Remembering the Raspberries, Part 2 of 4

Continued from Part One…

Raspberries Off and Running
Three, four or possibly more labels courted the group. Epic was one; Columbia was another. 55 years later Bonfanti can’t recall some of the others. But he remembers the label with which the band inked a contract. He says that they chose Capitol Records for two reasons: “It was the best deal,” he says. “And we loved the idea that it was the Beatles’ label; that definitely weighed into the decision-making.”

The Raspberries quickly fell into an efficient work cycle. “We would play the Agora every Sunday night, and afterward, we’d leave our gear set up,” Bonfanti recalls. The club staff would lock the band in, and the Raspberries would play through the night, until 7 a.m. “We worked on our original material,” Bonfanti says. They did the same the following night and morning. “We took Wednesdays off, and on Thursdays we played at JB’s. Then the cycle started again,” he explains.

The hard work – that full-bore combination of live shows and rehearsals – tightened the band’s music and presentation. And tightness – perhaps more than anything else – was what the Raspberries were about. Raspberries singles would boil down the pop hit aesthetic to its strongest, shortest possible form. After a razor-sharp introduction, the first verse of “I Wanna Be With You” lasts barely ten seconds. Taking the “don’t bore us / get to the chorus” ethos to its extreme, the verse of “Go All the Way” clocks in around eight seconds. Bonfanti says that the approach was driven by a ‘60s mentality. “You couldn’t have a song too long and get it on the radio,” he notes. “And you wanted to get to the hook right away.”

The group had a superb songwriter in Eric Carmen. (“A brilliant writer,” says Bonfanti.) Writing on his own and with lead guitarist Bryson, Carmen would be responsible for five of the nine songs on the band’s debut LP, 1972’s Raspberries. The album sold well – No. 51 on the Billboard 200 – but its leadoff single only scraped the bottom of the chart. Oddly, considering the band’s exuberant image and overall sound, Capitol chose the lush balladry of “Don’t Want to Say Goodbye” as the record’s first single. Luckily, the record’s second single, “Go All the Way” stormed the charts, reaching No. 5 in both the U.S. and Canada. In Australia, it fared nearly as well, reaching No. 14.

Taking another leaf from the Beatles’ playbook, the Raspberries returned with a second album right on the heels of their debut. Released in November 1972 – barely seven months after its predecessor – Fresh would prove an even bigger success. The album spawned two Top 40 singles, “I Wanna Be With You” (No. 16, Billboard’s Hot 100) and “Let’s Pretend” (No. 35). The album made it to No. 36 on the Billboard 200, giving the Raspberries their best-ever album chart showing.

Around that time, the band experienced one of its highest highs: a gig at New York City’s prestigious Carnegie Hall. “We already had a lot of success by then,” Bonfanti allows. “But that gig was, to me, the exclamation point: ‘Okay, guys, we’ve got this truck rolling the right way!’”

Side 3 followed within a year; it wasn’t as successful on the album chart (No. 128) but earned critical praise. Despite the high quality of the music, none of Side 3’s singles made it onto Billboard’s Top 40. Dave Smalley had been the band’s rhythm guitarist, but moved over to bass in late ‘72. Shortly after the release of Side 3, he left the band.

Bonfanti departed as well. “I quit the band on my own terms,” he says today, citing the combination of four headstrong band members and lack of a good manager as core reasons. “Arguments got stronger, and there was nobody there to keep us in line,” he says. “We couldn’t get out of our own way sometimes.”

Raspberries Reconstituted
Carmen and Wally Bryson brought in former Cyrus Erie drummer Michael McBride and bassist Scott McCarl to replace the departed members. “It was like a totally open door.” says McCarl. As the new lineup began rehearsing songs from the first three albums, ideas for new material began to spring up. “One day,” he says, “Eric and I just began writing together.” Three songs by the Carmen-McCarl songwriting duo – plus one McCarl solo composition, “Rose Coloured Glasses” – would land on their next record.

Fan chatter over the years has sometimes included assertions that Starting Over is a concept album. McCarl dismisses the notion. “It wasn’t meant to be one, anyway,” he says. “We sure didn’t say, ‘Now, everybody write about yourself, and your feelings about life, and the wear and tear of the music business; that’ll be Side One.’” But he understands why listeners might perceive a theme to the record. Some lyrics do touch on personal themes and the travails of a band – like a less acerbic Badfinger Head First – bur McCarl thinks that credit for the conceptual flow (if any) is due to a force outside the band. “I put it down to the sequencing of the album’s songs,” he says. “And that was all [producer] Jimmy Ienner’s doing.”

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