Everyone I Meet is from California (1972)

Performer: America                                              Writer: Dan Peek
Highest US Chart Position: N/A                              Label: Warner Brothers
Musicians: Dan Peek, Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell and Kim Haworth

The group America has some major connections with Great Britain, as the members of the group went to high school in London, recorded their first album there, and they eventually went on to work with Beatles’ producer George Martin. In fact, when The Beatles put out their albums they wanted to give their fans the most for their money and so they didn’t include songs that they had already released on 45. In the same way, neither of the songs on America’s first single originally appeared on their first album, and so the first pressings of their self-titled debut did not contain the single “A Horse with No Name” or the B-side, “Everyone I Meet is from California.” Once the A-side became a hit, however, Warner Brothers quickly slapped the song on all subsequent releases of the album, but the B-side wouldn’t see the light of day until Rhino put out a second greatest hits package entitled Encore: More Greatest Hits. Another version of the song, however, was re-recorded for the group’s follow up album, Homecoming, and for those who were only familiar with this version the B-side of the single is striking by comparison. The earlier version is more energetic, with crisper vocals and even with the acoustic instrumentation it feels much stronger overall.

The song begins with a rhythm pattern being strummed on muted acoustic guitar strings over eight bars. Muted toms on the drums double the rhythm, with percussion and single notes on the electric guitar on the upbeats at the end of every two measures, and the sizzle of a tambourine throughout. Finally, Dan Peek’s bass plays a four-note pickup into the song proper. Acoustic guitars and bass are the central focus of the driving chord progression, propelled by Kim Haworth’s drums. Peek’s lyrics, always nebulous, have yet another oblique reference to Christianity, which would ultimately be the impetus for his leaving the band. The first verse is about heaven and the afterlife, while verse two juxtaposes the sensual pleasures of the California coast with the promise of life after “the world has set you free.” The chorus is sung in three-part harmony in an ascending line over the chords before falling back to the verse. After the second chorus is a nice Dan Peek guitar solo, beginning with some two-string repeated riffs before going free form and finishing with an upper register repeated lick. The harmonies, of course, are wonderful, but it’s the interplay of the bass and the acoustic guitars, along with the congas, that really makes the song.

The most obvious difference between this early B-side and the remake later that year is that Dan Peek decided to electrify the guitars in the reprise. In fact, the song even bears a different title, “California Revisited.” It begins with an acoustic guitar strumming the intro rather than just providing a rhythm, and then something of an awkward bass slide into the opening rather than the more confident bass pickup on the single. The vocals are far more out front in this version, while the buried rhythm section and the soft jangle of the electric guitars simply make the song feel too lightweight in comparison. The one thing that is very good is the electric guitar riff that plays after every line of the first verse. But there's also a third version of the song, recorded many years later by Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell on their Hourglass album from 1994. I've always suspected that Dan Peek played bass on that album because the bass player pictured in the CD booklet looks an awful lot like him, and it was also the first album since his departure where they resumed naming their albums with titles beginning with the letter “H.” In this version the opening chords are played on a twelve-string and Bunnell sings the lead. Otherwise it owes more to the remake than the original B-side. “A Horse with No Name” went to number one in March of 1972 and stayed there for three weeks, but the flip side is equally good. “Everyone I Meet is from California” is a fantastic, forgotten gem in the America songbook.