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Post by the Scribe on Mar 22, 2020 21:59:11 GMT
An unusual place to start a tribute but the NYT gives a great summary of Andrew's life.Andrew Gold, Singer and Songwriter, Dies at 59www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/arts/music/andrew-gold-singer-and-songwriter-dies-at-59.html
By Paul Vitello
June 7, 2011
Andrew Gold, a pop wunderkind who had barely finished high school when Linda Ronstadt enlisted him to play in her backup band, and who later had a successful recording career of his own with hits like “Lonely Boy” and “Thank You for Being a Friend,” died on Friday at his home in Encino, Calif. He was 59.
His family said that he had renal cancer and had been responding well to treatment but that the cause of death might have been a heart attack.
Mr. Gold’s combination of instrumental versatility and songwriting skill gave him a prominent if sometimes invisible role in shaping the Los Angeles-dominated pop-rock style of the 1970s. In addition to his instrumental and arranging work for Ms. Ronstadt’s breakout 1974 album, “Heart Like a Wheel,” Mr. Gold was a much sought after musician whose guitar and piano work (he also played bass and drums) helped define the seamless texture of recordings by artists like James Taylor, Carly Simon, Maria Muldaur, Jackson Browne and Loudon Wainwright III.
Though he was considered a masterly musician, he never learned to read music. “We gave him lessons on piano and guitar, but somehow he found it easier to just listen to something and play it by ear,” said Mr. Gold’s mother, the singer Marni Nixon.
www.marninixon.com/
Both of Mr. Gold’s parents were prominent musicians. Ms. Nixon, a classically trained soprano who has performed on Broadway and with the New York Philharmonic, is best known for dubbing the movie singing voices of Natalie Wood in “West Side Story” and Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady.” His father, Ernest Gold, who died in 1999, wrote the Academy Award-winning score for the movie “Exodus,” as well as the scores for “Judgment at Nuremberg” and “Ship of Fools.”
www.nytimes.com/1999/03/21/nyregion/ernest-gold-77-oscar-winning-composer.html
“It was clear from the beginning that I was going to be a musician,” Mr. Gold told The Los Angeles Times in 1977.
Andrew Gold, guitarist, pianist, bassist and drummer, in 1997.Credit...Helen Neafsey
Andrew Gold was born on Aug. 2, 1951, in Burbank, Calif., the first of his parents’ three children. He was attending the Oakwood School, a private high school in North Hollywood, when Ms. Ronstadt and her band, the Stone Poneys, performed there in the late 1960s. Mr. Gold introduced himself.
Mr. Gold is survived by his wife, Leslie Kogan; his mother; two sisters, Martha Carr and Melani Gold Friedman; and by his daughters Emily, Victoria and Olivia, from his first marriage, to Vanessa Gold, which ended in divorce.
After several years with Ms. Ronstadt, Mr. Gold began a solo career that produced pop hits like “Thank You for Being a Friend,” which later became the theme song for the long-running NBC sitcom “The Golden Girls.” He later recorded with Art Garfunkel, Brian Wilson, Cher and three former Beatles: John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
Mr. Gold’s first solo hit, “Lonely Boy,” which reached No. 7 on the Billboard singles chart in 1977, resonated in his family at least as much as it did on the charts. It was the story of a first-born child who feels betrayed when a baby sister is born. “How could his parents have lied?” it goes. “He thought he was the only one. Oh, oh, what a lonely boy.”
The lyrics drew so many parallels to the songwriter’s life — “born on a summer day, 1951,” parents who resolved to “teach him what we’ve learned” — that his mother was taken aback.
“I said, ‘Andy, oh, my God, the pain you must have felt,’ ” Ms. Nixon said in an telephone interview Monday. “But he said he hadn’t even thought of it that way. He thought he was making it up.”
