Bill Gibson was born in Sacramento, California and began playing music last century at the ripe old age of 7. Wanting to be a Saxophone player, his elementary school band teacher gave him a clarinet to become familiar with the mouthpiece. Bill played the clarinet but never graduated to the Sax. At age 12, Bill’s dad, an architect by trade but also an amateur drummer, gave him his first pair of drumsticks and took him to see all the great big band jazz artists of the day. The Count Basie and Duke Ellington big bands were favorites to go see, along with Buddy Rich’s band. Bill became obsessed with the drums, and at the age of 14, got his first set of drums.
Bill began to hone his craft by playing for hours on end and started his first high school band at age 15. He was influenced by players such as Mitch Mitchell from Jimi Hendrix’ Experience, Bill Bowen from the local group Sons of Champlin, Lenny White from Chick Corea’s Return To Forever, and Billy Cobham from The Mahavishnu Orchestra.
By age 18, Bill had formed the band Sound Hole, which included hometown friend Mario Cipollina and a young Sax player/ singer from Suisun City named Johnny Colla. Sound Hole was a favorite Marin County bar band that later backed Van Morrison on a short tour in 1974. Sound Hole disbanded in 1976 and Bill started to play with legendary San Francisco bassist Jack Casady, Nick Buck, and Brian Marnell in a punk band called SVT.
In 1977, Huey Lewis and Sean Hopper’s band, Clover, had disbanded and Huey put together a lively jam session/variety show called “Monday Night Live” at a local Marin County club called Uncle Charlie’s. The band featured the core of what was to become The News. The Monday Night Live band began to record demo tapes in hopes of getting a record deal and in 1979, Huey Lewis and the News was formed with Bill as a founding member. The rest, as they say, is history.
Besides performing on every HLN release to date, Bill has also performed on albums by Alex Call and Chris Isaac.