{"id":30103,"date":"2025-12-23T05:30:05","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T10:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30103"},"modified":"2025-12-24T08:55:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T13:55:14","slug":"remembering-the-raspberries-part-2-of-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/23\/remembering-the-raspberries-part-2-of-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Raspberries, Part 2 of 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"Raspberries Off and Running<\/b>
\nThree, four or possibly more labels courted the group. Epic was one; Columbia was another. 55 years later Bonfanti can\u2019t 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: \u201cIt was the best deal,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we loved the idea that it was the Beatles\u2019 label; that definitely weighed into the decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Raspberries quickly fell into an efficient work cycle. \u201cWe would play the Agora every Sunday night, and afterward, we\u2019d leave our gear set up,\u201d Bonfanti recalls. The club staff would lock the band in, and the Raspberries would play through the night, until 7 a.m. \u201cWe worked on our original material,\u201d Bonfanti says. They did the same the following night and morning. \u201cWe took Wednesdays off, and on Thursdays we played at JB\u2019s. Then the cycle started again,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

The hard work \u2013 that full-bore combination of live shows and rehearsals \u2013 tightened the band\u2019s music and presentation. And tightness \u2013 perhaps more than anything else \u2013 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 \u201cI Wanna Be With You\u201d lasts barely ten seconds. Taking the \u201cdon\u2019t bore us \/ get to the chorus\u201d ethos to its extreme, the verse of \u201cGo All the Way\u201d clocks in around eight<\/i> seconds. Bonfanti says that the approach was driven by a \u201860s mentality. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t have a song too long and get it on the radio,\u201d he notes. \u201cAnd you wanted to get to the hook right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

The group had a superb songwriter in Eric Carmen. (\u201cA brilliant<\/i> writer,\u201d says Bonfanti.) Writing on his own and with lead guitarist Bryson, Carmen would be responsible for five of the nine songs on the band\u2019s debut LP, 1972\u2019s Raspberries<\/i>. The album sold well \u2013 No. 51 on the Billboard<\/i> 200 \u2013 but its leadoff single only scraped the bottom of the chart. Oddly, considering the band\u2019s exuberant image and overall sound, Capitol chose the lush balladry of \u201cDon\u2019t Want to Say Goodbye\u201d as the record\u2019s first single. Luckily, the record\u2019s second single, \u201cGo All the Way\u201d stormed the charts, reaching No. 5 in both the U.S. and Canada. In Australia, it fared nearly as well, reaching No. 14.<\/p>\n

Taking another leaf from the Beatles\u2019 playbook, the Raspberries returned with a second album right on the heels of their debut. Released in November 1972 \u2013 barely seven months after its predecessor \u2013 Fresh<\/i> would prove an even bigger success. The album spawned two Top 40 singles, \u201cI Wanna Be With You\u201d (No. 16, Billboard<\/i>\u2019s Hot 100) and \u201cLet\u2019s Pretend\u201d (No. 35). The album made it to No. 36 on the Billboard<\/i> 200, giving the Raspberries their best-ever album chart showing.<\/p>\n

Around that time, the band experienced one of its highest highs: a gig at New York City\u2019s prestigious Carnegie Hall. \u201cWe already had a lot of success by then,\u201d Bonfanti allows. \u201cBut that gig was, to me, the exclamation point: \u2018Okay, guys, we\u2019ve got this truck rolling the right way!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Side 3<\/i> followed within a year; it wasn\u2019t as successful on the album chart (No. 128) but earned critical praise. Despite the high quality of the music, none of Side 3<\/i>\u2019s singles made it onto Billboard<\/i>\u2019s Top 40. Dave Smalley had been the band\u2019s rhythm guitarist, but moved over to bass in late \u201872. Shortly after the release of Side 3<\/i>, he left the band.<\/p>\n

Bonfanti departed as well. \u201cI quit the band on my own terms,\u201d he says today, citing the combination of four headstrong band members and lack of a good manager as core reasons. \u201cArguments got stronger, and there was nobody there to keep us in line,\u201d he says. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t get out of our own way sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raspberries Reconstituted<\/b>
\nCarmen and Wally Bryson brought in former Cyrus Erie drummer Michael McBride and bassist Scott McCarl to replace the departed members. \u201cIt was like a totally open door.\u201d says McCarl. As the new lineup began rehearsing songs from the first three albums, ideas for new material began to spring up. \u201cOne day,\u201d he says, \u201cEric and I just began writing together.\u201d Three songs by the Carmen-McCarl songwriting duo \u2013 plus one McCarl solo composition, \u201cRose Coloured Glasses\u201d \u2013 would land on their next record.<\/p>\n

Fan chatter over the years has sometimes included assertions that Starting Over<\/i> is a concept album. McCarl dismisses the notion. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t meant to be one, anyway,\u201d he says. \u201cWe sure didn\u2019t say, \u2018Now, everybody write about yourself, and your feelings about life, and the wear and tear of the music business; that\u2019ll be Side One.\u2019\u201d 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 \u2013 like a less acerbic Badfinger Head First<\/i> \u2013 bur McCarl thinks that credit for the conceptual flow (if any) is due to a force outside the band. \u201cI put it down to the sequencing of the album\u2019s songs,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd that was all [producer] Jimmy Ienner\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One\u2026 Raspberries Off and Running Three, four or possibly more labels courted the group. Epic was one; Columbia was another. 55 years later Bonfanti can\u2019t recall some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,49,55,62],"tags":[3177],"class_list":["post-30103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-new-release","category-powerpop","category-rawk","tag-raspberries","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-55-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30103"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30582,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30103\/revisions\/30582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}