Origin: Des Moines, Iowa (USA)

MELVIN JAMES

Melvin James

Melvin James' discography:

The passsenger - 1987 (with lyrics)

Notes about Melvin James:

- Melvin James (born Melvin Douglas Veach on November 11, 1958, in Des Moines, Iowa) is a talented and resourceful American multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer whose career captures the essence of melodic rock, AOR, and power pop from the 1980s.

He grew up in a working-class environment, helping his bricklayer father and sweeping up sawdust at his grandfather's business, Veach's Eastside Fish Market. His obsession with music began when his father bought him his first guitar; after no more than a handful of basic lessons, he taught himself by working through popular chord books, starting with The Beatles' Abbey Road. He soon immersed himself in the sound of 1960s and '70s guitar gods — Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, and Johnny Winter — and formed his first band, Last Road to Destiny, with his elementary school classmates.

His youth was marked by a series of almost cinematic twists of fate. At fourteen, he camped out at the Iowa State Fair living on a dollar a day, spending his time around the fairground's band shell. There he met the members of Dakota, a glam rock band from Fort Dodge, and talked them into letting him sit in on their final number, "Smoke on the Water" — playing the solo with the microphone stand and his teeth. The following year, at fifteen, he hitchhiked ninety miles to board Dakota's tour bus; soon after, while borrowing a car from one of the band members, he was in a serious accident that left him in a coma for two weeks. During his two-month recovery at his grandparents' house, Melvin filled the hours listening to the glam records his Dakota friends had given him — David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, The Rolling Stones, T-Rex, Queen — which expanded his musical world and laid the groundwork for his future style.

His technical education took off thanks to Frank Wiewel, Dakota's bassist and co-owner of Westminster Recording Studio in Otho, Iowa, who introduced him to his business partner, Kirk Kaufman. Impressed by his songwriting, Kaufman set James up in a nearby apartment and gave him free studio access from midnight to 8:00 a.m. Over about eighteen months there, Melvin learned the fundamentals of audio engineering and recorded numerous tracks, eventually catching the ear of Warner Brothers executive Doug Lee, who encouraged him to put a band together and get some stage experience.

At twenty, James headed north to the Twin Cities, where he formed the power trio Crash Street Kids with bassist Gary Snow and drummer Randall Procowitz. The band released the album Little Girls in 1981 on Fat City Records; a review in Playboy described their sound as reminiscent of The Who, The Yardbirds, and The Raspberries. While touring behind the album, the band was involved in a serious car accident outside Brookings, South Dakota — Procowitz broke his collarbone and Snow injured his shoulder — which left Crash Street Kids unable to perform and brought the project to an end.

Following the band's end, James returned to his studio roots, recording new demos with Keith Brown and Frank Wiewel in Otho. A showcase in Minneapolis touched off a bidding war among MCA, Warner Brothers, and EMI; James ultimately signed with MCA under A&R executive Michael Rosenblatt, who had previously signed Madonna and the B-52's.

The deal produced his 1987 debut album, The Passenger, produced by celebrated Eagles and Joe Walsh producer Bill Szymczyk, with James himself credited as co-producer. The album was a multi-instrumental showcase: James handled lead vocals, guitars, much of the bass, and percussion, backed by bassist Dik Shopteau and three different drummers — Gordy Knudtson, Pye Prochowitz, and Joe Vitale, who also played synthesizers. (A young "Little Melvin" — James's son and future Planet Melvin drummer — even received a credit for wind chimes on "Why Won't You Stay.") That song, "Why Won't You Stay (Come In, Come Out of the Rain)," reached the Top 20 on the rock radio charts and the Top 10 in Miami, Chicago, Denver, and Minneapolis, with its video in heavy rotation on MTV.

The momentum stalled when Rosenblatt and MCA label president Irving Azoff both left the company. Geffen Records funded new demos for James at Prince's Paisley Park studio, but the label ultimately passed on signing him, and James stepped away from music for about a year.

His return came in the late 1990s with Planet Melvin, a family trio formed with his son, Melvin III, on drums. A Paramount Pictures director who happened to hear the band's single "Havin' Fun" on an Iowa radio station while driving through the state later placed the song in several films, including Without a Paddle, She's the Man, Sleepover, and The Bye Bye Man.

In the years since, Melvin James has lived in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he and his wife Anne run the recording studio Melville Sound and Creative. He has produced other artists and served as musical director for a Pete Townshend–endorsed staging of Quadrophenia Live at the Grove in Los Angeles. The Passenger was reissued in 2023 by the French label Bad Reputation, securing Melvin James's honest, lived-in lyrics a lasting place in AOR history. -