Maybe it's the climate, for some reason, California prospered as a major center of soft rock, particularly during the 1970s and '80s. It's not so much that so many of the genre's practitioners hailed from the Golden State (though almost a quarter of the artists on this volume were in some way associated with California). It has more to do with soft rock's evolution out of several California-born styles: the sunswept harmonies of the Beach Boys and the laid-back aspects of country-rock as it progressed from the Byrds through the Flying Burrito Brothers to the Eagles.

There's also the matter of that little record label from Burbank. While its roster featured rockers, funk groups and even a few leftover Rat Packers, Warner Bros. Records was, for a period, practically synonymous with two genres', the singer-songwriter movement of James Taylor and others, and soft rock as exemplified by such acts as America, Ambrosia, Christopher Cross, Seals and Crofts and mid-period Chicago. Roughly half of the performers on Summer Breeze were signed to Bugs Bunny's waxworks or one of its affiliate imprints.

The earliest selections here date from 1970, two the work of what was then a brawny, brass-baring septet from the Windy City. The irresistibly swinging Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? comes from Chicago's 1969 debut album, when it billed itself as the Chicago Transit Authority. The more ambitious [and in spots not so soft: dig that wah-wah solo) 25 Or 6 To 4 preceded Time into the top 10 and is from the group's second album, Chicago (or, as it was subsequently designated, Chicago II}.

Other early entries include a pair from the quartet that practically invented soft rock. Producer-singer-pianist David Gates, drummer Jim Gordon and guitarists James Griffin and Robb Royer met as session musicians on the busy Los Angeles studio scene in the 1960s. Make It With You and The Guitar Man, both Gates compositions, display uncommonly sophisticated writing and arranging. The former, from 1970, was Bread's debut single and first hit, while the latter, from 1972, is a slinky second cousin, thematically at least, to the Carpenters' Superstar.

Like Gates, Todd Rundgren eventually won his wings as a producer (Badfinger, Meat Loaf, Grand Funk's The Loco-Motion), but he also saw his own chart action—specifically in 1973, when the bittersweet pop ballad Hello It's Me brightened up the airwaves (an earlier version of the song, by Rundgren's Philadelphia band the Nazz, had made Billboard's Hot 100 four years earlier). Jim Seals and Dash Crofts had likewise tasted pop stardom before. From 1958 to 1965, they toured as members of the Champs, the Los Angeles-based combo behind the chart-topping Tequila. In the fall of 1972, the delicate Summer Breeze ushered in a string of subtle Seals and Crofts singles that ran through the late '70s. Concurrently, their Warner Bros, labelmates America and the Doobie Brothers were starting to make their marks. Despite its lyrical ambiguity, there's something undeniably appealing about 1974's Tin Man, You Can Do Magic, from 1982, marked the last significant hit for the trio (by then dwindled to a duo). The Doobies, too, would prove a durable group. The folk-tinged Black Water, from 1975, became their first No.l single, while the prototypical What A Fool Believes, from 1979, was their second and last. Fool's then pervasive influence can be heard in the chorus harmony and raindrops rhythm of Robbie Dupree's Steal Away from 1980.

From the mid-'70s to late in the decade, the gospel of gently rocking music spread to a variety of stylistic quarters. In 1976 alone New York's Orleans applied it to modified boogie on Still The One; Daryl Hall and John Gates made soft rock out of what was essentially a soul/doo-wop ballad in the graceful Sara Smile, their first hit; and Gary Wright, the New Jersey-born keyboardist for British psyche-rockers Spooky Tooth, took the form into space with the effects-laden, period-defining Dream Weaver. Texan Michael Martin Murphey stuck closer to home with 1975's atmospheric tale of a ghostly apparition on horseback on a cold Nebraska night. The top-10 Wildfire sparked Murphey's still-active career as a singer-storyteller of Western lore. 

