John Crawford (musician)
Encyclopedia
John Buckner Crawford is a singer-songwriter whose efforts with the band Berlin
were an essential part of their rise to fame in the early 1980s. Crawford's career as a musician began in junior high after breaking his leg during a basketball
game. In an attempt to fight off the boredom of being injured, he picked up a guitar
and began taking lessons at a musical instrument retailer in nearby Fullerton, California
, where his teacher put him in touch with future Berlin band members Dan Van Patten and Chris Velasco. John attended El Dorado High School in Placentia, California.
The three soon formed a band called The Toys with vocalist Ty Cobb at the helm. The band’s first performance was at a Sadie Hawkins dance at Crawford’s high school of the time. Crawford, Cobb and the others were influenced by then-current punk rockers like the Sex Pistols
along with Synthpop band Ultravox
, though Crawford has cited KISS
as an early influence as well. (top two paragraphs cited from Crawford's website,.)
After a name change to Berlin
, Cobb was out and a string of vocalists ensued. In 1980 Berlin released the EP
Information on Zone H. Records with Virginia Macolino fronting the group. The band signed to I.R.S. Records briefly in 1980, releasing the single A Matter of Time, before suddenly disbanding in 1981.
on indefinite hiatus, Crawford set to work building up his bass chops with another Orange County
, CA -based band, The Videos with Craig Sibley on vocals and guitars, Rich West on keyboards, Ken Dudley on guitars, and John Benson on drums, and as a vocalist for Fahrenheit, a synthesizer pop quartet in the order of Depeche Mode and Ultravox, for which he also played occasional bass and acoustic guitar. Along with Van Patten as synthesist and drum machine programmer, Fahrenheit included West (later of Stacey Q
’s band) and Keith Walsh, both on synths as well.
Sometime around the formation of Fahrenheit in late 1981, the Los Angeles-based independent label M.A.O. Records released a new Berlin single, featuring the songs The Metro and Tell Me Why, with Terri Nunn
on vocals. It wasn’t until 1982’s platinum-selling Pleasure Victim, however, that Crawford’s music gained the audience it deserved. Crawford had a hand in penning all of the disc’s songs except for Masquerade, a song written by guitarist and original Berlin member Chris Ruiz-Velasco.
Crawford attributes the album’s themes of love gone wrong to post-adolescent heartache, which seemed to resonate with listeners, as Pleasure Victim became, for a while, the most successful independent EP ever released.
label, a bidding war ensued, with Geffen eventually offering the band and their British expatriate manager Perry Watts-Russell the most attractive offer to release the record to a wider audience. The disc, recorded on modest equipment at the Casbah recording studio in Fullerton, California for around $3,000, included the controversial hit single Sex (I’m A) as well as Masquerade and The Metro.
Guitarist Ric Olsen and keyboardist/guitarist David Diamond joined the others in helping to create the synth-driven sound that now seems to epitomize early 1980s techno pop. The follow-up to Pleasure Victim, titled Love Life went gold in 1984, thanks in part to the hit single No More Words, which further established Berlin as a household name.
Personnel changes would continue to plague the band, with only Nunn and Crawford remaining from the Pleasure Victim lineup as they went into their third album, to be titled Count Three and Pray, released in 1986.
Caught between his desire to maintain artistic integrity and the industry’s desire to sell records, Crawford found the ever-elusive hit single hard to come by. Instead, the commercial centerpiece of Count Three and Pray turned out to be Take My Breath Away, the chart climbing single written by Giorgio Moroder
featured in the film Top Gun
.
Count Three and Pray was produced by "super producer" Bob Ezrin
(producer of many rock superstars including Kiss
, Pink Floyd
, Peter Gabriel
, Lou Reed
and Alice Cooper
) and features guest appearances by a host of others including Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Ted Nugent, and Elliott Easton of The Cars. As one might expect, the majority of the album is characterized by an aggressive, guitar-driven hard rock sound.
