BRUCE HORNSBY
Moving far from his early image as a
middle-of-the-road performer, Hornsby
became a member of The Grateful Dead in
1990, replacing late keyboardist Brent
Mydland. “That’s really kept
going through to 2015,” he
states proudly. “I was in the
band for their Fare Thee Well
50th anniversary concerts.”
For the past decade, he’s
been writing fi lm and TV
scores, including the music
for Spike Lee’s Netfl ix series
She’s Gotta Have It and his
2018 movie BlacKkKlansman.
“The success that we had
early on opened up my
musical world in an amazing
way,” refl ects the artist who
has appeared on more than
100 records by everyone from
Sting to Willie Nelson.
“I started getting asked to
play and write with amazing
artists from Robbie Robertson
to Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt,
Spike Lee... it just kept
moving and moving.
“But then, it was off the
radio,” Hornsby says of most
of his post-80s music. “Critical
acclaim in the press only goes
so far in growing your
audience and a lot of people in
the hinterlands of the US have no idea about
any of that. A lot of people who have been
coming to hear our band don’t know that I’ve
made a record in the past 25 years!”
Above: Bruce
Hornsby And The
Noisemakers
onstage at Stubb’s
BBQ in Austin,
TexasBruce Randall Hornsby was born in
Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1954. He came
from a musical family. His father played
saxophone with his uncle’s band Sherwood
Hornsby & The Rhythm Boys.
His grandfather organised
music in schools and played
church organ on Sundays.
Bruce took some short-
lived piano lessons at the age
of seven but it was the arrival
of The Beatles in America
that inspired him to take up
an instrument in earnest.
“I had a Vox guitar, because
that’s what they played, when
I was 12 or 13 years old,”
he reports.
For much of his teens,
Hornsby concentrated on
athletics and basketball,
before rediscovering
the piano.
“I was a late starter,” he
says of his keysmanship. “My
brother turned me on to the
Joe Cocker album, Mad Dogs
And Englishmen, on which
the great Leon Russell was
the band leader and piano
player. He also turned me
onto Elton John’s third
album, Tumbleweed
Connection, which was the
one Elton record without a hit on it but
which may still be my favourite of his
records. Those albums blew my mind and
made me want to take up the piano.“You have to imitate before you can
innovate. You have to learn the language. So
I was doing that by learning Leon Russell
songs, Joe Cocker songs and Elton’s songs.”SCHOOL OF ROCK
Hornsby was schooled in music at the
University of Miami and the prestigious
Berklee School Of Music in Boston. But he
also learned his craft the rough way, playing
electric piano in his elder brother’s band
Bobby Hi-Test And The Octane Kids. They
specialised in Grateful Dead covers at frat
parties so wild that chicken wire protected
the band from fl ying bottles.
He subsequently formed his own Bruce
Hornsby Band and in 1980, with help from
Michael McDonald and Jeff Baxter from
The Doobie Brothers, who saw him playing
in a Steak & Ale restaurant, signed a song
publishing deal with 20th Century Fox,
along with his younger brother and
sometimes co-writer John.
“They signed me mostly because they
thought I was going to get a record deal,”
Hornsby explains. “David Geffen was
starting his label and was interested in
signing me. But they ended up not signing© Jim Chapin Photography© Sarah Walor