Montana-born backup singer Nicolette Larson, who'd recorded with Neil Young, Graham Nash and others, gave Young's Lotta Love a sprightly treatment, taking it into the top 10 in late '78. By then, Larson's former roommate, Linda Ronstadt, had been batting them out of the park for a while, with a long line of covers of '50s and '60s classics; her take on Little Anthony and the Imperials' Hurt So Bad, from 1980, was her last significant chart single until her 1986 duet with James Ingram, Somewhere Out There.

Like Larson, the Kentucky quintet Exile falls info the "one big hit" category, though the band's smoldering, quasi-disco Kiss You All Over (1978) romanced its way to the very top of the tunedecks and lingered there for nearly half a year. Exile in the '80s eschewed pop altogether to take up a successful career in country music before officially disbanding in 1993. While she didn't recast herself as radically as Exile, Rickie Lee Jones has continued—except for a dry spell in the '80s—to make albums, though she never recaptured the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of 1979's jazzy Chuck E.'s In Love.

As the '70s closed and the '80s dawned, soft rock was firmly ensconced within the institution of popular music. "Adult contemporary" radio formats catered to the style, and it was claiming a major portion of space on the singles charts—with acts like Little River Band and Dr. Hook having already racked up two or three years of singles success. Cool Change was LRB's sixth top-20 entry, and the flute-accented, disco-lite Sexy Eyes was the last of Dr. Hook's six fop-10 singles.

The early 1980s introduced at least three of soft rock's most prominent flag bearers. His total tenure as a star may not have been as long as some, but when he was hot, unassuming San Antonio singer-songwriter Christopher Cross was hot, grabbing five Grammys in 1981 alone. Co-written with Burt Bacharach, 1981's Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do), from the Dudley Moore film Arthur, was his second chart topper; Never Be The Same (1980) followed his first No. 1, Sailing.

Although it first enjoyed singles action back in 1975, Los Angeles trio Ambrosia (David Pack, Joe Puerto and Burleigh Drummond) broke bigger later. The vaguely Doobies-ish You're The Only Woman was the follow-up to the soul-styled Biggest Part Of Me; both discs are from 1980. Another soft-rock superstar act of the '80s was the Melbourne, Australia, duo of Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell. The catchy mid-tempo piece Even The Nights Are Better, from their third platinum LP (1982's Now And Forever), was Air Supply's seventh consecutive single to reach the top five. Fellow British Commonwealth acts John Waite and Alannah Myles also ascended in the '80s, but their reigns were much briefer. Waite, former lead singer of English band the Babys, got off to a fast start. His debut single, Missing You (which, like many records of the period, appropriates the plink-plonk rhythm pattern of the Police's Every Breath You Take), went straight to No. 1 in 1984, but follow-ups flopped and, in 1989, Waite and new bandmates debuted as the multi-platinum Bad English, Canadian vocalist Myles likewise started at the top of the charts, with the bluesy Black Velvet in 1990, but failed to deliver on her initial promise.

Florida drummer Bertie Higgins also found fame fleeting. Formerly a backup musician for '60s singer Tommy (Sheila and Dizzy) Roe, Higgins went top 10 in 1982 with Key Largo, his evocative paean to the Bogart and Bacall 1948 film noir classic—then slipped from sight. The most recent track on Summer Breeze is Beautiful In My Eyes by California singer-songwriter Joshua Kadison. The piano-driven top-20 single was the best-performing of three chart singles from Kadison's 1993 debut, Painted Desert Serenade.

—Gene Sculatti

If this compilation has one overarching theme, it may well be the sheer variety of artists who've toiled in the soft-rock trenches over the past few decades. A quick glance at the roster of Ride Like The Wind participants reveals a pretty wide swath of performers—from solo singers to duos and trios, from mainstream bands to new wave and country-rock groups, studio ensembles and veteran touring acts.

