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Pop stars of the ’70s to
appear in Waikiki show
Even though it's being billed as a light-rock concert, the three principal acts are anything but lightweight.
In their collective heyday during the 1970s, John Ford Coley, Terry Sylvester and Ambrosia were responsible for some of the best pop music of the time, with hits like "Love Is the Answer," "I'd Really Love to See You Tonight," "The Air That I Breathe" and "The Biggest Part of Me."
Sunday night at the Waikiki Shell, they join forces on a concert bill that includes local openers Pauline Wilson, who made her name as the lead vocalist with Seawind, and show/variety group the J. Michaels Band, which just released its new CD, "Collaboration," earlier this week.
Coley, who provided harmony vocals behind his former partner England Dan, is now upfront-and-center but still working with other like-minded musicians -- like Sylvester and Ambrosia.
"Terry and I are going to a bunch of things together," he said by phone from his Nashville, Tenn., home, "specifically a CD with our friend James Griffin from Bread, and we might be working with Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys, maybe Al Jardine as well. I've also played with Ambrosia a lot on the road."
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"I love these kind of concert bills," he said. "I first met Ambrosia when we shared a bill in the Philippines, and they're some of the finest musicians I've known. They're so consistent -- like, every though I haven't seen them in two months, we can still get together, not practice, and step onstage like we played yesterday."
Coley remember playing in Honolulu before he and his partner hit it big, specifically at the Top of Da Shoppe sometime in the mid-'70s, "then we got the record deal, and later played the Waikiki Shell with Seals & Crofts."
Using all those years on the road as material, Coley is in the process of editing something "I refer to jokingly as a funny book. There's no drugs, sex and rock 'n' roll in it, just funny and dumb things that I saw happen on the road. ... Even though it's mostly factual, I did take some liberties with some of the stories. After all, I used to be an English lit student, so there's such a thing as poetic license!"
TERRY SYLVESTER replaced Graham Nash as one of the vocalists for the popular British band the Hollies back in 1968, and even though Sylvester had his share of Holly hits when he sang lead (i.e., "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," the aforementioned "Air" and "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress"), he's also promoting a self-compiled CD set of mostly his work away from the British Invasion band.
Speaking by phone from his Toronto home, Sylvester said that his "'Complete Works, 1969-1982' took two years to compile because we lost some of the master recordings, and we had to beg, steal and borrow some 45s and digitally remaster them. ... The liner notes were written by me, with help by my journalist son in London."
And Sylvester is one of those few lucky musicians who owns the rights to all of his recordings and songs "thanks to our shrewd but honest manager named Robin Britten, who basically set (the band) up for life."
Even though he's not involved with the current incarnation of the Hollies, he does keep busy doing shows like "'The Best of the Brits,' playing with other like Billy J. Kramer and Joey Molland from Badfinger. ... Now that we're all in our 50s, all we care about is the audience, so they're no ego clashes. ... It's all about quality, not quantity."
BECAUSE of that, both he and Coley are content to share their onstage time with Ambrosia, in their role of backup band for the two, before the band does its own set.
Joe Puerta and the rest of his band mates will finally meet their Hawaii fan base that made "The Biggest Part of Me" one of Ambrosia's biggest hits in '82.
"I've played in Hawaii with other groups," he said by phone from his Milwaukee home, "but this'll be the first time it'll be Ambrosia proper."
Even though Puerta acknowledged that "there's always been a pop element to the band," Ambrosia leaned more toward its progressive-rock influences early in its existence. In fact, when everyone lived in Los Angeles, and did one of their first showcases at the University of California at Los Angeles, an engineer friend of theirs invited symphony conductor Zubin Mehta to see and hear them.
"He then took us under his wing and tried to get us further along further." Through Mehta they met Leonard Bernstein, which started a brief foray into contemporary classical music that was a fluke.
"It was unbelievable, such an extreme experience," Puerta remembers. "One weekend, we played the Hollywood Bowl on a Friday night, part of a 'Great American Song Book' program with a lot of modern composers involved -- and the next night, we played a YMCA dance!"
But it was through that concert that they met a producer with A&M Records and, after auditioning for label co-owner Herb Alpert, got a record deal.
"There were no musical boundaries back then -- we just followed our muse. Acts then were slowly developed and brought along." Now, at this stage of their career, the members of Ambrosia "keep the live thing going, still enjoy performing, while we work on our own projects in our own studios.
"It's still fun, depending where we playing, so it'll definitely be fun to do a show in Hawaii," Puerta said.
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