John Buckner Crawford (born January 17, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter known for co-founding the pop group Berlin, which had several hit songs in the 1980s. Crawford's career as a musician began in junior high after breaking his leg during a basketball game. In an attempt to fight off the boredom of being injured, he picked up a guitar and began taking lessons at a musical instrument retailer in nearby Fullerton, California, where his teacher put him in touch with future Berlin band members Dan Van Patten, Chris Velasco, and Tyson Cobb. John attended El Dorado High School in Placentia, California.
The three soon formed a band named The Toys, with vocalist Ty Cobb at the helm. Crawford, Cobb, and the others were influenced by then-current punk rockers like the Sex Pistols and synth-pop band Ultravox, though Crawford has cited KISS as an early influence as well.
After a name change to Berlin, the band stayed together for about three years. After Cobb left the group, a string of vocalists attempted to fill his spot. In 1980, Berlin released the EP Information on Zone H. Records with Virginia Macolino fronting the group. The band signed to I.R.S. Records briefly in 1980, releasing the single "A Matter of Time", before suddenly disbanding in 1981.
Hiatus
With Berlin on indefinite hiatus, Crawford worked with another Orange County–based band, The Videos, with Craig Sibley on vocals and guitar, Rich West on keyboards, Ken Dudley on guitars, and John Benson on drums. He also worked as a vocalist for Fahrenheit, a synthesizer pop quartet in the order of Depeche Mode and Ultravox, for which he also played occasional bass and acoustic guitar. Along with Van Patten as synthesist and drum machine programmer, Fahrenheit included West (later of Stacey Q’s band) and Keith Walsh, both on synths as well.
Sometime around the formation of Fahrenheit in late 1981, the Los Angeles-based independent label M.A.O. Records released a new Berlin single, featuring the songs "The Metro" and "Tell Me Why", with Terri Nunn on vocals. It wasn't until 1982's platinum-selling Pleasure Victim that Crawford's music gained an audience. Crawford had a hand in penning all of the disc's songs except for "Masquerade," a song written by guitarist and original Berlin member Chris Ruiz-Velasco.
Rising star
After Pleasure Victim's initial success on the independent Enigma label, a bidding war ensued, with Geffen's eventually offering the band and their British expatriate manager, Perry Watts-Russell, the offer to release the record to a wider audience. The disc, recorded at the Casbah recording studio in Fullerton, California for around $3,000, included the controversial hit single Sex (I’m A) as well as Masquerade and The Metro.
The Guitarist Ric Olsen and keyboardist/guitarist David Diamond joined the others in helping to create the synth-driven sound of early 1980s techno pop. The follow-up to Pleasure Victim, titled Love Life, went gold in 1984, thanks in part to the hit single No More Words.
Personnel changes continued to plague the band, with only Nunn and Crawford remaining from the Pleasure Victim lineup as they went into their third album, titled Count Three and Pray, released in 1986.
The commercial centerpiece of Count Three and Pray turned out to be Take My Breath Away, the chart-topping single written by Giorgio Moroder featured in the film Top Gun.
Count Three and Pray was produced by Bob Ezrin (producer of many rock superstars including Kiss, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, Lou Reed and Alice Cooper) and features guest appearances by a host of others, including Dave Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Ted Nugent, and Elliott Easton of The Cars. The majority of the album is characterized by an aggressive, guitar-driven hard rock sound.
End of "the Berlin Era" Due to artistic differences between Crawford and Nunn, Berlin disbanded once again, and Crawford created the band The Big F. "The Big F was a chance for Rob (Rob Brill, Berlin and Big F drummer) and I to say, look, okay, we saw what that was and we’re going to try actually now to really focus on just making music, and let the rest of the stuff go away," Crawford said during a 2005 telephone interview.