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| Think this honors him best. |
The Hit
The man’s name sounded like a parody stage name and the one big hit he landed probably would only deepen that impression for someone listening over 40 years later. Randy Van Warmer’s “Just When I Needed You Most” makes the average easy-listening song sound medium-rock at a minimum; his melted-butter vocals let it go down even easier. If you listen closer (or just again), Van Warmer’s smarter touches come through - e.g., the way he hangs his verses over the bar-line, the spindly, picked guitar that, if you’re willing to stretch far enough, evokes a spider’s web.
Lyrically, “Just When I Needed You Most” tells a tale of abandonment, but with a kicker of his failure to stop his special someone from leaving and how he keeps reaching out too late to get anything back but silence. It's a damn sad song, regret piling on regret.
Bouncing around the Internet, I found multiple origin stories for Van Warmer’s heartache - everything his father’s passing when he was just 12 (Wikipedia), a girlfriend that broke his heart (Country Thang Daily), even his favorite old car breaking down on his way to work in Denver (also, Country Thang). The thing about the girlfriend comes up most - a deep-dive into his songwriting process/career on American Songwriter puts it on a high school sweetheart who moved with him to England only to leave - so my money’s on that fount of heartbreak.
The inspiration aside, two key figures helped Van Warmer put polish on the song: one, an Englishman in the music publishing business named Iam Kimmet, who took him under his wing when he started songwriting, the other Hot Chocolate’s Tony Wilson. The song did really well on its release - which was a minor miracle for several reasons - but it landed him a No. 8 on the UK charts, a No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary charts and an impressive No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100. The song includes an autoharp bridge, one played by John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful fame. Van Warmer credits the bridge for making the song a hit…now about that minor miracle…or series of them.
The Rest of the Story
Twelve years before his father died, Randy Van Warmer was born in Indian Hills, Colorado and raised in the Denver area. He grew up on Star Trek and other science fiction and dreamed of growing up to be an astronaut as a kid, but, when his father died, his mother moved him to Looe, in Cornwall, England, when he was 15 years old. [Ed. - The “high school sweetheart” hits a speed bump here; even if they started early…she moved to England with a guy shed dated before age 15?] Growing up on that rainy, wind-swept spit of land left Van Warmer with a plenty of time to kill indoors, so he turned to songwriting.
He found Kimmet through nothing more complicated than walking into a publishing company and asking for tips. That began a long-distance relationship where Van Warmer wrote songs in Cornwall and took the train to London to run them past Kimmet. As much as his mentor admired his enthusiasm and saw the potential, he kept pushing Van Warmer toward artists who he felt understood “the shape of songs,” something Kimmet felt they lacked - until Van Warmer walked in the door with “Just When I Needed You Most.” On hearing it, Kimmet reached out to a producer he knew in the States, Albert Grossman.
Anyone who recognizes Grossman’s name will rightly interpret that as Kimmet throwing Van Warmer to the sharks; after all, Grossman was the man who ripped off Bob Dylan, took out a life insurance policy on Janis Joplin after he heard that she was shooting up again, and who charged the artists he managed 10% over the industry-standard because, as he put it, “every time you talk to me you’re ten percent smarter than before.” If you already haven't, listen “Just When I Need You Most” and imagine the man who wrote that working with someone like Grossman.
Van Warmer moved back to the States, where Grossman signed him to his label, Bearsville Records, and released his debut album, Warmer, in 1979. Van Warmer’s official bio credits “a DJ” for passing on “Gotta Get Out of Here,” the song Grossman saw as the lead single, and flipping to the b-side which had “Just When I Needed You Most.” Then, with a hit circulating and an album to promote, Grossman made the inexplicable decision to bar Van Warmer from touring in the U.S. or appearing on television. Confined to working as a studio artist, Van Warmer cranked out three more albums over the next three years - 1980’s Terraform, 1981’s Beat of Love, and 1983’s The Things That You Dream. None of them sold all that well, though Van Warmer scored a minor hit (No. 55) with the single “Suzi Found a Weapon” from Beat of Love, a song he wrote for a Bearsville public relations rep named Suzi Blosser, the same woman he later married and started a family with.
