune a few years later.
The graceful, acoustically rendered “Ann” invites comparisons with Gates’ Bread ballads: “I wrote that for one of my daughters, and I still do it in concert – it’s really stood the test of time. I wish sometimes like Vince Gill would do it – he could really tear it up.”
Gates was disappointed that First failed to reach a wide audience. Undaunted, he released his Never Let Her Go album in 1975. The album’s title tune attracted some attention, reaching #29 as a single. “That song comes from my pre-Bread days,” he points out. “I’d written it back in 1964 and had forgotten about it. It had been recorded back then by Gwen Johnson, an artist I was producing for RCA at the time. Years later, I was looking through my archives for some tunes, and I stumbled upon it again.” Another key Never Let Her Go track, the moody “Part-Time Love,” later became an R&B hit for Gladys Knight.
Meanwhile, James Griffin had stepped out as a solo artist as well. His Breakin’ Up Is Easy appeared on Polydor in 1974 and continued in the eclectic vein of Griffin’s work with Bread. One track, the Griffin/Royer tune “She Knows,” was taken from an unreleased Bread session and featured Knechtel on electric piano and Gates on bass. The song was later covered by Ray Charles and The Band.
During this period, Knechtel had returned to session work while Botts joined Linda Ronstadt’s band. Besides co-writing with Griffin, Royer pursued screenwriting and worked on a never-produced musical.
Despite their best efforts, neither Gates nor Griffin was making much impact as a solo artist. At this point, Elektra began expressing interest in reviving Bread. “The record company said, ‘Please guys, there’s still a demand out there; we’d like you to try it,’” Gates remembers. “I didn’t want to do it, but I liked all the people at Elektra and could understand their situation. I didn’t think we could go back in and crank it up again and have any sort of sense of continuity, but we decided to try.”
So in 1976, Gates, Griffin, Botts, and Knechtel attempted to make Bread rise again and recorded Lost Without Your Love. The title song was written by Gates specifically for the project and recaptured some of the band’s earlier charm. “I wrote that one night on the piano,” he says. “During the entire Bread era, James and Robb wrote so many songs on piano that, to balance out the albums, I wrote almost exclusively on guitar. When Bread broke up, suddenly I could write songs on the piano again, which is a totally different experience for me. ‘Lost Without Your Love’ came out of that.”
Released in early 1977, Lost Without Your Love was more of a return to Bread’s essentials than a groundbreaking effort. “Hooked On You,” for instance, is a coy mid-tempo number reminiscent of “Sweet Surrender.” Gates remembers writing this song for James to sing, though he ended up handling the lead vocals himself. “The Chosen One,” another Gates song, simmers along to a sultry groove. “She’s The Only One,” a Griffin/Royer tune sung by James, ventures into country-rock territory.
“Lost… was a pretty tentative album,” Gates says of the project overall. “We tried not to step on each other’s toes, but after we were halfway through it, I got the feeling that we were going to just stagger to the finish line with this one. Then we went out and did a tour, and I felt like I had fulfilled my obligation to Elektra. It was worth a try, and it went OK, but once was enough.”
“Lost Without Your Love” became a #9 single, though its follow-up, “Hooked On You,” only managed to creep up to #60. The album was certified gold, but its performance was not enough to justify continuing further. By the end of 1977, Bread had called it quits for a second time.
From there, Gates took on an assignment to write the title song for The Goodbye Girl, a Neil Simon film comedy starring Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason. It happened this way, he recalls: “I had the melody already, and then I got the call to go see this film. I came back to my ranch, and I wrote the song while driving around on the tractor. I’d been hoping to find lyrics for this melody anyway, so it was very good timing.” Dean Parks, who had served as guest guitarist on Bread’s 1977 tour, played on the “Goodbye Girl” track.
In conjunction with the success of the film, “Goodbye Girl” became a #15 hit in early 1978. This led to the release of an album by the same title, which contained both new material and tracks from Gates’ first two solo LPs. Among the freshly recorded tunes was “Took The Last Train,” a lighthearted excursion into the outer fringes of disco. “I love that song,” Gates says of “Last Train.” “I worked on it with Larry Knechtel up at his place in Washington – he wrote the bridge for me and helped me with the chorus. I didn’t do it fast enough, though – if I had recorded it at a faster tempo, I think it would have been much more successful.” As it turned out, the song chugged up to #30 as a single.
Falling In Love Again (1979) was a respectable effort, featuring the #46 single “Where Does The Lovin’ Go.” Gates describes this tune as “kind of a negative lyric set to a rather happy, upbeat melody…those types of things happen sometimes, musically.” A year later, he switched labels from Elektra to Arista and released Take Me Now. The title track from this album reached #62.
Griffin maintained a good amount of visibility during the 1980s. After the 1977 Europe-only release of a second Polydor album, James Griffin, he recorded several singles for the small Memphis-based label Shoe. From there, he moved back to Los Angeles and joined forces in 1986 with Randy Meisner (ex- Poco and Eagles), Blondie Chaplin (a former Beach Boys sideman), and singer/songwriter Billy Swan to form Black Tie. This unit had some success on the country charts in the early ‘90s, particularly with a cover of Buddy Holly’s “Learning The Game.” At the same time, Griffin was a member of another country group, The Remingtons, which released two albums and gained airplay with such songs as “Two-Timin’ Me.” In addition, he earned hits as a songwriter with Conway Twitty (“Who’s Gonna Know”) and Restless Heart (“You Can Depend On Me”).
This country connection is no accident – much of what Bread recorded in the ‘70s anticipated the direction that country music took during the late ‘80s and ‘90s. By 1994, Griffin, Royer, and Knechtel all found themselves in Nashville and began performing at local clubs together as Toast (ouch!).
On his own, Knechtel has remained active as a sideman (recording and touring with Elvis Costello among others) and has released an instrumental album, Mountain Moods (MCA, 1988). Concentrating on songwriting, Royer has scored a pair of notable successes: “Quittin’ Time” (a hit for Mary Chapin Carpenter in 1988) and “Sold” (a #1 country smash for John Michael Montgomery in 1995).
As for Gates, he resurfaced in 1995 with his CD Love Is Always Seventeen, which yielded a well-received single by the same title. A recent tour done with country singer Billy Dean pointed towards a higher profile in the near future.
David Gates and his band mates may have been known as the kings of soft rock during their glory years, but their accomplishments remain solid into the present day. Their music was built upon the firm foundations of expert songcraft and tempered by the contrasting personalities of the group. The Bread sound has stayed remarkably fresh, offering a taste of pop-rock romanticism that still goes down easy.
– Barry Alfonso
Nashville, Tennessee
April 1996
Special thanks to: David Gates, James Griffin, Fred Karlin, Larry Knechtel, and Robb Royer.
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1. DISMAL DAY
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45666 (6/69) A
2. LONDON BRIDGE
(David Gates)
From the album Bread (9/69) A, G
3. ANY WAY YOU WANT ME
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45666 (6/69) A
4. THE LAST TIME
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
From the album Bread (9/69) A
5. COULD I
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45668 (7/69) A
6. FRIENDS AND LOVERS
(James Griffin/Robb Royer/Tim Hallinan)
From the album Bread (9/69) A, G
7. LOOK AT ME
(David Gates)
From the album Bread (9/69) A
8. MAKE IT WITH YOU
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45686 (5/70) B, F
(Pop #1, AC #4)
9. LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
From the album On The Waters (7/70) B, F
10. BEEN TOO LONG ON THE ROAD
(David Gates)
From the album On The Waters (7/70) B, G
11. WHY DO YOU KEEP ME WAITING
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45686 (5/70) B
12. CALL ON ME
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45701 (9/70) B
13. IT DON’T MATTER TO ME (Single Version)
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45701 (9/70) F
(Pop #10, AC #2)
14. LET YOUR LOVE GO
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45711 (12/70) C, F
(Pop #28)
15. HE’S A GOOD LAD
(David Gates)
From the album Manna (2/71) C, G
16. LIVE IN YOUR LOVE
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45740 (6/71) C
17. SHE WAS MY LADY
(David Gates)
From the album Manna (2/71) C
18. IF
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45720 (3/71) C, F
(Pop #4, AC #1)
19. TOO MUCH LOVE
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45711 (12/70) C, F
20. TAKE COMFORT
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45720 (3/71) C
21. TRUCKIN’
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45751 (9/71) C, F
22. DOWN ON MY KNEES
(James Griffin/David Gates)
Elektra single # 45784 (4/72) D, F
23. DAUGHTER
(David Gates)
From the album Baby I’m-A Want You (1/72) D, G
14. GAMES OF MAGIC
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
From the album Baby I’m-A Want You (1/72) D
15. JUST LIKE YESTERDAY
(James Griffin)
Elektra single # 45803 (6/72) D, G
______________________________________________________________
1. MOTHER FREEDOM
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45740 (6/71) D, F
(Pop #37)
2. BABY I’M-A WANT YOU
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45751 (9/71) D, F
(Pop #3, AC #1)
3. EVERYTHING I OWN
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45765 (1/72) D, F
(Pop #5, AC #3)
4. DIARY
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45784 (4/72) D, F
(Pop #15, AC #3)
5. THE GUITAR MAN
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45803 (6/72) E, G
(Pop #11, AC #1)
6. AUBREY
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45832 (1/73) E, G
(Pop #15, AC #4)
7. FANCY DANCER
(Mike Botts/James Griffin)
From the album Guitar Man (10/72) E, G
8. SWEET SURRENDER
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45818 (10/72) E, G
(Pop #15, AC #1)
9. YOURS FOR LIFE
(David Gates)
