We Five was a 1960s
folk rock
Folk rock is a fusion genre of rock music with heavy influences from pop, English and American folk music. It arose in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U.S., folk rock emerged from the folk music re ...
musical group based in
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
,
California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
. Their best-known
hit was their
1965
Events January–February
* January 14 – The First Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years.
* January 20
** Lyndon B. Johnson is Second inauguration of Lynd ...
remake of
Ian & Sylvia's "
You Were on My Mind", which reached No. 1 on the
Cashbox chart, No. 3 on the
''Billboard'' Hot 100, and No. 1 on the
Adult Contemporary
Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul ...
chart. The original group split after recording their second album in 1967, but a re-formed band produced three more albums between 1968 and 1977.
Biography
Formation and organization
Michael Stewart was the brother of
John Stewart of
The Kingston Trio and came from
Claremont, California
Claremont () is a suburban city in eastern Los Angeles County, California, United States, east of Los Angeles. It lies in the Pomona Valley at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. As of the 2010 United States Census, 2010 census it had ...
. When Michael was a student at the
University of San Francisco
The University of San Francisco (USF) is a Private university, private Society of Jesus, Jesuit university in San Francisco, California, United States. Founded in 1855, it has nearly 9,000 students pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees ...
in 1964, he formed We Five as a quartet, although it soon added another member. The group played adult rock 'n roll, pop jazz,
Broadway show tunes, and
Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...
tunes. Stewart did all the arrangements, which ranged from "
My Favorite Things", in a style which reflected
Bach, to "Very Merry Un-birthday". He put in several additional hours working on arrangements after the five band members worked together for five or six hours each day.
The ensemble played acoustic guitars, electric guitar, and bass guitar and sang multi-part harmonies. The original quintet line-up, which grew out of a band called the Ridgerunners, included:
*
Michael Stewart (1945–2002) (voice, 5-string banjo, 6-string acoustic guitar, 9-string electric guitar)
*
Beverly Bivens (born 1946) (voice, guitar)
*Jerry Burgan (1945–2021) (voice, guitar)
*Pete Fullerton (1946–2021) (voice, acoustic and electric bass guitar)
*Bob Jones (1947–2013) (voice, guitar)
1965–1970
Record label
A&M Records
A&M Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group and functions as a branch of Interscope Geffen A&M Records, Interscope-Geffen-A&M. Established in 1962 by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, the label initially operated independent ...
, owned by
Herb Alpert
Herb Alpert (born March 31, 1935) is an American trumpeter, pianist, singer, songwriter, record producer, arranger, conductor, painter, sculptor and theatre producer, who led the band Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass (sometimes called "Herb Alpe ...
, responded to the new popularity of folk and rock music by adding new artists starting in 1965 to its existing line-up of middle-of-the road material turned out by Alpert's
Tijuana Brass, the
Baja Marimba Band, and
Brasil '66. In addition to We Five, Alpert's label released albums by
Boyce and Hart, the Garden Club,
Chris Montez
Chris Montez (born Ezekiel Christopher Montañez; January 17, 1943) is an American guitarist and vocalist, whose stylistic approach has ranged from rock & roll to pop standards and Latin music. His rock sound is exemplified in songs such as hi ...
, and
The Merry-Go-Round.
We Five's first album produced a major hit with the title tune, Stewart's re-arrangement of the
Ian & Sylvia song "
You Were on My Mind". Stewart made several changes to the original
Sylvia Tyson composition, and the song went directly to the Billboard Top Five in 1965. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a
gold record
Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...
.
The group's second single was an arrangement of the popular song "
Let's Get Together," written by Chester Powers, who performed under the name Dino Valenti. It reached No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and was later a Top Five hit and a million-seller for
The Youngbloods as "Get Together").
In February 1966, We Five was nominated for a
Grammy for Best Performance By A Vocal Group (for "You Were on My Mind"), against the Beatles among others, but they lost the award to the
Anita Kerr Quartet. They were also the first commercial folk-rock artists to record music for
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a cola soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. In 2013, Coke products were sold in over 200 countries and territories worldwide, with consumers drinking more than 1.8 billion company beverage servings ...
. The group added John Chambers as a touring drummer, so that it could tour behind its hit.