His sister Martha Carr, a psychotherapist, said that episode partly explained her brother’s success as a songwriter. “When Andy felt deeply,” she said, “he would just make it a song.”Andrew Gold and the ’70s Soundwww.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/opinion/08wed4.html?action=click&module=RelatedCoverage&pgtype=Article®ion=Footer
By Verlyn Klinkenborg
June 7, 2011
At one time, I thought I owned every album Andrew Gold played on between 1974 and 1980, nearly all of them recorded and produced in southern California. I was wrong. I never owned the albums he recorded with Barbi Benton, Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend in the early 1970s, even though she went to high school with me. I wasn’t intentionally collecting Gold, who died last week at age 59. He just happened to back up, produce or appear with nearly everyone I was listening to at the time.
www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/arts/music/andrew-gold-singer-and-songwriter-dies-at-59.html
Andrew Gold doesn’t define the southern California pop of that era. But if you listen to the songs he played, you come away with a vivid feel for the sensibility of those years, a music of the subtropical twilights and the soft westerlies, to borrow a phrase from Joan Didion. Gold knew catchy, and nearly all the songwriters he knew — Karla Bonoff for one — knew catchy as well.
When I hear Gold’s name, I hear the names of dozens of studio musicians from that time: Waddy Wachtel, Dan Dugmore, Kenny Edwards, Wendy Waldman and on and on. Above all, I hear Linda Ronstadt, who broke through big with “Heart Like a Wheel,” the first of her albums that featured Gold.
The music certainly wasn’t L.A. noir. It was L.A. velour. As for Gold’s early solo albums, which yielded the songs “Thank You for Being a Friend,” “Lonely Boy” and “Never Let Her Slip Away,” they were painfully sweet but catchy, and I was caught.
I remember watching Gold in Ronstadt’s band, playing piano and a flame-toned Les Paul guitar that was nearly the color of his hair and beard. He was an excitable boy (to quote Warren Zevon, who lived on a darker but adjacent musical street), and it showed.
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 12, 2020 11:34:30 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 12, 2020 11:36:19 GMT
Wait. Am I getting this right? Andrew was basically calling Linda “scatterbrained.” And saying his mother was similarly “scatterbrained.” The mom did set him up for that. But still.. not nice. I guess it was all in fun. Peter Asher would never say that about Linda. He was aware that her giggly stage presence in the 70s caused people to get the wrong idea, that she was highly intelligent and that was just nerves coming through. Linda did admit back in the day she did say some silly things in public when feeling compelled to fill up the silence between songs. She’d trot out a fun fact she’d learned about the city where she was playing. So in upstate NY she told the crowd she’d heard it was “the INCEST capital of the country.” Lol. Maybe AG was playfully aacknowledging moments from that era when she said things without thinking them through. *************************************************************** I just read that this song written by Andrew Gold is about Linda Ronstadt. One of his best and most heartfelt songs to be sure. Evidently it was an unconsummated-one-sided love affair.
Goldie
There's a girl I know
So far away from here
She's got a lover, she's got a friend
And she's got someone who's always near
One of them is me
Yeah, don't know who
One of them is me
And I don't know who
Oh look into my eyes
Tell me what you see
One of them is me
And I don't know who
She's got so many men
Who long to love her
To feel her body next to theirs
Or just to understand her
One of them is me
And I don't know who
One of them is me
And I don't know who
Oh look into my eyes
Tell me what you see
One of them is me
And I don't know who
Oh come to me sweet baby
I'm in love with you and I cant stop it now
You're a part of me
Oh save me, oh save me from you
What can I do
She loves a man
Who makes her feel lonely
She loves a man
Who makes her feel so guilty
One of them is me
And I don't know who
One of them is me
I don't know who
Oh look into my eyes
Tell me what you see
One of them is me
And I don't know who
Oh look into my eyes
Tell me what you see
One of them is me
And I don't know who
A glimpse from Peter Lewry's book:
A whimsical and somewhat telling foreword by Andrew Gold. You need to read between the lines but if anything he was quite fond of Linda so a terrible crush or love doesn't seem too much of a stretch. Maybe only Andrew knows the truth which he took with him the morning he didn't wake up on his last day here, June 3, 2011.
From the Early Seventies, on and off until 1993, I was in Linda Ronstadt’s band, often playing quite a large role, on stage and on record. Our band did countless tours and spent a huge amount of time together, personally and professionally. Although there were people Linda would call closer friends, I did see a lot of what was going on in her life and with her career, especially in the mellow yet wild 70’s. I had the most wonderful time of my youth in those early days of the seventies, and was very spoiled by the huge success I walked into right out of school, all starry eyed and innocent in my early 20’s way. I think the enormity of her success in 1974 after Heart Like A Wheel came out was a bit daunting at first anyway, even to her, and we all were pretty much alternating, sometimes hourly, between the euphoria of power, riches and fame, to the extreme stress and tiredness in keeping up with the demands on her from every corner of the earth. She was, for a very long time in the seventies, the most famous female rocker in America. As you may imagine, it was hectic and non-stop, but we were all young and ambitious, with a healthy dose of post 60’s party instinct to boot. At the center, however, was of course the music. The music came first always.
