Anyone who saw National Lampoon’s Animal House remembers the earnest folk singer whose guitar John Belushi smashes to pieces. That was Stephen Bishop, who turns 75 on Nov. 14, and Eric Clapton, Phil Collins and Art Garfunkel have all named him one of their favorite singer-songwriters in their autobiographies.
That movie cameo came after years of struggle. Born in San Diego, Bishop started writing songs at 13 and left for Los Angeles at 17, where he took a $50-a-week job as a staff songwriter. Then came a lean eight-year stretch in which he was rejected by “nearly every label and producer,” as Rolling Stone later reported.
He eventually got his break through some friends. Singer Leah Kunkel passed his songs to Art Garfunkel, who recorded two of them, a moment Bishop has called “very big.” With Garfunkel in his corner, he signed with ABC Records in 1976.
Even then, expectations were low for his debut album, Careless. “The record company only put out 3,000 albums,” he told American Songwriter, explaining that the label didn’t think it would sell. It did. Eric Clapton played on two tracks, including the lead single “Save It for a Rainy Day,” and Chaka Khan and Garfunkel guested too. “On and On” peaked at No. 11 on the Hot 100, but its almost seven-month chart run made it the No. 30 single on Billboard’s 1977 year-end chart.
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His biggest hit came as a writer. “Separate Lives,” his ballad for the 1985 film White Nights, became a No. 1 hit for Phil Collins and Marilyn Martin and earned him an Oscar nomination. “When I first wrote it, I felt like it was my angry song,” he told Songfacts. He also sang “It Might Be You,” the theme from Tootsie, a song many listeners assume he wrote. He didn’t.
Clapton became a lifelong friend, and in his 2007 autobiography he described Bishop as “one of the great singer-songwriters.”
There’s a fun symmetry to where Bishop finds himself at 75. The album his label once printed only 3,000 copies of is now the centerpiece of his goodbye. In August he released a remastered 50th-anniversary vinyl edition of Careless, and on Oct. 9 he played a sold-out Grammy Museum show, his first live performance in seven years. His Farewell Tour: 50th Anniversary of Careless opens March 13, 2027, at Phoenix’s Musical Instrument Museum.
And that guitar Belushi smashed? Bishop still keeps it as a memento. Some things, like his songs, just go on and on.
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