He’s quite possibly the most famous musician you’ve never heard of.
A newly minted Pebble Beach resident, John Beland has lent his guitar and vocal chops to countless recordings and live performances. A conversation with him is liberally peppered with a plethora of mid- to late-20th century musical household names such as Arlo Guthrie, Ricky Nelson, Rita Coolidge, Glen Frey, Kim Carnes, Johnny Cash, Slash, The Bellamy Brothers and The Flying Burrito Brothers. Beland’s memoir, “Best Seat in the House,” features jacket blurbs from some with whom he’s played and remained friends: Garth Brooks, Kris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt. His story is an American dream writ large, and it spans recording studios from Los Angeles to Nashville and stages around the globe.
Beland was born in a place with the Hollywood-script-sounding tag of Hometown, Illinois (yes, it’s real). It was a typical post-WWII suburban Chicago neighborhood, full of ex-GIs and their growing families of baby boomer children. That was an innocent America, when the word “helicopter” only applied to flying machines, not to parenting. For his sixth birthday, young Beland received a prophetic gift, an official Davy Crockett guitar. “It wasn’t a toy,” he writes, “but a real guitar with six strings and a red rope lariat for a strap.” He was in love and, like many guitar heroes, such as Keith Richards and Jimi Hendrix, became inseparable from it, even sleeping with it.
The soundtrack of his childhood was 1950’s rock ‘n’ roll and pop music, and he especially loved watching teen idol Ricky Nelson on the Nelson family television series, “Ozzie and Harriet.” “Hometown is on the southwest side of Chicago,” Beland says, “and I also heard a lot of rhythm and blues and blues.” The seminal Chess Records studio, home to Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and John Lee Hooker was nearby. “I used to hang out there. My parents would have had heart attacks if they knew,” he says with a chuckle.
In his midteens, Beland senior moved his family to sunny Southern California, landing in sleepy La Puente. Young Beland already had a fledgling musical career going, playing gigs with his band. He was devastated at first, homesick for Hometown. But then he followed the well-worn path to Hollywood and forgot all about Illinois. “I hitched a ride and started hanging out. I fell in love with the place.” A budding songwriter, one day he snuck onto an elevator in the iconic Capital Records building (the one that looks like a stack of 45 rpm records) on Vine Street. “I’d slept in the parking lot the night before. When I got out, an A&R (artists and repertoire) man asked if he could help me. I had a totally amateurish tape of my songs, and he gave a listen.” No, this isn’t one of those stories that picks a young man out of obscurity and launches him to instant fame and fortune—but the executive did give him a tip that changed Beland’s life forever. “He told me to check out the Troubadour, a West Hollywood place that hosted an open mic night.”
The Troubadour was a petri dish of up-and-coming talent, and Beland fit right in, showcasing his tunes and filling in on guitar for acts that needed a helping hand. “One day I was asked to play with a young Nashville songwriter who had just blown into town. I met him in the dressing room, and he taught me his songs.” That songwriter was Kris Kristofferson. “I never saw him again until a couple of years later and I heard he’d done a couple of movies.”
Around 1970, Beland was introduced to a sultry young singer who was leaving her band, the Stone Ponies, to go solo under her
own name, Linda Ronstadt. “We formed Swampwater with Linda,” he says. “We had a weeklong gig at the Troubadour, and Kris opened for us.” Interestingly, Kristofferson’s band included bassist Billy Swan, who later had a No. 1 hit with “I Can Help.” “He asked if I would play with him, so I worked with both acts all week. One night, he told me that a friend of his was going to sit in with the band. Johnny Cash got up on stage. I’m totally freaking…knees are knocking. The place went crazy, he looked ten feet tall to me.”
Beland has scores of stories of encounters like this at the legendary club, including one night when Ronstadt took the reluctant guitarist to see an unknown piano player named Elton John. “Everything I got in my career I owe to those days at the Troubadour, backing people up,” he says.
In Hollywood, Beland settled into the life of a professional session guitarist, playing on recordings by other artists, and for commercials and film scores, while also honing his songwriting chops. Often, acts he recorded with hired him to tour with them, and that led to many more opportunities, including one that was a childhood dream of that kid from Hometown. “Ricky Nelson had booked some dates in Las Vegas for the first time in his career. His manager wanted him to make a big impression there and he called me.” By this time, Beland had a reputation as a master of the Fender Telecaster guitar style and sound. “Ricky’s early hits—’Hello Mary Lou,’ ‘Travelin’ Man,’ ‘Lonesome Town’—featured the legendary James Burton on Telecaster. They called me because Burton was then working with Elvis.”
That Vegas stand turned into a lifelong friendship and professional relationship. “We recorded his album ‘The Memphis Sessions’ that included a cover of Bobby Darin’s ‘Dream Lover.’ That became Ricky’s last hit song.” Nelson died in a tragic plane crash in 1985. “Working with him was everything I wanted to do when I was learning to play. He was the best. By far.”
Country music became Beland’s forte, and that meant moving to Nashville, where he became an in-demand player. “I’m proud of my long career playing country music in Nashville.” One highlight is his playing on a demo record for then-unknown singer Garth Brooks. “The song was ‘Friends in Low Places,’ and it became the biggest song in country music history.” In 1980 he was tapped to join The Flying Burrito Brothers, a country rock outfit originally formed in 1968. By that time, the band was “an underground hippy rock band” (in Beland’s words). Under his production, songwriting and guitar playing, he resurrected the band, inking a deal with Curb Records and racking up nine hit songs.
Now Beland is back in California, but he still has his finger on the pulse of the music business. “I do a lot of recording at my home studio,” he says. He’s also producing independent acts, including, interestingly, country rock bands in Norway. “I’m still rockin’ and rollin’.”
For more information, visit www.johnbeland.net.