In terms of their number, solitary artists top the list, and it's perhaps no surprise that most of them fall into the category of singer-songwriter. Chronology-wise, the first of the solo folk are Carly Simon and Todd Rundgren, whose respective hits You're So Vain and I Saw The Light hail from 1972. The first tune, the tale of an ascot-clad cad, features background singing from Mick Jagger (who some have speculated is the subject of the song). The latter offers the producer and pop wizard's abundant gift for winsome melodies and delicious arrangements. The '80s ranks of singer-songwriters include Manhattan-raised composer-vocalist-playwright Rupert Holmes, whose superbly crafted saga of his girl's other guy, Him (1980), followed his Escape (The Pina Colada Song), and San Diego's Stephen Bishop, whose It Might Be You (1983), from the Dustin Hoffman film Tootsie, was the last of his four top-40 postings.

Although both fronted bands, Christopher Cross and Phil Collins scribed and sang their own material as solo artists. Collins' ballads Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now) and One More Night, both No. 1 records, were respectively the first and third of six singles the Genesis drummer walloped into the top five in 1984 and 1985. The chart-topping Sailing and its forerunner, the No. 2 Ride Like The Wind, ushered Texas singer-songwriter Cross into the ranks of superstardom in 1980. Cleveland pianist-writer Marc Cohn won the Grammy as 1991's Best New Artist on the basis of his debut LP and its gospel-inflected single, Walking In Memphis, which was covered by, among others, Cher.

They worked alone, but longtime Billboard charter Linda Ronstadt and one-hit wonder Jack Wagner didn't generate their own material. Ronstadt's 1978 cover of Ooh Baby Baby, sandwiched in between hit covers of classics by Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly and Little Anthony and the Imperials, was a relatively faithful cover of Smokey Robinson's 1965 Miracles hit, while All I Need, 1984's No. 2 single by the TV actor (General Hospital, Melrose Place, The Bold and the Beautiful) came from the pen of Glen Bollard, who would gain fame a decade later producing Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill.

The '60s may have been the heyday of rock 'n' roll and soul twosomes (think Everly Brothers, Sam and Dave, the Righteous Brothers and Ike and Tina Turner), but the '70s and '80s were soft-rock prime time for small ensembles. Of the duos and trios represented on this collection, America (which began as a trio but contracted to a duo in 1976) was first at bat with the loping, Neil Young-inspired A Horse With No Name in 1972; it was a No. 1 record, as was 1975's Sister Golden Hair. Folky Californians Seals and Crofts mined their second top-10 smash (after Summer Breeze) with a jazzy paean to a Diamond Girl in 1973. She's Gone takes the same honors within Daryl Hall and John Oates' extensive canon; the Philadelphia duo's soul ballad, one of nearly three dozen Billboard pop single postings for them, was also an R&B chart topper for Tavares in 1974. Likewise the smoothly rocking, Philly-flavored How Much I Feel from 1978 marked the first of two top-10 entries by L.A. trio Ambrosia. The adventurously arranged Making Love Out Of Nothing At All (the full band doesn't come in until the record's two-minute mark), from 1983, was the last of eight top-five singles from Australians Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell, better known as Air Supply.

At the same time they were first tasting Top 40 radio success, Chicago and the Doobie Brothers were drawing big on the ballroom and rock festival circuit of the 1970s. Chicago's sunny Saturday In The Park (one can practically see folks tossing Frisbees) is from 1972, while the more somber If You Leave Me Now, the band's first No. 1 single, came four years later. Minute By Minute (1979) was the successor to the Doobies' second chart topper, What A Fool Believes, and the twelfth of 16 top-40 placings for the group. Although they subsequently hit the road to perform concerts, Bread, heard here on If and Baby I'm-A Want You (both 1971), began life as the recording-only project of L.A. studio musicians. Foreigner, too, was something of an assembled aggregation; in 1977, London-born guitarist Mick Jones recruited American and British players to form the arena-rocking band, which drove home the soaring power ballads Waiting For A Girl Like You and I Want To Know What Love Is in 1981 and 1984.

