Player – “Too Many Reasons”

Player was formed in 1977 when Englishman Peter Beckett met J.C. Crowley at a Hollywood party. Beckett had come to the United States after the demise of his popular English band Paladin. The band was completed by Ronn Moss and John Friesen and the four became the founding members, After many rehearsals and songwriting sessions, Player was born. In January 1978, the band had an international number one hit with their first single “Baby Come Back”, which was co-written by Beckett and J.C. Crowley and sung by Beckett. The first album entitled simply “Player” went platinum and the band toured extensively. These classic outings included Boz Scagg’s Silk Degrees Tour, Eric Clapton’s Slowhand Tour, Heart’s Dog & Butterfly tour and Kenny Loggin’s Footloose Tour, consistently playing to sold out arena audiences. Four albums followed spawning four more hit singles, including “This Time I’m In It
For Love”, which reached number eleven on Billboard’s chart.

Peter Beckett has written hit songs for many artists including Heart, Olivia Newton-John, Kenny Rodgers, The Temptations, Poco, Janet Jackson, The Commodores, Cliff Richard, Survivor, Grace Slick, and most recently Vanessa Hudgens. He has numerous movie credits as artist, producer and/or writer, including “The Karate Kid”, “Two of a Kind”, “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, “Major League”, “St Elmo’s Fire” (Grammy nomination), “Frankie and Johnny”, “Rock Star”, “Terminator 3”, “Basic Instinct”, “Beyond Borders”, “Life or Something Like It”, “Dirty Dancing 2”, and “Transformers”. Between the years 1989-1997, Peter was a featured
member of Little River Band and has written several singles for them.

In the mid eighties, founding member/bassist Ronn Moss took on another career as Ridge Forrester, the male lead in the CBS television series “The Bold And The Beautiful”, a role which became his alter ego for the last 25 years. “B&B” has consistently ranked as the most watched television series in the world, averaging more than 26 million viewers per day, and has garnered more than 500,000 Twitter followers for Ronn. He has appeared in numerous feature films and television commercials, and took second place on the Italian version of “Dancing With The Stars”.

Player started performing again in the year 2003, always featuring an all star line-up, which has included at various times members of The Cars, Mister Mister, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, and Little River Band.

“Too Many Reasons” sees Peter and Ronn produce a classy album of melodic rock that matches new songs with a freshly redone version of  “Baby Come Back” – a song that you may initially think “I don’t know that one”…trust me you do (well, you do if you’re of a certain age like me!).

This sounds like a band on top form, doing it for the right reasons (and judging by the biography they don’t need the cash!). There is a nice tone to the vocals that scream about a life that’s been lived – and yet the songs sound full of joie de vivre and of today – quite an achievement for a band who have been around the block like these guys. “Too Many Reasons” is released, like their 2012 EP “Addiction”, on Frontiers – a sign for all lovers of classy AOR that this is an album worth a little gamble on. You won’t go wrong with this. The official video for “I Will” gives a fabulous indication of the quality you can expect…go on, go on, go on. You know you want to add this to your collection

Check out the great music, exciting videos, historic pictures and the latest updates at www.player-theband.com , http://www.peterbeckett-player.com/ , and http://www.ronnmoss.com/.