MEDIA

 

 

 

 

AMBROSIA, PETER BECKETT, AND JOHN FOR COLEY AT THE LORAIN PALACE  JANUARY 26, 2019

By GREG DREW 


 

AMBROSIA & FRIENDS ENCHANT THE PARAMOUNT HUNTINGTON, NY 10-27-17

By CRYPTICROCK

November 2, 2017


 


 

Rock'n Blues Concert Series Welcomes PLAYER, Billboard #1 Hitmakers

Kick off summer with Rock 'n Blues Concert Series as we welcome PLAYER, hosted by Diane & The Deductibles. Rock with us in this historic intimate venue for a great night of music and after show Meet 'N Greet.
  
PLAYER - Current Line Up
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. - April 13, 2017 - PRLog -- Rock'n Blues Concert Series is ready to rock summer solstice when Diane & The Deductibles host PLAYER, veterans of the classic, breezy California sound. Featuring founders Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss; Buster Akrey, Rob Math; and Burleigh Drummond (from AMBROSIA).

Diane Adams, series producer and Diane & The Deductibles lead singer, is a strong advocate supporting the music industry. She developed this series in June 2014 especially for the OC community, at the Huntington Beach Library Theater. Diane, a member of The Huntington Beach Library Patrons Foundation as well as many other Huntington Beach community groups, initiated the Children's wing expansion that included this library theater. The theater is an intimate 319-seat setting with perfect sight lines and acoustics. More than a concert, the Rock'n Blues Concert Series offers a total music lover experience in a scenic venue, Red Carpet photo opportunities, food and drink and post-show meet and greet with the band.

PLAYER was formed in 1977 by UK native Peter Beckett who came to the U.S. after playing for years in The popular English band Paladin. The band was born at a chance meeting between Peter and J.C. Crowley when they met at a classic Hollywood White Party and were the only two dressed in jeans and t-shirts. Ronn Moss joined next, bringing in his high school bandmate John Friesen. From there the band honed their style of soft pop rock, with mellow keyboards and layered harmonies.

To get noticed, they did it the rock 'n roll brick and mortar way – they played LA clubs and bars, went around to producers' offices to play live, hauling their own gear. The band's theory was that "a demo tape can be thrown on a shelf and forgotten, whereas a live band wouldn't fit."

This focus served them well and before long they were signed by legend Robert Stigwood of RSO Records. Their first gig was opening for Gino Vanelli; next they went out with Boz Scaggs and it was during this tour that 'Baby Come Back' charted number one on Billboard and internationally for 35 weeks.


They continued to tour arenas in the classic Bill Graham-promoter style, with everyone from Eric Clapton on his Slow Hand Tour, to Heart, Little River Band and Kenny Loggins. Album three, ROOM WITH A VIEW, yielded Top 40 hit "It's For You" on Neil Bogart's legendary Casablanca Records (KISS, Donna Summer, Village People, Cher, Parliament featuring George Clinton). They also worked on their own projects, each of them having successful careers in everything from film/TV scoring, producing, music software to soap opera stardom (Ronn Moss, Bold & The Beautiful).

1995 was the first time Peter and Ronn performed again as PLAYER, connecting originally to work on Ronn's solo record; instead they put out PLAYER'S fifth LP, LOST IN REALITY, which earned them a nomination for Best Independent Album Production at the LA Music Awards. The chemistry remained and since then PLAYER continues to record and tour the US and internationally. We look forward to kicking off summer with this great, enduring band.

August 17, 2015

By Matt Wardlaw 2013


 Eric Clapton pulls the plug on PLAYER?

