Rinehart, Bill (14th February 1946-18th April 2017)

Arranger, bassist, guitarist, producer and singer-songwriter who was with a number of bands in the mid-to-late ‘60s, beginning with The Rockwells, an oldies cover and surf-rock band that succeeded The Byrds at Ciro’s, a Los Angeles club housed on the Sunset Strip. They then changed their name to The Leaves. Bill co-wrote their debut single, “Too Many People”, with Jim Pons, and it became a big enough hit in L.A. to get them on their way. He left the band shortly thereafter.

After a brief tenure with Gene Clark, Bill was recruited by Emitt Rhodes to join The Merry-Go-Round. In fact, Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers hit the shelves in 1967, the same year The Merry-Go-Round released “Live” and “You’re a Very Lovely Woman”, both of which cracked the top 100. It wasn’t enough to convince A&M Records that The Merry-Go-Round had legs, however, and in 1969, they were unceremoniously dropped from the label.

In 1969, Bill turned his attention to producing The Aquarians’ Jungle Grass and The Fields’ eponymous (and only) album, and wrote “When You Believe” for inclusion in the Robert Redford comedy, The Hot Rock. He re-united with Emitt Rhodes in 1971 for Emitt’s debut solo album, The American Dream. In 1984, he dabbled in film again by contributing “Nights of Fire” to the Robert DeNiro/Meryl Streep romance, Falling in Love. He was also featured in the May/June 1984 edition of Blitz in an article entitled, “The Leaves and The Merry-Go-Round: The Bill Rinehart Story”.

Snippets of his work appear on The Leaves… Are Happening!, The Merry-Go-Round’s Listen, Listen: The Definitive Collection and the various-artists anthology, Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era: 1965-1968.

He died in April 2017 when he was 71 years old.

Sonny & Cher recordings
A Beautiful Story (Sonny Bono)

Sources:

Rinehart, Bill (14th February 1946-18th April 2017)

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