A Chat with Bradley Cole (04.02.26)
Interview with Karen Beishuizen (Guest contributor)
Bradley Cole is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor who is based in Los Angeles. He has a new album out called Desert Dreams. We talk about his career, his acting, his music, his new album, and more.
Did you always want to be a singer and musician growing up?
Cole: Well, now that I think about it, maybe I did. Music was always affecting me from the time I can remember. I just really loved songs, singing and even instrumental music. My earliest memory is probably church music. I was raised in the Catholic Church, was an altar boy and went to parochial school, and I remember singing in the choir with the rest of the class inside the church, and it was just magical to me.
A little bit later, my older brother was given an acoustic guitar and guitar lessons. I must have been about 8 years old, and he was one year older than me. I remember being terribly jealous and getting a hold of the guitar whenever I could and convincing my mom to let me tag along on the guitar lessons. The lessons didn’t stick with my brother, but the guitar stuck with me, and I never really let go of the guitar since then. The thought of becoming a professional singer or musician didn’t occur to me until maybe I was in high school and playing in bands and things like that. I started dabbling in writing songs, but it was never really about making money. It was just that I loved playing and singing.
Who were your musical heroes as a kid?
Cole: Well, my parents were music lovers too, and they had a stereo system and lots of great records. I loved listening to those old records, everyone from Chubby Checker, Trini Lopez, Mitch Miller and his gang, Harry Belafonte, Sinatra and Elvis, of course, Herb Alpert, The Everly Brothers, The Beach Boys, The Mamas and Papas, and all that great music from the late 50s and early 60s.
The list is long, but everything changed when I first heard The Beatles. They had a huge impact on me. Also, the Doors, I remember having almost like an out-of-body experience at a very young age listening to ‘Light My Fire’. I was lying out by the pool on the hot cement, and I was put into like a hypnotic state listening to that song. The Beatles’ Help album, I remember playing it over and over and over and over again, and then subsequently I learned all the songs and all their music. It’s really how I kind of learned how to play guitar, figuring out the Beatles songs, and it also taught me, without even realising it at the time, about songwriting and song structure.
What age did you start playing the guitar, and what was the first song you ever wrote?
Cole: Well, I was 8 years old when I first started learning the guitar. I didn’t really get very good at it until maybe I was in my early teens, and I would literally play most of the day and sometimes into the night. Those first guitar lessons were just basic chords and things like that. I remember getting a Mel Bay guitar book and learning a few techniques, and I’m basically self-taught, like most of us were back then. We would put the needle on the record, listen and try to copy what we heard with varying degrees of success. It’s not an easy instrument at first I’ll have to say.
I’m still learning to this day. It never really occurred to me to start writing my own songs until I was in college, and I would dabble here and there, but I was too embarrassed to really seriously say here is a song that I wrote. It was more like my buddies and me having a laugh and writing some lyrics to some riffs that I would come up with. Later, when I was travelling through Europe with my guitar and playing in bars and clubs, I actually did write and perform a couple of songs. They’re on a cassette tape somewhere, but my first actual recorded song that I wrote was for a play that I also wrote and produced. The play was called Laeticia, and the song was called ‘Let Go’. It is really poppy, rocky kind of thing with a little bit of angst thrown in.
During that time, so we’re talking about the 80s, now, I had a tape recorder, and I would put down my musical thoughts and ideas on these cassettes and just store them and keep them stored up for years, and it’s kind of how I still work today. I put down ideas, of course, now I use a cell phone instead of a cassette recorder, and when it comes time to actually put some songs together for recording in a studio. Then I’ll sit down, take the ideas that I like the best and flesh them out and actually then sit down and write the majority of the lyrics at that point.
Richard Winslow on ‘Guiding Light’: How did you get this part? What is your fondest memory?
