Greg Hawkes

Greg Hawkes is best-known because the synthesizer participant the Vehicles, but he was also briefly a single artist, and it has guested on recordings by various other artists aswell. Born and elevated in Baltimore, MD, Hawkes had taken piano lessons at a age group, but soon empty the instrument and only comic books and Japanese cult movies. By age 14, Hawkes acquired picked up your guitar, and produced his first accurate music group, the Aardvarks. Ultimately, Hawkes came back to piano, and signed up for Boston’s Berklee College of Music through the early ’70s. It had been during this time period that Hawkes befriended another previous Baltimore indigenous who happened to stay down in Boston, vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Ric Ocasek. Hawkes became a member of a folk-based group that Ocasek was leading at that time (alongside Ben Orr), known as Milkwood. The group would concern a lone record in 1972, How’s the elements, before divorce. Hawkes used various Boston-based rings throughout the middle-’70s, including a smooth rock outfit known as Orphan, and also a group that supported comedian Martin Mull (known as Martin Mull & His Fantastic Home furniture). Ocasek and Orr made a decision to upgrade their musical design and present it today’s new influx edge for his or her next task, which resulted the duo reuniting with Hawkes within the group Cap’n Golf swing. The band offered like a precursor towards the Vehicles, who authorized on with Elektra Information and released their traditional self-titled debut in 1978. Few tracks are as carefully associated to the brand new influx movement because the albums’ long lasting hit, “PRECISELY WHAT I Required,” that was propelled by Hawkes’ space age group synth playing. The Vehicles quickly became probably one of the most commercially effective bands from the past due ’70s/early ’80s, on the effectiveness of such further produces as 1979’s Candy-O, 1980’s Panorama, 1981’s Tremble It Up, and 1984’s Heartbeat Town. Although Ocasek was the group’s undisputed primary songwriter, the only real additional Vehicles bandmember to generate co-songwriting credits (albeit on an exceptionally limited basis) was Hawkes, who lent a submit the penning from the songs “THIS MAY BE Like” (from Tremble It Up and “IT ISN’T THE NIGHT TIME” (from Heartbeat Town). Hawkes would also look for a home for a number of of his additional initial compositions on his only single discharge, 1983’s Niagara Falls. Regardless of the Vehicles’ standing as you of rock’s biggest groupings, the music group imploded after only 1 more discharge, 1987’s lackluster Door to Door, because they decide to part the following season. Hawkes would continue steadily to play with others (he’d currently guested on a set of single produces by Ocasek throughout their tenure using the Vehicles, 1982’s Beatitude and 1986’s This Part of Heaven), including program focus on Paul McCartney’s 1989 launch, Flowers within the Dirt. Through the ’90s, Hawkes continuing to sporadically pop-up on additional performers’ albums (Propaganda’s 1234 and self-titled discharge, Words for Cleo’s Move!, La Peste’s Peste), plus another single discharge by Ocasek (1997’s Troublizing) along with a compilation of ’70’s-era Martin Mull materials, Mulling It Over: A Musical Oeuvre Watch. The keyboardist also oversaw the creation and discharge of a set of double-disc archival Vehicles releases issued through the past due ’90s, 1995’s PRECISELY WHAT I Required: The Vehicles Anthology and 1999’s The Vehicles [Deluxe Release]. In 2000, Hawkes and everything his former Vehicles bandmates had been interviewed collectively for the very first time since their break up, as a reward segment for his or her DVD launch the same 12 months, Live.