Writer: Gerry Beckley
Producer: George Martin
Recorded: Late 1974 at the Record Plant in Los Angeles
Released: March 1975
| Players: | Dewey Bunnell — vocals, guitar Dan Peek — guitar, vocals Gerry Beckley — guitar, vocals David Dickey — bass Willie Leacox — drums |
| Album: | Hearts (Warner Bros) |
Though they met at London’s Central High School, only one of the three members of America was native to England — Dewey Bunnell, who was born in Yorkshire in 1952. All three were sons of American Air Force officers stationed overseas.
Their first group together was an acoustic folk-rock band called Daze.
They chose the name America both out of longing for their homeland and as a coincidence while they were listening to a jukebox that had the word “Americana” on it.
“Sister Golden Hair” was written during sessions for America’s previous album, Holiday, but didn’t make it onto that set.
Gerry Beckley, who wrote “Sister Golden Hair,” said it’s not about anyone in particular: “This is all poetic license. With ‘Sister Golden Hair,’ as far as my folks were concerned, I was writing a song about my sister, and I couldn’t quite fathom it; they must not have listened to the lyrics.”
Beckley added that Jackson Browne helped fine-tune the song: “We toured with Jackson a couple of times, and we’d always play each other songs backstage. I sang ‘Meet me in the middle, will you meet me in VA’ (i.e. Virginia). And he thought I was singing ‘Meet me in the air.’ He was singing along, and he sang that line and I said ‘Oh, that’s better.’”
Beatles producer George Martin oversaw the Hearts album. It sold more than a million copies worldwide.
“Sister Golden Hair” was America’s second Number One hit. Their first was the first song they recorded, “A Horse With No Name.”
The album title for Hearts followed America’s odd custom of naming many of their albums with words beginning with the letter H. Others were called Homecoming, Hat Trick, Holiday, History,Hideaway, Harbor, and Hourglass.
The Hearts album also spawned the Top 20 single “Daisy Jane.”