Which is where this book fits in nicely. The music is the central player, not the crazy personal details which, in most biographies about musicians, are incomplete, or too complete (Yikes. We did that??) or just wild conjecture on the part of the journalist, second hand stories, and embellished folk lore made up for the sake of entertainment. Although there are some bits here about personal relationships, incidents and events, there are only just enough to give the proper perspective and setting, and they are mercifully short and mostly accurate as far as I know (or remember). Thank God they left out the whole Pig Stye incident, and doesn’t mention my and Linda’s torrid and hauntingly brutal sado-machochistic love affair with the bunny and the dagger, her whole Satanic/Hannah-Barbera period, the grizzly “cookies eaten out of the garbage pail”, or who’s boy scout outfit that was, but this is a good thing, and will cost less in legal fees. Mainly, because none of these things happened. (OK, I did admittedly draw knives flying to the cute bunnies she always doodled, ok, ok?? Jeez!) My point being, it’s usually best to stick to the facts of someone’s music career, unless you really know the truth about the personal details, and Linda’s music is covered quite succinctly and accurately here. Besides, let me write the dirt later…Who needs friends? So, Linda. It was grand, and I loved making music with you, and why are you not in the rock and roll hall of fame? I can rent a tux within the hour…
As she calls me,
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Post by the Scribe on Apr 17, 2020 10:09:39 GMT
In 1996 Gold’s was the first human voice to be “heard” on the surface of Mars, when Final Frontier, his theme from the American television series Mad About You, was used to activate a robot for the Mars Pathfinder space probe.
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Post by the Scribe on May 21, 2020 23:57:42 GMT
YOU'RE NO GOODLinda Ronstadt began performing “You’re No Good” to close her live shows in early 1973 after her band member Kenny Edwards suggested it to her. She first included it in her setlist while opening for Neil Young. Ronstadt gave an early televised performance of “You’re No Good” on an episode of The Midnight Special which was broadcast December 21, 1973.
Ronstadt recorded her Heart Like a Wheel album with producer Peter Asher in the summer of 1974 at the Sound Factory; “You’re No Good” was a last-minute choice for recording, and while the song was Ronstadt’s suggestion, Asher recalls: “It was an odd coincidence. She’d been doing the song already, and it was always a favorite song of mine…the version I fell in love with [being by] the Swinging Blue Jeans”.[5] The original backing track intended for Ronstadt’s version of “You’re No Good” was recorded July 1, 1974. According to Bob Warford, a guitarist in Ronstadt’s touring band who played on the July 1 track, “They were trying to do an R&B version of the song, which was actually closer to the way we did it live than to the released version. We played it at a faster tempo live, which we did on that recording [ie. of July 1].”[5] Ronstadt vetoed the July 1 arrangement; she recalls: “It was just the wrong groove for me. I don’t think I knew how to phrase around [the players], certainly no fault of theirs. They were fantastic.”[5]
The final recording of the Ronstadt version of “You’re No Good” was made July 5, 1974. Ronstadt would recall: “Ed Black, who played six-string guitar and pedal steel, started to play a rhythm riff on his Les Paul. Kenny Edwards…the bass player…echoed the riff in octaves. Andrew Gold added a sparse drum track, giving me a basic track to sing over. We did a few takes, picked one we liked, and then Andrew, who always played guitars and keyboards went to work with Peter [Asher]and began to work up layers of guitar, piano, and percussion tracks.” Ronstadt recalls that during a playback after several hours of work, Val Garay, the engineer, accidentally erased Andrew Gold’s guitar solo from the track, necessitating Asher and Gold’s reconstructing that solo from scratch.[6]
In late August 1974 a string arrangement – by Gregory Rose – was added to the track at AIR Studios. According to a Classic Tracks article by Mick Hurwitz at MixOnline.com: “It ends with a strong, long-held note, which Asher conceived, executed by Garay with a slow riding of the level on the string faders during the final mix.”[5]
Capitol Records was unsure whether to release “You’re No Good” or “When Will I Be Loved” as the lead single off Heart Like a Wheel, only deciding to release “You’re No Good” a week after the album’s release.
