The 1972 America song with “the most lasting power”
“Ventura Highway in the sunshine / Where the days are longer, the nights are stronger than moonshine”, so goes ‘Ventura Highway’, a breakthrough single from the band America in 1972, from their second album, Homecoming.
With an apt, perfect name to introduce them, America became one of the leading groups within the California rock scene and beyond, honing their own voices within the Americana tradition, and not just in their name. From their beginnings, the band had something different. For one, they were from London (and lead singer/guitarist Dewy Bunnell was born in Yorkshire), but not British. Each member, Bunnell, Gerry Beckley and Dan Peek, was the son of US Air Force personnel who were eventually stationed in London, bringing their families along with them, in the mid-1960s.
They attended London Central High School together and played with their own bands before coming together in 1970 to form America. Each sang lead and backing vocals while playing guitar, finding their place within the folk tradition’s softer acoustic melodies. Their 1971 self-titled debut album made them household names with the hits ‘A Horse With No Name’ and ‘I Need You’, before they re-emerged the following year with a fantastical force in ‘Ventura Highway’.
To be clear: there is no actual Ventura Highway. Rather, Ventura is a county in California, while Highway 101, a major highway which connects Los Angeles to Tumwater, Washington, runs through the county. “There is no such beast,” Bunnell clarified of the fictitious highway, in the 2001 documentary Walk on By: The Story of Popular Song, and he noted that he was trying to invoke the image of the Pacific Coast Highway, Highway 1.
When writing the song, living on a farm outside of London, Bunnell took the liberty of combining the two within his recollection of childhood fantasy, reconnecting with his American roots and tracing back to a day when he and his family were driving down the West Coast from Vandenberg Air Force Base. “One time, it was 1963 when I was in seventh grade, we got a flat tyre, and we’re standing on the side of the road, and I was staring at this highway sign,” Bunnell recalled to the Los Angeles Times in 2006, “It said ‘Ventura’ on it, and it just stuck with me. It was a sunny day, and the ocean there, all of it.”
Stuck waiting for their father to fix their tyre, Bunnell and his brother stood aside and began staring at the sky. In the white clouds that overtook the blue horizon, they began to see shapes, and thus, America sings of “Seasons crying no despair / Alligator lizards in the air”, child-like visions of animals dancing in the sky coming to life in the song.
Elsewhere in ‘Ventura Highway,’ the character of Joe comes into play, an old man inspired by someone that Bunnell met while his father was stationed in Biloxi, Mississippi. “Joe” represents a ‘Go West, young man’, mindset for the kid in Bunnell’s story to embark on. Once again playing into the idea of Americana, the phrase suggests an encouragement to expand across the country, finding opportunity and ideas along the way.
Ventura Highway, then, becomes a symbol of hope, a place for the kid to aspire towards on his travels. “‘Cause the free wind is blowin’ through your hair / And the days surround your daylight there,” they sing, conjuring the sense of wild abandon granted by life on the road, travelling to parts unknown.
Bunnell also once expanded on the opening vision of ‘Ventura Highway’: “Chewin’ on a piece of grass / Walkin’ down the road”, noting that he revisited childhood memories, once again, this time thinking of when he and his family lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and they would walk through the cornfields and, indeed, chew on pieces of grass. “So I think in the song, I’m talking to myself, frankly, ‘How long you gonna stay here, Joe?’” Bunnell explained in the booklet for America’s Highway box set.
“I really believe that ‘Ventura Highway’ has the most lasting power of all my songs,” he continued, “It’s not just the words, the song and the track have a certain fresh, vibrant, optimistic quality that I can still respond to.”
