Song Lyric Sunday – Second Album Singles

Jim Adams, the host of Song Lyric Sunday, has given us the challenge of finding a song released from a second album. My pick is from the 70s, my favorite decade for many reasons. One of the bands I loved was America for their soft gentle music. So my choice for today is a song that I featured back in 2019 for another SLS challenge, Ventura Highway. It is from America’s second album, Homecoming. Alligator lizards in the air was a little strange in the lyrics but it makes the song charming! Hope you enjoy it.

The Song

“Ventura Highway” is a 1972 song by the band America from their album Homecoming, written by Dewey Bunnell. It achieved the number 8 spot in the United States’ Billboard Hot 100 and number 43 in the UK Singles Chart.

Dewey Bunnell, the song’s vocalist and writer, has said that the lyric “alligator lizards in the air” in the song is a reference to the shapes of clouds in the sky he saw in 1963 while his family was driving down the coast from Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, California, where they had a flat tire. While his father changed the tire, he and his brother stood by the side of the road, watched the clouds, and saw a road sign for Ventura.

In the booklet for the boxed set, Highway, he states that the song “reminds me of the time I lived in Omaha as a kid and how we’d walk through cornfields and chew on pieces of grass. There were cold winters, and I had images of going to California. So I think in the song I’m talking to myself, frankly: ‘How long you gonna stay here, Joe?’ I really believe that ‘Ventura Highway’ has the most lasting power of all my songs. It’s not just the words — the song and the track have a certain fresh, vibrant, optimistic quality that I can still respond to”. The song has a “Go West, young man” motif in the structure of a conversation between an old man named Joe and a young and hopeful kid. Joe was modeled after a “grumpy” old man he had met while his dad was stationed in Biloxi, Mississippi, at Keesler Air Force Base. He also stated “I remember vividly having this mental picture of the stretch of the coastline traveling with my family when I was younger. Ventura Highway itself, there is no such beast, what I was really trying to depict was the Pacific Coast Highway, Highway 1, which goes up to the town of Ventura.”

“That’s Gerry and Dan doing a harmony on two guitars on the intro. I remember us sitting in a hotel room, and I was playing the chords, and Gerry got that guitar line, and he and Dan worked out that harmony part. That’s really the hook of the song”.

The song won many fans, including the pro wrestler-turned-politician, Jesse Ventura. Bunnell recalled, “We went and played at Governor Jesse Ventura’s inaugural out in Minneapolis. He asked us to — his wife is a horse lady, and she’d always loved ‘A Horse with No Name’, and he had adopted this name Ventura. So when he put together his cast of characters for his big inaugural celebration, he wanted us to come and play two songs, which we did”.

The Lyrics

Chewin' on a piece of grass, walkin' down the road
Tell me, how long you gonna stay here, Joe?
Some people say this town don't look good in snow
You don't care, I know

Ventura Highway in the sunshine
Where the days are longer
The nights are stronger than moonshine
You're gonna go, I know

'Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair
And the days surround your daylight there
Seasons crying no despair
Alligator lizards in the air, in the air

Wishin' on a falling star, waitin' for the early train
Sorry boy, but I've been hit by a purple rain
Aw, come on Joe, you can always change your name
Thanks a lot son, just the same

Ventura Highway in the sunshine
Where the days are longer
The nights are stronger than moonshine
You're gonna go, I know

'Cause the free wind is blowin' through your hair
And the days surround your daylight there
Seasons crying no despair
Alligator lizards in the air, in the air

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Dewey Bunnell
Ventura Highway lyrics © Wb Music Corp.