After completing their second album, ''
Make Someone Happy'', later in 1966, lead singer
Beverly Bivens decided to leave the group. To continue, We Five replaced Bivens with Debbie Graf Burgan (wife of guitarist Jerry Burgan) and added a full-time drummer in Mick Gillespie for live performances. That same year, the band turned down an opportunity to record John Stewart's song "
Daydream Believer", which went on to be an international hit for
The Monkees
The Monkees were an American pop rock band formed in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. The band consisted of Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones (musician), Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork. Spurred by the success of ''The Monkees (TV series), Th ...
.
We Five was among the artists included in a preliminary injunction issued by the Los Angeles Superior Court in April 1968. The edict prohibited
bootlegging of A&M artists, including the Tijuana Brass and
The Sandpipers. The action was directed against Superba Tapes, Inc., of
Lancaster, California. The company had copied tapes of the recordings and sold them to the public without paying royalties to the artists.
The group would record two albums with Debbie Burgan singing lead, ''Return of the We Five'' (1969) for A&M and ''Catch the Wind'' (1970) for
Vault. Neither album came close to the success of the earlier Bivens material. In 1970, Stewart, Jones and Fullerton all quit We Five, breaking up the original band.
Subsequent events
After We Five split up, Debbie Graf and Jerry Burgan kept a version of the group going through 1977. This group recorded another album in 1977, ''Take Each Day as It Comes'' for AVI Records before also disbanding. From 1977 through 1981, Jerry and Debbie performed as "The Burgans", supported by bassist Paul Foti.
Various versions of the band featuring the Burgans remained together for the next 30 years. The Burgans in March 2009 contributed an original song, "For Old Times," to an online-novel-with-music-tracks entitled "Alt. Country," scheduled to appear on the website of author Alan Rifkin.
Bob Jones was also a member of the current version of the band, which is now officially known as "We Five Folk Rock Revival." He died from
pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of ...
on July 24, 2013. Later editions of the band also included Frank Denson, who went on to write music for television shows, including ''
Magnum, P.I.'', ''
Tales of the Gold Monkey'', and ''
Blossom''; plus between 1968 and 1970 the drummer Mick Gillespie.
Pete Fullerton left the music business in 1970 to minister to the homeless and needy: he is the founder of the California-based organization "Truck of Love".
Michael Stewart appeared in occasional reunions with We Five from 1978 to 1989. He became a record producer (most notably for
Billy Joel
William Martin Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Piano Man" after his Signature song, signature 1973 song Piano Man (song), of the same name, Joel has ha ...
) and a pioneering developer of
MIDI
Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...
music software. He died on November 13, 2002, at age 57
as a result of "a long illness." Stewart's son, musician
Jamie Stewart, has alleged several times that his father in fact died by
suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death.
Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...
, though this has been unconfirmed.
In 2009, after many years of seclusion, Beverly Bivens sang at the opening of an exhibition, mounted by the Performing Arts Library & Museum in San Francisco, of the rock scene in the Bay area in the mid-sixties to early seventies.
''There Stands the Door - The Best of We Five'' was released by Big Beat Records (CDWIKD 286) in 2009. The compilation included selections from both albums plus several unreleased recordings by the original group. This collection takes its name from the We Five single which Jerry Burgan observes just missed the
raga rock trend.
''Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution,'' a reminiscence by Jerry Burgan incorporating the birth of folk rock and the original band's subsequent collapse, with co-author Alan Rifkin and a foreword by Sylvia Tyson, was published in April 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield.
Jerry Burgan (born William Jerome Burgan on February 3, 1945) died on March 29, 2021, at age 76.
Pete Fullerton (born Clive Avon Fullerton on February 6, 1946, in
Pomona, California
Pomona ( ) is a city in eastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. Pomona is located in the Pomona Valley, between the Inland Empire and the San Gabriel Valley. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city's population was ...
) died on September 28, 2021, at age 75.
Beverly Bivens is the sole surviving member of the original group.
Discography
Albums
Singles
See also
*
List of bands from the San Francisco Bay Area
References
Further reading
*
External links
Official SiteWe Five on A&M RecordsOfficial Trailer for ''Wounds to Bind''Obituary of We Five member Jerry Burgan*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:We Five
Folk rock groups from California
Rock music groups from California
Musical groups from San Francisco
Musical groups established in 1964
A&M Records artists
Vault Records artists