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Singer-songwriter Eric Carmen, who fronted the power-pop Seventies band the Raspberries and later had hovering pop hits like All By Myself and Hungry Eyes from the hit Soiled Dancing soundtrack, has died. He was 74.
His dying was introduced on his website by his spouse, Amy Carmen, who didn’t reveal a trigger, saying solely that he died “in his sleep, over the weekend”.
“It introduced him nice pleasure to know, that for many years, his music touched so many and will probably be his lasting legacy,” the message learn.
Carmen had 13 songs within the Billboard Scorching 100, together with three within the High 10. The Raspberries, which fashioned in Cleveland, had 4 High 40 singles, together with the High 5 hit Go All The Means.
Shaped in 1970, the Raspberries made 4 albums for Capitol Data and had been identified for his or her matching fits at a time when most bands had deserted them.
“Virtually each band had hair all the way down to their waist and beards and ripped denims they usually seemed like a bunch of hippies, and I needed to get as far-off from that as I might,” Carmen told the Observer in 2017.
The Raspberries’ second album, Recent, launched in 1972, can be their highest charting, hitting No 36 and that includes two High 40 hits, I Wanna Be With You and Let’s Faux.
The Raspberries ended their first run in 1975, two years after artistic variations hastened the departures of drummer Jim Bonfanti and bassist Dave Smalley.
Carmen then launched a solo profession and his self-titled debut included the hovering hit All By Myself, which bought greater than 1 million copies within the US and reached No 2 in 1976. His different hits included Make Me Lose Management – a No 3 hit on the Billboard Scorching 100 in 1988 – and he co-wrote Virtually Paradise, sung by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson, which peaked at No 7 in 1984.
Carmen’s albums embrace 1977’s self-produced and autobiographical Boats Towards the Present, 1978’s Change Of Coronary heart and 1980’s Tonight You’re Mine. His songs Nowhere To Disguise and Determined Fools are mushy rock classics.
In 1984, he launched a second self-titled album, teaming up with Bob Gaudio from Frankie Valli & The 4 Seasons. It had the only I Wanna Hear It from Your Lips. In 1987, he had one other large hit when his recording of Hungry Eyes was featured on 1987’s Soiled Dancing soundtrack, reaching the High 5 on Billboard’s Scorching 100 and propelling the album to gross sales of over 32 million copies.
Carmen was born in Cleveland and was musical early, taking violin classes at six and later studying piano and guitar. He was a pupil at John Carroll College when he joined an area group referred to as Cyrus Erie. He and one other Cyrus Erie member, guitarist Wally Bryson, joined forces with former members of a band referred to as the Choir to kind the Raspberries, combining melodies, guitar riffs and luxurious ballads.
He and the Raspberries reunited for a few exhibits in late 2004 at Cleveland’s Home of Blues, which led to dates across the nation the next yr and the album Stay On Sundown Strip, which included liner notes by no much less a fan than Bruce Springsteen, who hailed the Raspberries as “THE nice underrated energy pop masters”.
“It’s extra satisfying now to go onstage and play with these guys than it ever was,” Carmen informed The Plain Seller in 2007. “It’s additionally good that after 30-some years, we lastly appear to be eliciting the respect of the media and individuals who perhaps the primary time round didn’t fairly get it.”