Justin Vernon was not the fi rst of
a younger generation of artists to
embrace the music of Bruce
Hornsby. During the 90s, the civil
rights message and irresistible
piano hook of The Way It Is made
it a favourite sample among
hip-hop artists.
MC Buzz B incorporated the
song into his 1991 release Never
Change. E-40 used it in Things’ll
Never Change. More recently,
Akon featured it in Change Comes
and Tshila did a rap-augmented
version of The Way It Is on her
album World In Crisis last year.
Most famously, Tupac Shakur
wrote his posthumous worldwide
hit Changes around a version of
The Way It Is re-sung by Talent,
in 1998.
“I loved it,” Hornsby reports. “It
came to me out of the blue on a
cassette when they talked to me to
negotiate rights splits. It was sort
of a gift out of the sky.”
It didn’t bring him a new
following of rap fans, he adds, but
it did make him a particularly
cool dad.
“One of my sons was a very
gifted basketball player and when
you achieve a high level of
basketball in the US, you’re
playing mostly with black players.
My son, aged 10, was recruited
into the Boo Williams AAU
basketball programme and from
10 to 17 he was the only white
player on his teams. When I would
go down there as dad, the kids
said, ‘You wrote Changes by
Tupac? Okaaay, then.’
“It gave me great credibility in
the hood!” he chuckles.Cool Dad
on the block
me to the label, which was really a blessing,
because I was not ready. I was not formed at
all as an artist. But the publishing contract
enabled me to move to LA and I spent a
couple of years there just trying to write
songs, trying to get a record deal.”
A couple of his and John’s songs wound
up in a bar scene in the 1982 fi lm Making
Love. But generally, he says of his time at
Fox: “We were not successful. We were the
opposite of success, and when I didn’t get a
record deal they kicked me to the kerb.”
He spent the next year, “kicking around
LA, playing on demos for other writers and
doing the odd session.” In 1983, he was
hired as Sheena Easton’s piano player and
spent the next two years touring with her.
You can spot him in the background of
Easton’s video for Strut.
“All that time, I was trying to get my own
thing going, and Sheena was always a big
fan of what I was doing. You could walk by
her dressing room, with the door closed,
and hear her warming up by singing along
with my demos, which I’d given her because
she was a fan.”
In 1985, Hornsby and his newly-formed
band The Range, signed with RCA, largelyon the strength of his demos for Mandolin
Rain and The Red Plains.STANDING IN LINE
Hornsby’s debut single, Every Little Kiss,
peaked at a disappointing No.72 in the US
but his fortunes changed dramatically when
Radio 1 in the UK latched onto the title
track of his fi rst album, The Way It Is – a
stirring song about social injustice delivered
in a deceptively mellow manner over an
irresistible piano hook.
“Our album came out in April in the
States and it was gradually, ever so slowly
gaining attention on what’s called AOR
radio, which meant album-oriented rock.
So I was on the radio with John
Mellencamp, Tom Petty, Springsteen’s
Tunnel Of Love and records like that.
“We weren’t on Top 40 radio at all, but
the record was slowly gaining interest.
Then, the record was coming out in the UK.
The RCA promotion exec was a bit
befuddled by it. He gave it to a friend of his
at Radio 1, producer Mik Wlikojc, and said,
‘Here’s a record we don’t know what to do
with. It’s kinda country, kinda jazz. Take a
listen and see what you think.’ MikI started getting asked to play and write
with amazing artists from Robbie Robertson
to Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Spike Lee...
In his 30-plus year career,
Bruce Hornsby has been
nominated for 13 Grammys
(winning three)