From the album Guitar Man (10/72) E, G
10. SHE KNOWS – James Griffin & Co.
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Polydor single # 14236 (5/74) *
11. CLOUDS (Single Edit) – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45857 (6/73) a
(Pop #47, AC #3)
12. I USE THE SOAP – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45857 (6/73) a
13. SAIL AROUND THE WORLD – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45868 (9/73) a
(Pop #50, AC #11)
14. ANN – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45500 (6/78) a, c
15. NEVER LET HER GO – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45223 (11/74) b, c
(Pop #29, AC #3)
16. PART-TIME LOVE – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45245 (3/75) b, c
(AC #34)
17. LOST WITHOUT YOUR LOVE
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45365 (11/76) H
(Pop #9, AC #3)
18. SHE’S THE ONLY ONE
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
From the album Lost Without Your Love (1/77) H
19. HOOKED ON YOU
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45389 (3/77) H
(Pop #60, AC #2)
20. THE CHOSEN ONE
(David Gates)
From the album Lost Without Your Love (1/77) H
21. GOODBYE GIRL – David Gates
Title Song From Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45450 (11/77) c
(Pop #15, AC #3)
22. TOOK THE LAST TRAIN – David Gates
(David Gates/Larry Knechtel)
Elektra single # 45500 (6/78) c
(Pop #30, AC #7)
23. WHERE DOES THE LOVIN’ GO – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 46588 (12/79) d
(Pop #46, AC #9)
24. TAKE ME NOW – David Gates
(David Gates)
Arista single # 0615 (9/81) e
(Pop #62, AC #15)
25. FOR ALL WE KNOW – James Griffin
(James Griffin/Robb Royer/Fred Karlin)
(Previously unissued) **
NOTE: Numbers in italics (following original single release information) denote peak positions on Billboard’s “Hot 100” and “Easy Listening/Adult Contemporary” charts respectively – courtesy BPI Communications and Joel Whitburn’s Record Research Publications.
__________________________________________________
All Songs by David Gates Published by Colgems EMI Music Inc. ASCAP (1969-1972) & Kipahulu Music Co. ASCAP (1972-1981), except “Goodbye Girl” Published by Kipahulu Music Co. ASCAP/WB Music Corp. ASCAP.
All Songs by James Griffin/Robb Royer Published by Candlewyck Music BMI/RobRoy West Music BMI, except “The Last Time” & “Friends And Lovers” Published by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Co. BMI & “For All We Know” Published by MCA Inc. ASCAP/EMI Al Gallico Music Corp. BMI/Music Corporation Of America BMI.
“Down On My Knees” Published by Candlewyck Music BMI/RobRoy West Music BMI.
“Just Like Yesterday” Published by Candlewyck Music BMI.
“Fancy Dancer” Published by Candlewyck Music BMI/Bo-Brah Music ASCAP.
ORIGINAL ALBUM SOURCES / PRODUCTION CREDITS:
A. Bread
Elektra # 74044 (9/69) (LPs #127)
Produced by BREAD
Production Supervisor: JAC HOLZMAN
Engineered by BRUCE BOTNICK
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
B. On The Waters
Elektra # 74076 (7/70) (LPs #12)
Produced by DAVID GATES, JAMES GRIFFIN & ROBB ROYER
Production Supervisor: DAVID GATES
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at SOUND RECORDERS, Hollywood, CA
“It Don’t Matter To Me” (Single Version)
Same production credits as for On The Waters
C. Manna
Elektra # 74086 (3/71) (LPs #21)
Produced by DAVID GATES, with JAMES GRIFFIN & ROBB ROYER
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at SOUND RECORDERS, Hollywood, CA
D. Baby I’m-A Want You
Elektra # 75015 (1/72) (LPs #3)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Associate Producer: JAMES GRIFFIN
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at SOUND RECORDERS, Hollywood, CA & SOUND LABS, Hollywood, CA
E. Guitar Man
Elektra # 75047 (10/72) (LPs #18)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Associate Producer: JAMES GRIFFIN
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
F. The Best Of Bread
Elektra # 75056 (3/73) (LPs #2)
Various Producers, Engineers & Studios
(Refer to credits for original albums)
G. The Best Of Bread, Volume Two
Elektra # 7E-1005 (5/74) (LPs #32)
Various Producers, Engineers & Studios
(Refer to credits for original albums)
H. Lost Without Your Love
Elektra # 7E-1094 (1/77) (LPs #26)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Associate Producer: JAMES GRIFFIN
Engineered by BRUCE MORGAN
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
__________________________________________________
JAMES GRIFFIN:
* Breakin’ Up Is Easy
Polydor # 6018 (2/74)
Produced by JAMES GRIFFIN & ROBB ROYER
“She Knows” Produced by JAMES GRIFFIN
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER, ED BARTON
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA & WALLY HEIDER STUDIOS, Hollywood, CA
** “For All We Know”
Demo for the film Lovers And Other Strangers
Recorded 2/26/70 (Previously unissued)
Produced by FRED KARLIN
Recorded at ID SOUND STUDIOS, Hollywood, CA
__________________________________________________
DAVID GATES:
a. First
Elektra # 75066 (10/73) (LPs #107)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Associate Producer: LARRY KNECHTEL
Engineered by BRUCE MORGAN & ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
b. Never Let Her Go
Elektra # 7E-1028 (1/75) (LPs #102)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Associate Producer: LARRY KNECHTEL
Engineered by BRUCE MORGAN
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
c. Goodbye Girl
Elektra # 6E-148 (6/78) (LPs #165)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Engineered by BRUCE MORGAN, ROGER MAYER
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
(compilation of previously released recordings & new material)
d. Falling In Love Again
Elektra # 6E-251 (12/79)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Engineered by BRUCE MORGAN, ROGER MAYER
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
e. Take Me Now
Arista # 9563 (8/81)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Engineered by DAVID GATES, JO RITA GATES, BRUCE MORGAN
Recorded at DG STUDIOS, Los Angeles, CA
NOTE: Numbers in italics (following original album release information) denote peak positions on Billboard’s “Top LPs” chart – courtesy BPI Communications and Joel Whitburn’s Record Research Publications.
__________________________________________________
BREAD:
DAVID GATES (A-H): vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, violin, arrangements
JAMES GRIFFIN (A-H): vocals, guitar, keyboards
ROBB ROYER (A-C, F-G): guitar, bass, keyboards
MIKE BOTTS (B-H): drums, percussion
LARRY KNECHTEL (D-H): keyboards, bass, guitar, harmonica
with:
JIM GORDON (A): drums
James Griffin:
JAMES GRIFFIN (*): electric guitar
DAVID GATES (*): 12-string guitar, bass
LARRY KNECHTEL (*): keyboards
ROBB ROYER (**): guitar
DAVID COHEN (**): guitar
David Gates:
DAVID GATES (a-e): guitar, bass, keyboards, arrangements
LARRY KNECHTEL (a-e): bass, keyboards
MIKE BOTTS (a-e): drums, percussion
JIM HORN (a, c-d): alto sax
LARRY CARLTON (a): solo guitar
LOUIE SHELTON (a): guitar
JIM GORDON (a): drums
JOHN GUERIN (a): drums
RUSS KUNKEL (a): drums
JIMMY GETZOFF (a): strings
DAN DUGMORE (c-d): steel guitar
DEAN PARKS (c): lead guitar
DAVID LINDLEY (c): fiddle
HADLEY HOCKENSMITH (d-e): lead guitar, bass
DAVID MINER (d-e): bass
ROBIN WILLIAMSON (d): guitar
PAUL LEIM (e): drums, percussion
CRAIG GATES (e): percussion
DICK HYDE (e): bass trumpet
CHUCK FINDLEY (e): flugelhorn
TOM SCOTT (e): alto sax
Compilation Produced for Release by BREAD, DAVID McLEES & BILL INGLOT
Compilation Assistance: ROBERT HAIMER
Project Supervision: TED MYERS
Discographical Annotation: GARY PETERSON
Licensing: MARK PINKUS, STEVE POLTORAK
Remastering: BILL INGLOT & GEOFF SYKES
Art Direction: COCO SHINOMIYA
Design: BRYAN RACKLEFF
Photos: FRANK BEZ, SELWYN MILLER, DAVID GATES, MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES
Project Assistance: GARY STEWART, EMILY CAGAN, CINDY LAUDATI, FAITHE RAPHAEL, MICHAEL JOHNSON, ELIZABETH PAVONE
Special Thanks: DAVID GATES, JAMES GRIFFIN, ROBB ROYER, MIKE BOTTS, LARRY KNECHTEL, SELWYN MILLER, VIRGINIA HAVERICK, ANDY PALEY, SEYMOUR STEIN, FRED KARLIN, STEVE POKORNY
Management: SELWYN MILLER, WORLDWIDE ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK, INC. (310) 477-8796
Original Sound Recordings (P) 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978 & 1979 Elektra Entertainment Group, produced under license from Elektra Entertainment Group, except “She Knows” (P) 1974 PolyGram Records, Inc., under license from PolyGram Special Markets, a Division of PolyGram Group; “Take Me Now” (P) 1981 David Gates, licensed from David Gates; “For All We Know” (P) 1996 Fred Karlin, licensed from Fred Karlin. This Compilation (P) 1996 Elektra Entertainment Group.