Cole: It’s funny how life can take its twists and turns, and that’s why I truly believe that there is a guiding hand that God is leading me somehow to somewhere for some reason. I had been living in Europe for many, many years, and I was doing a stage play at the time, so this was 1998,1999. I had been going back and forth between Los Angeles, New York and Paris, but mostly living in Paris. There was a break in the play, and I was going to go visit my mother in Los Angeles and my family, and my agent there said, “Well, while you’re here, why don’t you see a couple of people?” One of those people was Glenn Daniels, who was the casting director for Guiding Light, and they were looking for the part of a prince.
So, they gave me these sides, and they were for Prince Edmund, who was the bad prince. So, I learned that, and when I went in, Glenn said “no, no, no. Oh my gosh, you have to read for Prince Richard. Here, take these sides.” So, I learned those, came in, read for him, and he said to me, “well I hope you’re not doing anything or going anywhere next week because I think you’re going to be going to New York to audition.” I said OK. That’s when I went and met Kim Zimmer and auditioned with her, and the rest is history.
My favorite time? Well, you know I was on the show for 10 years – oh my gosh, 10 years, really wow – but certainly my favorite time was the beginning of the San Cristobal story, which I just thought was so well written and so well produced by Paul Rauch and everybody at Guiding Light. When I came back and played the character of Jeffrey O’Neill, that had to have been really my favorite time. It was just so much fun to play that character, and they really gave me some good writing and a lot of leeway. Working with Laura Wright and Kim Zimmer, I mean, I really was spoiled, wasn’t I?
What made you go to France and start acting there on TV shows? Do you speak French fluently?
Cole: Well, that is a very, very long story of how I ended up in France. I’ll spare you all of the details, but I’ll give you a quick synopsis. After finishing my studies at university in California, I hit the road. I wanted to see some of the world before I decided I was going to do anything. So, I literally went across the United States hitchhiking and riding a Greyhound bus and then continued my journey on to Europe and went to most of the European countries, travelling with just my guitar and a backpack. I went through England, France, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, and Ireland. I’m sure there are some other countries I’m missing.
During that journey, I was in Paris, and there was an English-speaking theater that I came across on the Left Bank on the Rue de Seine. It was called La Gallerie 55 (cinquante cinq), and I went in, and I saw a production, in this tiny little theatre in English in Paris, of A View from the Bridge. It was spectacular. The acting was fantastic, and I was just blown away, and I just thought to myself, oh my goodness, what a dream to be able to perform in Paris like this. Well, it turns out they were doing another play when I returned to the city a couple of months later, and that was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. The actor playing the character of Nick was leaving, and I spoke to the director and auditioned for him, and he gave me the part of Nick!
So, there I was performing on that stage in Paris, and it was just absolutely incredible. It was like a dream. That’s how everything began there. I ended up getting an agent there, I ended up creating my own theater company there, I started producing plays there myself, all the while playing my guitar in clubs and just living the life of a bohemian artist. At the time, occasionally, productions from America would come over to France to shoot, and to save them the cost of bringing an actor over for some of the smaller parts, they would cast an American already living in Paris. I had an agent there, and so I would get these little parts here and there on some of these American productions.
Finally, my French was good enough that I was getting parts in some of the French TV shows and French movies. So, to answer your question, one thing just snowballed into another, and it was a fantastic experience. Oh, yes, and I do speak French fluently, but it took a while to get there.
Are there artists you would love to collaborate with or you wished you had?
Cole: I’ve never really thought about it like that, or I mean, I never really said to myself, “oh I really wish I could collaborate with this person or that person”. Songwriting is a very personal thing for me, and it’s difficult for me to let go of things. On the other hand, if someone says, “hey can you put some lyrics to my song?”, that’s different. I can do that, but if someone starts trying to change those lyrics, that’s a problem for me. Or, if someone wants me to put some music to lyrics, I can do that too.
Playing in a band or playing with other people is a collaborative thing, and yes, I really enjoy that because when you’re playing with gifted people and everyone’s kind of playing off of each other, it’s pure joy. Let me just be honest, I actually have dreamed of collaborating with Paul McCartney, but I’m not sure he’s available this week.
I let you make an album with 7 of your most favorite songs (not your own). What would you pick and why?
