Robert Berry has managed to survive in the treacherous minefield that is the music business and flourished as a performer, songwriter and producer. It seems he's done it all. While he may be best known as the vocalist/bass player in the ELP spinoff, 3, with Keith Emerson and Carl Palmer, Berry impressive list of credits include a stint fronting Ambrosia, and long running affiliations with Alliance, December People, and the Greg Kihn Band. Berry has released 5 solo albums, contributed to a number of high-profile tribute albums and has an impressive track record in the studio. He grew up in a musical family in what would become Northern California’s Silicon Valley. It didn’t take long before he appropriated a Vox Continental organ from his father’s music store. By the time he was a freshman in high school, his group had released a single that went on to become a regional favorite. Although he denies it, according to his school mates, Berry was known as his school’s first full-fledged rock star. His bands became solid fixtures on the Bay Area college and club circuit, where they worked constantly. It was during this period that his interest in multi-track recording blossomed. Legend has it, Berry somehow finagled the very first Teac four-track recorder to arrive in the valley. It wasn’t long before he had written and recorded an experimental twenty-two song ‘rock opera’. As his quest for knowledge grew he managed to snag a part-time position as ‘assistant everything’ person at a busy San Jose recording studio. By the time he was a senior in high school he had acquired a reputation as a solid performer and in-demand studio musician.

-From Berry’s site

Tell me about growing up in San Jose, CA. What was your childhood like? When were you first introduced to music and what initially fascinated you about it? I understand you play many instruments including the guitar, keys, bass as well as the drums. Were you a self taught musician in those early days, or did you take lessons?

Before I was born San Jose was the major city of the Santa Clara valley which was called the “valley of hearts delight”. It’s where most of the fruit for the world at that time came from. Nothing but fruit trees as far as you could see. Our weather rarely gets below the mid 50’s and we’re usually between 68 and 90 depending on the time of the year. Perfect for growing fruit. Now know as Silicon Valley you can still find a few fruit trees here and there, but we are mostly where hi-tech ideas come from. My dad had a big band when he was younger and traveled parts of the U.S. with it. My mother was the singer in my dad’s band so I was actually already on stage up until a month before I was born. My dad eventually opened a piano/organ store that also imported Vox guitars and amps. That’s the brand the Beatles used.

I always heard my parents band practice in our living room. My mom sang all the time around the house. She was always happy and had a song to sing. My dads store had an older German lady that taught piano. I was expected to be one of her top students because after all, her boss was my dad. I started piano at 6 years old. I played many music teacher association performances during the 8 years of classical lesson I took from her. When in high school I continued on with 2 years of jazz piano lessons and then eventually majored in music at San Jose State University. You can see I had extensive piano training. But, I also had 2 guitar lessons, played trumpet in elementary school, and taught myself drums. I play other instruments on recordings at times but I wouldn’t really say I know how to play them.

What groups influenced as well as made an impact on you early on? Where would you go to see local shows and who were among some of the first groups you saw live?

I was very lucky that my dad carried Vox musical equipment. Most of the English bands that came to play the San Jose Civic Auditorium used Vox, or at the very least would accept a Vox AC30 amp as a spare incase one of there amps burned out. My dad would set me back stage with his buddy the stage manager to guard the Vox AC30 he supplied. Bands like The Who, Animals, Dave Clarke Five, etc. The top English bands. It left quite an impression on a 11 year old boy. From then on I always preferred the European sounding bands. I started very young so I couldn’t go to concerts on my own. The local music stores would have battles of the bands and some of the first bands I saw were San Jose bands that were heading towards having hits. The Count Five, Syndicate of Sound, and People. Many years later those 3 bands have come into my studio Soundtek and re-recorded their hits. That was really great to be a part of.

Gary Dunn far left- Eddie Callahan center- and Berry at 12 years olds. This was a transition band right before 4th St. Exit.

What was your community like back in those days? What would you and your friends do for fun?

Lots of local bands, lots of music bars and music venues, no hi-tech yet. There were lots of people with ideas and money to back them. We have the best weather here and people just seemed to thrive on innovation. It has to be the sunshine. My friends would do what most kids did. Play ball on the street, play hide and seek, ride bikes, shoot BB guns. The usual stuff. Me?, I wasn’t a sports guy and when kids came by to see if I could play I’d tell them I had to practice my piano (even though I hated practicing) I was actually just very shy.

Prior to recording your infamous debut LP, “Heavy Berry”, you participated in a group called The 4th Street Exit at just the age of 12. Can you tell me about that outfit and how you guys initially formed?

