Bonnie Hayes is back. After a decade as chair of the songwriting department at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, the tunesmith, who struck songwriting gold with the hits “Have a Heart” and “Love Letter” for Bonnie Raitt, has returned to Marin with the satisfaction of knowing that she helped nurture some of the best of the next generation of pop music songwriters.
Over an iced latte in the patio of a coffee shop in Novato on a sweltering afternoon last week, the 69-year-old songwriter, educator and performer beams when she’s asked if she’s had any former students who’ve gone on to successful careers.
“Are you kidding?” she says. “Let’s talk.”
She starts with Charlie Puth, 32, who co-wrote Wiz Khalifa’s smash single “See You Again,” which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for best original song and three nominations at the 58th annual Grammy Awards, including song of the year. The tune, which he also co-produced and performs on, reigned for 12 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 and was featured on the “Furious 7” soundtrack.
“He’s a huge artist,” she says. “Say his name to anyone under 30 and they know who he is.”
She doesn’t shy away from bringing up Ingrid Andress, also 32, a Grammy-nominated songwriter whose debut studio album, “Lady Like,” was one of Billboard’s top 10 best country albums in 2020 and the highest streaming country female debut album of all time. Andress got some unwanted notoriety when she flubbed the national anthem at Major League Baseball’s Homerun Derby last week, blaming her cringeworthy performance on being intoxicated, and promising to go into rehab.
“That was very unfortunate,” Hayes says, “but that’s not who she is.”
And then there is her star student, Amy Allen, another 32-year-old songwriter, singer and producer who has written a string of top 10 hits for the likes of Selena Gomez and Harry Styles. This summer, “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” songs she penned for Sabrina Carpenter, rocketed to No. 1 on Billboard’s Global 200 pop chart.
“I was 59 when I moved to Boston,” Hayes says. “At that age, you’re in a giveback modality, or at least you should be. I loved being connected to these really talented young people and seeing things in them when nobody else did, like when they’d get overlooked by the star teacher and I’d say, ‘That girl is going to do it.’ It was super fun to be that helping hand when they needed it. And I’m still in touch with a lot of them.”
During her tenure at Berklee, Hayes did some teaching but worked primarily as an administrator, developing the songwriting curriculum and dealing with hiring and personnel.
“I changed the curriculum and hired most of the teachers, including a ton of firsts — first Hispanic, first Black, first Asian,” she says. “We had gender parity after I’d been there for six years.”
Semi-retired since stepping down in 2022, she’s been teaching remotely part-time through Berklee Online. The day after this interview, she would head to Los Angeles to run Berklee’s summer program there. And, for the 11th year, she’ll be teaching at the Planet Bluegrass Song School in Colorado in August.
Hayes doesn’t play gigs very often these days, maybe once or twice a year, which makes her Aug. 11 show at HopMonk Tavern in Novato, part of its Cookout Concert Series, such a special occasion, a rare chance to see one of Marin’s most celebrated songwriters in concert. She’ll be performing with the band Mystery Dance on a bill with blues guitarist Roy Rogers and the Delta Rhythm Kings.
The eldest of seven children, Hayes credits the exposure her parents gave her as a child to music and the arts for the success she’s had as a musician and songwriter. She began piano lessons at 4 years old and studied at the Blue Bear School of Music in San Francisco when she was growing up, as did her brothers, Novato’s Kevin Hayes, the former drummer for the Robert Cray Band and one of Marin’s most in-demand musicians, and Chris Hayes, who was lead guitarist and a main songwriter for Huey Lewis and the News. Bonnie Hayes still teaches the occasional songwriting class at Blue Bear and serves on the school’s board of trustees.