Cole: Oh, good one. Of course, my answer today will be completely different from what my answer would be tomorrow and the day after that. But let’s see, here we go.
Off the top of my head, I just watched a Badfinger documentary, and I just love that song ‘No Matter What’. I’ve always loved that song. I remember listening to it when I was in junior high. Why that song? It’s a great rock song with a great hook, a great melody and a sweet harmony on top. And, then there’s the middle 8 knock down the old gray wall, be a part of it all, just pure awesome rock. So, I would love to do that song.
Neil Diamond’s ‘Cherry, Cherry’ is another great rocker. The guitar intro is really rhythmic and catchy, but he does this thing where he changes up the rhythm on the acoustic guitar and the chord changes. He uses the same chords but plays them in a different order and rhythmically different between the verse and the chorus, and then there are those cool background voices with the girls. Just a great, fun, cool song to do. OK, so that’s two, I got to come up with five more!?
You know, really, I’m not even sure I would wanna do this because those songs are perfect already. I wouldn’t wanna mess them up, really. What we’re talking about is songs that I would like to sing, but would really have a hard time making them my own.
Ok, so how about ‘Who Do You Love, Not Fade Away’, which I covered. Why? Pure rock blues, nothing better. And tell you what, why don’t you give me the missing 3, and I’ll tell you if I would do them. Lol!
You have a new album out, Desert Dreams. What is it about and how did the process go?
Cole: I wanted the album to be thematic like when we used to listen to album-oriented rock when I grew up in the 60s and 70s in Southern California. Music shifted. It changed. We went from those great AM radio hits, 3 minutes or less, to suddenly we were getting these albums that took you on a journey. Albums like, well I guess, starting with Sergeant Pepper and then we had Pink Floyd and we had Led Zeppelin. We would go and get these albums, take them home and treasure them. Open them up slowly, put them on the record player, read over those liner notes, pour over them and listen to every note as if the artist was speaking to us and taking us on this trip. I remember those first albums with such fondness and they’re gone.
The industry and the digital platforms have changed everything. No one is going to download a digital album, well I guess a few people will. I’m sure Taylor Swift fans are going to listen to every note and go through the journey with her on her albums, but very few will sit there and listen to it from end to end. Now, the digital universe has us swiping and getting our quick fix. We might make our way through a whole song. Can you imagine getting through a whole 3 or 4 minutes of a song, what a novel concept, before we get to the next one.
So, anyway, I wanted to make this album, Desert Dreams, like one of those old albums that had a theme and took you on a trip. The theme of Desert Dreams is a voyage through the desert, which is a metaphor for life. Our main character is searching for something, for someone, for salvation, for love. Sometimes he thinks he finds it. Sometimes it slips out of his hand. He talks to God, he’s trying to find himself, he’s trying to find answers. Every song is supposed to get us closer to understanding the struggle of the human condition. At the end of the day, it’s really just some cool guitar music that I want to put out there, but for those that want more than just a quick fix there might be something there.
Process? Well, it was just a delight for me sometimes in the early going when I’m actually writing the lyrics and finalizing the songs. It’s a little bit like ripping it out of the earth; some songs come very easily, and some songs don’t. That’s the only hard part, but even that, I kind of enjoy. Then, of course, when I’m actually taking my demos into the studio and recording with my musicians, there’s not another place on earth I’d rather be. That’s the best part of the process, and then taking those tracks and shaping them and molding them and mixing them and making them sound the way I want them to sound, that’s a labor of love, too. I was surrounded by some great people helping me do that. I can’t name them all, just have a look at the credits in the record, and you’ll see them. I’m very lucky to have them.
New album means touring? What are you up to this year?
Cole: Well, that’s all still being put together. I’ll be doing some appearances here and there, but, hopefully, I would like to put a band together and get out on the road. I’ll be performing in Silver City, NM, on February 26, at the singer-songwriter event at Whiskey Creek Zocalo, and please check the website for more dates!
Thanks to Bradley Cole for speaking to us. Find out more about Bradley Cole on his official website, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Spotify.
