• Writer: Gerry Beckley
• Producer: George Martin
• Recorded: Late 1974 at the Record Plant in Los Angeles
• Released: March 1975
• Players:
  Dewey Bunnell — vocals, guitar
  Dan Peek — guitar, vocals
  Gerry Beckley — guitar, vocals
  David Dickey — bass
  Willie Leacox — drums
• Album: Hearts (Warner Bros., 1975)
• Also On:
  History: America’s Greatest Hits (Warner Bros., 1975)
  America Live (Warner Bros., 1977)
  America In Concert (Capitol, 1985)
  America In Concert (King Biscuit Flower Hour, 1996)
  Highway: 30 Years Of America (Rhino, 2000)
• Though they met at London’s Central High School, only one of the three members of America was native to England — Dewey Bunnell, who was born in Yorkshire in 1952. All three were sons of American Air Force officers stationed overseas.
• Their first group together was an acoustic folk-rock band called Daze.
• They chose the name America both out of longing for their homeland and as a coincidence while they were listening to a jukebox that had the word “Americana” on it.
• “Sister Golden Hair” was written during sessions for America’s previous album, Holiday, but didn’t make it onto that set.
• Gerry Beckley, who wrote “Sister Golden Hair,” said it’s not about anyone in particular: “This is all poetic license. With ‘Sister Golden Hair,’ as far as my folks were concerned, I was writing a song about my sister, and I couldn’t quite fathom it; they must not have listened to the lyrics.”
• Beckley added that Jackson Browne helped fine-tune the song: “We toured with Jackson a couple of times, and we’d always play each other songs backstage. I sang ‘Meet me in the middle, will you meet me in VA’ (i.e. Virginia). And he thought I was singing ‘Meet me in the air.’ He was singing along, and he sang that line and I said ‘Oh, that’s better.’”
• Beatles producer George Martin oversaw the Hearts album. It sold more than a million copies worldwide.
• “Sister Golden Hair” was America’s second Number One hit. Their first was the first song they recorded, “A Horse With No Name.”
• The album title for Hearts followed America’s odd custom of naming many of their albums with words beginning with the letter H. Others were called Homecoming, Hat Trick, Holiday, History, Hideaway, Harbor, and Hourglass.
• The Hearts album also spawned the Top 20 single “Daisy Jane.”

FAST FORWARD:

• Dan Peek left America in 1976, after becoming a born-again Christian. He went on to record some Contemporary Christian music. His album All Things Are Possible earned a Grammy nomination in 1979.
• Bunnell and Beckley have continued America as a duo.
• For the song “You Can Do Magic,” a Top 10 hit in 1982, America collaborated with actor Billy Mumy, who played Will Robinson on the TV show Lost In Space, and half of the comedy duo Barnes And Barnes, which gave the world “Fish Heads.”
• Peek reunited briefly with Bunnell and Beckley for a 1993 tour opening for the Beach Boys.
• Beckley has recorded with Robert Lamm from Chicago and the late Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys under the banner Beckley-Lamm-Wilson.

Beckley and Bunnell have both guested on albums by David Cassidy.