ART
Hey there. I am the guy they call John Sperling, and I work in the Art Department. We make art. Art for albums, art for posters, art for calendars, art for T-shirts, brochures, and displays. Besides me, our talented and hard-working crew includes Sevie Bates, Rachel Gutek, Nancy Hopkins, Bryan Rackleff, Coco Shinomiya, and Julie Vlasak, design pros all. We like to make things look good so you will feel special…because you are.
ELEKTRA TRADITIONS
RHINO
This Compilation (P) & © 1996 Elektra Entertainment Group. Manufactured & Marketed by Rhino Records Inc., 106635 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025-4900. Printed in U.S.A.
R2 73509
Made in U.S.A.
__________________________________________________
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New York, NY 10003
(800) 729-4237
To buy this album from Amazon.com, click here: Retrospective [2 CD SET]
_______________________________________________________________________
In their own understated way, Bread defined the sound of the early 1970s as much as any group of their era. Anyone who tuned in to U.S. Top 40 radio during those days couldn’t help but hear their signature songs: “Make It With You,” “It Don’t Matter To Me,” “If,” “Baby I’m-A Want You,” “Everything I Own,” “The Guitar Man.” Bread was a staple on the AM airwaves well into the middle of the decade, purveying a romantic variety of pop rock that was unmistakably their own. Their music was an appealing counterpoint to the harder-edged rock and R&B of the Nixon/Ford Years, earning them an impressive string of certified gold albums and singles.
Smoothly blended vocal harmonies and finely crafted songwriting were the essential ingredients that went into the making of Bread. Founding members David Gates, James Griffin and Robb Royer brought considerable talent and experience to the group when it was launched in the summer of 1968. With the addition of drummer Mike Botts and bassist/keyboardist Larry Knechtel (who replaced Royer in 1971), the level of expertise increased still further. A close listening to their work reveals much subtlety and attention to sonic detail.
Bread emerged at a time when pop music was veering away from psychedelic excess and toward more acoustic-based sounds. Homespun combos like The Band and Crosby, Stills & Nash brought the decibel levels down and emphasized words and melody once again. Bread’s music had a similar slant, though its members’ songwriting roots were more in mainstream pop than rock ‘n’ roll.
As they gained notoriety, Bread was tagged with the “soft rock” label, which became a source of annoyance for Griffin and Royer. “We never saw ourselves as avatars of the great new soft trend,” Royer says. “As far as I was concerned, I was trying to prolong the ‘60s for as long as I could. But all of us were parts players, rather than screaming lead guitar players, and that lead us in a certain direction.” From Gates’ perspective, the labeling was inevitable: “Ultimately, ‘soft rock’ was what we did best, and you can’t really argue with success. So that’s fine.”
Bread was always more complex than its easy-flowing, unabashedly sentimental hit singles would indicate. As time went on, Gates took the spotlight as the group’s balladeer par excellence, while Griffin and Royer (who generally wrote songs as a team) tried to pull the band in a quirkier, more upbeat direction. It didn’t help the group’s team spirit that Gates’ ballads – beginning with the chart topping “Make It With You” in 1970 – were accepted by radio programmers, while Griffin’s more rock oriented tunes did less well. This divergence eventually undermined Bread’s unity and contributed to their initial breakup in 1973.
Looking back, it’s fair to say that Bread was more than the sum of its ingredients. While the solo work of Gates and Griffin had merit, it could not duplicate the chemistry of the group (even if that had been the goal). Bread was never an underground band and was meant to be a radio-friendly, commercially successful venture from the start, but there was an elusive magic to their best moments that went beyond mere craftsmanship and calculation.
A certain amount of ego-clashing and artistic disagreement within the group was probably inevitable. In the end, Bread may have been a case of too many cooks (or bakers) for one band to handle. All three founding members had pursued individual music careers prior to joining forces and brought their own particular strengths to the partnership.
Of the three, Gates had the most extensive résumé as a songwriter/session player/arranger. Born December 11, 1940, he was a product of the same vibrant Tulsa music scene that nurtured Leon Russell (a future West Coast colleague and sometime rival) and J.J. Cale. Among his first recording efforts as a teenager was “Swinging Baby Doll,” a rockabilly-style single that Gates admits was “not an outstanding piece of material.”
Moving to Los Angeles in the early ‘60s, he quickly became an in-demand musical jack-of-all-trades. His best known credit as a writer/producer was The Murmaids’ 1963 hit “Popsicles And Icicles”; he also placed tunes with The Monkees, Johnny Burnette, Shelly Fabares, Connie Stevens and others. His assignments as an engineer were even more diverse, bringing him projects with Glenn Yarbrough, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens, Bobby Darin, Pat Boone, and Rod McKuen, to name only a few. His involvements ranged in extremes, from production work with avant-garde rocker Captain Beefheart to the founding of a short-lived R&B label, Planetary Records. Gates kept busy behind the scenes throughout the decade, though he continued to dream of making his own records as an artist.
Griffin was also active in the L.A. music scene at this time. He had relocated from Memphis in 1962 and scored a recording deal with Reprise soon after. He released a cover version of Lennon/McCartney’s “All My Loving” in ‘63, followed by an album, Summer Holiday. None of Griffin’s releases on Reprise or, later, on Imperial and Viva had much impact on the national charts. Still, he enjoyed some success as a songwriter, placing tunes with artists as disparate as Lesley Gore, Bobby Vee, Ed Ames, and Rudy Vallee.
By 1967 Griffin was co-writing songs with Royer, an L.A. native who had begun his career as a folk guitarist. Switching to rock, he helped to launch Pleasure Faire, a Mamas & Papas-esque outfit that recorded an album for Uni Records in 1967. The group’s producer was none other than Gates, who also contributed some uncredited vocal parts as well. When the Faire broke up a year later, Royer remained in touch with Gates as he developed his songwriting partnership with Griffin.
By mid-1968 the time seemed right for these seasoned pros to join forces. Griffin and Royer began to spend time at Gates’ ranch in the L.A. suburbs, trading sounds and working on harmonies. “Groups were popular at the time, and I figured that we had a better chance at success getting together than we had on our own,” Gates recalls. Griffin agreed: “Although I had a solo deal, I liked the idea of participating in a group. David and Robb and I were all writers, and I was so tired of getting my songs recorded by people who’d miss the point. David expressed similar sentiments, so we decided to form a band and have control over our own songs.”
All three writer/performers sensed that the pop music market was ready to swing back to gentler, more melodic sounds. “We all said, ‘Acoustic music is going to happen again,’” Gates recalls. “We felt that people were getting tired of acid rock and that a group like ours would have a chance.”
The still-unchristened combo didn’t have to wait long before securing a record contract. Prominent entertainment attorney Al Schlesinger brought the group to the attention of Elektra Records founder Jac Holtzman, who sent them into the studio to cut some demos. He was pleased with the results, and the deal was finalized by the beginning of 1969.
The name of the band was settled upon after much trial and error – Griffin recalls that Gates was considering such ominous monikers as Dragonwyck (the title of a Vincent Price film). Finally, after a sleepless night driving about L.A. in search of inspiration, Griffin and Royer pulled up behind a Barbara Ann Bread truck at a stoplight. “I went, ‘Bread! That’s it!’” Royer says. “I called up David with the name, and he said, ‘Nah, we’d better keep looking.’ But then at an Elektra meeting, I mentioned it, and Bill Harvey (the label’s art director) jumped up, slapped the table, and said, ‘I like it…everybody’s pretending that they’re so oblivious to money, so let’s have a band called Bread.’”
