Eric Carmen, whose plaintive vocals soared above the crunching guitars of the Nineteen Seventies power-pop pioneers the Raspberries earlier than his gentle rock crooning made him a mainstay of Nineteen Eighties music, has died. He was 74.
His loss of life was introduced on his website by his spouse, Amy Carmen. She didn’t give a trigger and stated solely that he died “in his sleep, over the weekend.”
The Raspberries, which fashioned in Cleveland, burst onto the American rock scene in 1972 with their self-titled debut album, that includes a raspberry-scented scratch-and-sniff sticker and their greatest hit: “Go All the Way,” a provocative tune for its day, sung from the perspective of a younger girl.
Dave Swanson of the web site Final Traditional Rock referred to as it “the definitive energy pop tune of all time,” because the rising fashion, recognized for grafting brilliant ’60s-era vocal harmonies onto the heavy guitar riffs of the ’70s, would come to be referred to as.
“The opening Who-like blast leads into a really Beatles-esque verse, earlier than touchdown in some forgotten Seaside Boys refrain,” he wrote. “Thus was the magic of the Raspberries tune craft. They have been capable of take one of the best components and concepts from the earlier decade, and morph them into one thing new, but acquainted.”
The Raspberries’ second album, “Recent,” additionally launched in 1972, can be its highest charting, at No. 36. It featured two High 40 hits, “I Wanna Be With You” and “Let’s Pretend.”
The band, recognized for its matching fits and clear picture, was dismissed by some as passé.
“Virtually each band had hair right down to their waist and beards and ripped denims and so they regarded like a bunch of hippies, and I wished to get as distant from that as I might,” Mr. Carmen stated in a 2017 interview with the Observer.
The band did earn some important acclaim and cachet: John Lennon was photographed sporting a Raspberries shirt. Its affect on rock music would solely develop over time.
After the band broke up in 1975, Mr. Carmen went solo. He swerved into gentle rock, shortly scoring a success single with “All by Myself,” which peaked at No. 2.
Within the Nineteen Eighties, two of his greatest hits got here from soundtracks. For 1984’s “Footloose,” he co-wrote “Almost Paradise,” which was recorded by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson, and he wrote and sang “Hungry Eyes,” from 1987’s “Soiled Dancing.” “Make Me Lose Control” reached No. 3 in 1988.
Mr. Carmen’s songs can be lined by artists as assorted as Shaun Cassidy (“That’s Rock ’n Roll”), Celine Dion (“All By Myself”) and John Travolta (“Never Gonna Fall in Love Again”). In 1989, he started showing with Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band.
The Raspberries reunited in 2004. A present from that tour was featured on a 28-song stay album in 2017, “Raspberries Pop Art Live. The liner notes have been written by the filmmaker Cameron Crowe, who featured “Go All of the Manner” in his 2000 film “Virtually Well-known.”
Mr. Carmen was sanguine in regards to the influence of the Raspberries.
“Rock critics obtained it and 16-year-old ladies obtained it, however , the 18-year-old man who favored Megadeth was by no means going to love the identical file his sister did,” he stated within the 2017 interview, earlier than recounting the primary time he met Bruce Springsteen.
“I walked in his dressing room earlier than a present and he was writing out the set checklist and we each checked out one another for a few minutes — I used to be very uncomfortable being on the fan finish, so I felt somewhat silly. However Bruce checked out me and he goes, ‘You already know, whereas I used to be writing “The River” all I listened to was Woody Guthrie and the Raspberries’ best hits.’”
