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Eric Carmen, the rock singer who led ’70s power-pop pioneers the Raspberries, before reinventing himself as a soft-rock singer who became a mainstay of ’80s radio and film, passed away. He was 74 years old.
His death was announced in website by his wife, Amy Carmen. She did not give a cause and only said that she died “while she was sleeping, over the weekend.”
The Raspberries, who formed in Cleveland, burst onto the American rock scene in 1972 with their self-titled debut album, which featured a raspberry-scented scratch-and-sniff sticker and their biggest hit: “Go to the end,” a provocative song for its time, sung from the point of view of a young woman.
Dave Swanson of the website Ultimate Classic Rock called it “the definitive power pop song of all time,” as the emerging style, known for grafting ’60s-era vocal harmonies onto the crunchy guitar riffs of the ’60s, would come to be called. 70. .
“The initial Who-like explosion leads into a very Beatles-esque verse, before landing on a forgotten Beach Boys chorus.” he wrote. “This was the magic of the art of the Raspberries song. “They were able to take the best parts and ideas of the previous decade and transform them into something new, but familiar.”
The Raspberries’ second album, “Fresh”, also released in 1972, would be their highest chart position, at number 36. It featured two Top 40 hits, “I want to be with you” and “Let’s pretend.”
The band, known for their matching suits and clean image, was dismissed by some as old-fashioned.
“Almost all the bands had waist-length hair, beards and ripped jeans and looked like a bunch of hippies, and I wanted to get as far away from that as possible,” Carmen said in a 2017 interview with the Observer.
The band garnered some critical praise and prestige: John Lennon He was photographed wearing a Raspberries t-shirt. His influence on rock music would only grow with time.
After the band disbanded in 1975, Carmen went solo. She veered onto a soft rock and quickly scored a single with “All alone” which reached number 2.
In the 1980s, two of their biggest hits emerged from soundtracks. For 1984’s “Footloose,” she co-wrote “Almost Paradise,” which was recorded by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson, and he wrote and sang “Hungry eyes,” from “Dirty Dancing” from 1987. “Make me lose control” it peaked at number 3 in 1988.
Carmen’s songs would be covered by artists as varied as Shaun Cassidy (“That’s rock’n roll”), Celine Dion (“All alone”) and John Travolta (“I will never fall in love again”). In 1989, she began performing with Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band.
The Raspberries reunited in 2004. A show from that tour appeared on a 28-song live album in 2017. “Raspberries Pop Art live. The liner notes were written by filmmaker Cameron Crowe, who featured “Go All the Way” in his 2000 film “Almost Famous.”
Carmen was optimistic about the impact of Raspberries.
“The rock critics got it and the 16-year-old girls got it, but you know, the 18-year-old boy who liked Megadeth was never going to like the same record as his sister,” he said in the 2017 interview. , before. telling of the first time he met Bruce Springsteen.
“I walked into his dressing room before a show and he was writing down the set list and we both looked at each other for a couple of minutes; I felt very uncomfortable being on the side of the fans, so I felt a little stupid. But Bruce looked at me and said, ‘You know, while he was writing “The River” all I heard were the greatest hits of Woody Guthrie and the Raspberries.’”