It is ’80s North Hollywood. Calculated Risk gigs at the FM Station, a club that could be a rock/country bar in the band’s Pueblo hometown. A world away from the Sunset Strip. Days later their phone rings. It’s producer Paul A. Rothschild, who did the first five Doors albums among other giants.
In 2026 Jim Cooper remembers: “He says, ‘Hi, I’m Paul Rothschild. My friend was at FM Station and told me about you guys.’ Jim and his identical twin John Cooper were the bookend guitarist-singers in Calculated Risk. They’re on the phone from the home they share in Pueblo. The twins finish each other’s thoughts and sentences, laugh at precisely the same time. John picks up the story: “We didn’t even know who he was. So we went to the record store and found his name on a Doors album!”
The band invites the gazillion-selling Rothschild to their next gig at a tiny club in Chinatown.
“We were all sick with the flu,” John says. Jim adds, “We weren’t at our best.” The quartet didn’t know if Rothschild showed up. A couple days later, the phone rings. They laugh. “He told us, ‘You need to hone your stage presence.’ He said, “practice in front of mirrors.”
Rothschild liked the songs. Told the boys he had an open door for them. Rothschild validated everything they’d been chasing, but the “almosts” were beginning to pile up. “The last contact we had was in 1990,” John says, “after we sent him a tape. He’d been
working on a movie, he didn’t tell us it was The Doors. He told us he had something in mind for us.”
Rothschild thought the band was ready but was soon diagnosed with lung cancer. They were devastated, not because Rothschild represented success, but because they’d become friends. “After he died we kept in contact with his son and daughter,” John says.
The twins were five when their mother died following heart surgery. Their dad and grandmother raised them.
“Our dad bought a Spanish guitar,” John says, “and we’ve had it since we were born. He’d play country and blues on that guitar. That got the ball rolling.”
One ’70’s Christmas, Dad got Jim and John identical Gibson SG guitars. “We used those guitars all those years,” John says. “We retired them not long ago so we didn’t beat them up anymore.”
Bassist Karl Harvey, drummer Jeff Glaubensklee, Jim and John have been pals since junior high. They formed in ’75, doing covers, including BTO, Eagles, and lots of Beatles. Made a living honing their skills playing the Colorado club circuit. None of that cover stuff flies in L.A. They knew each other and their instruments inside and out.
After making the classic late-’70s move from small-town USA to L.A. in search of a deal, the band Chance became Calculated Risk. The band moved back and forth, before settling in for an eight-year stretch beginning in ’82. Early on, the quartet auditioned for The Gong Show, but got gonged because they were too serious and not funny enough for the show. They were all like brothers. Lived Monkees-style in houses around L.A. The way to win a big audience then was to land a major-label record deal. These guys harangued labels, blasted songs in record company parking lots, and collected myriad rejections.
They worked day gigs in L.A. John and Jim had college degrees to cushion any fall. John got hired at Screen Gems/EMI Publishing. “We made lots of contacts,” he says. With both pride and surprise, he laughs, “I did that every day for five years.”
More validation came when Joe Saraceno (the genius producer behind The Ventures) and songwriter/producer George Motola (the guy who penned “Goodnight My Love”) cut songs with them. A deal with Ariola Records was on the table, and then it wasn’t.
The twins can’t really pinpoint their sound. But the songs soar in a powerful but buoyant way, nodding to the British Invasion, the Beatles, Buddy Holly, and the Cars, and, like Illinois power-pop band the Shoes, there’s earnestness in their delivery. It’s all heart and crisp craftsmanship.
Power-chugging foot-tappers “Hung on the Telephone” and “She’s Different” are such sweet guitar-driven, harmony-rich pop that a listener risks a diabetic coma. Belinda Carlisle was hot to record the band’s bubblegum snapper “A Way About You” but went instead with “Mad About You.”
“We didn’t try to emulate anybody,” John says. “We’d sit around drinkin’ beers and then it just came out.” A band member idea became a group idea and the tune emerged. By 1990 Calculated Risk were based back in Pueblo.
“We’re still in touch with Karl and Jeff,” Jim says. They laugh. John adds, “it’s viable we get back together and tour!”
The twins are still gigging, using knockoff matching SGs, but, as John says, “playing mostly the same cover songs we played 50 years ago!”
Jim says, “Forty years later we finally get a record deal with Fervor.”
– Liner notes by Brian Jabas Smith