With Crawford on bass and vocals, The Big F’s self-titled debut album for Elektra in 1988 represented a kind of experiment in anti-commercialism, with its dark themes and aggressive hard rock sound. Before courting the attention of record labels, Crawford and Brill deliberately concealed their identities to avoid any association with Berlin. Crawford took on the name John Shreve while Brill became Rob Donin. Mark Christian rounded out the trio in his role as guitarist. They contributed a cover version of the MC5
song "Kick Out the Jams
" to the 1990 Elektra compilation Rubáiyát
.
The Big F’s second album, Is, was released on Chrysalis in 1993, and like the first, failed to find a large audience, possibly due to the dense, dark sound of the music and challenging lyrics. For the Is tour, the band hired a bassist, allowing Crawford/Shreve to concentrate solely on vocals. In 1995, The Big F called it quits once and for all.
, an act that he credits with saving not only his soul but his marriage to his wife Jacquelyn and their three children, Paul, Sydney, and Samantha.
In 2003 the members of Berlin's
Love Life era lineup got together at the behest of VH1
’s Bands Reunited
show, resulting in phone conversations between Crawford and Diamond that Crawford credits with inspiring him to begin writing again.
“I have to kind of give credit to David Diamond,” Crawford said in late 2005. “I just had a lot of fun talking to him about music, talking to him on the phone a little bit afterwards, and it just kind of perked me up a little bit. I just decided to try doing, just to write some stuff for myself, just to see what it was like.”
The resulting self-released album, Surrender, represents 12 tracks of Crawford’s masterful songwriting and vocals emphasizing his newfound faith, along with his precise guitar and bass playing and drum programming. The hard-rocking album has the electric guitar as its sonic focal point, all of it based on Crawford’s uncanny knack for generating lyrical and melodic hooks.
Surrender features guest appearances by former Big F band mate Mark Christian and was co-produced by former Stacey Q
bandleader Jon St. James, who weighs in with background vocals and occasional guitar work as well. The album was recorded at Crawford’s home studio with additional recording and mixing done at St. James’ studio.
During his tenure as Berlin’s main songwriter, Crawford wrote most of his songs using an acoustic guitar, though these days his main composing tools are his personal computer and a music application called Reason
produced by Propellerhead Software.
Surrender is available from Crawford’s website, where he frequently posts in his public journal about his life as a musician and his conversion to Christianity
.
An album of new material titled 8 Days was released in August 2006, and Crawford is reportedly working on a new album of material, to be called Tarantula that he says is closer to Berlin’s early 80s sound than anything he’s released in the past 20 years. According to Crawford's posts on his message board, due to the financial expense involved in self releasing his two solo CDs, he may offer MP3 downloads of this new electronic music, song by song, as he completes them. Also on his website, Crawford has hinted that he is open to the idea of playing Christian praise and worship music.
With Berlin (bassist, occasional vocalist, songwriter)
1982: "Pleasure Victim EP" (Enigma)
1983: "Pleasure Victim EP" (Geffen)
1984: "Love Life"
1986: Berlin: "Count Three and Pray"
1988: Best of Berlin: 1979-1988"
With The Big F (As John Shreve) (lead vocalist, bassist, songwriter)
(Big F Discography info cited from http://www.oozingbrain.com/thebigf/band.html)
As John Crawford (Vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards, drum programming, songwriter)
2006: 8 Days
Singles
With Berlin (bassist, occasional vocalist, songwriter)
1980: "A Matter of Time"
Berlin (band)
Berlin is an American New Wave/Synthpop band. The group was formed in Los Angeles in 1978 by John Crawford . The band contained Crawford, Terri Nunn , David Diamond , Ric Olsen , Matt Reid and Rod Learned . Learned left during the first EU tour and was replaced by Rob Brill...
were an essential part of their rise to fame in the early 1980s. Crawford's career as a musician began in junior high after breaking his leg during a basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
game. In an attempt to fight off the boredom of being injured, he picked up a guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
and began taking lessons at a musical instrument retailer in nearby Fullerton, California
Fullerton, California
Fullerton is a city located in northern Orange County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 135,161.It was founded in 1887 by George and Edward Amerige and named for George H. Fullerton, who secured the land on behalf of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway...
, where his teacher put him in touch with future Berlin band members Dan Van Patten and Chris Velasco. John attended El Dorado High School in Placentia, California.
