How Old Is John Crawford? John Crawford Birthday
John Crawford was born on January 17, 1960 and is 64 years old now.
Birthday: January 17, 1960
How Old - Age: 64
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John Crawford - Biography
John Buckner Crawford (born January 17, 1960) is a singer-songwriter whose efforts with the band Berlin were an essential part of their rise to fame in the early 1980s. Crawford's career as a musician began in junior high after breaking his leg during a basketball game. In an attempt to fight off the boredom of being injured, he picked up a guitar and began taking lessons at a musical instrument retailer in nearby Fullerton, California, where his teacher put him in touch with future Berlin band members Dan Van Patten and Chris Velasco. John attended El Dorado High School in Placentia, California.The three soon formed a band called The Toys with vocalist Ty Cobb at the helm. The band’s first performance was at a Sadie Hawkins dance at Crawford’s high school of the time. Crawford, Cobb and the others were influenced by then-current punk rockers like the Sex Pistols along with Synthpop band Ultravox, though Crawford has cited KISS as an early influence as well.After a name change to Berlin, Cobb was out and a string of vocalists ensued. In 1980 Berlin released the EP Information on Zone H. Records with v*rginia Macolino fronting the group. The band signed to I.R.S. Records briefly in 1980, releasing the single A Matter of Time, before suddenly disbanding in 1981.The in-between days:With Berlin on indefinite hiatus, Crawford set to work building up his bass chops with another Orange County, CA -based band, The Videos with Craig Sibley on vocals and guitars, Rich West on keyboards, Ken Dudley on guitars, and John Benson on drums, and as a vocalist for Fahrenhhesizer pop quartet in the order of Depeche Mode and Ultravox, for which he also played occasional bass and acoustic guitar. Along with Van Patten as synthesist and drum machine programmer, Fahrenheit included West (later of Stacey Q’s band) and Keith Walsh, both on synths as well.Sometime around the formation of Fahrenheit in late 1981, the Los Angeles-based independent label M.A.O. Records released a new Berlin single, featuring the songs The Metro and Tell Me Why, with Terri Nunn on vocals. It wasn’t until 1982’s platinum-selling Pleasure Victim, however, that Crawford’s music gained an audience. Crawford had a hand in penning all of the disc’s songs except for Masquerade, a song written by guitarist and original Berlin member Chris Ruiz-Velasco.Crawford attributes the album’s themes of love gone wrong to post-adolescent heartache, which seemed to resonate with listeners, as Pleasure Victim became, for a while, the most successful independent EP ever released.Rising star:After Pleasure Victim’s initial success on the independent Enigma label, a bidding war ensued, with Geffen eventually offering the band and their British expatriate manager Perry Watts-Russell the most attractive offer to release the record to a wider audience. The disc, recorded on modest equipment at the Casbah recording studio in Fullerton, California for around $3,000, included the controversial hit single Sex (I’m A) as well as Masquerade and The Metro.Guitarist Ric Olsen and keyboardist/guitarist David Diamond joined the others in helping to create the synth-driven sound that now seems to epitomize early 1980s techno pop. The follow-up to Pleasure Victim, titled Love Life went gold in 1984, thanks in part to the hit single No More Words, which further established Berlin as a household name.Personnel changes would continue to plague the band, with only Nunn and Crawford remaining from the Pleasure Victim lineup as they went into their third album, to be titled Count Three and Pray, released in 1986.Caught between his desire to maintain artistic integrity and the industry’s desire to sell records, Crawford found the ever-elusive hit single hard to come by. Instead, the commercial centerpiece of Count Three and Pray turned out to be Take My Breath Away, the chart climbing single written by Giorgio Moroder featured in the film Top Gun.Count Three and Pray was produced by Bob Ezrin (producer of many rock superstars including Kiss, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed and Alice Cooper) and features guest appearances by a host of others including Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Ted Nugent, and Elliott Easton of The Cars. As one might expect, the majority of the album is characterized by an aggressive, guitar-driven hard rock sound.End of "the Berlin Era":Due to artistic differences between Crawford and Nunn, Berlin disbanded once again, and the disillusioned Crawford wasted no time pursuing the creation of a band, The Big F. “The Big F was a chance for Rob (Rob Brill, Berlin and Big F drummer) and I to say, look, okay, we saw what that was and we’re going to try actually now to really focus on just making music, and let the rest of the stuff go away,” Crawford said during a 2005 telephone interview.