Though his career as a musician died before it really got started, Van Warmer enjoyed one hell of a second act as a songwriter. It started when Suzi Van Warmer shopped one the songs from Beat of Love, “I Guess It Never Hurts to Hurt Sometimes,” to some friends in Nashville in the mid-1980s. It eventually found its way to Ron Chancey, the producer of The Oak Ridge Boys, who recorded a cover for their next album. The Van Warmers moved to Nashville shortly thereafter where he became a regular songwriting partner for some of country’s biggest stars - e.g., Chet Atkins, Conway Twitty, Kenny Rogers, Charley Pride, Laura Branigan and Billie Joe Royal. His more notable hits included “I Will Whisper Your Name” by Michael Johnson and Alabama’s cover of another song Van Warmer had recorded, “I’m in a Hurry (And I Don’t Know Why),” which gave them a No. 1. Even Dolly Parton got in on it when she covered “Just When You Need Me Most”; she even invited John Sebastian back for the autoharp bridge. Wow. I actually like his better...
After many successful years in Nashville, and even releasing some material of his own in the late 80s/early 90s (I ignored it), Van Warmer’s life took a tragic turn with a 2003 leukemia diagnosis. He was working on a Stephen Forster tribute album at the time, and wrapped it up quickly after he heard the news. That album, Sings Stephen Foster, was released in posthumously in 2004. A second posthumous happy ending came in 2007 - and again in 2012 (somehow) - when Suzi Van Warmer honored his life-long love for outer space (he never stopped collecting space stuff, apparently) by arranging to have his ashes taken to the International Space Station.
You’ll get the best impression of Van Warmer as a person in that American Songwriter piece. He comes off well in that interview - enthusiastic, hard-working generous, but also confident - but one thing you don’t hear is bitterness. If he blames Grossman for his failure to launch as a musician, you doesn't mention it; he doesn’t even mention him. Instead, he talks about his songwriting process, whether solo or collaborative, how to write a good song, and sprinkles in comments like “My advice is if you find something that works stick with it.” When he speaks directly to his career behind the mic, he said this:
“I was very naïve early in my career. I didn’t want to be labeled a balladeer so I tried to do rock ‘n roll and I didn’t have the weight in my voice to carry off music with real heavy drums.”
One more interesting comment to share, one that speaks to his transition from writing pop songs to country songs. He clearly loves the latter, but has a pretty clear theory on the fundamentals of both genres:
“Country music is much more lyric oriented. Pop music is more impressionistic. In country music you have to paint a picture that is very lyrical. In pop music you can just jump around more in time. I think country music is much more of a craft and to me pop music is more of an art.”
I doubt anyone who sees a front-man, or even an engaging soloist when they look at Randy Van Warmer. Even the people who hate him credit Grossman with good judgment. Maybe he wound up where he fit best in his second act.
About the Sampler
“Maybe he was purely musical rather than commercial. Or, maybe as I suspect, not enough people took the time to sit down, to truly listen to his music. Otherwise, word of mouth would have built Randy Vanwarmer into the star he should have been.”
It was cool to see that Van Warmer still has fans; this guy gushes. He even lives on the Internet: I found a couple “reaction clips,” including one where a really cheerful guy reads the first paragraph of his Wikipedia page and listens to “Just When I Needed You Most.” (He liked it.) About half of that comes from not caring for…any of his music, really - though it's growing on me, the same way it always does when I listen long enough - but the other half comes from hearing nothing less than real quality in Van Warmer’s songwriting. They’re close to flawless in structure, sprinkled with scores of smart little hooks, and he the man has an incredibly clean, melodic and expressive voice. It's good, but...it’s just there’s no…hair on it, you know? As he put it, his voice “didn’t have the weight.”