The three soon formed a band called The Toys with vocalist Ty Cobb at the helm. The band’s first performance was at a Sadie Hawkins dance at Crawford’s high school of the time. Crawford, Cobb and the others were influenced by then-current punk rockers like the Sex Pistols
Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement in the United Kingdom and inspiring many later punk and alternative rock musicians...
along with Synthpop band Ultravox
Ultravox
Ultravox is a British New Wave rock band. They were one of the primary exponents of the British electronic pop music movement of the late 1970s/early 1980s. The band was particularly associated with the New Romantic and New Wave movements....
, though Crawford has cited KISS
KISS (band)
Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
as an early influence as well. (top two paragraphs cited from Crawford's website,.)
After a name change to Berlin
Berlin (band)
Berlin is an American New Wave/Synthpop band. The group was formed in Los Angeles in 1978 by John Crawford . The band contained Crawford, Terri Nunn , David Diamond , Ric Olsen , Matt Reid and Rod Learned . Learned left during the first EU tour and was replaced by Rob Brill...
, Cobb was out and a string of vocalists ensued. In 1980 Berlin released the EP
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
Information on Zone H. Records with Virginia Macolino fronting the group. The band signed to I.R.S. Records briefly in 1980, releasing the single A Matter of Time, before suddenly disbanding in 1981.
The in-between days
With BerlinBerlin (band)
Berlin is an American New Wave/Synthpop band. The group was formed in Los Angeles in 1978 by John Crawford . The band contained Crawford, Terri Nunn , David Diamond , Ric Olsen , Matt Reid and Rod Learned . Learned left during the first EU tour and was replaced by Rob Brill...
on indefinite hiatus, Crawford set to work building up his bass chops with another Orange County
Orange County, California
Orange County is a county in the U.S. state of California. Its county seat is Santa Ana. As of the 2010 census, its population was 3,010,232, up from 2,846,293 at the 2000 census, making it the third most populous county in California, behind Los Angeles County and San Diego County...
, CA -based band, The Videos with Craig Sibley on vocals and guitars, Rich West on keyboards, Ken Dudley on guitars, and John Benson on drums, and as a vocalist for Fahrenheit, a synthesizer pop quartet in the order of Depeche Mode and Ultravox, for which he also played occasional bass and acoustic guitar. Along with Van Patten as synthesist and drum machine programmer, Fahrenheit included West (later of Stacey Q
Stacey Q
Stacey Q is a pop singer, dancer and actress. She is best known for her 1985 hit single "Two of Hearts".-Early life:Stacey Swain was born on November 30, 1958 in Fullerton, California. She is the youngest of three children...
’s band) and Keith Walsh, both on synths as well.
Sometime around the formation of Fahrenheit in late 1981, the Los Angeles-based independent label M.A.O. Records released a new Berlin single, featuring the songs The Metro and Tell Me Why, with Terri Nunn
Terri Nunn
Terri Kathleen Nunn , is an American singer and actress. She is best known as the lead vocalist of the New Wave band Berlin.-Biography:...
on vocals. It wasn’t until 1982’s platinum-selling Pleasure Victim, however, that Crawford’s music gained the audience it deserved. Crawford had a hand in penning all of the disc’s songs except for Masquerade, a song written by guitarist and original Berlin member Chris Ruiz-Velasco.
Crawford attributes the album’s themes of love gone wrong to post-adolescent heartache, which seemed to resonate with listeners, as Pleasure Victim became, for a while, the most successful independent EP ever released.
Rising star
After Pleasure Victim’s initial success on the independent EnigmaEnigma Records
Enigma Records was a popular rock and alternative American record label in the 1980s. It was initially a division of Greenworld Distribution, an independent music importer/distributor, which it split-off from in 1985 to become its own company...
label, a bidding war ensued, with Geffen eventually offering the band and their British expatriate manager Perry Watts-Russell the most attractive offer to release the record to a wider audience. The disc, recorded on modest equipment at the Casbah recording studio in Fullerton, California for around $3,000, included the controversial hit single Sex (I’m A) as well as Masquerade and The Metro.