dreamsinthewind.com/linda-ronstadt/
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Post by the Scribe on May 22, 2020 0:01:16 GMT
Classic Track: Andrew Gold's "Lonely Boy""Lonely Boy" is an international hit song from 1977, written and recorded by Andrew Gold in 1976 for his album What's Wrong with This Picture? It spent five months on the American charts, peaking at number seven in both Canada and the United States and number 11 in the United Kingdom. While "Lonely Boy" would be Gold's biggest U.S. hit, his "Never Let Her Slip Away" achieved greater success in the U.K.
Linda Ronstadt sang backing vocals on this track, marking a role reversal for the singers: Gold backed Ronstadt (on keyboards, guitar and vocals) on her albums Heart Like a Wheel, Prisoner in Disguise and Hasten Down the Wind.
The song follows the life of a child who feels neglected by his parents after the birth of a younger sister. Many assume this song to be autobiographical, yet Gold denied the implication, despite great similarities between the lyrics and his life.
Regarding the verses' first lines: "He was born on a summer day in 1951" matches Andrew's August 2, 1951 birthday, "In the summer of '53 his mother/Brought him a sister" matches his sister Martha's July 22, 1953 birthday, and "He left home on a winter day, 1969" may well match the formation of Bryndle, of which Andrew was a member, in 1969.
(I'm a huge Bryndle fan)
The song was also released as an edited single, eliminating the vocal bridge and shortening the instrumental finale.
The song was featured in a number of films including Boogie Nights (1997), The Waterboy (1998), and The Nice Guys (2016).
In 1982 Italian singer Ron covered the song adding Italian language lyrics, releasing it as Cosa farò in his album Guarda chi si vede.
In 1997 country music band Blackhawk recorded a cover for their third studio album Love & Gravity
In February 2000, the Foo Fighters recorded a cover of the song to be used as a B-side for an upcoming single off their 1999 album There Is Nothing Left to Lose; however, it wasn't used as a B-side as planned.
In 2007, the song was covered separately by the bands Farrah and Lazlo Bane.
In 2013, rock band The Almost covered this song for their album Fear Inside Our Bones.
British-American band The Hoosiers often cover this song when they perform live.
"Lonely Boy" Linda Ronstadt Band Interview Session With Andrew Gold
Q - How long did it take to write "Lonely Boy"?
A - It was about four hours. I was just in this zone where I can get when I'm writing songs. I'm kind of tuned into some sort of like a stream of creativity that you stop sort of judging yourself and realize that mistakes made can really be great instead of bad. It can take you interesting places. That kind of stuff makes for writing a good song. I always feel when I'm writing that if I'm sick, I don't feel sick. That's sort of an alpha wave that gets very strong in creative people when they're creating. So it took about four hours. It was gonna be a real long song, because back then that's what people were doing a lot. They would cut it down for radio. But I got bored after the third verse. Originally it was not gonna be me at all. But then I thought, just leave it like this. And then we went out and rehearsed the song, played it on the road during my show as a song we hadn't recorded yet. We played it for about two months and really knew it at the end. I went into the studio and recorded it 'live'. All of it is 'live'. There were little strings on this machine which were like fakes, but we liked the sound. The sleigh bells, the drummer was amazing. It's quite a feat. Quite a show. The song originally had a real plaintive kind of soft section in the middle. And everybody said to hell with that, let's pump it up! And we played it out and it was much better. We were playing it on the road and we were getting applause in the middle of the song. A brand new song, they were going "yeah." So when we recorded it, I felt very confident about what we were doing. And we added some real strings and I put the vocal on and that was it.
Q - How'd you get that gig in Linda Ronstadt's band? Were you friends with Peter Asher?