All that feels cheap because these are good songs. At any rate…
With the exception of his oddball cover of The Zombies’ “She’s Not There,” plus a couple popular out-takes - e.g., “The Vital Spark,” and his originals of the songs Michael Johnson and Alabama actually made famous, “I Will Whisper Your Name” and “I’m in a Hurry (And Don’t Know Why).” The rest I pulled from Randy Van Warmer’s studio albums. In order:
Warmer: the hit single, of course, but also, “Gotta Get Out of Here” (linked to above), “Losing Out on Love,” as a middle point between ballad and pop, but also well-constructed, cheesy hack-job called, “Convincing Lies.” I think he’s better than that one…
Terraform: “Whatever You Decide,” a singer/songwriter attempting pop, then the rocker, “Down Like a Rock” to prove Van Warmer’s point about “weight.” The song I couldn’t resist there was “Terraform - Falling Tree/I’ve Got a Ticket/21st Century/Terraform,” 10:29 opus that shows impressive (and, again, quality) range, but definitely goes on too long.
Beat of Love: I’d call this Van Warmer’s best album, for what it’s worth, and I think I mostly like it because he’s clearly trying something new with it. “Suzi Found a Weapon” I linked to above, but there’s also the very-80s “Babel / Don’t Hide,” his “I Guess It Never Hurts to Hurt Sometimes,” and a topical calypso-inspired take-down of televangelists, “Amen.”
Last but not least, The Things You Dream: based on my selection (not reliable), Van Warmer returned to analog for this, but with a cooler, leaner touch in the production (because the ‘80s), as repped by s singer-songwriter ballad, “Color Me Out,” and two fairly different, but also over-produced takes on early ‘80s rock, “What in the World Comes Over You at Night” (which sounds so, so much like...something), and the somewhat impressively brooding, “At Least It’s a Life.”
That’s it for this one. The next one goes in…a different direction. Till then…
The man’s name sounded like a parody stage name and the one big hit he landed probably would only deepen that impression for someone listening over 40 years later. Randy Van Warmer’s “Just When I Needed You Most” makes the average easy-listening song sound medium-rock at a minimum; his melted-butter vocals let it go down even easier. If you listen closer (or just again), Van Warmer’s smarter touches come through - e.g., the way he hangs his verses over the bar-line, the spindly, picked guitar that, if you’re willing to stretch far enough, evokes a spider’s web.
Lyrically, “Just When I Needed You Most” tells a tale of abandonment, but with a kicker of his failure to stop his special someone from leaving and how he keeps reaching out too late to get anything back but silence. It's a damn sad song, regret piling on regret.
Bouncing around the Internet, I found multiple origin stories for Van Warmer’s heartache - everything his father’s passing when he was just 12 (Wikipedia), a girlfriend that broke his heart (Country Thang Daily), even his favorite old car breaking down on his way to work in Denver (also, Country Thang). The thing about the girlfriend comes up most - a deep-dive into his songwriting process/career on American Songwriter puts it on a high school sweetheart who moved with him to England only to leave - so my money’s on that fount of heartbreak.
The inspiration aside, two key figures helped Van Warmer put polish on the song: one, an Englishman in the music publishing business named Iam Kimmet, who took him under his wing when he started songwriting, the other Hot Chocolate’s Tony Wilson. The song did really well on its release - which was a minor miracle for several reasons - but it landed him a No. 8 on the UK charts, a No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary charts and an impressive No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot 100. The song includes an autoharp bridge, one played by John Sebastian of The Lovin’ Spoonful fame. Van Warmer credits the bridge for making the song a hit…now about that minor miracle…or series of them.