Sessions for Bread’s eponymous debut album took place at Elektra Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, with the band producing and Bruce Botnick (famed for his work with The Doors among others) serving as engineer. The recording process went smoothly, despite the fact that Gates had suffered a broken leg during a basketball game with his bandmates and wore a cast during the sessions. Royer remembers the freewheeling team spirit that the band shared during this time: “My main instrument was guitar, but I played a little keyboards, some bass, even some flute and recorder. We were like the guys in The Band when they did Music From Big Pink – whatever instrument was nearby, we’d pick it up and play it. It was wildly experimental, and we felt a real optimism and excitement about it all.”
The Bread album turned out to be a mixed bag of hook-laden pop rockers and bittersweet ballads. Despite its title, Gates’ “Dismal Day” was not among the latter – the song’s wry lyric is matched with a catchy, folk-rocking track. “That was ironic, wasn’t it?” he says. “I don’t understand why I did it that way at all. We thought that song would be a smash hit, but it didn’t do that well as a single. It was a good outlet for us to sing all those high harmonies, though.”
“London Bridge” is another Gates tune, expressing a pang of nostalgia. Says David: “I read about London Bridge being auctioned off and moved to Lake Havasu, Arizona, and I said, ‘Is nothing scared anymore?’ It came out of that feeling. There’s a Moog synthesizer on that track, one of the first times it was used on a pop record. Paul Beaver (of the early synthesizer duo Beaver and Krause) came in and programmed it, and I played it on the keyboard.”
Griffin and Royer contributed “Any Way You Want Me,” a slinky tune with a bit of a funk bite. “That song was the first time I had ever played electric lead guitar,” Griffin notes. “I was more of a rhythm player, but as the band progressed, I played more and more lead. There’s some lead parts by me on ‘London Bridge’ and other songs as well.”
Another Griffin/Royer song, “Friends And Lovers,” was co-written with Tim Hallinan, a member of Pleasure Faire who later went on to become a successful mystery novelist. “That’s a real interesting song,” Royer points out. “In a way, we were looking down the road to darker days, and they all certainly came to pass for the group. The whole thing was about how pieces of your life start falling away as time goes on. The song is sort of surreal, full of a lot of little snippets of things you see and hear.”
“Look At Me” is a haunting waltz-time vignette by Gates, foreshadowing such later ethereal Bread ballads as “Diary” and “Aubrey.” “It’s just another of my moody pieces, not based on any particular individual or circumstances,” he says.
“Could I,” sung by Griffin, was Bread’s second single, following the unsuccessful “Dismal Day.” “Robb came up with the musical idea for that one on piano,” Griffin recalls. “I wrote the second part, that George Harrison-ish middle-C section. We thought it had a real English flavor to it. Jim Gordon (of Derek And The Dominos renown) played drums on it – it was a real hard song for a drummer to pull off, because it had a 3/4 against a 4/4 rhythm. Jim was one of the few who could’ve done it.”
“The Last Time” was written by Griffin and Royer before they joined Bread. “That was my guitar riff, and mostly my chord changes,” Griffin says. “I wrote most of the lyric, I think. It was kind of a Neil Diamond-y thing that I thought of doing as a solo artist.” Adds Royer: “The song goes into a modulation at the end of a chorus, from D to E, and then out in an interesting way. It really expanded when the band worked it up.”
While concentrating on Bread, Griffin and Royer also became involved in a side project that would ultimately turn out to be quite rewarding for them. Not long after the first Bread LP was released, James and Robb were asked to put lyrics to a tune by film composer Fred Karlin. The song that resulted, “So You Say,” was recorded by Bread for a now-obscure film titled Cover Me Babe. (The group also recorded the title tune for the movie, which featured lyrics by Randy Newman.)
This assignment led Karlin to request Griffin and Royer’s lyrical help on another musical piece, intended for the film Lovers And Other Strangers, starring Gig Young, Bea Arthur, and a young Diane Keaton. The pair obliged and the finished work was titled “For All We Know.” Griffin recorded a demo of the song in March 1970, accompanied by Royer and session player David Cohen on guitars. For publishing reasons, Griffin and Royer used pseudonyms (Arthur James and Robb Wilson, respectively) in their songwriting credits. “For All We Know” was performed by singer Larry Meredith in the film – but, more important, the song was then covered by The Carpenters, who turned it into a #3 hit in 1971. “For All We Know” went on to win an Academy Award® for Best Song and remains Griffin and Royer’s most successful collaboration.
In 1970 Bread were under pressure to reach a wider audience. Neither “Dismal Day” nor “Could I” had cracked the Top 100 singles charts, while their debut LP had sold in the disappointing 30,000-to-50,000 copy range. “The first album was a critical success, but it didn’t do real well,” Gates recalls. “We realized that just because you form a group and perform some good songs, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll have a radio hit. The second album had to happen for us – if it hadn’t, we would’ve dissolved the group.”
A few changes were made before the band returned to the studio. Bread became a quartet with the addition of permanent drummer Mike Botts. A well-known studio musician, he had started his professional career at the tender age of 12, backing up such jazz notables as Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith while still in his teens. “Mike was put in control of the drum parts, and he was pretty innovative,” says Gates. “He made a significant contribution on the percussion side, and he sang an occasional harmony.”
The band also switched engineers and recording studios for their sophomore album. “We went back into Elektra Studios (in L.A.) with Bruce Botnick to re-create the first album experience, but the magic just wasn’t there,” Royer recalls. “So we moved over to Sound Recorders and worked with Armin Steiner, who was a semi-legendary, very technically accomplished guy. He’d been working with Neil Diamond at the time and had a lot of hits behind him.” On The Waters, the album that resulted from these sessions, brought Bread the career upturn they had hoped for – though in ways they might not have expected. “We thought that we were going for a harder, punchier, rockier sound with this album,” Royer says. “Ironically, what came out of it was ‘Make It With You’ – we thought that song was a change of pace for us, and it became the model for the rest of our career, practically.”
Composed and sung by Gates, “Make It With You” marked a turning point in the band’s fortunes. “I got goosebumps while I was writing that song,” he confesses. “I knew that I was onto something, that it was better than the run-of-the-mill song, but I had no idea that it would do as well as it did. It was the fourth song that we started for the album, and as soon as Elektra heard it, they wanted to put it out immediately. We had to sprint to the finish line to complete and release On The Waters so we could take advantage of ‘Make It With You’ being such a big single.
“I realized while I was writing the song that it was meant for just a solo vocal and that a string section was appropriate for it. I wanted a fairly bare-bones rhythm track, and we had a hard time getting it to work. I ultimately ended up going in with just Mike Botts, and he sat there playing drums while I played acoustic guitar to start the track off right. Then I added the bass and the electric guitar afterwards, because that was the only way I could control the emotional feel.”
“Make It With You” became the prototype for further Bread ballads to follow, though it would remain their only #1 single. All told, the song enjoyed a 17-week run on the singles charts and sold over a million copies.
For those who delved deeper than “Make It With You,” On The Waters offered other standout tracks. Griffin rendered his own version of a Bread ballad with “Look What You’ve Done.” “That was a song that Jimmy and I wrote before we joined the band,” says Royer. “We tried to cut it on the first album, but for whatever reason, it didn’t fit. We recut it with Armin Steiner, and we liked that version quite a bit.”
“Been Too Long On The Road” combines an early groove with an ambitious, tempo-shifting arrangement. “That song came out of being away from home with the band on tour,” says Gates. “The title hit me first, and then as I started writing the thing, it got more and more complex, and it turned out to be this five-minute epic.”
Griffin and Royer’s efforts to inject more rock ‘n’ roll into Bread can be heard in “Why Do You Keep Me Waiting.” Says Royer: “That song was part of our movement toward finding our own rock direction. I remember that we were trying to improve on the sound you could get with a fuzz pedal, which was a little too raucous. So we pulled the guts out of a radio and overdrove its amplifier to get that mean little buzz you hear on the track.”
“Call On Me” adds a dash of blues-rock raunch to the Bread batter. “That song is like something on The Beatles’ White Album, like ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’” says Griffin. Royer adds: “There were groups like Grand Funk Railroad out there at the time who had their songs with big minor licks, so we wanted to make sure we had one too.”
Going toe-to-toe with the likes of Grand Funk was not in the cards, however. Rather than get behind another On The Waters track as a single, Elektra released Gates’ “It Don’t Matter To Me” as the follow-up to “Make It With You.” This empathetic ballad first appeared on Bread’s debut album in somewhat different form. David tells its history thus: “I wrote that song a year or so before joining Bread, mostly for my personal pleasure. I thought it would be good for the group – it has this unusual bridge that takes off and does some crazy things musically. The version that we did for the first album was in the key of E, much faster and without strings. About a year later, when we were looking around for a song to follow ‘Make It With You,’ I said, ‘Let’s go back and do “It Don’t Matter To Me” the way I really wanted to do it.’” The re-recorded version of the song reached #10 in late 1970 and was included on The Best Of Bread (1973).
