Jill Gibson

Jill Gibson (born June 18, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, photographer, painter and sculptor.

Jill Gibson was born in Los Angeles, California on June 18, 1942.

She is half-English.

Gibson attended University High School in Los Angeles.

She is a former model.

Jill Gibson was studying at University High School in Los Angeles, California when she met Jan Berry of Jan & Dean fame in 1959.

The two were an item for the next seven years.

Together they wrote over a dozen songs and through Berry, Gibson got more involved with the music scene.

Eventually she began composing songs with other known songwriters such as Don Altfeld, George Tipton and Roger Christian, a Los Angeles-based disc jockey who also wrote with Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.

Later Gibson dated Lou Adler, whom she had known since 1959 when he was the executive producer and manager of Jan Berry and Dean Torrence.

Adler had recently separated from his wife, actress and singer Shelley Fabares.

She is mostly known for her collaboration work with Jan & Dean and for having briefly been a member of the successful 1960s rock group the Mamas and the Papas.

The night featured live performances of Jan & Dean songs performed by artists who had once worked with Berry in the 1960s.

The event had been planned by Berry's widow, Gertie, and Al Nassar.

In 1962 Jan Berry decided to create a female answer to Jan & Dean called Judy & Jill, featuring Gibson with Dean Torrence's girlfriend Judy Lovejoy.

Demo recordings such as "Come On Baby" (written by Gibson and Lovejoy), "Eleventh Minute" (written by Gibson and Altfeld), "Just For Tonight", and "Baby What's It Gonna Be" were cut and produced by Berry for Liberty Records.

Gibson performed most of the leads on these unreleased demos.

Nothing major happened with the Judy & Jill recordings, however, and Gibson switched to providing background vocals on several Jan & Dean album tracks.

Meanwhile, she studied visual arts at the University of California at Los Angeles.

In 1963, Gibson appeared on the Jan & Dean track "Surf Route 101", and the next year she performed backing harmony on a song she wrote with Don and Horace Altfeld called "When It's Over" for a Jan & Dean album.

She then recorded two vocal duets with Berry that she had written with Don Altfeld that year, "It's As Easy As 1,2,3" and "A Surfer's Dream".

In November 1963 ABC television aired a one-hour special called Celebrity Party hosted by Dick Clark and Donna Loren that included performances and/or appearances by Jill Gibson, Jan & Dean, The Beach Boys, Shelley Fabares, James Darren, Connie Francis, George Hamilton, Nancy Sinatra, The Challengers, Johnny Crawford, Deborah Walley, among others.

It was sponsored by Dr Pepper.

The tracks appeared on 2 different 1964 Jan & Dean albums.

Gibson released her first solo recording in 1964, a cover version of her own song "It's As Easy As 1,2,3" backed with "Jilly's Flip Side", written by P.F. Sloan with Steve Barri and issued on Imperial Records.

Jan Berry produced and arranged both tracks.

She also sang backup on Jan & Dean's hit "Ride the Wild Surf."

Gibson co-wrote the B-side single "He Don't Love Me" for Shelley Fabares' More Teenage Triangle LP in 1964 with Berry.

The song "When It’s Over" was originally written and recorded by Gibson with Jan Berry in 1964 that was issued as the B-side of Jan & Dean's hit single "Sidewalk Surfin’."

In July 1965, a hit song Gibson had co-written with Berry and Roger Christian, called "You Really Know How to Hurt a Guy", peaked at number 27 for Jan & Dean on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

By the time Gibson sang vocals on Jan & Dean's last studio album, Jan & Dean Meet Batman, in 1966, her personal relationship with Berry was ending; they had gone their separate ways by the album's March 1966 release but remained friends.

Shortly after their breakup, Berry was involved in a serious motor-vehicle accident on April 12, 1966, which he survived.

Gibson often visited in the hospital during his long, difficult recovery.

She was also one of the main photographers at the historic Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

"Eleventh Minute" was briefly released in 1997 as the B-side of a 45 rpm record on the Maltshop Records label.

The licensed recording was soon withdrawn from sale (300 of the 500 red vinyl copies subsequently destroyed) due to questionable ownership of copyright and mechanical rights, as well as numerous label inaccuracies – most notably the performing artists are identified on the label of Maltshop 2 as "Jody & Jill".

Furthermore, the A-side recording, "Come On Baby", was not the ballad demo offered to Liberty Records, but an up-tempo surf rocker by an unknown male singer and band.

On April 18, 2004, Jill Gibson was one of 400 invited guests who gathered at The Roxy Theatre in Hollywood, California, to celebrate Jan Berry's life and music at a tribute called "Jan Berry: A Celebration of Life".

Other guests included Judy Lovejoy (her former singing partner), Dean Torrence, Don Altfeld (her former songwriting partner), Ann Marshall, Ryan O'Neal, Nancy Sinatra, Lou Adler, Lloyd Thaxton, Diane Rovell and Ginger Blake of The Honeys.

In 2008, Jill Gibson recorded the duet ballad "When It's Over" with Cameron Michael Parkes for the Berry tribute album Encomium In Memoriam Vol. 1.