Andrew Gold

Andrew Gold

Andrew Gold (born Andrew Maurice Gold, August 2, 1951, Burbank, California) is an American singer, musician and songwriter, best known in the United States for his 1977 Top 10 single "Lonely Boy" and the 1978 single "Thank You for Being a Friend." His best known solo single in the UK is 1978's "Never Let Her Slip Away".

He has the distinction of being the first human voice to be 'heard' on the surface of Mars: his rendition of the theme from the television series Mad About You, entitled "Final Frontier," was used as the wake-up call for the Mars Pathfinder space probe in 1996.

He is a prolific multi-instrumentalist as artist, producer, film composer, session musician, actor, painter, and singer.

Early life

Gold joined the family business: his mother is singer Marni Nixon (who provided the singing voice for numerous well-known actresses, notably Natalie Wood in West Side Story, Deborah Kerr in The King and I, and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady); his father was the late Academy Award-winning composer for the movie Exodus, Ernest Gold. He has two younger sisters: Martha, born in 1953 and Melani, born in 1962. Gold began writing songs at the age of 13.

Career

1970s

By the early 1970s he was working as a musician, songwriter and music producer for many well-known artists. He was a member of the Los Angeles band Bryndle alongside Kenny Edwards, Wendy Waldman and Karla Bonoff. He played a major role as multi-instrumentalist and arranger for Ronstadt's breakthrough album, 1974's Heart Like a Wheel, and her next four albums. Among other accomplishments, he played the majority of instruments on the album's first track, including the famous guitar work on "You're No Good," Ronstadt's first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100, and the same on "When Will I Be Loved", "Heatwave", and many others. He was in her band from 1973, until 1977, and then sporadically throughout the 80's and 90's.

In 1975 Gold began recording as a solo artist, releasing four studio albums in the seventies and over 12 since then. His single "Lonely Boy" has appeared in many movie soundtracks, including Boogie Nights (1997) and Adam Sandler's movie Water Boy and others. Although "Lonely Boy" was the bigger radio hit in the States, his hit single "Thank You For Being A Friend" later gained huge popularity as the theme song for the popular 1985–1992 NBC situation comedy The Golden Girls (performed by Cindy Fee for the show). Gold is also known for his biggest UK hit song "Never Let Her Slip Away", which was a UK #5 hit twice, by him and again at #5 14 years later by Undercover. Freddie Mercury, who was a friend of Gold's, assisted him with the harmony background vocals of the song.

In 1977 alone, he worked with Art Garfunkel, playing all the instruments on Garfunkel's huge solo hit "I Only Have Eyes For You", as well as most of Garfunkel's album "Breakaway" ; He played guitar and drums on Eric Carmen's , Boats Against the Current, including the hit "She Did It", which was a #23 hit that same year.; Throughout the years, he played on Stephen Bishop's hit, "On and On"; Played and/or sang on records and/or live performances with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Brian Wilson, Don Henley, Cher's hit album- "If I Could turn Back Time", wrote hits for Trisha Yearwood, Wynonna Judd, for whom he co-wrote the #1 single "I Saw The Light" with Lisa Angelle, who he later produced in her own right; Toured with The Eagles, Played on record and toured with Jackson Browne, Produced, wrote and sang/played on 3 10cc tracks; Played and sang on record, and toured with James Taylor, Produced singles for Vince Gill, and Karla Bonoff, including her #19 hit "Personally", wrote and produced for Celine Dion; Was second engineer on part of Joni Mitchell's "Blue" album; and too many others to mention, and is considered an important part of the whole "Southern California Music Mafia", who were considered the pioneers of the "pop-country" genre.

1980s

In the early 80's, after 10cc's 1981 album Ten Out of 10 was completed, founding members Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman invited Andrew to become a member. Although Gold was a fan of hits "I'm Not In Love" and "The Things We Do For Love", and wanted to join, business conflicts prevented him from doing so for a short time. In late 1983 10cc broke up due to artistic conflicts between Gouldman and Stewart. Gold and Gouldman then formed Wax. Wax recorded and toured for 5-6 years, enjoying success worldwide and had several top 10 hits including "Right Between the Eyes", and their biggest hit "Bridge to Your Heart", which reached an average of #5 in six major countries. In 1986, interestingly, the duo had a #1 hit in Spain, lasting 6 months on top, and in a bizarre record company decision, no further singles were released there. The band broke up in 1989, but Gold and Gouldman continue to write and record together when possible.

1990s

During the 1990s Gold once again joined forces with bandmates Karla Bonoff, Wendy Waldman and Kenny Edwards to re-form Bryndle and release their first album. Marrying a British woman in 1990, he appeared twice with his family of 3 daughters, Emily, Victoria, and Olivia Gold on Family Feud, for fun, on the daytime version in 1990 and the syndicated version in 1991. In 1996, he produced a classic original songs Halloween album, "Halloween Howls", considered by some notable people such as "Dr. Demento" as one of the two best Halloween albums in history. It is currently being developed as an animated movie. The same year he recorded a cult hit under a pseudonym, "The Fraternal Order Of The All" "Greetings from Planet Love" on his own record label QBrain records. This album was a fake 60's band, with original songs in the style of Andrew's favorite Psychodelic 60's bands, such as The Beatles, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan etc. He released a rareties Wax album, called Bikini Wax, and the same year he made one of his most acclaimed solo records, Since 1951. He has since also produced, composed, and/or written songs for numerous films, such as the comedy "Rectuma" from Director Mark Pirro and contributed songs for many television soundtracks and commercials. He also sang "Final Frontier", the theme song for the Paul Reiser/Helen Hunt sitcom Mad About You. He produced seven albums for Eikichi Yazawa, famous Japanese rock/pop singer.

2000s

Currently, together with his second wife, screenwriter Leslie Kogan, Gold is trying his hand at writing and directing some short films. He was recently persuaded to release some rare cover versions of many Beatles and Beach Boys classics he recorded throughout the years for fun, titling the CD CopyCat. On this record, Gold played all instruments and sang all vocals himself. Over the last years, Gold was working on a new Solo Album with original songs (the first new solo record since 2001) He planned to release the album and tour more extensively in 2011 but for the moment, these plans are on ice.

Albums

• 1975 "Andrew Gold"
• 1976 "What's Wrong With This Picture"
• 1978 "All This And Heaven Too"
• 1979 "Whirlwind"
• 1996 "...Since 1951"
• 1997 "Thank You For Being A Friend" (Compilation)
• 2000 "The Spence Manor Suite"
• 2002 "Intermission"
• 2008 "Copy Cat"

Singles

• 1975 "Heartaches in Heartaches"
• 1976 "Do Wah Diddy"
• 1976 "One Of Them Is Me"
• 1976 "Stay"
• 1976 "That's Why I Love You" #68 U.S.
• 1977 "Lonely Boy" #7 U.S. (#11 U.K.)
• 1978 "How Can This Be Love" (#19 U.K.)
• 1978 "I'm On My Way"
• 1978 "Thank You for Being a Friend" #25 U.S. (#42 U.K.)
• 1978 "Never Let Her Slip Away" #67 U.S. (#5 U.K.)
• 1987 with Graham Gouldman under the name WAX, Gouldman and Gold

He had a worldwide #5 (average) hit in over 5 major countries with "Bridge To Your Heart", and a #43 album in the US, "Magnetic Heaven".

(Note - 3 of these singles were released as promo copies only. Also, some chart numbers here are from the magazine Cashbox, and Record World, no longer in publication, but which at the time were considered to be equally accurate in reporting chart positions as Billboard, the main source of consumer chart reporting today. Numbers are similar.)

External links

• Andrew Gold home page