Bread seemed to have found its niche in the marketplace with the popularity of these two ballads – a prospect not altogether pleasing to Griffin and Royer. They particularly bridled at comparisons with The Carpenters as purveyors of soft-rock sentimentality. Says Royer: “We had pressure from the label, from our management, from the radio, from everybody to keep putting ballads out. I was sort of resisting that, and after awhile it became a point of contention between David and me. He said, ‘This is really paying off, let’s roll with it.’ Jimmy and I were looking in other areas, exploring, whereas David was just powering down the middle of the road.”
Manna (1971) did little to reconcile the division in the Bread ranks. While Griffin and Royer felt frustrated that the band’s more aggressive side was being downplayed, Gates was pleased to refine his balladry further. “Manna was an extension of our strengths,” David says. “It had a consistent flow to it – we felt that we knew who our audience was by that time. We had an identity and we had more confidence.”
Still, Bread didn’t neglect their up-tempo tunes altogether. “Let Your Love Go,” Manna’s first single, found Gates delivering a credible rock vocal performance. “We thought it was a great radio song,” he says. “It was a lot of fun to do live, and we opened our shows with it for a long time.” Unfortunately, “Let Your Love Go” fizzled out at #28, underscoring the perception that Bread could only make the Top 10 with ballads.
Elektra quickly released a second single, the archly romantic “If.” This Gates penned aria of devotion reached #4 and remains one of Bread’s standards. “I wrote that song one night at the dining room table, after my kids and my wife had gone to bed,” he remembers. “It took me about an hour and a half, with an extra verse left over. If you look at it, there’s a few bizarre lines in there, like ‘You and I would simply fly away’ – that’s kind of an unusual thought. When I was done, I said, ‘That’s the best song I’ve ever written and probably will be the best song I’ll ever write.’ For me, it’s really held up over time, more than any of the others.”
When “If” was recorded, the track was enhanced by a mysteriously quavering sound that gave the song a distinctive sheen. “That was created by two Moog synthesizers,” Gates reports. “Paul Beaver came in and set them up – I played a plain old Fender Telecaster guitar through a voltage-controlled amplifier, and he put that into these two oscillators that triggered each other in random fashion. When we were all done he said, ‘I hope you liked that and got it on tape, ‘cause I could never do that the same way again.’”
(“If” was later covered by a number of other artists. The oddest rendition was by actor Telly Savalas of Kojak fame, who scored a #1 British single with the tune in 1974.)
Balancing the airiness of “If” on Manna were tracks like “Truckin’,” a high-octane ode to life on the road. “It was kind of a country-rock song,” says co-writer Royer. “It grew out of the lick to ‘Move Over,’ a song on our first album. Jimmy and I were sitting around trying to write, we were stuck, and he started playing that riff with a different feel. He started singing a new melody to it, and we sort of finished the song on the spot as a gag. Gates wasn’t sure about the tune, but Botts really drove the song when we recorded it and made us enthusiastic about it. Gates played some harmonica on it. It turned out to be the most popular song that Jimmy and I ever wrote for Bread.”
Gates’ “He’s A Good Lad” is a genial number with British pop overtones. “It has sort of a Beatles feel,” he acknowledges. “I thought about my kids when I wrote it, but the song was for any good lad or good person. Of course, I had to bring it around to be more of a universally accepted adult story line. I thought it could’ve been a single.”
“Take Comfort” harkens back to Griffin’s Memphis blues background. “That one is a favorite of mine,” says James. “It shows what we did best: me coming up with riffs and chords and melodies, and Robb writing an intelligent adult lyric. The message of the song is, ‘Don’t be too picky. It’s hard enough to find something that works even halfway right, so enjoy it while it’s there.’ I struggle with that even now, all these years later.”
“Too Much Love,” another Griffin/Royer number, is a breezy country-rocker carried along with a shimmering acoustic guitar line. “Everyone thought that song should’ve been a single, but the intro was too long,” Griffin recalls. “David set up a good mood at the beginning with his guitar playing. But it was just too much to get on the radio.”
“She Was My Lady” gives Gates a chance to show off his rock ‘n’ roll side. “I played the guitar solo on that one,” he says. “It probably wasn’t that good of a song, but it was fun to do.”
Griffin and Royer’s “Live In Your Love” is a piano ballad somewhat along the lines of Gates’ work. Both of its writers express reservations about the song today. Says Griffin: “I wasn’t crazy about that one. I started it on piano, and I don’t think we worked long and hard enough on the lyric. I think the lyric is kind of whiney. I wouldn’t have used those sentiments if I’d really been in that kind of situation.”
Manna continued the gold certification streak that began for Bread with On The Waters. It was also the last album to feature Royer as a bandmember – by the fall of ‘71, he had exited the group as a player, though he continued on as Griffin’s songwriting partner. For his replacement, the group recruited bassist/keyboardist Larry Knechtel, one of the West Coast’s top rock sessionmen.
Born in Bell, California, Knechtel was actively performing with combos in nightclubs by his late teens. His early involvements included stints in bands with twang-guitar king Duane Eddy and R&B pioneer Johnny Otis. By the mid-‘60s, his multi-instrumental expertise had brought him to the front ranks of L.A.’s session elite. His sure touch on bass and/or keyboards can be heard on such tracks as The Doors’ “Light My Fire,” The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Mason Williams’ “Classical Gas,” and all of the hits by The Mamas & The Papas. Knechtel’s exquisite piano playing on Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” may be his most famous studio credit.
By the early ‘70s, Knechtel was looking beyond his lucrative session work for something more fulfilling. “I’d been doing sessions for eight or nine years, but I always had a live gig or a jam session to go to as well,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to turn into a stereotypical bored, burned-out studio player. That was one of the main reasons why I joined Bread.” Some rock critics faulted him for signing up with Gates and company: “I got nailed for that by reviewers quite a few times. They wondered what I was doing with them, and I told them, ‘Hey, I’m working.’ One guy wrote, ‘It must be for the bread,’ and that hurt.”
For their part, Bread was delighted to have Knechtel on board. “It was an incredibly different band after Larry joined,” Gates says. “He brought such fine musicianship, in terms of his time, his rhythm, and his overall spark. We were almost embarrassed to go on stage before, but when he was with us, it was great. He could really solo, and he added a tremendous credibility to us.” Griffin concurs: “We were more of a band on stage with his addition. It freed us up and took David off of the bass quite a bit. With all of us switching back and forth between instruments, Larry was able to pick up the slack. He was our all-around utility player.”
Baby I’m-A Want You (1972) was the first album to feature Knechtel’s contributions and may be Bread’s best-realized work overall. There’s a more consistent sound here, making Griffin’s blues-rock pieces and Gates’ mid-tempo tunes seem less far apart. It also became the only Bread album to yield four Top 40 singles.
Sessions for the album began in mid-‘71, while the group was still in transition between Royer and Knechtel. The first tune to be released as an advance single was “Mother Freedom,” a spirited rocker by Gates. “My recollection is that I played the bulk of the instruments on that,” David says. “I did the two electric guitars, and James played the solo guitar part. I remember writing the song the night before a session – we were supposed to record a new single the next day. I sat down in the living room about seven o’clock that night, and by ten ‘Mother Freedom’ was finished, and we recorded the track the next day. James and I sang it together to give it a little more punch and power.”
When “Mother Freedom” faltered at #37, Elektra released another Gates tune, “Baby I’m-A Want You.” This warm and mellow number reached #3 on the charts, making it Bread’s strongest single since “Make It With You.” David recalls that the song didn’t immediately come together in the studio: “I had written the song on piano, and when we recorded it on piano, the track had no life. I went home demoralized, because I knew it was a good song. So I tried it on guitar and raised it a whole key, then went back into the studio a few days later and re-did it. That made all the difference in the world.”
Bread started off 1972 with the release of “Everything I Own,” among the more personal songs Gates has recorded. “That was written in memory of my father,” he explains. “I worked on the lyric so that it could be taken in a general sense and not be real obvious. I didn’t tell anybody the story behind it for about two years after the record was out, and then I started telling audiences, and it made quite a bit of difference. Recording the song went really well – I was quite motivated to get that one done right. Larry played a real interesting and complicated part on the harpsichord. And we doubled the kick drum to get that thick sound. I just tried to put as much emotion into it as I could.” “Everything I Own” charted at #5 and went on to become hit material for reggae artist Ken Booth in the ‘70s and for Boy George in the ‘80s as well.
