America was formed in London in 1970 by Dewey Bunnell, Dan Peek, and Gerry Beckley. The trio met as sons of US Air Force personnel stationed in London, where they began performing live. Peek left for the United States for a failed attempt at college during 1969. Soon after his return to the UK the following year, the three began making music together. Starting out with borrowed acoustic guitars, they developed a style that incorporated three-part vocal harmony. In May 1977, Dan Peek left the band. He recently had renewed his Christian faith after years of recreational drug use and had begun to seek a different artistic direction from Beckley or Bunnell; the break with the band was amicable. Tin Man was written by Dewey Bunnell and produced by (Beatles producer) Sir George Martin, who also plays the piano part on the recorded version. DEWEY BUNNELL: “Tin Man was manufactured from the chunks of thoughts and themes that I was putting together into a kind of mosaic. It wasn’t a common thread. I originally wanted to write a cohesive dialogue about The Wizard of Oz, which I loved. It was my favorite movie as a kid and it’s still one of my Top Ten. The song is like surrealism, which was a genre of art that was always mesmerizing for me. There’s the whole psychedelic thing, coming out of the Sixties, the Woodstock generation, opening your eyes, expanding your mind and looking at things differently. We really did, we were a straight culture out of the Fifties. It was all black and white."