Andrew Gold

Andrew Maurice Gold (August 2, 1951 – June 3, 2011) was an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and record producer who influenced much of the Los Angeles-dominated pop/soft rock sound in the 1970s. Gold performed on scores of records by other artists, especially Linda Ronstadt, and had his own success with the U.S. top 40 hits "Lonely Boy" (1977) and "Thank You for Being a Friend" (1978), as well as the UK top five hit "Never Let Her Slip Away" (1978). In the 1980s, he had further international chart success as one half of Wax, a collaboration with 10cc's Graham Gouldman. During the 1990s, Gold produced, composed, performed on and wrote tracks for films, commercials, and television soundtracks, such as "Final Frontier", the theme of the sitcom Mad About You. Some of his older works experienced newfound popularity: "Thank You for Being a Friend" sung by another performer was used as the opening theme for The Golden Girls, and the children's novelty song "Spooky, Scary Skeletons" (1996) became an Internet meme in the 2010s. In 1997, Gold released a tribute to 1960s psychedelic music, Greetings from Planet Love, issued under the pseudonym "the Fraternal Order of the All". He died in 2011 aged 59 from heart failure. Early life Gold was born on August 2, 1951, in Burbank, California, and eventually followed his parents into show business. His mother was singer Marni Nixon, who provided the singing voice for numerous 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 Ernest Gold, an Austrian-born composer who won an Academy Award for his score for the movie Exodus. He had two younger sisters. Gold began writing songs at the age of 13. While in school in the United Kingdom for one year, the 16-year-old Gold scored his first recording contract on the strength of a selection of demos he submitted to Polydor Records' London office. That contract resulted in the single "Of All the Little Girls", which was recorded with his friend and collaborator Charlie Villiers, and released in 1967 under the name Villiers and Gold.