A - No. I hadn't met Peter Asher yet and I didn't know he was managing Linda. But looking back, I heard he had just started with Linda, and producer of the album before the one I did, which was "Heart Like A Wheel", which had various big hits. My band, who had Kenny who was part of The Stone Ponys, was a magnificent guitar player. A guy named Gene Garfin played drums and sang high. Bass was a guy named Peter Bernstein, whose father is Elmer Bernstein, a famous music composer. We were opening up for Linda. It was a George McGovern fund raiser. We went on and Linda watched us and liked what I did and called me the next day and said "Would you consider playing in my band?" I said "Consider it? Absolutely." I got there and they put my amp onstage. I thought oh, I have arrived to total luxury. I don't have to carry my amp anymore, which to this day is still my least favorite thing to do. About a month later Kenny joined, playing bass. He usually played guitar, but he got really good on the bass.
After I was in her band for about one tour, and I had never been on a tour and it was a very rough tour, we were opening for Jackson Browne. The first part, when we flew out, we had the worst turbulence I had ever felt in any plane before or after. Because of that, I wrote a song called "Endless Flight" that was pretty much the story of my life there. (laughs) I hate flying.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_Flight)
It was so cold back East. It was pretty disheartening and the people on the tour were kind of weird. Just didn't get along with them that much. So when it came time for the second half, she was begging me to come back and play. They had a temporary girl, in fact it was Karla Bonoff, but she just sort of did a very slow miniscule version of what I was doing. She (Linda Ronstadt) begged me. "I'll give you more money." She basically said...let me put it this way, "I'll give you my body. I'll sleep with you." I can't believe that I did not take her up on that. That would've been very nice. I said "C'mon, you don't have to go that far." So anyway, I did join her band and then stayed in it for real. She started paying us retainers and off we went.
www.classicbands.com/AndrewGoldInterview.html
Andrew Gold during 'Lonely Boy' Linda Ronstadt Band Interview Session With Andrew Gold - February 15, 1977 in New York City, New York, United States:
www.gettyimages.com/event/lonely-boy-linda-ronstadt-band-interview-session-with-andrew-gold-february-75235473?#andrew-gold-during-lonely-boy-linda-ronstadt-band-interview-session-picture-id111580934
The 30 Greatest Rock & Roll Movie Moments
5. Andrew Gold, 'Lonely Boy' in 'Boogie Nights' (1998)
One of the most unbelievably sad moments ever captured on film, as P.T. Anderson takes a harmless bit of Seventies soft-rock fluff and turns it into a heartbreaking requiem for basically everybody in the movie, if not America in general. It’s a druggy L.A. pool party at Burt Reynolds' mansion, in the coked-out stupor of the Seventies. All the porn stars are there to make the scene: Julianne Moore, Mark Wahlberg, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzman (former president of the Greendale ceramics club). The phone rings in the kitchen – just some kid looking for somebody who isn't there. You realize how completely doomed all these party people are, and how savagely they are going to break the hearts of everybody they ever touch. Oh, what a lonely
He was born on a summer day 1951
And with a slap of a hand
He landed as an only son
His mother and father said what a lovely boy
We'll teach him what we learned
Ah yes just what we learned
We'll dress him up warmly and
We'll send him to school
It'll teach him how to fight
To be nobody's fool
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
In the summer of '53 his mother
Brought him a sister
And she told him we must attend to her needs
She's so much younger than you
Well he ran down the hall and he cried
Oh how could his parents have lied
When they said he was an only son
He thought he was the only one
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Goodbye mama, goodbye to you
Goodbye papa I'm pushing on through
He left home on a winter day 1969
And he hoped to find all the love
He had lost in that earlier time
Well his sister grew up
And she married a man
He gave her a son
Ah yes a lovely son
They dressed him up warmly
They sent him to school
It taught him how to fight
To be nobody's fool
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
full interview including the making of Lonely Boy and some interesting times in Linda Ronstadt's band
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Post by the Scribe on Sept 12, 2020 23:01:01 GMT
In Remembrance: Andrew Gold 1951 - 2011Nina
14.2K subscribers
"Thank You For Being A Friend" by Andrew Gold
From the 1978 album All This And Heaven Too
In remembrance for sweet Andrew Gold and all his dear family and friends.
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Post by the Scribe on Nov 22, 2021 2:05:41 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on Feb 26, 2022 8:15:33 GMT
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Post by the Scribe on May 26, 2022 21:54:08 GMT
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