My first band was actually The Reasons Why. I used to have to play two Christmas songs on piano for whatever school grade I was in. One of my classmates told his older brother Tony that I was a good piano player. Tony knew my dad had a music store and thought the band would get free equipment if I joined. I was right at the end of 11 years old and was so excited to be in a band. The first gig was at a private party. On the way home our guitar player, Eddie Callahan, was driving his motor cycle home and got hit by a drunk driver. That pretty much put an end to that band. Once Eddie had healed he got a call from the 4th Street Exit. They wanted him and he wouldn’t do it without bringing me to the audition. We joined and it was quite a ride. We played every weekend and actually recorded a record. Unheard of in those days for a new band to get all that going so quickly. I made a life long friend in Eddie and also got interested in recording. I actually worked at that same studio for 10 years starting my last year of high school.

THE 4th STREET EXIT: Bottom Left - GTR Skip Mazey(rip), top left BASS Mark Fichera(rip), bottom center-GTR/vocal Eddie Callahan , top center-VOCALIST Mike Aguilar (brother of chocolate Watchband singer Dave Aguilar), top right DRUMS Bob Jansen, bottom right - KEYBOARDS Robert Berry

What were those early gigs like? Where would you play and what were some of those experiences like for you at that age?

Oh man, they were rough. Stanford university beer busts where they thought our amps and organ were there to set their beer on. A cool venue where all the good bands played called The Wutzit Club, and various teen club dances. But the competition was fierce. The one gig I really appreciate now was playing for severely handicapped kids once a month at a park called Happy Hollow. The first gig there was rough. We didn’t know how to react. But when we saw how much fun they had and how much their parents appreciated the music it became a very important piece of our puzzle. Since the guys were older than me and could drive we played some interesting places. I remember a teen club we played at one afternoon with a bunch of other bands. When we got done another bands guitarist/singer came over and asked me to be in his band. When Eddie and Tony found out they took him out back of the venue and beat him up. I didn’t know that until about 20 years later. Yep, it was a great time to grow up in the local music world.

I understand the band recorded a single that featured the tunes, “A Love Like This/Strange One”. Can you tell me a little about writing and recording those tunes and how the deal with Rowena Records came about? What eventually happened to the band and how soon after would you embark out on your own as a solo musician?

Our manager was the bass player’s mom. Word had it that she had managed boxers in New York. Al, her husband was a little guy but an ex fighter. He was tough and the equivalent of our road manager. The manager, Esta knew what was needed and how to achieve it. She knew a record was a must so we worked on two songs. Eddie and I thought that she might have written A Love Like This but it was credited to her son Mark, our bass player. Rowena Records was the label that Tiki Sound owner, Gradie O’Neal started. He thought we were good enough to be on it. The label was named after his sister Rowena. My dad had moved us to the foothills my freshman year of high school. It was rough for a shy kid in a new school where I didn’t know anybody. Esta seemed to have a keen insight into the band members and what they were up to.

Blue Ash at Maple Leaf Music circa: 1968.

Blue Ash at Bob Berry Piano House circa: 1969.

She booked the most popular teen club in my new town. Everybody was there and let’s just say when I came to school Monday morning I wasn’t among strangers anymore. It was really a boost for my self esteem. The school was a buzz about how great my band The 4th Street Exit was. Esta also had strict rules for the band. One was no girlfriends at rehearsals or gigs. Well, I was to shy to even think of having a girlfriend but Eddie, he was a true ladies man. Esta warned him, he didn’t listen. Eddie was out. A new guitar player named Jerry Katz joined. Jerry and I got close musically and found that the older music 4th Street Exit was playing was not what we wanted to do. The band broke up at the end of my softmore year when Jerry and I started a new band with his drumming brother Richard. We also brought Eddie back into our world. We called it Blue Ash.

Berry and Katz (Blue Ash) at Saratoga circa 1970.

You mentioned in our correspondence that you recorded “Heavy Berry” while you were still attending high school, which completely blows my mind! Can you tell me about writing those songs and what you wanted to express, or get across with those particular tunes?

Blue Ash played mostly harder English rock like Cream and Jethro Tull. But we also played the more creative American music like Iron Butterfly. All these different influences didn’t really give me a solid base to spring my writing from. It was all over the map. I had started writing some pretty lame songs way back in 8th grade but by my junior year I was starting to find a few in my stack that I thought I liked. My dad noticed the time I spent in the garage writing and recording on his old Ampex mono recorder so he took me down to an electronics store and got me my first stereo tape recorder. It was a German machine called a UHER and you could bounce betweeen the two tracks and overdub as many times as you wanted. Of course the hiss multiplied each bounce.

