We Five

Formation and organization

Michael Stewart formed We Five after graduating from Pomona Catholic High School and attending Mt. San Antonio College. He was the brother of John Stewart of the Kingston Trio and came from Claremont, California. When Michael was a student at the University of San Francisco in 1964, he formed We Five as a quartet, although it soon added another member. The group played adult rock 'n roll, pop jazz, Broadway show tunes, and Disney tunes. Stewart did all the arrangements, which ranged from "My Favorite Things", in a style which reflected Bach, to "Very Merry Un-birthday". He put in several additional hours working on arrangements after the five band members worked together for five or six hours each day.

The ensemble played acoustic guitars, electric guitar and bass and sang multi-part harmonies. The original quintet line-up, which grew out of a band called the Ridgerunners, included:

1965-1970

Record label A&M Records, owned by Herb Alpert, responded to the new popularity of folk and rock music by adding new artists starting in 1965 to its existing line-up of middle-of-the road material turned out by Alpert's Tijuana Brass, the Baja Marimba Band, and Brasil '66. In addition to We Five, Alpert's label released albums by Boyce and Hart, the Garden Club, Chris Montez, and The Merry-Go-Round.

We Five's first album produced a major hit with the title tune, Stewart's re-arrangement of the Ian and Sylvia song "You Were on My Mind." Stewart made several changes to the original Sylvia Tyson composition, and the song went directly to the Billboard Top Five in 1965. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold record. In February 1966, We Five was nominated for a Grammy for Best Performance By A Vocal Group (for "You Were on My Mind"), against the Beatles among others, but they lost the award to the Anita Kerr Quartet. They were also the first commercial folk-rock artists to record music for Coca-Cola. The group added John Chambers as a touring drummer, so that it could tour behind its hit.

After completing their second album, Make Someone Happy, later in 1966, lead singer Beverly Bivens decided to leave the group. The group had a hit from this album in 1967 with its arrangement of the popular Kingston Trio folk tune "Let's Get Together," which reached #31 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and was later a Top Five hit and a million-seller for The Youngbloods as "Get Together"). To continue, We Five replaced Bivens with Debbie Graf Burgan (wife of guitarist Jerry Burgan) and added a full-time drummer in Mick Gillespie for live performances. That same year, the band turned down to opportunity to record the first version of "Daydream Believer", which went on to be an international hit for The Monkees.

We Five was among the artists included in a preliminary injunction issued by the Los Angeles Superior Court in April 1968. The edict prohibited bootlegging of A&M artists, including the Tijuana Brass and The Sandpipers. The action was directed against Superba Tapes, Inc., of Lancaster, California. The company had copied tapes of the recordings and sold them to the public without paying royalties to the artists.

The group would record two albums with Debbie Burgan singing lead, 1969's Return of the We Five for A&M and 1970s Catch the Wind for Vault. Neither album came close to the success of the earlier Bivens material. In 1970, Stewart, Jones and Fullerton all quit We Five, breaking up the original band.

Subsequent events

After We Five split up, Debbie Graf and Jerry Burgan kept a version of the group going through 1977. This group recorded another album in 1977, Take Each Day as It Comes for AVI Records before also disbanding. From 1977 through 1981, Jerry and Debbie performed as "The Burgans", supported by bassist Paul Foti.

Various versions of the band featuring the Burgans have remained together for the next 30 years. The Burgans in March 2009 contributed an original song, "For Old Times," to an online-novel-with-music-tracks entitled "Alt. Country," scheduled to appear on the website of author Alan Rifkin.

Bob Jones was also a member of the current version of the band, which is now officially known as "We Five Folk Rock Revival." He died from pancreatic cancer on July 24, 2013. Later editions of the band also included Frank Denson, who went on to write music for television shows, including Magnum, P.I., Tales of the Gold Monkey, and Blossom; plus between 1968 and 1970 the drummer Mick Gillespie.

Peter Fullerton left the music business in 1970 to minister to the homeless and needy: he is the founder of the California-based organization "Truck of Love".

Michael Stewart appeared in occasional reunions with We Five from 1978 to 1989. He became a record producer (most notably for Billy Joel) and a pioneering developer of MIDI music software. He died on November 13, 2002 at age 57 as a result of "a long illness." Stewart's son, musician Jamie Stewart, has alleged several times that his father in fact committed suicide, though this has been unconfirmed.

In 2009, after many years of seclusion, Beverly Bivens sang at the opening of an exhibition, mounted by the Performing Arts Library & Museum in San Francisco, of the rock scene in the Bay area in the mid sixties to early seventies.

"There Stands the Door - The Best of We Five" was released by Big Beat Records (CDWIKD 286) in 2009. The compilation included selections from both albums plus several unreleased recordings by the original group. This collection takes its name from the We Five single which Jerry Burgan observes just missed the raga rock trend.

Wounds to Bind: A Memoir of the Folk-Rock Revolution, a reminiscence by Jerry Burgan incorporating the birth of folk rock and the original band's subsequent collapse, with coauthor Alan Rifkin and a foreword by Sylvia Tyson, was published in April 2014 by Rowman & Littlefield.