Mutating and shape-shifting rock bands also hit the soft-rock trail, particularly during the '70s and '80s. Mike + the Mechanics, the sometime side project of Genesis member Mike Rutherford, Squeeze vocalist-keyboarder Paul Carrack and Sad Cafe singer Paul Young, topped the Hot 100 in 1989 with The Living Years, a son's tale of regret for his deceased father. More than a decade—and several significant personnel shifts—separate Manfred Mann's No. 1 British Invasion entry, Do Wah Diddy Diddy, from a 1976 No.l cover of Bruce Springsteen's Blinded By The Light by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. Both incarnations of Mann's men specialized in covers; in addition to Springsteen (the Earth Band also reached No. 40 in 1977 with a version of his Spirit In The Night), both also covered Bob Dylan— charting in 1968 with his Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo) and in 1979 with You Angel You. After his 1971-74 tenure with Fleerwood Mac ended, guitarist Bob Welch lit out on his own—though it took three years for him to find his niche. The lyrical Sentimental Lady had first appeared on the big Mac's 1972 album, Bare Trees; Welch's version features later Mac members Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham on backing vocals. Alumni of the Byrds (Michael Clarke), the Flying Burrito Brothers (Clarke and Rick Roberts} and Spirit (Mark Andes} coalesced in Colorado into the country-rock group Firefall, whose cleanly harmonic You Are The Woman, from the group's eponymously titled 1976 debut LP, was their only top-10 showing.

The most significant development of the late-'70s/ early-'80s period was the advent of back-to-basics punk rock and its tamer younger sibling, new wave. Boston's Cars were the first of the bands associated with the movement to connect commercially (Just What I Needed, My Best Friend's Girl). Bassist Ben Orr (not usual lead singer Ric Ocasek) handles the vocal on Drive, the band's third top-10 single, from the fall of 1984. The skinny ties and plural-noun name may have pegged them as new wavers, but Britain's Korgis were strictly a pop outfit, as evidenced by the soft-rocking Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime; their sole posting, the synth-heavy ballad rose to No. 18 late in 1980.

Finally, the British quartet the Escape Club, whose I'll Be There represents the most recent recording on Ride Like The Wind, comes from the early '90s, when post-punk and dance music were busy forming one wing of the newly christened "alternative rock" (the band shared a producer with such bands as R.E.M., Patti Smith and the Replacements). Trevor Steel's breathy vocal tells the tale of a recently deceased friend ("Just think of me/And I'll be there"), which made the top 10 in 1991.

—Gene Sculatti

Any discussion of pop music would surely proceed more easily if artists could be divided into two categories: innovators and adaptors. One column could list the big-vision trailblazers and the other their less-inspired followers. But it's never that black and white, as the performers on Into The Night illustrate. Here are true originals, as well as later arrivals, but there are so many shades of gray to this roster: artists who updated or streamlined their approaches, grew artistically or modified their music, and moved in directions they themselves might never have considered at the outsets of their careers.

Appropriately, the earliest cuts belong to three of the most original and influential artists of the era. If his profile has been lower of late, Cat Stevens, represented here by 1971s Wild World (and known as Yusuf Islam since 1979), has been among the world's most prominent singer-songwriters. Ever present, it seems, is another singer from the songwriter ranks, Elton John, whose very first hit, 1970's Your Song, introduced a musical and cultural figure who's still standing almost 40 years later. Daniel (1973) was his fifth top-10 single. While still a member of the Faces, Rod Stewart kicked off his solo career with an original composition, 1971's chart-topping tale of a May-December hookup, Maggie May—though he's recently been thought of more as an interpreter of the Great American Songbook.

Singer-guitarist Peter Frampton likewise hit the chart apex— and was also a member of a band (Humble Pie) that included former members of the (Small) Faces. His No.l live album, Frampton Comes Alive!, generated 1976's top-10 Show Me The Way—and went platinum six times over.

