Gold (30)

Formed by former Jonesy keyboard player Jimmy Kaleth and Richard Thomas, with Martin Lawrence on guitar and Mike O’Donnell on bass, Gold was a fine band. The first project was an ambitious concept album based on Henri Charriere’s autobiography ‘Papillon’... songs were initially recorded in down time at Apple Studios. Soon the band moved more into a pop and rock direction, now spending much of their time recording songs at Ringo Starr’s Tittenhurst Park studio. Demos caught the attention of Beatles producer George Martin who produced some of the songs. Singles were released on CBS and EMI records but the band eventually moved into the lucrative world of jingles becoming one of the most successful such teams in the eighties. The band’s first single ‘Stay With Me My Love’ (produced by Tom Allom) shows the pop side to Gold, but the ‘B’ side ‘Right Down The Line’ is by contrast dark and cynical. There were many great slowies like ‘Born To Belong’ and ‘Love’s Been Good To Me’ which in spite of self engineered demo production, still shine as songs. Jimmy’s superb tune ‘Young Love’ in spite of a rough demo vocal, is up there with Brian Wilson for quality writing. ‘Gimme Your Love’ shows the harder edge that was very much part of the Gold repertoire. Lastly ’Rendezvous Part 1’, the first song ever recorded by Gold is the opening 8 minute track from the unfinished project ‘Papillon.’