Longtime Bay Area music fans may remember her as the ebullient young blonde who fronted Bonnie Hayes with the Wild Combo, a 1980s new wave band that released an album, “Good Clean Fun,” and toured with Huey Lewis and the News in their ’80s heyday. That led to an eponymous solo album on Chrysalis Records that included the single “Some Guys,” which was covered by Cher, the first time one of her songs was recorded by another artist. Another song of hers, “Shelly’s Boyfriend,” achieved cult status when it was featured on the soundtrack of the 1983 movie “Valley Girl.”
She was touring with a band that was the opening act for Detroit rocker Bob Seger when he gave her some career advice that she took to heart.
“He mentioned to me at one point that you should write songs,” she says. “That way you don’t have to play gigs for the rest of your life.”
So write songs she did. In addition to Raitt, her credits include songs for Bette Midler, Booker T. & the M.G.’s, Huey Lewis and the News, David Crosby and Adam Ant, among others.
Since moving back to Marin, she’s had time to spend three or four months a year traveling in Europe, both solo and with friends. Trim and fit, she’s planning to hike Camino de Santiago this fall in Spain, a pilgrimage trail through UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Not that she didn’t see a lot of the world as a keyboard player and backup singer on tours with Billy Idol and Belinda Carlisle during her career. In fact, she was in South America on tour with Carlisle in 1989 when Raitt’s breakthrough album, “Nick of Time,” which included the Hayes songs “Have a Heart” and “Love Letter,” won three Grammys, including record of the year, turning Raitt into a sudden superstar and Hayes into an overnight A-list songwriter.
That album would go on to sell more than 6 million copies with “Have a Heart” as one of its highest charting singles. Hayes remembers being in a bar in Ecuador after a night of clubbing when she saw Raitt accepting one of her Grammys on the TV news. She had no idea that her life was about to change.
“It was in Spanish, so I couldn’t understand it,” she says. “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s nice. She won a Grammy.’ When I got home, my voicemail was full. People had called and said, ‘What are you doing? We want to write with you.’ Whenever you have something like that happen to you, 7 million people come out of the woodwork.”
Now that she was a songwriter to be reckoned with, she moved to Los Angeles to begin working with other writers, seeing if she could duplicate the big money success she had with Raitt. It would not be a good fit.
“I hated that,” she says. “For me, all the songs I wrote were written for love. I was not good at writing on demand.”
Wanting a more wholesome lifestyle for her then-4-year-old daughter, she returned to Marin, bought a house in San Anselmo and spent 15 years teaching songwriting and producing records. She also enjoyed a brief career resurgence, putting together a band, Bonnie Hayes and the Super Superbonbons, and releasing an album, “Love in the Ruins,” in 2003.
More significantly, though, she began creating and running summer music programs for kids, experience that would serve her well when she was hired for the Berklee job in 2013. Her daughter, Lily Burns, has since followed in her mom’s footsteps. A 2016 Berklee graduate, she’s now a producer and songwriter in Los Angeles.
After being around young musicians and songwriters for so long, Hayes is one hip 69-year-old, feeling it’s her responsibility as a teacher and songwriter to keep up with the latest hits.
“Mostly I listen to really popular songs, thinking, ‘Wow, how did that become a hit?’” she says. “I’m one of the very few people my age who actually listens to pop music right now.”
After her long and distinguished career, what advice does she have for young aspiring songwriters?
“I don’t tell kids what to listen to,” she says. “What I do say is you should listen to everything. Don’t cut something out just because it doesn’t fit your story of who you are. I think a lot of people get stuck listening to music they heard in the most transformative time in their life, which for us was about from 15 to 25 or 30. I don’t expect them not to. But I’m a musician. It’s my responsibility to keep up. Songwriters should listen to everything and steal from everything.”
• Details: Roy Rogers and the Delta Rhythm Kings and Bonnie Hayes and Mystery Dance, featuring Kevin Hayes on drums, will play at 6 p.m. Aug. 11 at HopMonk Tavern at 224 Vintage Way in Novato. Admission is $38.50 to $61.50. More information and tickets at wl.seetickets.us/HopMonkNovato.
Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net