The band America may wear its Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies on its sleeve, but their soothing I Need You is as distinctive as it is derivative; the track trotted into the top 10 in 1972, behind the trio's debut single, A Horse With No Name. The following year, Texan Dobie Gray, who'd first scored in 1965 with the boisterous The "In" Crowd, clicked with the gospel-drenched Drift Away, which was penned by Mentor Williams, brother of songwriter Paul. Similarly rooted in black music forms is Elvin Bishop's Fooled Around And Fell In Love. The former guitarist for the Paul Butterfield Blues Band notched his only hit with this 1976 single; Mickey Thomas, later of Starship (of We Built This City fame), handled the lead vocal. The U.K. quintet Ace, too, hit but once—and with a noticeably R&B-inflected record. The soulful How Long, a No. 3 single in 1975, features Paul Carrack singing lead; Carrack would later distinguish himself in the same role within Squeeze, which made it halfway up the Hot 100 with Tempted (1981), and still later with Mike + the Mechanics.

The remainder of the '70s entries reflects a variety of approaches and styles. Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler's It's A Heartache (1978) projects a rustic, country-tinted flavor (and a certain vocal resemblance to Rod Stewart), while Montreal-born Gino Vannelli's I Just Wanna Stop (1978), the first of his two top-10 records, essays a more uptown-soul style. Even more polished are two cuts by lOcc. The airy I'm Not In Love (1975), melodically reminiscent in spots of the Beach Boys and Paul McCartney, was followed two years later by the very Queen-ish The Things We Do For Love. The band's principals, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, who'd long worked behind the scenes as writers and producers (they directed videos for the Police, Herbie Hancock and Duran Duran), enjoyed a hit on their own, in 1985, with Cry.

His comments suggest he viewed Escape (The Pina Colada Song) as something of an albatross, but composer-playwright Rupert Holmes must have appreciated the tune's success at the time; the 1979 single, a chart topper, was by far his biggest. England Dan and John Ford Coley's breezy I'd Really Love To See You Tonight is almost as prominent a touchstone of '70s nostalgia as The Pina Colada Song. The song ignited a hot streak of a half-dozen top-30 singles from 1976 to '79 for the duo. England Dan Seals is the brother of Jim, of soft-rock sultans Seals and Crofts. On And On, which just missed Billboard's top 10 in 1977, was the best single showing for San Diego writer-singer Stephen Bishop, who had cracked the top 25 the prior year with Save It For A Rainy Day.

Rounding out the decade are three cuts from two of its most consistent music makers. Little River Band's tuneful Lonesome Loser (1979) was the Australian sextet's third top-10 outing in a year (it followed Reminiscing and Lady), and Styx's big-chorused Babe, from 1979, was the Chicago group's only No. 1 single, though its achievements (two weeks at the top, on the Hot TOO for nearly 20 weeks) peg it too as a centerpiece of '70s rock. The adventurously arranged The Best Of Times hit No. 3 in 1981.

Moving into the '80s, two established acts were making adjustments to their basic sound in an attempt to modernize themselves—but without sacrificing their defining characteristics. Since 1966, Steve Winwood had made a name for himself in pop—first in the Spencer Davis Group, then later with Traffic and the supergroup Blind Faith. By 1981, he'd successfully updated his white R&B approach with While You See A Chance, which set the stage for his classic No. 1 hit Higher Love five years later. As did Winwood, the Moody Blues relied heavily on synthesizers to contemporize their lush harmony music; 1986's galloping Your Wildest Dreams was the group's last top-10 single, arriving 21 years after Go Now! and 14 years behind Nights In White Satin.

Also serving that decade were Los Angeles vocalist Kirn Games and singer-writer Benny Mardones, a native of Maryland. In the summer of 1980, Carnes, who had scored a No. 4 single that spring dueting with Kenny Rogers (Don't Fall In Love With A Dreamer), revisited the top 10. Her funk-lite cover of Smokey Robinson's 1967 Miracles hit More Love preceded her biggest record by a year (Bette Davis Eyes would hold down the No. 1 slot for nine consecutive weeks). Mardones' mid-tempo ballad Into The Night enjoyed a double life, rising to top-20 status first in 1980, off his second LP, Never Run, Never Hide, then again in 1989 off his eponymously titled fourth album.