“Diary,” a love ballad of almost Victorian gentility, continued Bread’s chart success by rising to #15. “I just made that one up,” says Gates. “A lot of people asked my if I’d really found a diary, and I’d say, ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t.’ I probably would have turned it in without reading it, anyway. There’s an unusual word in there: ‘disconcerting.’ It just fit. In the studio, I used a guitar run through a synthesizer of some sort on the track.”
Spurred on by the popularity of “Everything I Own,” “Diary,” and its title track, Baby I’m-A Want You easily went gold. The album also contained a number of choice album cuts, among them “Down On My Knees,” a rollicking pop rocker co-written by Gates and Griffin. “David and I wrote that at the Royal Lancaster Hotel during our first trip to London,” says James. “All I had was the title phrase, and David helped me to write it. The lyric doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me – I think we were each writing about different things. But the song got a lot of airplay, and people seemed to like it.”
“Daughter” finds Gates offering some fatherly advice, accompanied by Knechtel’s old-timey piano stylings. “I have two daughters, and they were sort of inspirational for it. The point was, ‘Don’t pick the first guy and run to him – be selective.’ I really like the song’s groove; we didn’t have anything else like it.”
“Just Like Yesterday” is a ballad with gospel overtones that rank among Griffin’s best Bread moments. “I wrote that one by myself. I had a piano, and it came out of messing around with it. That’s David playing that real strange sitar-sounding guitar on the track.”
Baby I’m-A Want You was barely on the record racks before Bread released a new single, “Guitar Man.” This Gates penned tribute to the archetypical traveling musician made it to #11 in the summer of ‘72. The swooping and soaring lead guitar lines are courtesy of Knechtel. The task fell to him by default, Gates recalls: “James went out and tried to play a solo that wasn’t sounding right, and I went out and tried it and didn’t have any luck either. Larry plays a little guitar, so I asked him to try it. He hooked up a little wah-wah pedal, and he came up with all those things on the spot. I’ll bet that wasn’t more than two hours of work on his part.”
The end of ‘72 saw the release of the Guitar Man album, a song collection that stuck close to the Bread recipe perfected on Baby I’m-A Want You. By this point, consumers knew what to expect from the group, though audience tastes seemed to diverge along gender lines. Knechtel used to notice this during the band’s concerts: “I’d look out into the first three or four rows of the audience, and I’d see these romantically enchanted girls, and next to them would be their boyfriends, sitting there with their arms folded, kind of pissed-off. We’d usually close the show with ‘Mother Freedom,’ one our best rockers. But a lot of times, I don’t think the girls wanted to hear that. As far as they were concerned, we didn’t need to put any up-tempo things on our albums at all.”
“Sweet Surrender” (#15, 1972) added a bit more of a rhythmic pulse to Gates’ winsome way with a melody. “I wrote that while out on tour,” he recalls. “It’s kind of a peppy, upbeat thing, and it’s not too serious. It has a nice feel.”
Those yearning for delicate Bread balladry were pleased by “Aubrey,” an impressionistic piece that reached #15 in early 1973. Gates says that it started with the title: “I hardly ever write any ‘name’ songs, but I loved that name and the way that it flowed in that particular melody. That may be the best melody that I’ve ever written. I had been watching the movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s, a very moody, sensitive picture that I didn’t totally understand. When it was over, I wrote ‘Aubrey’ – even though it had nothing to do with that film, the moodiness that it had kind of set me up to write that song.”
Guitar Man was not entirely given over to such serene heartfelt fare. “Fancy Dancer” was a bluesy portrait of a femme fatale, delivered by Griffin with a definite swagger. “That came from Botts’ riff,” says James. “He’d worked on this one lick for a long time – we heard it so much every time he’d pick up a guitar that David said, ‘Get with him and write to that.’ So I started playing rhythm guitar along with him, and we wrote the lyric together in an afternoon.”
Gates describes “Yours For Life” as “sort of a country song about permanence in a relationship, making a commitment, that sort of thing. But once again, it’s not a real, real serious song.” In concert, Gates and Griffin would do this tune as a duet, sharing vocal harmonies while playing acoustic guitars.
Guitar Man signaled the end of an era for Bread. Various factors, artistic and otherwise, caused them to disband in 1973. Gates puts it this way: “As we went in to do our sixth album, we found that our songs just weren’t as potent as they previously had been. We’d done successive albums once a year and a lot of touring, and we hadn’t had any chance to recharge our batteries. Rather than put out some album that would compromise the reputation that we’d built up, I decided that it was done.”
“The tensions of being on the road and our personal relationships took their toll,” Griffin feels. “I think the joy was going out of it for me. As I remember, David wanted to go solo. I don’t think the rest of us wanted to hang it up.”
After four gold albums and nine Top 20 singles, Bread crumbled and its members embarked on separate careers. The year 1973 was rife with solo singer/songwriters releasing albums, and Gates and Griffin both joined the fray by the end of the year.
Gates’ solo debut – appropriately titled First – was fairly similar to his work with Bread, though the production approach was more stripped down. “I saw going solo as a continuation,” he says. “I had been producing and arranging the Bread albums and writing my percentage of the songs, so it didn’t seem very different to me. But I did try to have a little more flexibility.” Participating in the First sessions were Breadmates Knechtel and Botts, along with drummer Jim Gordon (who had played on the Bread debut LP), guitarist Louie Shelton, sax player Jim Horn, and other West Coast session notables.
The expansive “Clouds” was the first single, taken from a lengthy suite heard in its entirety on the album. “That song came out of all the time I’d spent flying,” says Gates. “I’d flown a great deal, and I found it really pretty up there, looking down on the clouds. But it also had to do with traveling and being away from home so much.” Despite its airily appealing melody, “Clouds” only rose to #47.
“Sail Around The World” came next, reaching #50 before running out of wind. Gates remembers that this was originally meant for inclusion on Bread’s aborted sixth album. “I had a big sailboat back then, and I used to go from L.A. to Mexico and Hawaii. All sailors dream of taking a trip around the world, but you’re hemmed in by your job, and you can’t take that kind of time. That’s what the song is about.”
“I Use The Soap” is a buoyant country ditty with a lost-love theme. “We recorded that with an acoustic Earthwood bass,” he recalls. “It looks like a big guitar, and Larry Knechtel played the heck out of it. It didn’t fare real well as a single, but it’s a fun song.” Country singer Joe Stampley enjoyed some success with a cover of the tune a few years later.
The graceful, acoustically rendered “Ann” invites comparisons with Gates’ Bread ballads: “I wrote that for one of my daughters, and I still do it in concert – it’s really stood the test of time. I wish sometimes like Vince Gill would do it – he could really tear it up.”
Gates was disappointed that First failed to reach a wide audience. Undaunted, he released his Never Let Her Go album in 1975. The album’s title tune attracted some attention, reaching #29 as a single. “That song comes from my pre-Bread days,” he points out. “I’d written it back in 1964 and had forgotten about it. It had been recorded back then by Gwen Johnson, an artist I was producing for RCA at the time. Years later, I was looking through my archives for some tunes, and I stumbled upon it again.” Another key Never Let Her Go track, the moody “Part-Time Love,” later became an R&B hit for Gladys Knight.
Meanwhile, James Griffin had stepped out as a solo artist as well. His Breakin’ Up Is Easy appeared on Polydor in 1974 and continued in the eclectic vein of Griffin’s work with Bread. One track, the Griffin/Royer tune “She Knows,” was taken from an unreleased Bread session and featured Knechtel on electric piano and Gates on bass. The song was later covered by Ray Charles and The Band.
During this period, Knechtel had returned to session work while Botts joined Linda Ronstadt’s band. Besides co-writing with Griffin, Royer pursued screenwriting and worked on a never-produced musical.
Despite their best efforts, neither Gates nor Griffin was making much impact as a solo artist. At this point, Elektra began expressing interest in reviving Bread. “The record company said, ‘Please guys, there’s still a demand out there; we’d like you to try it,’” Gates remembers. “I didn’t want to do it, but I liked all the people at Elektra and could understand their situation. I didn’t think we could go back in and crank it up again and have any sort of sense of continuity, but we decided to try.”
So in 1976, Gates, Griffin, Botts, and Knechtel attempted to make Bread rise again and recorded Lost Without Your Love. The title song was written by Gates specifically for the project and recaptured some of the band’s earlier charm. “I wrote that one night on the piano,” he says. “During the entire Bread era, James and Robb wrote so many songs on piano that, to balance out the albums, I wrote almost exclusively on guitar. When Bread broke up, suddenly I could write songs on the piano again, which is a totally different experience for me. ‘Lost Without Your Love’ came out of that.”
