British rocker Graham Bonnet’s band, featuring Cherry Hill’s Beth-Ami Heavenstone, will perform in NJ

Graham Bonnet and Beth-Ami Heavenstone.

He’s a Brit, not a New Jerseyan. But Graham Bonnet’s return to New Jersey will be a homecoming.

Not for Bonnet, the onetime singer for Rainbow who belted out two of the group’s biggest hits, “Since You Been Gone” (1979) and “All Night Long” (1980). The homecoming will be for Bonnet’s bass player and longtime girlfriend Beth-Ami Heavenstone, who looks forward to reconnecting with fellow South Jerseyans when the Graham Bonnet Band plays the Landis Theater, a renovated 1930s Art Deco movie palace in Vineland, on May 10.

In an interview for NJArts.net, the L.A.-based couple was asked what fans can expect at the show.

“Possible wardrobe malfunctions. And that’s just Graham,” jokes Heavenstone.

“Yeah, that would be my fly breaking open,” says Bonnet.

EARLY DAYS

At age 14, Bonnet joined a dance band, singing a variety of genres from Sinatra to Beatles to jazz. He launched his recording career in 1968 when he and a cousin, Trevor Gordon, calling themselves The Marbles, scored a No. 5 hit in the U.K. with “Only One Woman,” a song written for them by The Bee Gees.

Later, Bonnet developed a reputation for collaborating with a string of guitar virtuosos, including Ritchie Blackmore, Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai and Michael Schenker.

In 1978, rumors were swirling that Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio was parting ways with the band led by Blackmore (Deep Purple’s founding guitarist). Bonnet reluctantly accepted an invitation to audition.

Graham Bonnet, second from right, on the cover of Rainbow’s 1980 single “All Night Long.”

“I didn’t have any idea who Ronnie Dio was, or Rainbow,” recalls the 77-year-old native of Lincolnshire, England. “I had no clue what I was getting myself into. I had to buy some albums and listen to the early Rainbow stuff. I listened to (Dio) and I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know about this. I don’t sing like that. I’ve never done any music that’s like this.’ I didn’t think I was right. But my manager at the time said, ‘You should go over there. You should learn one of their songs and just audition, and see what happens. Maybe nothing.’

“So I went over and sang a song called ‘Mistreated,’ which I learned off one of the albums. I basically went into the rehearsal with all their gear all set up, blasting away, and sang this damn song off-microphone! After we’d done the song, they all turned around and smiled at me. And I thought, ‘Aw, that’s it, then. I can go home now.’ But they said, ‘Oh, Graham, could you do that again? You were singing off-microphone.’ I said, ‘Well, can’t you hear me?’ They said, ‘No, we can hear you.’ That was the shock they had: We can hear you over the Marshall amps and the drums.

“The reason I sang off-microphone was because I thought I’d probably mess this song up. I was very uncertain about the song. I didn’t mess it up, obviously. I got the job.”

Bonnet received quite an education from working with Blackmore, who could be a taskmaster regarding the band’s sound and look. For instance, Blackmore detested Bonnet’s short haircut. He later told interviewers that he once put a guard on Bonnet’s hotel room to prevent a trip to the barber, a precaution he said Bonnet thwarted by jumping out the window.

Graham Bonnet, left, and Ritchie Blackmore in the video for Rainbow’s “Since You Been Gone.”

“It was nothing like that, I promise you,” Bonnet says with a laugh. “I didn’t jump out my hotel window. I was three floors up. I would never break my neck — on purpose.

“We all thought Ritchie was just nuts. Ritchie has this thing about hair, because of his lack of hair. That’s the way it goes, unfortunately.”

But Bonnet held a deep appreciation for the virtuosity of Blackmore and the band, which then included Don Airey (keyboards), Roger Glover (bass) and Cozy Powell (drums). “Every time I walked onstage with Rainbow, it was like walking into a warm living room,” Bonnet says. “I had no fear at all.”

POWER COUPLE

These days, Bonnet fronts the Graham Bonnet Band, which Heavenstone initially joined as a band member, but now also manages. How did the couple meet?

Heavenstone (to Bonnet): “You first.”

Bonnet: “I have no idea.”

She explains that Bonnet found her on LinkedIn. At first, their messages were mostly about producing music. “We had a few back-and-forths until I realized: He just liked my picture,” Heavenstone says. (Bonnet does not deny this.)

Beth-Ami Heavenstone performs with The Graham Bonnet Band in 2023.

But Heavenstone soon injected some reality into their conversation: “Early on, I had written to him, ‘It’s difficult for me. I’m a single mom with special-needs kids.’ He wrote back and said, ‘I have a son with autism, too.’ So everything sort of shifted. For months, that’s really all we talked about.”

Though they were not close geographically, Heavenstone was going to be in L.A. and suggested they meet for coffee.

She recalls: “We were getting coffee and I said, ‘I’m going to the ladies room. Don’t look at my butt.’ He said, ‘OK, I won’t.’ I was just kidding around.”

