Goodbye, Eric Carmen.

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Written on March 11, 2024

This broke my heart.  We’ve lost another singer/songwriter whose music has special memories for me.  Eric Carmen died in his sleep tonight at age 74.

As Samantha Jones would say on Sex and the City, attention must be paid.  Here are my favorite memories of his music:

In the early 70s, when I was very little, the first time I heard his voice was when he sang lead on The Raspberries’ song “Go All The Way.”  The song was banned in some countries for its lyrics, but they went right over my head because I thought the song was called “Please Go Away.”  As Eric Carmen was crooning, “please baby, go all the way,” I was happily playing with my Lite Brite and singing along at the top of my lungs, “pleeeeease baby, GOOOOOOO AWAAAAAAY…”

My second favorite song from him, sometimes my number one depending on my mood, is “Change of Heart.”  His voice sounds amazing on all of it, but my favorite part is the bridge when his voice catches in a way I can’t explain.  It’s not like he’s about to cry – it’s a husky, alluring sound.  It’s after he sings, “Nothing you could ever do would change the things I know deep in my heart.”  It’s on the part right after that where he sings:  

So I got to make you understand before I go

Then, after that line, the music swirls and soars as his voice rises with it, singing, “Sooner or later, I don’t know when, I’m gonna get you back in my arms again,” and then the song soars to the end and then the fade.  What a glorious song.

This memory is kind of dark, but I don’t judge, since I’m also a recovering alcoholic.  In the early 2000s, he was pulled over for drunk driving in Orange, Ohio, after hitting a fire hydrant.  The breathalyzer showed he was three times over the legal limit.  My two favorite things about this story are:

1. When the cops asked for ID, he handed them a credit card, and
2. There was a half-empty bottle of Grey Goose on the front seat.  Grey Goose is a luxury brand of vodka.  You can keep your low-rent rock stars chugging beer behind the wheel and tossing the cans into the backseat.  That’s not my man.  He sips Grey Goose before slamming right into that fire hydrant.  The man has class.

I’ll end on a happier note:  Eric Carmen wrote “Hey Deanie.”  It was the song that became a huge hit for my very first celebrity crush, Shaun Cassidy.  I just realized while typing this that I’ve never heard the original version that Carmen recorded.  Give me a sec.  (pulling up YouTube)

Just 15 seconds into the original version, and, um… no.  Sorry Eric, but I prefer Shaun Cassidy’s rock and roll version over the original doo-wop version.  But I still owe you big for writing that song in the first place and letting Shaun record it.  When I listened to Shaun’s version again, I felt that same joy and excitement that I felt as a child, hearing that opening piano glissando and jangly guitar.  That song kicks ass, and Shaun Cassidy sings the hell out of it. 

Hard to believe the man who wrote such an upbeat song also wrote “All By Myself” and “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again.”  But when I think about him today, I’ll play “Hey Deanie” and “Change of Heart” (with that incredibly sexy bridge), and I’ll hope that Eric Carmen is in a much happier place, in one of Heaven’s nicest piano bars now that he’s freed from addiction, where the bartender makes him a vodka martini made with Grey Goose and hands it to him with a knowing wink. 

Wherever you are now, Eric Carmen, I hope the stars are dancin’ like diamonds in the moonlight. 

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