Guitarist Ric Olsen and keyboardist/guitarist David Diamond joined the others in helping to create the synth-driven sound that now seems to epitomize early 1980s techno pop. The follow-up to Pleasure Victim, titled Love Life went gold in 1984, thanks in part to the hit single No More Words, which further established Berlin as a household name.
Personnel changes would continue to plague the band, with only Nunn and Crawford remaining from the Pleasure Victim lineup as they went into their third album, to be titled Count Three and Pray, released in 1986.
Caught between his desire to maintain artistic integrity and the industry’s desire to sell records, Crawford found the ever-elusive hit single hard to come by. Instead, the commercial centerpiece of Count Three and Pray turned out to be Take My Breath Away, the chart climbing single written by Giorgio Moroder
Giorgio Moroder
Hansjörg "Giorgio" Moroder is an Italian record producer, songwriter and performer based in Los Angeles. When in Munich in the 1970s, he started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records...
featured in the film Top Gun
Top Gun
Top Gun may refer to:* Top Gun is a 1986 film starring Tom Cruise.**Top Gun , soundtrack to the movie**Top Gun , a number of games based on the movie...
.
Count Three and Pray was produced by "super producer" Bob Ezrin
Bob Ezrin
Robert Alan "Bob" Ezrin is a Canadian music producer and keyboardist, known for his work with artists including Alice Cooper, Kiss and Pink Floyd. He was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2004.-Biography:...
(producer of many rock superstars including Kiss
KISS (band)
Kiss is an American rock band formed in New York City in January 1973. Well-known for its members' face paint and flamboyant stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid to late 1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting,...
, Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...
, Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
, Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
and Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper
Alice Cooper is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans more than four decades...
) and features guest appearances by a host of others including Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Ted Nugent, and Elliott Easton of The Cars. As one might expect, the majority of the album is characterized by an aggressive, guitar-driven hard rock sound.
End of "the Berlin Era"
Due to artistic differences between Crawford and Nunn, Berlin disbanded once again, and the disillusioned Crawford wasted no time pursuing the creation of a band, The Big F. “The Big F was a chance for Rob (Rob Brill, Berlin and Big F drummer) and I to say, look, okay, we saw what that was and we’re going to try actually now to really focus on just making music, and let the rest of the stuff go away,” Crawford said during a 2005 telephone interview.With Crawford on bass and vocals, The Big F’s self-titled debut album for Elektra in 1988 represented a kind of experiment in anti-commercialism, with its dark themes and aggressive hard rock sound. Before courting the attention of record labels, Crawford and Brill deliberately concealed their identities to avoid any association with Berlin. Crawford took on the name John Shreve while Brill became Rob Donin. Mark Christian rounded out the trio in his role as guitarist. They contributed a cover version of the MC5
MC5
The MC5 is an American rock band formed in Lincoln Park, Michigan and originally active from 1964 to 1972. The original band line-up consisted of vocalist Rob Tyner, guitarists Wayne Kramer and Fred "Sonic" Smith, bassist Michael Davis, and drummer Dennis Thompson...
song "Kick Out the Jams
Kick Out the Jams
Kick Out the Jams is the first album by Detroit protopunkers MC5, released in 1969. It was recorded live at Detroit's Grande Ballroom over two nights, Devil's Night and Halloween, 1968. In 2003, the album was ranked number 294 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time...
" to the 1990 Elektra compilation Rubáiyát
Rubáiyát
Rubáiyát is a compilation album, released in 1990 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Elektra Records record label. The concept was to feature present-day Elektra artists covering songs from the historic catalogue of recordings of Elektra Records and its sister label Asylum Records.Two...
.
The Big F’s second album, Is, was released on Chrysalis in 1993, and like the first, failed to find a large audience, possibly due to the dense, dark sound of the music and challenging lyrics. For the Is tour, the band hired a bassist, allowing Crawford/Shreve to concentrate solely on vocals. In 1995, The Big F called it quits once and for all.
A Return to grace
Following a short-lived attempt at reuniting Berlin with Nunn, Crawford took a step away from the music industry to focus on his family and sort out the aftermath of his success. It would be ten years before he performed again or wrote another note of music. In the early 90s, Crawford took a leap of faith and became a Born-Again ChristianChristian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
, an act that he credits with saving not only his soul but his marriage to his wife Jacquelyn and their three children, Paul, Sydney, and Samantha.
