{"id":26699,"date":"2024-01-17T05:30:28","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T10:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=26699"},"modified":"2024-01-18T07:44:42","modified_gmt":"2024-01-18T12:44:42","slug":"planet-love-and-the-world-of-andrew-gold-part-2-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/17\/planet-love-and-the-world-of-andrew-gold-part-2-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Planet Love’ and the World of Andrew Gold (Part 2 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"In 1970, Gold hooked up with fellow singer-songwriters to form Bryndle. The group also included Karla Bonoff, Wendy Waldman and former Stone Poneys multi-instrumentalist Kenny Edwards. The songwriters\u2019 collective recorded an album for Herb Alpert\u2019s A&M Records, but it went unreleased. The group split after a lone single failed to gain traction on radio. Gold immersed himself in studio work, much of it for Linda Ronstadt.<\/p>\n

Gold\u2019s work as a versatile studio hand would consume much of his time, but he began a concurrent solo career in 1975 with a self-titled album. In the space of less than two years, he scored hit singles with \u201cLonely Boy\u201d (#7 U.S., #11 UK), \u201cThank You for Being a Friend\u201d (#25 U.S., #42 UK) and \u201cNever Let Her Slip Away (#15 U.S. adult contemporary, #5 UK). By the end of the decade, Gold had landed songs in the charts in Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand as well. But as quickly as his solo star had risen, he seemed to disappear from the music marketplace: 1978\u2019s All This and Heaven Too<\/i> would be his last album to appear on the charts.<\/p>\n

Returning to England, in 1981 Gold started working with 10cc. That group had found success as a foursome with Kevin Godley, Lol Creme, Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman, but by late 1976 the group was down to a duo of Stewart and Gouldman. \u201cWe had a certain amount of success as the two of us,\u201d Gouldman says. \u201cBut our American record company wanted us to work with an American writer\/producer.\u201d The Warner Brothers executives believed doing so might increase the band\u2019s chances of Stateside success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey suggested Andrew, and I absolutely jumped to it,\u201d Gouldman says, \u201cbecause I was a massive fan of Andrew.\u201d Gold produced, played, sang and wrote several songs that appeared on the U.S. release of 10cc\u2019s well-regarded Ten Out of 10<\/i> album. He was invited to join the band as a full member, but demurred because of other commitments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great fun working with Andrew,\u201d says Gouldman. \u201cWe had very good chemistry right away.\u201d Gouldman\u2019s working relationship with Stewart, however, was becoming strained. \u201cWe both decided to kind of call it a day, and I asked Andrew to work with me,\u201d Gouldman recalls. \u201cI had a little studio in my house. Initially he was going to come over for two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gold ended up staying on for six months. \u201cHe pretty much played every instrument,\u201d Gouldman says. \u201cHe was a master of all trades: fantastic guitarist, great drummer, keyboard player, singer and producer. He had great instinct; he had it all.\u201d An entire album was recorded, but \u2013 like the Bryndle record more than a decade before \u2013 it wouldn’t be released.<\/p>\n

The two developed a solid working relationship and a deep friendship. \u201cAndrew was hilarious and very creative,\u201d Gouldman says. \u201cThough he was a bit obsessive as well.\u201d Gouldman recalls that Gold fussed for hours creating intricate phone answering machine messages. \u201cMere mortals might just [record a recitation of] \u2018I can\u2019t take your call right now,\u2019\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cBut Andrew would do these full-on calypso arrangements with steel drums and the right sort of guitars. He loved<\/i> doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gouldman says that even though Andrew Gold had the skills and ability to work completely on his own, he was a superb collaborator. The two formed a duo, Wax, and began work on their debut, Magnetic Heaven<\/i> in 1985. \u201cThe only time Andrew would show a bit of control freakery was in the studio,\u201d Gouldman recalls. Phil Thornalley was the nominal producer of the sessions, but that didn\u2019t stop Gold from getting his hands on the console. \u201cAndrew would go over to the compressors and stuff, tweaking them,\u201d Gouldman says. \u201cThis eventually pissed Phil off a little bit. Andrew would get told off, and he would listen. But he had that in him. His motives were good, but the way he went about it could’ve been a bit more discreet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Wax was primarily a studio project, but Gouldman and Gold did assemble a touring band, featuring former 10cc guitarist Rick Fenn, Roger Jackson on keyboards and drummer Mike Richardson. \u201cThe actual playing was brilliant,\u201d Gouldman emphasizes, \u201cbut the tour was disastrous; we had a crap promoter.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Gold loved being onstage, but there was one major part of touring that he did not enjoy. \u201cThe only bad thing in the whole of it for Andrew was flying,\u201d Gouldman says. \u201cThat was really what brought things to a halt.\u201d He recalls being on board a flight from London to some destination in Europe. \u201cAndrew was actually holding onto the seat in front and shaking,\u201d Gouldman recalls. \u201cEventually, he couldn’t do it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gouldman notes that Andrew Gold\u2019s versatility as a writer, in the studio and onstage made him a kind of musical chameleon. He could create music in whatever style and character called for by the circumstances. Like Gouldman \u2013 who had already written many hits for artists as varied as The Yardbirds, the Hollies, Herman\u2019s Hermits, Jeff Beck, the Ohio Express and many others \u2013 Gold could slip into whatever musical persona he chose, and then move onto another with ease.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe could apply himself to anything<\/i>,\u201d Gouldman says. And a hallmark of Gold\u2019s work was its inner complexity, manifesting in a seemingly simple, accessible way. \u201cHe liked unusual chord changes, but the thing with him was the melody. He had that gift: it\u2019s something that you can’t learn, you can’t teach it. It’s just inherent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to continue<\/a>\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… In 1970, Gold hooked up with fellow singer-songwriters to form Bryndle. The group also included Karla Bonoff, Wendy Waldman and former Stone Poneys multi-instrumentalist Kenny Edwards. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26706,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,51,57],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-26699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-pop","category-psych","tag-andrew-gold","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","cat-57-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26699"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26826,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26699\/revisions\/26826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}