Some songs don’t just remind you of a place. They make you want to go there.
More than half a century after America released “Ventura Highway,” the opening notes can still conjure an almost irresistible image: sunshine, an open road and somewhere better waiting just beyond the horizon.
Released in 1972 on the band’s second album, Homecoming, “Ventura Highway,” written and sung by Dewey Bunnell, became another major hit for America following the phenomenal success of “A Horse With No Name.” The song climbed to No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 3 on the Easy Listening chart, helping cement the young trio as one of the defining bands of the era.
Its inspiration reached back nearly a decade.
As a seventh grader in 1963, Bunnell was traveling with his family along the California coast when their station wagon got a flat tire. While his father changed it, Bunnell noticed a road sign for Ventura and watched clouds drifting above the coastline with his brother. The memory stayed with him. Years later, living outside London and searching for material for America’s follow-up album, that long-ago California afternoon resurfaced.
Strangely, there was no actual “Ventura Highway,” as Bunnell explained in a 2020 interview with American Songwriter.
“We took that coast road. Call it what you want, Highway One, Highway 101, Pacific Coast Highway. I dubbed it Ventura Highway. Because I’ve seen that name in my mind’s eye. Ventura. It was on the freeway signs,” said Bunnell. “I spent a lot of time staring at the ocean and up at that freeway sign that said Ventura. That image just somehow stuck with me, and that’s what I pulled out as a lyric option for that song.”
But “Ventura Highway” is bigger than the memory that inspired it. Bunnell fashioned the song as a kind of conversation between someone rooted in place and a younger person yearning to leave. It was a “go west young man” invitation toward sunshine, freedom and possibility. When listening, you might as well be seated next to young Bunnell in the back seat, head hanging out the window, hair flying in the wind.
And then there are those guitars.
The song’s instantly recognizable opening hook grew out of two harmonized guitar parts played by Gerry Beckley and Dan Peek over Bunnell’s chords. Bright, intricate and seemingly weightless, the interlocking acoustic guitars give “Ventura Highway” its sense of forward motion before Bunnell even begins to sing.
And that sound has traveled remarkably well.
In 2001, Janet Jackson’s “Someone to Call My Lover” sampled the famous “Ventura Highway” guitar riff, introducing it to another generation. Her producers, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, had grown up listening to America on Top 40 radio, and Bunnell later credited Jackson’s hit with giving America’s music a new boost.
“Ventura Highway” remains a staple of classic rock radio. It’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll hear it eventually in rotation. The song has inspired a string of exceptional covers since its inception and remains one of the band’s most recognizable recordings. To date “Ventura Highway” boasts nearly 500 million streams on Spotify.
Perhaps the best explanation for its longevity comes from Bunnell himself.
“I really believe that ‘Ventura Highway’ has the most lasting power of all my songs,” he said in an interview years after its release. “It’s not just the words, the song and the track have a certain fresh, vibrant, optimistic quality that I can still respond to.”
And the world agrees.
Fifty-four years after its release, “Ventura Highway” still doesn’t sound like a song about getting somewhere. It sounds like the exhilarating possibility of leaving, and believing something wonderful might be waiting down the road.
Related: 1969 Rock Song, Recorded on Abbey Road, Is Still a Generational Hit 57 Years Later
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