Released in early 1977, Lost Without Your Love was more of a return to Bread’s essentials than a groundbreaking effort. “Hooked On You,” for instance, is a coy mid-tempo number reminiscent of “Sweet Surrender.” Gates remembers writing this song for James to sing, though he ended up handling the lead vocals himself. “The Chosen One,” another Gates song, simmers along to a sultry groove. “She’s The Only One,” a Griffin/Royer tune sung by James, ventures into country-rock territory.
“Lost… was a pretty tentative album,” Gates says of the project overall. “We tried not to step on each other’s toes, but after we were halfway through it, I got the feeling that we were going to just stagger to the finish line with this one. Then we went out and did a tour, and I felt like I had fulfilled my obligation to Elektra. It was worth a try, and it went OK, but once was enough.”
“Lost Without Your Love” became a #9 single, though its follow-up, “Hooked On You,” only managed to creep up to #60. The album was certified gold, but its performance was not enough to justify continuing further. By the end of 1977, Bread had called it quits for a second time.
From there, Gates took on an assignment to write the title song for The Goodbye Girl, a Neil Simon film comedy starring Richard Dreyfuss and Marsha Mason. It happened this way, he recalls: “I had the melody already, and then I got the call to go see this film. I came back to my ranch, and I wrote the song while driving around on the tractor. I’d been hoping to find lyrics for this melody anyway, so it was very good timing.” Dean Parks, who had served as guest guitarist on Bread’s 1977 tour, played on the “Goodbye Girl” track.
In conjunction with the success of the film, “Goodbye Girl” became a #15 hit in early 1978. This led to the release of an album by the same title, which contained both new material and tracks from Gates’ first two solo LPs. Among the freshly recorded tunes was “Took The Last Train,” a lighthearted excursion into the outer fringes of disco. “I love that song,” Gates says of “Last Train.” “I worked on it with Larry Knechtel up at his place in Washington – he wrote the bridge for me and helped me with the chorus. I didn’t do it fast enough, though – if I had recorded it at a faster tempo, I think it would have been much more successful.” As it turned out, the song chugged up to #30 as a single.
Falling In Love Again (1979) was a respectable effort, featuring the #46 single “Where Does The Lovin’ Go.” Gates describes this tune as “kind of a negative lyric set to a rather happy, upbeat melody…those types of things happen sometimes, musically.” A year later, he switched labels from Elektra to Arista and released Take Me Now. The title track from this album reached #62.
Griffin maintained a good amount of visibility during the 1980s. After the 1977 Europe-only release of a second Polydor album, James Griffin, he recorded several singles for the small Memphis-based label Shoe. From there, he moved back to Los Angeles and joined forces in 1986 with Randy Meisner (ex- Poco and Eagles), Blondie Chaplin (a former Beach Boys sideman), and singer/songwriter Billy Swan to form Black Tie. This unit had some success on the country charts in the early ‘90s, particularly with a cover of Buddy Holly’s “Learning The Game.” At the same time, Griffin was a member of another country group, The Remingtons, which released two albums and gained airplay with such songs as “Two-Timin’ Me.” In addition, he earned hits as a songwriter with Conway Twitty (“Who’s Gonna Know”) and Restless Heart (“You Can Depend On Me”).
This country connection is no accident – much of what Bread recorded in the ‘70s anticipated the direction that country music took during the late ‘80s and ‘90s. By 1994, Griffin, Royer, and Knechtel all found themselves in Nashville and began performing at local clubs together as Toast (ouch!).
On his own, Knechtel has remained active as a sideman (recording and touring with Elvis Costello among others) and has released an instrumental album, Mountain Moods (MCA, 1988). Concentrating on songwriting, Royer has scored a pair of notable successes: “Quittin’ Time” (a hit for Mary Chapin Carpenter in 1988) and “Sold” (a #1 country smash for John Michael Montgomery in 1995).
As for Gates, he resurfaced in 1995 with his CD Love Is Always Seventeen, which yielded a well-received single by the same title. A recent tour done with country singer Billy Dean pointed towards a higher profile in the near future.
David Gates and his band mates may have been known as the kings of soft rock during their glory years, but their accomplishments remain solid into the present day. Their music was built upon the firm foundations of expert songcraft and tempered by the contrasting personalities of the group. The Bread sound has stayed remarkably fresh, offering a taste of pop-rock romanticism that still goes down easy.
– Barry Alfonso
Nashville, Tennessee
April 1996
Special thanks to: David Gates, James Griffin, Fred Karlin, Larry Knechtel, and Robb Royer.
__________________________________________________
Disc 1
1. DISMAL DAY
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45666 (6/69) A
2. LONDON BRIDGE
(David Gates)
From the album Bread (9/69) A, G
3. ANY WAY YOU WANT ME
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45666 (6/69) A
4. THE LAST TIME
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
From the album Bread (9/69) A
5. COULD I
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45668 (7/69) A
6. FRIENDS AND LOVERS
(James Griffin/Robb Royer/Tim Hallinan)
From the album Bread (9/69) A, G
7. LOOK AT ME
(David Gates)
From the album Bread (9/69) A
8. MAKE IT WITH YOU
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45686 (5/70) B, F
(Pop #1, AC #4)
9. LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
From the album On The Waters (7/70) B, F
10. BEEN TOO LONG ON THE ROAD
(David Gates)
From the album On The Waters (7/70) B, G
11. WHY DO YOU KEEP ME WAITING
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45686 (5/70) B
12. CALL ON ME
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45701 (9/70) B
13. IT DON’T MATTER TO ME (Single Version)
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45701 (9/70) F
(Pop #10, AC #2)
14. LET YOUR LOVE GO
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45711 (12/70) C, F
(Pop #28)
15. HE’S A GOOD LAD
(David Gates)
From the album Manna (2/71) C, G
16. LIVE IN YOUR LOVE
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45740 (6/71) C
17. SHE WAS MY LADY
(David Gates)
From the album Manna (2/71) C
18. IF
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45720 (3/71) C, F
(Pop #4, AC #1)
19. TOO MUCH LOVE
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45711 (12/70) C, F
20. TAKE COMFORT
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45720 (3/71) C
21. TRUCKIN’
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Elektra single # 45751 (9/71) C, F
22. DOWN ON MY KNEES
(James Griffin/David Gates)
Elektra single # 45784 (4/72) D, F
23. DAUGHTER
(David Gates)
From the album Baby I’m-A Want You (1/72) D, G
14. GAMES OF MAGIC
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
From the album Baby I’m-A Want You (1/72) D
15. JUST LIKE YESTERDAY
(James Griffin)
Elektra single # 45803 (6/72) D, G
______________________________________________________________
Disc 2
1. MOTHER FREEDOM
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45740 (6/71) D, F
(Pop #37)
2. BABY I’M-A WANT YOU
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45751 (9/71) D, F
(Pop #3, AC #1)
3. EVERYTHING I OWN
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45765 (1/72) D, F
(Pop #5, AC #3)
4. DIARY
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45784 (4/72) D, F
(Pop #15, AC #3)
5. THE GUITAR MAN
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45803 (6/72) E, G
(Pop #11, AC #1)
6. AUBREY
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45832 (1/73) E, G
(Pop #15, AC #4)
7. FANCY DANCER
(Mike Botts/James Griffin)
From the album Guitar Man (10/72) E, G
8. SWEET SURRENDER
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45818 (10/72) E, G
(Pop #15, AC #1)
9. YOURS FOR LIFE
(David Gates)
From the album Guitar Man (10/72) E, G
10. SHE KNOWS – James Griffin & Co.
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
Polydor single # 14236 (5/74) *
11. CLOUDS (Single Edit) – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45857 (6/73) a
(Pop #47, AC #3)
12. I USE THE SOAP – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45857 (6/73) a
13. SAIL AROUND THE WORLD – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45868 (9/73) a
(Pop #50, AC #11)
14. ANN – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45500 (6/78) a, c
15. NEVER LET HER GO – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45223 (11/74) b, c
(Pop #29, AC #3)
16. PART-TIME LOVE – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45245 (3/75) b, c
(AC #34)
17. LOST WITHOUT YOUR LOVE
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45365 (11/76) H
(Pop #9, AC #3)
18. SHE’S THE ONLY ONE
(James Griffin/Robb Royer)
From the album Lost Without Your Love (1/77) H
19. HOOKED ON YOU
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45389 (3/77) H
(Pop #60, AC #2)
20. THE CHOSEN ONE
(David Gates)
From the album Lost Without Your Love (1/77) H
21. GOODBYE GIRL – David Gates
Title Song From Neil Simon’s The Goodbye Girl
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 45450 (11/77) c
(Pop #15, AC #3)
22. TOOK THE LAST TRAIN – David Gates
(David Gates/Larry Knechtel)
Elektra single # 45500 (6/78) c
(Pop #30, AC #7)
23. WHERE DOES THE LOVIN’ GO – David Gates
(David Gates)
Elektra single # 46588 (12/79) d
(Pop #46, AC #9)
24. TAKE ME NOW – David Gates
(David Gates)
Arista single # 0615 (9/81) e
(Pop #62, AC #15)
25. FOR ALL WE KNOW – James Griffin
(James Griffin/Robb Royer/Fred Karlin)
(Previously unissued) **
NOTE: Numbers in italics (following original single release information) denote peak positions on Billboard’s “Hot 100” and “Easy Listening/Adult Contemporary” charts respectively – courtesy BPI Communications and Joel Whitburn’s Record Research Publications.