But there I was with this multitracking tape recorder, my dad’s band’s old drum set, a cheap Tiesco guitar my parents had given me a few years back, a Vox acoustic I got for 8th grade graduation, and no bass. Maybe that’s why I’m more in tune with playing bass on stage now. My dad also put an old piano from his music store in the garage which I put to good use. I had to record everything with one mic. I had to get the tone, all of the body of the instrument, be it a full drum set or a piano, and I had to figure out how to start with one track and build upon it so that it was still balanced mix wise in the end. I have lots of very poor recordings but it taught me so much. The songs on the Heavy Berry album came from those demos. I went into Tiki Sound and redid the tracks on a proper Ampex 4 track machine they had. It was quite an experience for me. I started working at Tiki a year, or so after that.

Who illustrated the cover? What was the overall vision for this album?

The cover is a picture of me with a baby horse. I don’t remember who took it, but I was and still am a horse lover. My sister actually took most of my band photos in the early days. When I was a junior in high school I worked at a small music store selling guitars and giving piano lessons. I loved to work with wood so I started making bass cabinets out of sub flooring plywood which is 1 and 1/8” thick. I put a 15” speaker inside. This made for a very heavy cabinet. I took one of the first ones to the music store to try and sell it and the owner helped me lift it and called it a Heavy Berry cabinet-and there you have it! The birth of a very short lived brand. You are thinking in terms of someone that considers themself an artist. I was just a kid experimenting with every piece of the music world I could get my hands on. Playing, writing, recording, building cabs, teaching. I thought of it all as the world of music I was interested in. So vision? I would say a very wide scope and I settled on 10 songs that had no common thread and no particular direction yet.

Did you perform these songs out publicly before going into the studio? When and where did recording begin? This was a self-released album, correct? How long did it take to record that album from start to finish? Are there any memories from those studio sessions that still stand out in your mind to this day? When was the album initially released?

No I didn’t. I was really just learning the ins and outs of the business. Releasing an album has many moving parts and I only knew how to write and record. The recording began on my UHER 2 track tape recorder. I had written many poorly executed songs over the previous two years. Once I developed a few that sounded better I picked my favorites. I then went to Tiki studios to re-record them as a master to release. I did learn an important lesson during the re-recording of a few of the songs. Sometimes you can never recreate a demo recording you like. Most of the songs turned out better. A few didn’t. I could only afford about 4 hours studio hours at Tiki at a time. Seems to me that it was $35 per hour. So it was spread out over 10 or so sessions. Oh that was so long ago. As I look back I’m a little surprised that I was determined to actually put out an album and do everything including silk screening the covers myself. At the time I couldn’t get enough and it was the most fun I had ever had. I think I thought you put out an album and people hear the music and buy the album. No PR, no record store placement. Just a pile of albums waiting to be discovered. And now here you are discovering it. Finally! Back before the Dinosaurs roamed the earth. Imagine, a 12” vinyl album and the record player wasn’t even invented yet.

I imagine you were the talk of the town in your school having released an LP. How did this impact your life during that? What's your favorite track on the album and why? What was the next move now that you had a physical manifestation of something you created?

Honestly, not many people knew and my immediate classmates could care less. I was still a bit shy about showing it around and selling it to people so it really didn’t get much exposure. My favorite is called Old Johnny Schrieber. Mr. Schrieber was my high school English teacher. He had a neighbor that had a cat that drove him nuts. If my memory serves me right he was blamed for killing that cat and always said he didn’t do it. I turned that into an expression about Mr. Schrieber killing my youthful exuberance. He cooked it up, sent it packing and in the song, that attitude never returned. I’ve never been asked about that song by the way. In fact, very few even know about this album. I was just doing what I enjoyed doing. I spent every waking hour in my parents garage recording or I was out playing with the band. One of the important piece of “my” puzzle was my parents support. They never pushed me but they were right there behind me as I got more interested.

Did you do any press, or supporting gigs for the album during that time, or was it considerably difficult still being in school? Is there anything you would like to share with the readers about this mysterious masterpiece that maybe we didn’t cover?

No. No PR for the album. I got by in school but didn’t put much effort into it. I was a solid C, C+ student though and my parents were ok with that. They knew where my heart was. Besides the fact that you found this album and oddly enough you think it’s good lol, you have asked me really great interview questions that I’ve never been asked before, and you are still in your 20’s? I think you’ve covered a lot of ground. My first really pro band came about in my early 20’s. It was called Hush. That is where all that I had learned really came together. Funny enough as I am having success with my new band Six By Six I have reverted some of my writing skills back to, no plan, no direction, no confinement to style. It has brought me back full circle to what I learned on that UHER tape recorded many years ago. If it expresses the feelings you have at the time and the music lays a good foundation for the lyric then you have created a time stamp of that moment in your life. Now let’s hope the fans like it. Check out “Save The Night” by Six By Six on YouTube. That is the time stamp of this moment for me. Thanks for a trip down memory lane. Whew, that wore me out!

Cheers,

Robert Berry

www.Robertberry.com

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