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Bob Cowsill recently inherited his position as chief of the performing Cowsill family tribe, after his older brother Bill made his decision to go it alone.
But Bob has been in on The Cowsill from the start.
With Bill, Bob Cowsill co-produced the smash hit “Hair,” which made the group the number one record act in the U.S.
With “The Prophecy of Daniel and John the Divine,” he came into his own as a producer as well as a performer (singer, guitarist, pianist, organist).
“Actually, ‘producer’ is just a title,” he notes. “Most groups don’t really need a producer. The four of us just go in and cut a record. We’re all producers, Barry produces the drum part, Paul his organ part, and I produce my guitar part. My real job is as a supervisor. I explain things if a problem arises.
“Bill and I used to write together. Now, I imagine Barry will start. A lot of the songs you write end up in the wastepaper basket, but most of the songs we write turn out well. Like at the moment, I have nine songs partly written. Usually a melody just hits you; then you have to sit around and wait for the other part to hit. But if we had an album to do within a month, I could sit down and knock out 12 songs. It’s not that I’m lazy, but I work best under the gun.”
“It’s great to now be able to say what we want to record. Whatever we like, we do. And it works. Because usually what we like, people like. After all, we’ve got all the age groups right here.
“With ‘Hair,’ our audience really expanded, opening us up to a lot of age groups we hadn’t made contact with before. Our previous songs tended to hold our appeal to one age bracket. Now it’s open season!
“I haven’t always liked every song we’ve done, such as ‘Indian Lake.’ It sold 960,000 copies, but no matter how big a hit it became, I still didn’t like it.
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“I have to admit, though, none of our songs sounds like the last one we recorded. I hate the very idea of a ‘success formula.’ You can’t be afraid to go on to the next step. That’s one of The Beatles’ secrets. I grew up with them. I grew with them.
“What difference does a top record make? It shows that doing what we want to do is making the right move.
“I’ve been involved in this thing since I was 13, when I played my first professional job. I decided, ‘I’m going to become famous.’ There was no one there to debate it. When it happened, I wasn’t excited. Happy, yes; but not excited. When we finally took off, nothing had changed, really. Although we play many more concert and campus dates, we do many of the songs we’ve always done. They’re new to the public, but not to us.
His opinions are as definite about his private life and how he wants to live it as are his feelings regarding his professional life. In both areas, Bob Cowsill seems to display marvelous combination of intelligence, humor, and the ability to think things through – and to laugh – even at himself.
“When we moved out to the West Coast, I came just knowing I wasn’t going to like it. I intended to make everybody absolutely miserable. Then they’d have to take me back.
“But eventually the weather turned great; I began to make friends. It made the difference.
“Really, it wasn’t any different having to make friends when you’re a 'Cowsill’ than if you weren’t. My friends meet me and accept me as me. They wouldn’t know the Bob Cowsill onstage.
“Onstage you have to play a role. But live performances are fun. You do so many shows that sometimes you don’t feel like getting up there, but once you’re up there you forget that you didn’t want to, and you want to.
“For the two hours that you’re up there onstage, you play a game. The audience is like the pieces on a chess board. You make the moves. A sad song, and they’re quiet; they’re listening carefully, reacting to the sound, to the lyrics. Then you switch to a rock number and the spell is broken. They’re moving, wanting to get up and dance. And you’re watching them. It’s sometimes really weird.
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“I guess I notice these things because I really dig psychology. Astrology too, but I figure you have to put up with people; you live with them all your life. So I like them, and like knowing what makes us tick.
“After I adjusted to the move to California, I began to notice things about it, too. I like the mountains, the ups and downs of it here. Out here, everybody takes his own pace. The east is fast; the south is slow; but here it’s up to you.
“Another thing I like about Los Angeles are the radio stations and the way they program things. If the jocks here don’t like a song, they don’t play it, no matter how big it’s making it elsewhere.
“We’ve always had a big house like this, whether we could afford it or not. It’s a matter of numbers. But I’ve always had to have a room of my own. I like to be able to close the door and live in my own world for awhile.
“I don’t get to go out much, even when we’re home, because I don’t have time for it. But it doesn’t bother me. There’s plenty of time for that.
“We all like what we do or we wouldn’t be doing it. We’d like to do some different things now, perhaps a television series. That would be a gas because you’d have a chance to build something. Guest shots, well, it’s like two minutes and 40 seconds, or however long the song takes, then off. It’s like nothing.
“I like learning about different things because it helps me to write. You can only write about things you know about or have experienced. And there’s still so much I haven’t learned or experienced. We’ve done a theme song for motion pictures (‘The Impossible Years’), but maybe some day we’ll be able to get into the composing end. That would be new to us, something different.
“As of now, I think I’ll be sticking with music. When you’re done something for over nine years, you don’t shake it off. It’s become a part of your life – a part you enjoy.
“And that’s the name of the game.
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