The Rest of the Story
Twelve years before his father died, Randy Van Warmer was born in Indian Hills, Colorado and raised in the Denver area. He grew up on Star Trek and other science fiction and dreamed of growing up to be an astronaut as a kid, but, when his father died, his mother moved him to Looe, in Cornwall, England, when he was 15 years old. [Ed. - The “high school sweetheart” hits a speed bump here; even if they started early…she moved to England with a guy shed dated before age 15?] Growing up on that rainy, wind-swept spit of land left Van Warmer with a plenty of time to kill indoors, so he turned to songwriting.
He found Kimmet through nothing more complicated than walking into a publishing company and asking for tips. That began a long-distance relationship where Van Warmer wrote songs in Cornwall and took the train to London to run them past Kimmet. As much as his mentor admired his enthusiasm and saw the potential, he kept pushing Van Warmer toward artists who he felt understood “the shape of songs,” something Kimmet felt they lacked - until Van Warmer walked in the door with “Just When I Needed You Most.” On hearing it, Kimmet reached out to a producer he knew in the States, Albert Grossman.
Anyone who recognizes Grossman’s name will rightly interpret that as Kimmet throwing Van Warmer to the sharks; after all, Grossman was the man who ripped off Bob Dylan, took out a life insurance policy on Janis Joplin after he heard that she was shooting up again, and who charged the artists he managed 10% over the industry-standard because, as he put it, “every time you talk to me you’re ten percent smarter than before.” If you already haven't, listen “Just When I Need You Most” and imagine the man who wrote that working with someone like Grossman.
Van Warmer moved back to the States, where Grossman signed him to his label, Bearsville Records, and released his debut album, Warmer, in 1979. Van Warmer’s official bio credits “a DJ” for passing on “Gotta Get Out of Here,” the song Grossman saw as the lead single, and flipping to the b-side which had “Just When I Needed You Most.” Then, with a hit circulating and an album to promote, Grossman made the inexplicable decision to bar Van Warmer from touring in the U.S. or appearing on television. Confined to working as a studio artist, Van Warmer cranked out three more albums over the next three years - 1980’s Terraform, 1981’s Beat of Love, and 1983’s The Things That You Dream. None of them sold all that well, though Van Warmer scored a minor hit (No. 55) with the single “Suzi Found a Weapon” from Beat of Love, a song he wrote for a Bearsville public relations rep named Suzi Blosser, the same woman he later married and started a family with.
Though his career as a musician died before it really got started, Van Warmer enjoyed one hell of a second act as a songwriter. It started when Suzi Van Warmer shopped one the songs from Beat of Love, “I Guess It Never Hurts to Hurt Sometimes,” to some friends in Nashville in the mid-1980s. It eventually found its way to Ron Chancey, the producer of The Oak Ridge Boys, who recorded a cover for their next album. The Van Warmers moved to Nashville shortly thereafter where he became a regular songwriting partner for some of country’s biggest stars - e.g., Chet Atkins, Conway Twitty, Kenny Rogers, Charley Pride, Laura Branigan and Billie Joe Royal. His more notable hits included “I Will Whisper Your Name” by Michael Johnson and Alabama’s cover of another song Van Warmer had recorded, “I’m in a Hurry (And I Don’t Know Why),” which gave them a No. 1. Even Dolly Parton got in on it when she covered “Just When You Need Me Most”; she even invited John Sebastian back for the autoharp bridge. Wow. I actually like his better...
After many successful years in Nashville, and even releasing some material of his own in the late 80s/early 90s (I ignored it), Van Warmer’s life took a tragic turn with a 2003 leukemia diagnosis. He was working on a Stephen Forster tribute album at the time, and wrapped it up quickly after he heard the news. That album, Sings Stephen Foster, was released in posthumously in 2004. A second posthumous happy ending came in 2007 - and again in 2012 (somehow) - when Suzi Van Warmer honored his life-long love for outer space (he never stopped collecting space stuff, apparently) by arranging to have his ashes taken to the International Space Station.