The program comes to a close with four very different soft-rock selections from the '90s. The 1990 chart-topping More Than Words was the highest-posting single for hard-rock/pop band Extreme, whose guitarist-songwriter Nuno Bettencourt can take some pride in the song's persistent popularity; so far, it's been covered by acts as disparate as Latin soul singer Frankie J and Irish boy band Westlife. Betraying the influence of the Beatles and even James Taylor, the romantic ballad contrasts sharply with I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That). The song, heavy hit-man Meat Loaf's sole No. 1 single, alternates, as did most of his hits, between quiet passages and thundering opera-rock. From 1993's Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell, the sequel to 1977's first Bat, I'd Do Anything was composed by longtime Loaf lyricist Jim Steinman. Bryan Adams' Please Forgive Me treads a more moderate path, commencing with a tender piano introduction before tearing off down Power Ballad Boulevard. Co-written, as were several of his '90s songs, with producer Robert "Mutt" Lange, Please Forgive Me rose to the No. 7 spot on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1993; Let's Make A Night To Remember, another Adams-Lange creation, reached No. 24 in 1996.

—Gene Sculatti

For some time now, it seems, a dominant trend in television programming has been what's called "relationship shows"—shows about friends and lovers, roommates and in-laws, co-worker cops and involved interns, guy and gal pals. In a way, soft rock's extended family of artists constitutes a sort of ongoing relationship show. Long-term friendships, evolving associations and geographic proximity seem to explain a lot.

For instance, a full quarter-century separates the earliest cut on this compilation from the most recent, but some of the performers on the oldest and one of the newest tracks jumped out of the same gene pool. The Mamas and the Papas' soaring but melancholic California Dreamin' released in 1966, has since become a bona fide American music standard, but it's also a cornerstone, specifically, of the genre known as West Coast pop. By 1990, that tradition had grown to include Mama Michelle and Papa John Phillips' daughter, Chynna—one-third of Wilson Phillips, whose harmonic Hold On was the first of three chart-topping singles (it preceded Release Me and You're In Love) from the trio's eponymously titled debut album. The other two members of Wilson Phillips were, of course, Wendy and Carnie Wilson, daughters of California's supreme musical dreamer, Brian Wilson. The legendary band Brian formed with his brothers and cousin in 1961 was still going strong in 1989, when it racked up its first million-selling single since Good Vibrations', though Brian is not heard on the record, Kokomo which originally appeared on the Cocktail film soundtrack, was the Beach Boys' final No, 1 single, following Good Vibrations, I Get Around and Help Me, Rhonda.

His family ties may lie elsewhere, but British singer and writer Albert Hammond surely had an affinity for California's temperate coastal climate and the dreams it inspired; both provided him with the substance for the 1972 cautionary tale It Never Rains In Southern California. While his only American hit as a songwriter to that point had been the Pipkins' novelty Gimme Dot Ding, Hammond went on to pen such numbers as the Hollies' The Air That I Breathe, Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias' To All The Girls I've Loved Before and Leo Sayer's When I Need You. Son Albert Hammond Jr. plays guitar in the hard-rocking New York band the Strokes.

