Andrew Gold born 2 August 1951

Andrew Maurice Gold (August 2, 1951 – June 3, 2011) influenced much of the sound of Los Angeles-dominated pop rock in the 1970’s. Best known for his solo hits Never Let Her Slip Away and Lonely Boy, he was an accomplished all-round musician, composer and arranger. His skills in the recording studio helped to propel Linda Ronstadt to stardom, and he worked with a long list of top-flight artists from the Eagles and Jackson Browne to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Cher and Celine Dion.

A musical career seemed almost inevitable from the moment he was born, in Burbank, California. His parents were Marni Nixon, the singer who dubbed the musical performances of Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, Deborah Kerr in The King And I and Natalie Wood in West Side Story, and the composer Ernest Gold, who scored the movie Exodus. Andrew recalled living in Laurel Canyon as a teenager: "My father had this little studio with a piano and all his awards. When he was working on a movie he'd go up there and compose. I'd wake up to this piano music over and over. I was always going to be a musician, and my parents encouraged me."

He first met Ronstadt as a high school student in the 1960s, when he saw her perform with her band the Stone Poneys. When the group split up in 1967, Gold teamed up with their guitarist Kenny Edwards and singer-songwriters Wendy Waldman and Karla Bonoff to form Bryndle (the "y" in the name was in homage to The Byrds). The group secured a recording deal and made an album, though it was not released.

Bryndle split up, and Edwards and Gold joined Ronstadt's new band. Gold was a crucial contributor to her 1974 breakthrough album, Heart Like a Wheel. In 1975 Linda Ronstadt had her only US No 1 with a revival of "You're No Good", previously a hit for Betty Everett and the Swinging Blue Jeans. The record was produced by Peter Asher but it was a tour de force for Gold, who played electric piano and drums as well as the guitar solo. Gold sang a duet with Ronstadt on a revival of the Everly Brothers' "When Will I Be Loved", while Ronstadt encouraged him to branch out on a solo career.

Gold released  his first album, Andrew Gold, in 1975, and following it up with What's Wrong With This Picture? (1976). Lonely Boy gave him his first big hit, in 1977, (with Ronstadt on backing vocals) cracking the US top 10 and reaching No 11 in Britain. Gold revealed that the song was partly inspired by Ry Cooder's version of How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live. The following year brought a streak of further hits with How Can This Be Love, Thank You for Being a Friend and Never Let Her Slip Away, the last of these gaining far more recognition in the UK than in the US (it also featured Freddie Mercury on backing vocals).

                              

Gold now began to exhibit his skills across a broader canvas. He played all the instruments on Art Garfunkel's I Only Have Eyes for You and made numerous instrumental contributions to Garfunkel's 1975 album Breakaway. He played the drums and  

guitar on Eric Carmen's album Boats Against the Current (1977), which included the hit She Did It. He co-wrote the chart-topping single I Saw the Light (1992) for Wynonna Judd, and produced the top 20 hit Personally for Bonoff. He worked with all the ex-Beatles except George Harrison, and with Don Henley, Brian Wilson, James Taylor and many more.

Having collaborated on three songs with 10cc, Gold was invited to join the group, but was prevented from doing so by other commitments. However, when 10cc split in 1983, Gold teamed up with Graham Gouldman in Wax, which scored several big hits including Right Between the Eyes and Bridge to Your Heart,  
before splitting up in 1989. In the 90s, he reassembled Bryndle 
with its original members, and the group finally managed to release its debut album.

In 1996, Gold left Bryndle to essay several whimsical solo projects, such as the Halloween album Halloween Howls (1996) and a set of 60s pastiche tracks called Greetings from Planet Love, released under the pseudonym of the Fraternal Order of the All (1997).

In 2000, Gold compiled a Wax rarities album, House of Wax on Wax, as well as recording and releasing a new solo album The Spence Manor Suite; this last was followed in 2002 by another solo collection, Intermission. In the early 2000s, he formed a Byrds tribute band, Byrds of a Feather, which performed in the Los Angeles area. He appeared in a 2006 concert with the classic rock group America, and singer-songwriter Stephen Bishop.

He also pursued a fruitful sideline in music for commercials and movie and TV soundtracks. His song Thank You for Being a Friend was used as the theme for the television series The Golden Girls, in a version by Cynthia Fee; and also cropped up in episodes of The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live.

Gold was diagnosed with kidney cancer and responded well to treatment, but on June 3, 2011, he died in his sleep from what is suspected to have been heart failure at age 59 in Los Angeles.

(Edited mainly from article by Adam Sweering @ The Guardian & Wikipedia)