He had been in that role since 1974, when he produced and arranged the eponymous debut by Orchestra Luna, but after his work with Streisand, he helmed Sailor's Trouble (1975), Sparks' Big Beat (1976), the Strawbs' Deep Cuts (1976), Lynsey de Paul's Tigers and Fireflies (1979), and Showbizz, a 1979 disco parody released on Capitol. By that year, Holmes released two additional albums on Epic - a self-titled 1975 album and 1976's Singles - neither of which broke the charts.ĭuring the last half of the '70s, Holmes worked steadily as a producer. She hired him to produce a portion of her 1975 album Lazy Afternoon, which also featured a few of his original tunes, including their co-write "By the Way." Streisand also featured several of Holmes' songs on the soundtrack for her 1976 remake of A Star Is Born. It didn't chart but it found a fan in Barbra Streisand. Widescreen, his debut album, arrived in 1974. This success, combined with his steady work as a songwriter, jingle tunesmith, and film composer, landed Holmes a deal with Epic Records. Holmes wrote most of their eponymous 1971 debut, including its other, minor hit "Give Up Your Guns," but "Timothy" caused a sensation and worked its way up to 17 on Billboard's Top 40. Instead, these recordings were billed to Street People, and they had two hits with Holmes on lead vocal in 1970: "Jennifer Tomkins," which peaked at 36, and "Thank You Girl," which scraped the charts at 96.Ī year later, Holmes scored his biggest bubblegum hit with "Timothy," a darkly funny and chipper tale about cannibalism recorded by the Buoys. Once the Archies had a smash hit with "Sugar Sugar" in the summer of 1969, producer Don Kirshner wouldn't allow Dante to sing on another project, so Holmes stepped into the breach, finishing up an album intended for release under the Cuff Links' name. After graduating Nyack High School, he enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music and once he left the school, he began working as a session musician and producer in New York City.Īfter arranging easy listening sessions for the Platters and Gene Pitney, Holmes earned a foothold within the pre-fabricated world of AM pop and bubblegum, getting his first break writing and producing for the Cuff Links, a band that was a front for Ron Dante, who sang for a number of studio-based pop groups, one of which was the Archies. At the age of six, his family relocated to the Nanuet, a suburb of New York City. The son of a United States Army warrant officer and bandleader father and an English mother, Rupert Holmes was born David Goldstein on Februin Northwich, Cheshire, England. At the dawn of the '70s, he cut his teeth in the junk factory of prefabricated pop, striking gold as the author of the Buoys' camp classic "Timothy." Holmes landed a solo deal after "Timothy," starting him on a path that would lead him to collaborate with both Barbra Streisand and Sparks before he eventually scored the hit that made his career even if it didn't define it. One of his books, Where the Truth Lies, was adapted for screen by the arthouse director Atom Egoyan, but Holmes' roots lay in the considerably less-sophisticated world of AM pop. Indeed, he gained considerable success on the Great White Way, earning two Tonys for the 1986 musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood, acclaim that would help lead to a second career as a mystery novelist. Despite these initial appearances, Holmes was a clever, versatile singer/songwriter who split the difference between Brill Building pop, bubblegum kitsch, McCartney-esque pomp, and Broadway. To make matters worse, "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" appeared to be a satin-draped novelty of the swinging '70s, a soft rock anthem devoted to gauche promiscuity, a sentiment that further tied him to a specific era - and one that was underscored through the song's omnipresence in film, television, commercials, and radio over the next few decades. "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" pegged Rupert Holmes as a one-hit wonder, an unfair designation if ever there was one.
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