John Carl Kuehne (February 6, 1942 – February 12, 2000), better known as John London, was an American

musician A musician is a person who composes, conducts, or performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general term used to designate one who follows music as a profession. Musicians include songwriters who wri ...

and songwriter, and was involved in several

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood, ...

television and movie productions. He was most notably associated with both the band The Monkees and their television series. Kuehne was born in Brazos County, Texas. He became a friend of Michael Nesmith, who had played with him (mostly bass guitar) in several working bands. He accompanied Nesmith and then-wife Phyllis Barbour to California to try their luck in the Los Angeles-area music scene. When Nesmith was cast in ''The Monkees'', he recruited London as his stand-in on the set, and when the originally-fictitious band began playing on their own recordings, London sometimes served as bassist, allowing Peter Tork to play keyboards,

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

, or another instrument. London also co-wrote "Don't Call On Me" with Nesmith, which was featured on '' Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.'' and a second-season TV episode, and appeared in bit parts on the show. London also played bass for other L.A.-based bands. In 1970, he and Nesmith, who had decided to leave the Monkees, formed a new group with

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...

ace Red Rhodes and drummer John Ware. Calling themselves the First National Band, the group signed with RCA Records. While praised for their

country rock Country rock is a genre of music which fuses rock and country. It was developed by rock musicians who began to record country-flavored records in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These musicians recorded rock records using country themes, vocal s ...

innovations, the band had little commercial success, and eventually broke up. Years after the Monkees and the First National Band, London served as key grip on several different productions, including ''

48 Hrs. ''48 Hrs.'' (pronounced 'forty-eight hours') is a 1982 American buddy cop action-comedy film directed by Walter Hill, who co-wrote the film with Larry Gross, Steven E. de Souza and Roger Spottiswoode. It stars Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, the ...

'', ''Who Will Love My Children?'', '' The Karate Kid'', '' Long Time Gone'', and '' Hudson Hawk''. He died in Rockport, Texas on February 12, 2000, aged 58.

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* 1942 births 2000 deaths American rock songwriters American rock singers The Monkees American male singer-songwriters American session musicians American rock bass guitarists American male bass guitarists 20th-century American singers American male guitarists 20th-century American guitarists 20th-century bass guitarists 20th-century American male singers Singer-songwriters from Texas The First National Band members {{US-rock-singer-stub People from Brazos County, Texas