During the ’70s, America was one of the most successful bands around. With four Top 10 albums and six Top 10 singles, including 1972’s iconic “Horse With No Name,” the trio was riding high (through the desert and beyond).
Unfortunately, after bassist Dan Peek left the band, remaining members Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley entered a period of…well, not as much success. So, with an eye towards landing themselves back on the charts, Bunnell and Beckley hired songwriter Russ Ballard.
Ballard knew how to write a popular song. When he was with the band Argent, he penned “Liar,” which was a hit for Three Dog Night; he was also the creative force behind classics like “God Gave Rock and Roll to You” (Kiss), “New York Groove” (Ace Frehley) and many others.
Ballard provided Bunnell and Beckley with the comeback hit they so desperately needed: “You Can Do Magic.”
“Russ had written ‘Winning’ for Santana, and he was now quite successful as a sort of songwriter for hire,” Beckley explained in an interview with Songfacts.
“So we heard it and thought, ‘That’s really good,'” he continued. “He’d obviously put the ‘Do-Do-Do-Dit-Do’s’ into the song, which I would have given a nod to CSN [Crosby, Stills & Nash], because we certainly didn’t have any claim to that kind of a vocal thing. But that was put in there to appeal to us.”
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According to Beckley, “we made a couple of chord changes, but basically took it as he wrote it. And it was very successful — it fit right into our body of work. It was a huge hit and a turning point for us, because it was a hit for Dewey and I, after Danny departed. It was our first hit as a duo.”
“You Can Do Magic” was, indeed, magic for America. The song peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 on October 16, 1982. While Beckley was, of course, thrilled, he hadn’t necessarily expected the track to do as well as it did.
“That’s always hard to say,” he admitted. “I always try to put it into, ‘How happy are you with the results?’ I would never be so presumptuous as to think, ‘OK…clear out that bank account, here it comes!'”
Hopefully Beckley’s bank account was big enough to accommodate America’s surprise hit.
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