By Peter Lindblad/Backstage Auctions Inc.
February 2013


PLAYER

 
The West Coast-based / AOR duo formed by Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss recently completed a very successful italian promotional tour in support of the digital release of their EP "Addiction", a prelude to a new CD currently being recorded. PLAYER made several national television and radio appearances, including "I Fatti Vostri" morning TV show and "L'Italia Sul Due" afternoon show, both on RAI 2. They also made a cameo appearance on Canale 5's top rated prime time show "Scherzla Parte",  "I Fatti Vostri", and were special guests on shows on both Radio Capital and Radio Deejay. Player's EP is available online through iTunes and Amazon and all other digital retailers. Frontiers expects to release the complete new CD by year's end.



PLAYER Release new EP 
on Frontiers Records


April 28, 2012

 



TODAY IN ROCK-PLAYER #1

1978 – PLAYER STARTED A THREE WEEK RUN AT NO.1 ON THE US SINGLES CHART


January 14, 1978

1978 – Player started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with ‘Baby Come Back’, a No.32 hit in the UK, the groups only UK hit.

Peter Beckett grew up in Liverpool, England, where he spent four years playing in a band called Palladin. He quit to come to America and join another group, Friends, which recorded for MGM. After a short time, they evolved into Skyband, which released one album on the RCA label. Skyband lasted long enough to play one concert in L.A. and tour abroad before breaking up.

In 1976, Peter slipped on his jeans and attended a classy Hollywood party. To his surprise, everyone there was wearing white except for one other guest, who had also come in Levi’s. Peter figured the other guy had to be a musician, so they sat down together and began to talk. As it turned out, he was John Charles Crowley, a singer/songwriter from Galveston Bay, Texas. The two hit it off, and made a date to listen to each other’s material.

THE TOP FIVE
Week of January 14, 1978

1. Baby Come Back
Player

2. How Deep is Your Love
Bee Gees

3. Here You Come Again
Dolly Parton

4. You’re in my Heart
Rod Stewart

5. Back in Love Again
LTD  

A few days later, Peter and J.C. held a jam session, and afterward decided to form a band. They added Ron Moss, a bass player from L.A., and veteran of two bands: Punk Rock and Count Zeppelin and his Fabled Airship. Ron brought along a high school friend, John Friesden, who, at one time, had toured the world as the assistant producer and drummer with the Ice Follies. Keyboard man Wayne Cook came abroad just a little too late; he missed being included in the photo used on their first album cover.

The boys were spotted by the production team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, and signed to their company, Haven. Lambert and Potter then negotiated a deal with RSO. A debut album was planned, which one critic was to call “a ten-song exercise in straightforward, romantic pop.” One of those tunes was “Baby Come Back.”

We wrote that pretty quickly,” recalled Peter. “It took about three hours one night, and then we spent about an hour the next night polishing it up. J.C. and I had just broken up with our girlfriends, and we were still feeling the sting. When we sat down to write, our moods just blended, and it came out as ‘Baby Come Back.’

“I remember rehearsing the song in J.C.’s garage studio. It was the middle of summer, hotter than hell, and there we sat with our acoustic guitars, working it up amid the spiders and cockroaches. We knew it sounded like a hit, though. There was so much personal feeling in the song that we knew we had something special.”

“Baby Come Back” broke on the radio in October 1977 and reached number one early in January. It spent three weeks at the top — more than seven months on the charts. During that time, over two million copies were sold.

This infuriated some critics, who felt that the boys’ style was a “blatant carbon” of several other groups. However, reviewers couldn’t seem to agree as to the source of their familiar sound. Various writers claimed that “Baby Come Back” was an imitation of Hall and Oates’ “She’s Gone,” while others insisted the band copied Foreigner, the Bee Gees, Steely Dan, the Eagles, Journey, and even Andy Gibb.

“Just call it rock ‘n’ soul,” said Ron Moss. “We pull from the best of both worlds.”

Player didn’t perform live until November 1977, when they appeared as the opening act for Gino Vanelli. Later, they toured with Heart, Boz Scaggs, Kenny Loggins, and Eric Clapton. Their second single, “This Time I’m in it for Love,” was a Top 10 hit in the spring of 1978. “Prisoner Of Your Love” was a Top 40 hit in November of that year. Their last charting singles were for Casablanca in 1980 and RCA in 1982.