In 2003 the members of Berlin's
Berlin (band)
Berlin is an American New Wave/Synthpop band. The group was formed in Los Angeles in 1978 by John Crawford . The band contained Crawford, Terri Nunn , David Diamond , Ric Olsen , Matt Reid and Rod Learned . Learned left during the first EU tour and was replaced by Rob Brill...
Love Life era lineup got together at the behest of VH1
VH1
VH1 or Vh1 is an American cable television network based in New York City. Launched on January 1, 1985 in the old space of Turner Broadcasting's short-lived Cable Music Channel, the original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly...
’s Bands Reunited
Bands Reunited
Bands Reunited is a television program produced by VH1 in 2004. Hosted by Aamer Haleem, the show documented the attempted reuniting of a formerly popular musical ensemble for a special concert in either London or Los Angeles....
show, resulting in phone conversations between Crawford and Diamond that Crawford credits with inspiring him to begin writing again.
“I have to kind of give credit to David Diamond,” Crawford said in late 2005. “I just had a lot of fun talking to him about music, talking to him on the phone a little bit afterwards, and it just kind of perked me up a little bit. I just decided to try doing, just to write some stuff for myself, just to see what it was like.”
The resulting self-released album, Surrender, represents 12 tracks of Crawford’s masterful songwriting and vocals emphasizing his newfound faith, along with his precise guitar and bass playing and drum programming. The hard-rocking album has the electric guitar as its sonic focal point, all of it based on Crawford’s uncanny knack for generating lyrical and melodic hooks.
Surrender features guest appearances by former Big F band mate Mark Christian and was co-produced by former Stacey Q
Stacey Q
Stacey Q is a pop singer, dancer and actress. She is best known for her 1985 hit single "Two of Hearts".-Early life:Stacey Swain was born on November 30, 1958 in Fullerton, California. She is the youngest of three children...
bandleader Jon St. James, who weighs in with background vocals and occasional guitar work as well. The album was recorded at Crawford’s home studio with additional recording and mixing done at St. James’ studio.
During his tenure as Berlin’s main songwriter, Crawford wrote most of his songs using an acoustic guitar, though these days his main composing tools are his personal computer and a music application called Reason
Reason (program)
Reason is a music software program developed by Swedish software developers Propellerhead Software. It emulates a rack of hardware synthesizers, samplers, signal processors, sequencers, and mixers, all of which can be freely interconnected in an arbitrary manner...
produced by Propellerhead Software.
Surrender is available from Crawford’s website, where he frequently posts in his public journal about his life as a musician and his conversion to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
.
An album of new material titled 8 Days was released in August 2006, and Crawford is reportedly working on a new album of material, to be called Tarantula that he says is closer to Berlin’s early 80s sound than anything he’s released in the past 20 years. According to Crawford's posts on his message board, due to the financial expense involved in self releasing his two solo CDs, he may offer MP3 downloads of this new electronic music, song by song, as he completes them. Also on his website, Crawford has hinted that he is open to the idea of playing Christian praise and worship music.
Discography
AlbumsWith Berlin (bassist, occasional vocalist, songwriter)
- 1980:
With The Big F (As John Shreve) (lead vocalist, bassist, songwriter)
- 1988: The Big F
- 1993: Patience Peregrine EP
- 1993: Is
(Big F Discography info cited from http://www.oozingbrain.com/thebigf/band.html)
As John Crawford (Vocals, guitars, bass, keyboards, drum programming, songwriter)
- 2005:
Singles
With Berlin (bassist, occasional vocalist, songwriter)
1980: "A Matter of Time"
- "The Metro" (1983) #58 US
- "Sex (I'm A...)" (1983) #62 US
- "Masquerade" (1983) #82 US
- "No More Words" (1984) #23 US
- "Now It's My Turn" (1984) #74 US
- "Dancing In Berlin" (1984)
- "Take My Breath Away" (1986) #1 US, #1 UK
- "Like Flames" (1986) #82 US
- "You Don't Know" (1987) #39 UK