__________________________________________________
All Songs by David Gates Published by Colgems EMI Music Inc. ASCAP (1969-1972) & Kipahulu Music Co. ASCAP (1972-1981), except “Goodbye Girl” Published by Kipahulu Music Co. ASCAP/WB Music Corp. ASCAP.
All Songs by James Griffin/Robb Royer Published by Candlewyck Music BMI/RobRoy West Music BMI, except “The Last Time” & “Friends And Lovers” Published by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Co. BMI & “For All We Know” Published by MCA Inc. ASCAP/EMI Al Gallico Music Corp. BMI/Music Corporation Of America BMI.
“Down On My Knees” Published by Candlewyck Music BMI/RobRoy West Music BMI.
“Just Like Yesterday” Published by Candlewyck Music BMI.
“Fancy Dancer” Published by Candlewyck Music BMI/Bo-Brah Music ASCAP.
ORIGINAL ALBUM SOURCES / PRODUCTION CREDITS:
A. Bread
Elektra # 74044 (9/69) (LPs #127)
Produced by BREAD
Production Supervisor: JAC HOLZMAN
Engineered by BRUCE BOTNICK
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
B. On The Waters
Elektra # 74076 (7/70) (LPs #12)
Produced by DAVID GATES, JAMES GRIFFIN & ROBB ROYER
Production Supervisor: DAVID GATES
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at SOUND RECORDERS, Hollywood, CA
“It Don’t Matter To Me” (Single Version)
Same production credits as for On The Waters
C. Manna
Elektra # 74086 (3/71) (LPs #21)
Produced by DAVID GATES, with JAMES GRIFFIN & ROBB ROYER
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at SOUND RECORDERS, Hollywood, CA
D. Baby I’m-A Want You
Elektra # 75015 (1/72) (LPs #3)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Associate Producer: JAMES GRIFFIN
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at SOUND RECORDERS, Hollywood, CA & SOUND LABS, Hollywood, CA
E. Guitar Man
Elektra # 75047 (10/72) (LPs #18)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Associate Producer: JAMES GRIFFIN
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
F. The Best Of Bread
Elektra # 75056 (3/73) (LPs #2)
Various Producers, Engineers & Studios
(Refer to credits for original albums)
G. The Best Of Bread, Volume Two
Elektra # 7E-1005 (5/74) (LPs #32)
Various Producers, Engineers & Studios
(Refer to credits for original albums)
H. Lost Without Your Love
Elektra # 7E-1094 (1/77) (LPs #26)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Associate Producer: JAMES GRIFFIN
Engineered by BRUCE MORGAN
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
__________________________________________________
JAMES GRIFFIN:
* Breakin’ Up Is Easy
Polydor # 6018 (2/74)
Produced by JAMES GRIFFIN & ROBB ROYER
“She Knows” Produced by JAMES GRIFFIN
Engineered by ARMIN STEINER, ED BARTON
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA & WALLY HEIDER STUDIOS, Hollywood, CA
** “For All We Know”
Demo for the film Lovers And Other Strangers
Recorded 2/26/70 (Previously unissued)
Produced by FRED KARLIN
Recorded at ID SOUND STUDIOS, Hollywood, CA
__________________________________________________
DAVID GATES:
a. First
Elektra # 75066 (10/73) (LPs #107)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Associate Producer: LARRY KNECHTEL
Engineered by BRUCE MORGAN & ARMIN STEINER
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
b. Never Let Her Go
Elektra # 7E-1028 (1/75) (LPs #102)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Associate Producer: LARRY KNECHTEL
Engineered by BRUCE MORGAN
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
c. Goodbye Girl
Elektra # 6E-148 (6/78) (LPs #165)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Engineered by BRUCE MORGAN, ROGER MAYER
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
(compilation of previously released recordings & new material)
d. Falling In Love Again
Elektra # 6E-251 (12/79)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Engineered by BRUCE MORGAN, ROGER MAYER
Recorded at ELEKTRA SOUND RECORDERS, Los Angeles, CA
e. Take Me Now
Arista # 9563 (8/81)
Produced by DAVID GATES
Engineered by DAVID GATES, JO RITA GATES, BRUCE MORGAN
Recorded at DG STUDIOS, Los Angeles, CA
NOTE: Numbers in italics (following original album release information) denote peak positions on Billboard’s “Top LPs” chart – courtesy BPI Communications and Joel Whitburn’s Record Research Publications.
__________________________________________________
BREAD:
DAVID GATES (A-H): vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards, violin, arrangements
JAMES GRIFFIN (A-H): vocals, guitar, keyboards
ROBB ROYER (A-C, F-G): guitar, bass, keyboards
MIKE BOTTS (B-H): drums, percussion
LARRY KNECHTEL (D-H): keyboards, bass, guitar, harmonica
with:
JIM GORDON (A): drums
James Griffin:
JAMES GRIFFIN (*): electric guitar
DAVID GATES (*): 12-string guitar, bass
LARRY KNECHTEL (*): keyboards
ROBB ROYER (**): guitar
DAVID COHEN (**): guitar
David Gates:
DAVID GATES (a-e): guitar, bass, keyboards, arrangements
LARRY KNECHTEL (a-e): bass, keyboards
MIKE BOTTS (a-e): drums, percussion
JIM HORN (a, c-d): alto sax
LARRY CARLTON (a): solo guitar
LOUIE SHELTON (a): guitar
JIM GORDON (a): drums
JOHN GUERIN (a): drums
RUSS KUNKEL (a): drums
JIMMY GETZOFF (a): strings
DAN DUGMORE (c-d): steel guitar
DEAN PARKS (c): lead guitar
DAVID LINDLEY (c): fiddle
HADLEY HOCKENSMITH (d-e): lead guitar, bass
DAVID MINER (d-e): bass
ROBIN WILLIAMSON (d): guitar
PAUL LEIM (e): drums, percussion
CRAIG GATES (e): percussion
DICK HYDE (e): bass trumpet
CHUCK FINDLEY (e): flugelhorn
TOM SCOTT (e): alto sax
Compilation Produced for Release by BREAD, DAVID McLEES & BILL INGLOT
Compilation Assistance: ROBERT HAIMER
Project Supervision: TED MYERS
Discographical Annotation: GARY PETERSON
Licensing: MARK PINKUS, STEVE POLTORAK
Remastering: BILL INGLOT & GEOFF SYKES
Art Direction: COCO SHINOMIYA
Design: BRYAN RACKLEFF
Photos: FRANK BEZ, SELWYN MILLER, DAVID GATES, MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES
Project Assistance: GARY STEWART, EMILY CAGAN, CINDY LAUDATI, FAITHE RAPHAEL, MICHAEL JOHNSON, ELIZABETH PAVONE
Special Thanks: DAVID GATES, JAMES GRIFFIN, ROBB ROYER, MIKE BOTTS, LARRY KNECHTEL, SELWYN MILLER, VIRGINIA HAVERICK, ANDY PALEY, SEYMOUR STEIN, FRED KARLIN, STEVE POKORNY
Management: SELWYN MILLER, WORLDWIDE ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK, INC. (310) 477-8796
Original Sound Recordings (P) 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978 & 1979 Elektra Entertainment Group, produced under license from Elektra Entertainment Group, except “She Knows” (P) 1974 PolyGram Records, Inc., under license from PolyGram Special Markets, a Division of PolyGram Group; “Take Me Now” (P) 1981 David Gates, licensed from David Gates; “For All We Know” (P) 1996 Fred Karlin, licensed from Fred Karlin. This Compilation (P) 1996 Elektra Entertainment Group.
ART
Hey there. I am the guy they call John Sperling, and I work in the Art Department. We make art. Art for albums, art for posters, art for calendars, art for T-shirts, brochures, and displays. Besides me, our talented and hard-working crew includes Sevie Bates, Rachel Gutek, Nancy Hopkins, Bryan Rackleff, Coco Shinomiya, and Julie Vlasak, design pros all. We like to make things look good so you will feel special…because you are.
ELEKTRA TRADITIONS
RHINO
This Compilation (P) & © 1996 Elektra Entertainment Group. Manufactured & Marketed by Rhino Records Inc., 106635 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025-4900. Printed in U.S.A.
R2 73509
Made in U.S.A.
__________________________________________________
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