Andrew Maurice Gold (August 2, 1951 – June 3, 2011) was an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and record producer who influenced much of the Los Angeles-dominated pop/soft rock sound in the 1970s. Gold performed on scores of records by other artists, especially Linda Ronstadt, and had his own success with the U.S. top 40 hits "Lonely Boy" (1977) and "Thank You for Being a Friend" (1978), as well as the UK top five hit "Never Let Her Slip Away" (1978). In the 1980s, he had further international chart success as one half of the British-American superduo Wax alongside 10cc's Graham Gouldman. Gold was a multi-instrumentalist who played guitar, bass, keyboards, accordion, synthesizer, harmonica, saxophone, flute, drums and percussion, and more arcane musical instruments such as ukulele, musette, and harmonium. He was also a producer, sound engineer, film composer, session musician, actor, and painter. Gold produced, composed, performed on, and wrote tracks for films, commercials, and television soundtracks. Some of his older works experienced newfound popularity in the '80s and '90s: "Thank You for Being a Friend" sung by Cindy Fee was used as the opening theme for The Golden Girls in 1985. He performed "Final Frontier", the opening theme of the sitcom Mad About You, which debuted in 1992. The children's novelty song "Spooky, Scary Skeletons" (1996) became an Internet meme in the 2010s. In 1997, Gold released a tribute to 1960s psychedelic music, Greetings from Planet Love, issued under the pseudonym "the Fraternal Order of the All".
