Representative Albums: "Eddie & the Cruisers," "Live & In Concert," "Tough All Over"
Biography
Arguably the quintessential one-shot band of all time, Cafferty and company (who, back in the early '70s, were simply a hack New England bar band) had their 15 minutes of fame courtesy of a ridiculously overwrought 1983 film called Eddie and the Cruisers (starring Michael Pare). The movie dealt with the suspicious death of a fictional singer/songwriter, modeled on a conflation of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, who had made the transition from smart rock & roller to serious artist. Seems as though Eddie had recorded a brilliant but unreleased album that fused Chuck Berry-style rock & roll with French Symbolist poetry. A record way ahead of its time, the master tapes of The Dark Side went missing, right around the time of Eddie's "death." Needing a band to supply music for the film, the producers used the Springsteen-ish sounding Cafferty and his clock-punching backup band. With the Springsteen-ish single "On the Dark Side" paving the way, Cafferty led, arguably, the most anonymous band with a hit record in the history of rock & roll. With the movie doing reasonably well in theaters and extremely well on video, sales of Cafferty's album -- which, ironically, had been out for months before the band's involvement with Eddie and the Cruisers and barely caused a murmur -- skyrocketed. But, as the movie faded from the public consciousness, so did Cafferty's imitation of Springsteen. ~ John Dougan, All Music Guide
John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band is the name of an Americanrockband of the 1970s and 1980s, from Narragansett, Rhode Island. Originally known as simply Beaver Brown, the group (consisting of John Cafferty (born ca. 1950) on vocals and rhythm guitar, Gary Gramolini on guitar, Patrick Lupo on bass, Kenny Jo Silva on drums, Bobby Cotoia on piano, and Michael "Tunes" Antunes on saxophone) started out as a New England bar band and initially established a popular following throughout Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
They achieved their greatest fame when they performed the music of a "Springsteen-esque" fictional band in the hit 1983 movie Eddie and the Cruisers. The soundtrack album from the film reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart and produced a #7 hit single ("On the Dark Side") on the Billboard Hot 100. "On the Dark Side" also reached #1 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart for five weeks.
The group's 1985 follow-up album Tough All Over made the top 50, getting some attention for "C.I.T.Y" and the title track, which became their second #1 single on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. Another song from that album, "Voice of America's Sons", was the featured theme song on the official motion picture soundtrack of the movie Cobra, starring Sylvester Stallone.[1] Subsequent releases were mostly sequels to the Eddie and the Cruisers concept, and Cafferty and the band faded from popular consciousness.