And their name? “We saw the word on television when the players from the show were listed,” Peter explained. “We knocked off the ‘s’ and went with it. I think the word holds a certain ambiguity.”

“And also, people can hold up our album, point to it, and say, ‘That’s a great record, Player’.”



PLAYER MASTERS THE GAME

CIRCUS MAGAZINE MARCH 16, 1978

By Mick Klebber

  Five record industry rookies who call themselves Player have homered their first time at the bat in the big leagues. Less than three months after the release of their first single, this California based rock quintet is at the top of the national record charts with "Baby Come Back", an r&b laced love lament which has already sold more than one million copies.

  Instant top ten is no longer the fairy tale phenomenon it once was. Witness the sudden emergence of groups like Foreigner and Boston, or the growing list of saccharine soloists like Debby Boone, Andy Gibb, Shaun Cassidy, and the barely pubescent Leif Garrett. In any case, Player's is still a Cinderella story, albeit a carefully crafted one.

  More than 18 months were spent in the production of the group's debut album, aptly entitiled Player, on the RSO labelBest described by Todd Rungren, as a platter of tasty but non-nutritional "ear snacks", the album sounds like a collection of potential singles. The songs are short and sweet, most of them featuring a repetitive refrain which is relentlessly driven into your memory banks.

  Several steps above Muziak but just as insidious, these are the kind of tunes that dentists pipe into their waiting rooms to keep America blissfully humming. Listening to "Come On Out", "Every Which Way", or "This Time I'm In It For Love"-any of which could follow up their current smash-is the kind of pleasant, marginally involving experience which drives Frank Zappa berserk.

  This winning sound is a hybrid of various influences. More than two years ago, Liverpudliansinger-songwriter Peter Beckett met transplanted Texan J.C. Crowley at a party. Peter remembers, "J.C. came out to my place with a bunch of songs and I had some, too, and we liked each other's stuff. he was some what jazzy and I was more rockish. We both were influenced by the Beach Boys and the Beatles. When we put it all together, the results were surprisingly good. So the nucleous of Player was formed."

  The rhythm section materialized when Ronn Moss, a flamboyant bassist with compatible voice, and former Ice Follies drummer John Friesen joined in succession. Angeleno keyboardist Wayne Cook performed so well during recording sessions, that he was asked to join the group, finalizing the present lineup.

  Currently busy in the studio preparing their second album, Player hooked into a tour with RSO stablemate Eric Clapton, but they seem destined to become headliners before the year is out. Their recent showcase at L.A.'s trendy nightclub The Roxy proved that they are more compelling in person than on vinyl and that their new material is just as broadly palatable as the songs now available.

  In contrast to the spate of acne-plagued pint size performers who exercise their Napoleonic complexes on stage, the members of Player are visually appealing to mothers as well as daughters. No one in the band needs platform boots to see over the microphones, and their well scrubbed complexions have never seen a Stridex pad. "It's great", grins Beckett infectiously. "We're not only taller, we're smarter too. We're really quite straight, and we try to stay healthy, which is rather unusual for a rock band. We're probably the straightest band you'll ever meet."

  One feminine pop aficionado dubs Beckett "the best looking thing in rock 'n' roll since Paul McCartney/" Other smitten fans cute Crowley's sensitive eyes or Moss's chiseled features as fuel for rock dreams.

  If this group has any problems, it would be sudden success without sacrificing their personal image. "We'd like to come across as close as possible to what we are," says J.C. "Obviously we don't have the hype. We're not trying to hype you. We think it would be nice to be appreciated by a wide range of people. So we're not going to limit ourselves to a pop audience or a teen audience ot an elderly audience... We're going for the whole thing."


