Good as Gold: Hit Songwriter Gets Posthumous Props

Considering he died four years ago, Andrew Gold has been an awfully busy fella. Plus, he’s been garnering the sort of attention and respect most of his living peers would kill for. Rolling Stone just mentioned his solo debut as one of the Ten Best singer-songwriter discs of the seventies. There’s talk of a documentary. And the boutique label, Omnivore Recordings, recently put out The Late Show-Live 1978, a smoking set by this piquant purveyor of Power Pop. Andrew Who? Actually, you know him. Gold had a big hit with the melancholic “Lonely Boy” and he wrote the evergreen “Thank You For Being A Friend.” He also arranged Linda Ronstadt’s breakthrough smash, “You’re No Good.” Bright, bouncy, Beatle-esque stuff, right? Still, it only tells a little bit of the story. Gold certainly had a way with a Pop hook, alright. But he was much more intriguing than all that Yacht Rock would have you believe.

“We are, in essence, an historical label,” says Omnivore co-founder, Brad Rosenberger. “We try to find great lost things. I didn’t know anything about Andrew’s 1978 show (at the Roxy), but I was delighted when I discovered it. About three years ago, my partner, Cheryl Pawelski and I got together with Leslie Kogan (Gold’s widow). Because when Cheryl produced the re-release of Andrew’s four solo albums for Collector’s Choice, she unearthed this live show. We got Michael Graves, an amazing sound engineer, to clean up the sound to the point where you feel you’re there. The reviews of the album have said what we already knew: ‘I didn’t know this guy could really play and the songs were so good.’”

One listen to The Late Show-Live 1978 bears this out. And it leads the casual listener to many lesser known facts about this amazing talent, many of whose best songs remain unreleased.

“There’s so much that even Andrew’s fans don’t know about him,” says Kogan, the person in charge of every aspect of her late husband’s considerable catalogue. “For instance, being the Beatles freak that he was, Andrew released a great, trippy album called Greetings From Planet Love, by his one-man band, Fraternal Order Of All. He also had a terrific Techno-Pop group , called Wax, with (10cc Pop genius) Graham Gouldman. Plus, Andrew wrote songs for artists like Wynona Judd and Celine Dion. ‘Thank You’ is just the tip of the iceberg. This great live album that Omnivore just put out will hopefully allow us to release even more of Andrew’s best, lesser-known material. Trust me, there’s tons.”

Gold, who came from an illustrious musical family (his mother, Broadway star Marni Nixon, provided the voice for Natalie Wood in West Side Story, his movie composer father, Ernest Gold, scored Exodus), has the sort of eclectic fan base that truly marks him as an original.

On one end of the spectrum is West Coast guitar god, Waddy Wachtel, who played with Gold for several years in Linda Ronstadt’s band.

“Andrew and I made such a good team because we were so different and complimented each other really well. He couldn’t believe I could step up and just improvise a solo. I admired him as the sort of guy who dissected Beatles tunes to see how they worked. And whether it was the stuff he played on ‘You’re No Good,’ or the dual solo we did on ‘When Will I Be Loved,’ Andrew liked to have everything figured out and polished before he did it. He was very meticulous in his writing and his playing.” Then, there’s the King Of Alternative Music. Yep, Dave Grohl, himself, during a 2000 podcast with comic Marc Maron, talked about his love for Gold’s seventies Pop“In that era, you had all of these great songwriters, who were also very proficient in their playing,” Grohl said. “Andrew Gold wrote and sang a song called ‘Never Let Her Slip Away.’ Dude, this tune is one of the most beautiful, sophisticated pieces of music ever written. We’re going to record this single and call it ‘Solid Gold.’ ‘Lonely Boy’ on one side, ‘Never Let Her Slip Away’ on the other.” (The Foo Fighters did record “Lonely Boy” but it remains unreleased).

So think of this piece as an appetizer. Following, hopefully, will be a multicourse meal, a delicious banquet of still unserved songs by Andrew Gold. Brad Rosenberger “hopes” to put out more of the man’s work. Wife Leslie Kogan is thinking about a documentary on the wildly creative life of her late husband. But in the meantime, listen to the guy’s 1978 show at the Roxy. Here is a songwriter who’s just waiting for you to check out his music again. And when you do, you’ll find that like all true Gold, the stuff really shimmers.

For more information on Andrew Gold’s live album, go to omnivorerecordings.com or www.andrewgold.com.