We say goodbye to Eric Carmenleader of The Raspberries and author of the eternal “All by myself”. With permission from that “Heaven knows I’m miserable now” who Morrissey y Marr composed for The Smiths, if there is a song that has universalized self-pity, it is this one. Impossible to forget the scene of The diaryof Bridget Jones in which one Renee Zellweger very dressed in tintorro cries her sentimental sorrows doing playback about the tune. One of the best cinematic parodies of wound-licking after a heartbreak ever made.
The version that played in the movie was that of Celine Dion. Caramelized to the maximum, of course, to be even more tear-jerking than the original. The original was written and performed by a Cleveland musician named Eric Howard Carmen –In artwithout him Howard– of which we received today the news, released by the family, of his death this past weekend while he was sleeping. A peaceful death for an artist who could unjustly go through one hit wonderbut whose importance for pop would be worth highlighting a little here.
The success of the album that contained the mega hit “All by myself” and also the no less successful “Never gonna fall in love again” (both, by the way, inspired by symphonies by Rachmaninoff), titled simply Eric Carmen and published in 1975, placed its author at the top. Nevertheless, Carmen Before this he had been part of something much more relevant to the future of pop: together with other classmates from the University of Cleveland and when the bands they belonged to broke up –Cyrus Erie y The Choir (yes, those from “It’s cold outside”) – formed The Raspberries. An essential band to understand that subgenre adored by many people called Power Pop.
The Raspberries They united in their splendid songs the electric intensity of mod bands like Small Faces o, of course, The Whoto the sweet melodies of Beatles, Hollies, Beach Boys o Phil Spector. That is to say, they added strong guitars, in the style of the 1970s, to the pop of the 1960s, something for which they only had competition on the other side of the pond, at the hands of Badfingerthe band of Pete Ham y Tom Evans. Along with these, Raspberries They were the founding spark of all that current that has had names like Paul Collins, Plimsouls, Matthew Sweet o The Rubinoos as standard bearers.
The band made four superb albums, each one better, in just three years of existence. The lack of expected success took its toll on them, but of course, we can count much of the content of those albums among the best that appeared in the United States in the first half of the seventies. And they are not very well known, curiously. Surely, because the solo career of Carmenwhich did receive the honey of success, buried the memory of this formation for years.
Eric CarmenAs we say, after the dissolution of the quartet, he embarked on a solo project that not only brought “All by myself”. His debut in 1975 was full of successes. It also contained the very catchy “That’s rock and roll” which was a hit at the hands of the idol teen Shaun Cassidy and overall it was a well-polished and phenomenally composed record. His follow-up came in 1977 and also brought him the hit single “She Did It”, as well as others, composed for himself and for other artists, which kept him at the top not only in the glamorous seventies, but also in the eighties, in that the cinema took him into account, sneaking two of his songs into the soundtracks of two of the blockbusters most popular of the time like Footloose (“Almost paradise”, in duet with Merry Clayton) y Dirty Dancing (“Hungry eyes”).
Beyond this, which of course, is part of an ultra-commercial pop sector of little artistic interest except for completists, it is not that Eric reaped too much success from the nineties onwards. She became part of those nostalgic acts that perform, at most, in hotels in Las Vegas and above all, to live off the many royalties generated by his most famous compositions. However, we cannot fail to dedicate space here to his not inconsiderable contribution to maintaining the original spirit of pop. Rest in power (pop).