 PLAYER Feeling It's Oates

Rollingstone Magazine April 6, 1978

 

  "Walking into a room that Player is in is an experience", Player's press release gushes. "They seem to vibrate the air with their presence." I don't know about the experience part, but the air is determinedly upbeat in this Santa Monica hotel room, where the five members of Player, in town as the warmup act for Eric Clapton, have gathered for an interview. There aren't even grimaces in fact, when Hall And Oates are mentioned. Player has been labeled a copycat because of its Hall-And-Oates-sounding Top ten single, "Baby Come Back". "If you're going to get compared to someone, it's nice to get compared to someone good", says a smiling Peter Beckett, guitarist/vocalist. Adds keyboard player/vocalist J.C. Crowley, "It's flattering  because so far no one's said we sound like the Kingsmen". They do sound alternately like the Eagles, Steely Dan, The Young Rascals, the Bee Gees and who knows who else on their debut album, Player. Perhaps that's why Player has come so far so fast. 

Beckett and Crowley met two years ago at a Hollywood party. Liverpool-born Beckett, who remembers catching some of the Beatles' lunchtime sets at the Cavern ("That's where I got the urge to do it"), had played his way to Los Angeles several years earlier, and Crowley had been lured from the Gulf Coast of Texas after getting an encouraging phone call from Jesse Ed Davis, who'd heard one of his tapes. Beckett and Crowley then met bassist/vocalist  Ronn Moss, son of   theater impresario John Moss. Moss brought in John Friesen, who he'd played with in high-school bands before Friesen had taken off for a six-year stint with the Ice Follies.("The ratio was sixty to one female, that's why I stayed.")

 

   Instead of sending tapes to land a record deal, Beckett, Crowley, and Moss made the rounds in person, lugging their acoustic guitars and electric bass and amp with them. "A tape can get shoved away", Moss explains. "Yeah", chortles Friesen, "and you need a big shelf for three guys". Producers Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter (who had worked with such acts as the Righteous Brothers and The Four Tops) didn't mind the intrusion and signed Player to their Haven Records. The label folded shortly after the group was signed, but Lambert and Potter subsequently helped Player land a deal with RSO and produced the group's first album last fall. Player went into the studio as a four-man unit, only to be so pleased with the keyboard work of L.A. session man Wayne Cook, that he was invited to join The cover art had already been shot however, hence, only four faces. Though "Baby Come Back" had been in the Top Ten charts for a few weeks, Crowley admits that the member's financial status is "lower-middle class at the moment", sparking Friesen to add " Just two nights ago I had the shit embarrassed out of me. Twelve relatives sitting around me and the bill comes. They all just look at me and smile. I had three dollars in my pocket."

 

   Then, perhaps thinking ahead to the royalty checks due to start streaming in, Crowley begins pointing around the room. "I'll be a wealthy man. He will be. He will be. He will be, and he will be. We'll all be rich... someday."

 


 PLAYER AS IT LAYS 

Creem Magazine 1978

NEW YORK- The members of Player are utterly imperturbable. Following their No.1 single "Baby Come Back", and their latest lp Danger Zone, the group struts onto stages confidently, coolly, with pure professionalism. It little concerns them that people hearing "Baby Come Back" searched in vain to find Daryl Hall and John Oates among their membership, and that "Prisoner Of Your Love" is sung to be a disco-fied  beat with harmonies uncannily resembling the brothers Gibb. "It could have been worse!", asserts bassist Ronn Moss. "People have to have a reference point when they hear a new group.  The Eagles were compared to America, and it didn't hurt them any."

   Player's mention of their Los Angelenos might hold a modicum of wishful thinking. After spending several unsatisfying years playing in bands with such names as Count Zeppelin and the Fabled Airship or (strange but true) Punk Rock, Moss sees something magical in 'Baby Come Back'. "I dreamed about it", he recalls. "I thought we recorded the song, that, why shouldn't it be a hit? It had incredible potential, we just felt it in our bones when we worked it up, but you never know..."