You’ll get the best impression of Van Warmer as a person in that American Songwriter piece. He comes off well in that interview - enthusiastic, hard-working generous, but also confident - but one thing you don’t hear is bitterness. If he blames Grossman for his failure to launch as a musician, you doesn't mention it; he doesn’t even mention him. Instead, he talks about his songwriting process, whether solo or collaborative, how to write a good song, and sprinkles in comments like “My advice is if you find something that works stick with it.” When he speaks directly to his career behind the mic, he said this:
“I was very naïve early in my career. I didn’t want to be labeled a balladeer so I tried to do rock ‘n roll and I didn’t have the weight in my voice to carry off music with real heavy drums.”
One more interesting comment to share, one that speaks to his transition from writing pop songs to country songs. He clearly loves the latter, but has a pretty clear theory on the fundamentals of both genres:
“Country music is much more lyric oriented. Pop music is more impressionistic. In country music you have to paint a picture that is very lyrical. In pop music you can just jump around more in time. I think country music is much more of a craft and to me pop music is more of an art.”
I doubt anyone who sees a front-man, or even an engaging soloist when they look at Randy Van Warmer. Even the people who hate him credit Grossman with good judgment. Maybe he wound up where he fit best in his second act.
About the Sampler
“Maybe he was purely musical rather than commercial. Or, maybe as I suspect, not enough people took the time to sit down, to truly listen to his music. Otherwise, word of mouth would have built Randy Vanwarmer into the star he should have been.”
It was cool to see that Van Warmer still has fans; this guy gushes. He even lives on the Internet: I found a couple “reaction clips,” including one where a really cheerful guy reads the first paragraph of his Wikipedia page and listens to “Just When I Needed You Most.” (He liked it.) About half of that comes from not caring for…any of his music, really - though it's growing on me, the same way it always does when I listen long enough - but the other half comes from hearing nothing less than real quality in Van Warmer’s songwriting. They’re close to flawless in structure, sprinkled with scores of smart little hooks, and he the man has an incredibly clean, melodic and expressive voice. It's good, but...it’s just there’s no…hair on it, you know? As he put it, his voice “didn’t have the weight.”
All that feels cheap because these are good songs. At any rate…
With the exception of his oddball cover of The Zombies’ “She’s Not There,” plus a couple popular out-takes - e.g., “The Vital Spark,” and his originals of the songs Michael Johnson and Alabama actually made famous, “I Will Whisper Your Name” and “I’m in a Hurry (And Don’t Know Why).” The rest I pulled from Randy Van Warmer’s studio albums. In order:
Warmer: the hit single, of course, but also, “Gotta Get Out of Here” (linked to above), “Losing Out on Love,” as a middle point between ballad and pop, but also well-constructed, cheesy hack-job called, “Convincing Lies.” I think he’s better than that one…
Terraform: “Whatever You Decide,” a singer/songwriter attempting pop, then the rocker, “Down Like a Rock” to prove Van Warmer’s point about “weight.” The song I couldn’t resist there was “Terraform - Falling Tree/I’ve Got a Ticket/21st Century/Terraform,” 10:29 opus that shows impressive (and, again, quality) range, but definitely goes on too long.
Beat of Love: I’d call this Van Warmer’s best album, for what it’s worth, and I think I mostly like it because he’s clearly trying something new with it. “Suzi Found a Weapon” I linked to above, but there’s also the very-80s “Babel / Don’t Hide,” his “I Guess It Never Hurts to Hurt Sometimes,” and a topical calypso-inspired take-down of televangelists, “Amen.”
Last but not least, The Things You Dream: based on my selection (not reliable), Van Warmer returned to analog for this, but with a cooler, leaner touch in the production (because the ‘80s), as repped by s singer-songwriter ballad, “Color Me Out,” and two fairly different, but also over-produced takes on early ‘80s rock, “What in the World Comes Over You at Night” (which sounds so, so much like...something), and the somewhat impressively brooding, “At Least It’s a Life.”
That’s it for this one. The next one goes in…a different direction. Till then…
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