The year 1972 was a fruitful one for the soft-rock clan. Houston-born Johnny Nash followed Hammond's meteorological bent with the uplifting I Can See Clearly Now, his sole chart topper (he'd scored a No. 5 with Hold Me Tight in 1968). The record, which Nash cut in London, played a major role in introducing Jamaican reggae to American audiences (the music's ascent was also abetted by the reggae-heavy feature The Harder They Come, which premiered in 1972). San Jose's Doobie Brothers connected big on their very first Hot 100 outing, the irresistibly rhythmic Listen To The Music, a No. 11 hit that was preceded by, among other non-chart singles, a cover of Randy Newman's Beehive State. Listen To The Music, from the band's second LP, Toulouse Street, and written by founder Tom Johnston, launched the Doobies' long-running assault on the charts (15 top-40 placings in eight years). The band's Warner Bros, labelmates America also consolidated considerable gains in 1972, gently tearing down Ventura Highway (where "the nights are stronger than moonshine") for their third top-10 entry that year (following A Horse With No Name and I Need You], and Bread poured more coal on its early-'70s hot streak. Everything I Own, the L.A. session musicians' follow-up to Baby, I'm-A Want You, remains a soft-rock classic; David Gates' yearning vocal makes the chorus soar, and on the bridge his singing recalls some of the delicacy of John Lennon's vocal on A Day In The Life.

Linda Ronstadt hadn't really hit her stride yet in 1972 (her best showing thus far, Different Drum, dates from 1967, when she was the Stone Poneys' featured singer), but within three years she had generated a genuine Hot 100 heat wave. Her rollicking version of Phil Everly's When Will I Be Loved (a top-10 hit for the Everly Brothers in 1960) followed 1974's breakthrough No. 1 single, You're No Good. When Will I Be Loved came from Ronstadt's double-platinum Heart Like A Wheel, which, like most of her albums from that period, featured the contributions of Andrew Gold. The Los Angeles guitarist-writer-singer-arranger, who also worked on projects by James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carly Simon and numerous other artists, would soon spend some time on the Billboard scoreboard himself, with 1977's Lonely Boy and its '78 follow-up, Thank You For Being A Friend.

The latter song, subsequently rewritten, would wind up as the theme for the popular sitcom The Golden Girls, which ran from 1985 to 1 992. Even more successful in the same realm was I'll Be There For You, the brisk pop tune that introduced the ensemble relationship show Friends every week for a decade. The writers and performers of that track were Danny Wilde and Phil Solem, going by the moniker the Rembrandts. Their top-20 Just The Way If Is, Baby, from 1991, is an understated mid-tempo rocker with a slight trace of Paul McCartney vocal influence and some clever lyrics ("I've never had a hand for solitaire"). Ronn Moss may have had but a bit part in the history of pop music—his band, Player, put across one massive hit in 1977, the soft-soul ballad Baby Come Back, and after a No. 10 follow-up disappeared—but the bassist probably didn't let that worry him too much. Since 1987, he's been a key cast member of the daytime soap The Bold and the Beautiful, playing Ridge Forrester.

The Rembrandts first carne to the larger public's attention in the '90s, but principals Wilde and Solem had previously played in Great Buildings, a Beatlesque quartet active in L.A.'s early-'80s new wave and punk scene. Another band on that scene—the most commercially successful to emerge from it, in fact—was the all-girl Go-Go's, the group that introduced an alluring figure who would make a major contribution to the soft-rock canon. Significantly polished up from her earlier incarnation, the band's lead singer, Belinda Carlisle, stepped out as a solo in 1984, delivering the lovely Circle In The Sand, from the LP Heaven On Earth, three years later; the song was the fourth of six top-30 singles for Carlisle.

Two additional acts likewise share a longstanding musical bond. In his pre- and early Doobie Brothers days, singer Michael McDonald supplied background vocals to such acclaimed Steely Dan albums as Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied and Aja. Drummer Jeff Porcaro and keyboardist-singer David Paich, mainstays of L.A.'s Toto, played on some of the same (and other) Steely Dan LPs. By the '80s, McDonald and Toto were enjoying thriving careers, the former notching a No. 4" single in I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near) from his solo debut, If That's What It Takes (1982), and the latter scoring its final top-15 entry with I'll Be Over You, from 1986's Fahrenheit LP. Perhaps not surprisingly, Michael McDonald sang background vocals on that album and, in the one-good-deed-deserves-another department, Porcaro and Toto guitarist Steve Lukather guested on McDonald's LP. It was all, appropriately enough, in the family.

—Gene Sculatti