   According to the lead vocalist J.C.Crowley, co-writer with Briton Peter Beckett of all Player songs, Danger Zone stresses the groups musicality, not hit formulas. " There aren't any short songs on the album, which comes from it's live aspect. We set everything up in the studio almost as if we were on stage.  We don't even add anything we can't do on stage. It's incredible how we covered it. Sometimes I'm almost embarrassed.",  he dead-pans.

   Player's approach to dealing with the rock biz, it's illusions and facades,  has been as unsubtle as Crowley's sarcasm. They enlisted producers Dennis Lambert and and Brian Potter by walking the band's three guitar players into their office. Says Moss, " It's easy to put a tape on a shelf, but you can't put three guys on a shelf. We made appointments, we didn't hang out like bums, but we were very forceful."  Crowley says the production duo, known for their rigorious work with The Four Tops and Tavares, is "open and malleable" in dealings with Player.

   The members of Player are still close enough to their pre-hit fanasties to set goals of not relying upon nine-to-five jobs, cocky enough to think about controlling their records from products to packaging. Who can argue with an attractive quintet, clothed in off-the-rack leathers, so clean their hairdos are unruffled at shows end, their shirts untarnished by sweat? Player openly recycles the American harmonic pop tradition, "listening to everything, putting it together, and spitting it out as our own thing." Exactly.

Toby Goldstein




"Baby Come Back" Player 

Super Seventies

 

Peter Beckett grew up in Liverpool, England, where he spent four years playing in a band called Palladin. He quit to come to America and join another group, Friends, which recorded for MGM. After a short time, they evolved into Skyband, which released one album on the RCA label. Skyband lasted long enough to play one concert in L.A. and tour abroad before breaking up.

 

In 1976, Peter slipped on his jeans and attended a classy Hollywood party. To his surprise, everyone there was wearing white except for one other guest, who had also come in Levi's. Peter figured the other guy had to be a musician, so they sat down together and began to talk. As it turned out, he was John Charles Crowley, a singer/songwriter from Galveston Bay, Texas. The two hit it off, and made a date to listen to each other's material.

 

A few days later, Peter and J.C. held a jam session, and afterward decided to form a band. They added Ron Moss, a bass player from L.A., and veteran of two bands: Punk Rock and Count Zeppelin and his Fabled Airship. Ron brought along a high school friend, John Friesden, who, at one time, had toured the world as the assistant producer and drummer with the Ice Follies. Keyboard man Wayne Cook came abroad just a little too late; he missed being included in the photo used on their first album cover.

 

The boys were spotted by the production team of Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, and signed to their company, Haven. Lambert and Potter then negotiated a deal with RSO. A debut album was planned, which one critic was to call "a ten-song exercise in straightforward, romantic pop." One of those tunes was "Baby Come Back."

 

We wrote that pretty quickly," recalled Peter. "It took about three hours one night, and then we spent about an hour the next night polishing it up. J.C. and I had just broken up with our girlfriends, and we were still feeling the sting. When we sat down to write, our moods just blended, and it came out as 'Baby Come Back.'

 

"I remember rehearsing the song in J.C.'s garage studio. It was the middle of summer, hotter than hell, and there we sat with our acoustic guitars, working it up amid the spiders and cockroaches. We knew it sounded like a hit, though. There was so much personal feeling in the song that we knew we had something special."

 

"Baby Come Back" broke on the radio in October 1977 and reached number one early in January. It spent three weeks at the top -- more than seven months on the charts. During that time, over two million copies were sold.

 

This infuriated some critics, who felt that the boys' style was a "blatant carbon" of several other groups. However, reviewers couldn't seem to agree as to the source of their familiar sound. Various writers claimed that "Baby Come Back" was an imitation of Hall and Oates' "She's Gone," while others insisted the band copied Foreigner, the Bee Gees, Steely Dan, the Eagles, Journey, and even Andy Gibb.