Later, Heavenstone’s band did a gig at the Whisky a Go Go, the legendary venue in West Hollywood, and Bonnet accepted her invitation to join them onstage. After singing The Beatles’ “Oh! Darling” and Badfinger’s “No Matter What,” Bonnet told Heavenstone: “Oh my God, that was so much fun! I want to be in a band with you.”

Sure enough, Bonnet enlisted her in 2013 while assembling a solo band. As time passed, Heavenstone took on more and more managerial duties.

“I’m really strong-willed,” she says. “Because of running the show, there’s been a shift in power that way. So I have to tell him what to do, even though I don’t want to be in that position. I want to be the soft, feminine type. But I’m not, really. I never was. You (Bonnet) can probably attest to that. I was always kind of tomboyish. But he loves me no matter what, and he understands that everything I do, it’s for his own good. We are best friends.”

The band — which also currently includes Conrado Pesinato (guitar) and Francis Cassol (drums) — is at work on a new album. Though the project is still in the early stages, Heavenstone lets it slip that Bonnet will be singing a duet with Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden.

ALL ABOUT THAT BASS

Heavenstone grew up in Cherry Hill, where she attended Cherry Hill High School East in the late 1970s.

“I was in, I hate to say it, kind of an abusive childhood,” she says. “I had lots of learning disabilities. Music was a life-saver for me. I threw myself into music.”

Heavenstone also lived in Philadelphia, New York and L.A., and became a bass player through happenstance. “I had a boyfriend who was a bass player,” she says. “He lived with me, and off me, for years. When he moved out, he left me a bass as a parting gift to cover his expenses or whatever. It was right-handed, and I’m not; I’m ambidextrous, but I write with my left hand. But it never felt weird to play (bass) with my right hand.”

In Los Angeles, Heavenstone met Tomi Rae, later known as Tomi Rae Brown, the widow of soul icon James Brown.

Beth-Ami Heavenstone, second from left, in the band Hardly Dangerous.

“She was just a teenager, a runaway, and she was a singer,” Heavenstone says. “She was in this band called Hardly Dangerous. I was fascinated by her and by the rest of the band. They needed a bass player. I lied and told them I had experience and all this stuff. I couldn’t really play at all at that point, but I figured if I put my mind to it, I could do anything. But Tomi knew I was lying; she farmed me out to a different band.”

This led to Heavenstone’s first gig as a bassist. “I auditioned on a Tuesday, and I played at The Whisky to a packed house the following Monday. That was it. I never went back to school.

“When I first started playing and I was in an all-girl band, I dressed like a hooker onstage. Because it opened doors. I used to be really pretty when I was young. You could get anything done if you were a pretty girl, especially in Los Angeles.

“I objectified myself, like everybody else did. I thought my only value was my appearance, not realizing that if I sat and actually played my bass more, that would have helped. I have to say that joining Graham’s band … he keeps me honest. I can’t get away with anything. He’s made me a much better player.

“Of course, I had dreams of being a rock star. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t. But did I think I’d get to play alongside one? No.

“Whenever people go, ‘You’re famous!,’ I say, ‘No, no, no. I’m fame-adjacent.’ ”

Graham Bonnet in his video for the song “Imposter.”

STAYING IN THE GAME

Considering all of the guitar maestros Bonnet has worked with over the years, did the singer gravitate toward them, or vice versa?

“It seems to be that they gravitate towards me,” he says. “Because of me being with Ritchie Blackmore in the first place, in Rainbow, it sort of gave me a pedigree of being some guy that wants the best guitar players in the world. Usually, I find that guitar players who have listened to my music, and to what I write about, are the ones that I choose. Or they choose me.”

Bonnet’s stock-in-trade as a vocalist has always been his pipes. Listen to “Since You’ Been Gone,” and hear a commanding voice. But Bonnet seems mystified over being termed a “heavy rock singer.”

“I just call myself a singer,” he says. “I could never really figure out why metal (music) is called metal. What’s metal about it? I’m still singing the same way I did when I was 19 years old back in England. It’s just the way I am.”

Though his voice is still strong, Bonnet has some challenges, to say the least. He is deaf in one ear and has tinnitus in the other. He explains: “My deafness happened over the years, using very loud headphones when I’m recording and also being in a band that was very loud.”

When performing, Bonnet hears himself via floor monitors on stage, with his vocals high in the mix.

He is not alone among his generation of performers. Physical longevity is increasingly important to artists of a certain age who wish to stay in the game. “I think everybody tries to keep healthy,” he says. “Everybody’s stopped drinking now. I know Glenn (Hughes of Deep Purple) cleaned up. He was terrible. He was worse than me! But I don’t smoke, I don’t drink.”

Does Bonnet attribute his good health to clean living alone? If so, Heavenstone might disagree.

“Oh, come on,” she chimes in. “Tell him it’s me!”

The Graham Bonnet Band will perform at The Landis Theater in Vineland, May 10 at 8 p.m.; visit TheLandisTheater.com

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