Cleveland native Eric Carmen, who had hits with Raspberries and as solo artist, dies at age 74

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Eric Carmen, the Cleveland-born lead singer and songwriter who penned and performed multiple hits for the Raspberries and as a solo artist, has died at the age of 74.

Carmen’s wife, Amy, confirmed his death in a post on her husband’s website.

“It is with tremendous sadness that we share the heartbreaking news of the passing of Eric Carmen,” the post says. “Our sweet, loving and talented Eric passed away in his sleep, over the weekend. It brought him great joy to know, that for decades, his music touched so many and will be his lasting legacy.”

It was with the Raspberries that Carmen had his first big hit, “Go All the Way,” which reached No. 5 on the Billboard singles charts. Critics hailed the band’s unique twist on Beatlesque power-pop, citing Carmen as a pop visionary. Bruce Springsteen and Courtney Love both are fans of the band’s music. Kiss, Cheap Trick, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Guns N’ Roses cite them as an influence.

But it could be argued his more enduring hits came as a solo artist. “All by Myself” and “Almost Paradise (Love Theme From Footloose)” are among the most-played songs in U.S. pop history. Celine Dion covered “All by Myself” on her 1996 album “Falling Into You.”

“I’d like to think my staying power is a testimonial to damn good songwriting,” Carmen told The Plain Dealer in 1998. “My goal has always been to write really, really good songs.”

Carmen was born in Cleveland and grew up in Lyndhurst. At the age of 2, he was entertaining his parents, Ruth and Elmer Carmen, with impressions of Tony Bennett and Johnnie Ray. By 3, he was in the Dalcroze Eurythmics program at the Cleveland Institute of Music. At 6, he took violin lessons from his aunt, Muriel Carmen, then a violist with the Cleveland Orchestra.

By 11, he was playing piano and dreaming about writing his own songs. The arrival of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones altered the dream slightly: By the time Carmen was a sophomore at Brush High School in Lyndhurst, he was playing piano and singing in rock ‘n’ roll bands.

Carmen became serious about rock ‘n’ roll while attending John Carroll University in the late 1960s, joining a band called Cyrus Erie, which recorded several unsuccessful singles for Epic Records. Cyrus Erie’s guitarist, Wally Bryson, had been playing with friends Jim Bonfanti and Dave Smalley in one of Cleveland’s most popular bands, the Choir, which scored a minor national hit in 1967 with the song “It’s Cold Outside.”

When Cyrus Erie and the Choir collapsed at the end of the ‘60s, Carmen, Bryson, Bonfanti and Smalley teamed up to form the Raspberries.

The band quickly grew in popularity in Cleveland and signed its first recording contract in 1971 with Capitol Records. It released its self-titled album in 1972 and had its first hit with “Go All The Way.”

“Cleveland was a special place for music back then,” Carmen told The Plain Dealer in 1998. “It was a lot like Liverpool in the ‘50s. It was this industrial city on the water with nasty winters. It wasn’t exactly a resort area at the time. And an awful lot of kids turned to music as an outlet. ... It was an amazing time.”

The Raspberries had a few more minor hits, such as “I Wanna Be With You” and “Let’s Pretend” ... but their time was short, with disagreements on the band’s direction leading to Bonfanti and Smalley quitting the band in 1973. They were replaced, but band broke up in 1975.

Carmen released his first solo album in 1975, which had three Top 40 singles, including “All By Myself.” He released three more solo albums but only had one more hit, “Change of Heart,” in 1978. In 1984, Carmen’s “Almost Paradise,” covered by Mike Reno and Ann Wilson for the movie “Footloose,” became a major hit, peaking at No. 7.

He again reached the Top 40 in 1987 with “Hungry Eyes,” written for the movie “Dirty Dancing,” peaking at No. 4. A year later, he released “Make Me Lose Control,” which reached No. 3 on the charts.

After living in Los Angeles, Carmen moved back to Northeast Ohio in the mid-1990s and basically went quiet for several years.

In late 2004, Carmen reunited with the Raspberries for a few shows at the House of Blues in Cleveland. It led to them performing eight shows around the country in 2005. The band regrouped several more times for shows in the following years and it released a live recording of one of its 2004 Cleveland shows.

“I think the band really is playing better now than it ever did in our heyday,” Carmen told The Plain Dealer in 2007.

The blockbuster movie “Guardians of the Galaxy” gave Carmen a boost in 2014 when it included “Go All The Way” in the soundtrack. It brought back memories for Carmen about when he wrote the song.

“I was at Brush High School and I remember seeing guys in the hallway, they’re singing The Who’s ‘Magic Bus’ and then pumping their fists in the air. I thought that I wanted to write a song like that,” Carmen told The Plain Dealer. “Then one day I was in the drugstore and I saw a paperback with the title, ‘Go All the Way’ by Dan McGraw. That’s when my antenna went up. I thought I might be able to use that.

“This was at the time when the Stones were on Ed Sullivan, and they made them change the lyrics from ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ to ‘Let’s Spend Some Time Together.’ I noticed that on the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ record they could get away with racy lyrics like that because of how they looked and the melodic way they sang the suggestive stuff. They slid it by the censors. So my idea was to put those words in the mouth of the girl. It was a different approach. That made it more acceptable. So the song was banned in the U.K. but it got through here.”

Carmen also remembered the music that moved his generation not exactly being embraced by his parents.

“My dad called Mick Jagger, Mick Jaguar,” Carmen told The Plain Dealer. “He called the Beatles, Lemon and McCarthy. Like I said, I’m old school. It’s the duty of every generation to find music their parents hate.”