 

"Just call it rock 'n' soul," said Ron Moss. "We pull from the best of both worlds."

 

Player didn't perform live until November 1977, when they appeared as the opening act for Gino Vanelli. Later, they toured with Heart, Boz Scaggs, Kenny Loggins, and Eric Clapton. Their second single, "This Time I'm in it for Love," was a Top 10 hit in the spring of 1978. "Prisoner Of Your Love" was a Top 40 hit in November of that year. Their last charting singles were for Casablanca in 1980 and RCA in 1982.

 

And their name? "We saw the word on television when the players from the show were listed," Peter explained. "We knocked off the 's' and went with it. I think the word holds a certain ambiguity."

 

"And also, people can hold up our album, point to it, and say, 'That's a great record, Player'." 

 

 


 

PLAYER Concert Review

TWIN RIVER CASINO, LINCOLN R.I.   MAY 25-26, 2007


Featuring two original band members from the late 70's Peter Beckett/lead vocals and Ronn Moss/bass, Player gave two outstanding performances 
on Friday and Saturday night at the Light House Bar, located in the heart of theTwin River Casino in Lincoln, R.I. 

Player is best known for their  #1 classic hit “Baby Come Back” from the 70's,  but they proved by their first 2007 tour dates that they are so much more than that. They still have the power to draw you in with their hypnotic sound, and shower you with sweet memories of good old rock n roll.  Beckett's unblemished vocals stand the test of time, perfection at it's finest, along with his expertise guitar riffs. Moss adds to the groove with his excellent bass playing and smooth backing harmonies. Player literally rocked the house with a combination of rock n roll, blues, soul, and the perfect touch of soft pop mixed in to set a lighter mood. They were also joined by Craig Pilo/drums, Ron Green/percussion, Ricky Zacharaides/guitar, and Ed Roth/keyboards. Pilo and Green had previously toured with Player in the early 2000’s.

Player is a breath of fresh air to experience live, restoring faith that heart touching lyrics, and soul reaching melodies, still do exist. No gimmicks…just talented musicians with a special gift; singing and playing their hearts out, along with sharing their passion and love of music with their audience. Player's song list included two harder edged pieces, “My Religion” and “Still of the Night”, from Peter’s solo cd self-titled ‘Beckett’(1991). From his song writing career of movie tunes, Player performed “Twist of Fate”(Two of A Kind), “Party”(Terminator III), and a remake of  Ledbetter's“Black Betty” (Basic). Possibly appearing on the new Beckett/Player cd in the future, Player slowed down the tempo with “Wash Away", only to come back with  another hip shaking-hand clapping jam called “Wild Side”… radio stations may want to pay close attention to this one.

About half way through the show, the band left the stage, leaving Ronn Moss to grace the crowd with his solo performance; a guitar solo written for his friend's wedding named"Moon Over Myassi", and Player's second hit song from their self-titled debut LP called "This Time I'm In It For Love". Moss mixed it up the second night singing "For The Rest Of My Life", from his first solo cd 'I'm Your Man' (2000).

Not to forget Player's history of "straight to the heart" melodies, the band performed "This Is Your Life" from their 'Lost In Reality' cd(1996), "It's For You" from 'Room With A View'(1980), and of course their love classic still heard all around the world today, "Baby Come Back", with Peter Beckett's phenonimal voice sending chills through the audience with his power packed high note finale. "House A Rockin" also brought down the house, bringing people to their feet, as well as to the dance floor.

Player is a band that definitely knows how to have a good time while doing what they love and do best, generously sharing these great moments with their audience....leaving the audience with a good feeling inside. The only down side to both nights is that Player didn't return back on stage to do an oncore. I, along with everyone there, didn't want this beautiful experience to ever end...we were ready for more!

If Player comes to a venue near you, please do yourself a favor and go see them perform. I promise you that you will not be disappointed...