Rupert Holmes (born February 24, 1947) is an
American and British composer, songwriter and
author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit
"Escape" (subtitled "The Piña Colada
Song") in 1979 and his Tony Award winning musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
Life and career
Holmes was born in Northwich, Cheshire, England. His father was a United States Army Warrant Officer and bandleader, and his mother was English, and both were musical.
Holmes has dual American and British citizenship. The family moved, after a few years, to the northern New York City suburb of Nanuet, New York, where Holmes grew up
and attended nearby Nyack High School and then the Manhattan School of Music (majoring in clarinet). Holmes' brother, Richard, is an
opera singer based in New York City and is the principal lyric baritone of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan
Players, sings roles with regional opera companies, such as Glimmerglass
Opera, Lake George, and Virginia Opera, among others, and has appeared at the
Metropolitan Opera. Holmes' daughter Wendy died suddenly in 1986, at the age of ten,
of an undiagnosed brain tumor. He has two sons, Nick and Tim (who has autism).
Songwriter and recording artist
In his 20s, Holmes was a session musician (producing sessions, writing and arranging songs, singing and playing a few
instruments), who wrote jingles and pop tunes (including for Gene Pitney, the Platters, the Drifters and television's The Partridge Family). As a recording artist, Holmes broke through with 1974's Widescreen on Epic Records, which introduced him as a presenter
of highly romantic, lushly orchestrated "story songs" that told a witty narrative punctuated by clever rhymes and a hint of
comedy. Barbra Streisand discovered this album and asked to record songs from it,
launching Holmes on a successful career. She then used some of his songs in the movie A Star Is Born. His second, self-titled album led Rolling Stone to compare him to Bob Dylan in the sense of being an
artist of unprecedented originality that commanded attention.
Holmes' production skills were also in demand during this period, and he took on this role for Lynsey De Paul on her album "Tigers and Fireflies", which spawned the radio hit "Holiday Romance". That
album also featured a song, the bluesy "'Twas", co-written by the two.
"Escape" was included on his fifth album, Partners in Crime, and
reached the Hot 100 No. 1 Hits of 1979. The song hit #1 late
December 1979, becoming the last song to top the pop chart in the 1970s. The song fell to #2 for the first week of January, 1980
and then rebounded to #1 the next week, making Holmes the only artist to ascend to the #1 spot with the same song in different
decades. Another popular song on that album was "Him".
Holmes wrote a song for the band The Buoys called "Timothy," possibly the only top-40 song about cannibalism. Holmes
was not in the band, but did play piano on the track. He also wrote "Give Up Your Guns", "The Prince of Thieves", "Blood Knot",
and "Tomorrow" for the band. "Timothy" charted at #17 and "Give Up Your Guns" at #84. In 1986
Holmes's composition "You Got It All" (sometimes called "You Got It All Over Him") was a hit single for The Jets and later recorded by pop superstar Britney Spears, featured
in her internationally released version of Oops!...I Did It Again
(2000).
In the 1980s and 1990s, Holmes also played in cabarets and comedy clubs, mostly in New York City, telling often
autobiographical anecdotes illustrated with his songs.
Playwright
Cast album cover
Rupert Holmes made his professional debut as a playwright with the musical
The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 1985. Holmes was encouraged to write a musical by Joseph Papp and his wife
after they attended one of Holmes's cabarets in 1983. The result, loosely based on the
Charles Dickens unfinished novel, and inspired
by Holmes's memories of English pantomime shows he attended as a child, would earn Holmes
Tony Awards for both book and score, as well as Drama Desk
Awards (for book, music, and lyrics), and various other honors. Holmes also orchestrated Edwin Drood himself,
making him one of the few Broadway composers to write his own orchestrations. Because the original novel was left unfinished
after Dickens's death, Holmes came up with the unusual idea of providing alternate endings for each character who is suspected of
the murder, and letting the audience vote on a different murderer each night. The success of Drood would lead Holmes to
focus more on writing plays (both musical and non-) in later years, though he has stated that he avoided musical theater for some
time after the untimely death of his daughter.
Holmes also wrote the Tony Award-nominated ("Best Play 2003") Say Goodnight,
Gracie, based on the relationship between George Burns and Gracie Allen. The play, which starred Frank Gorshin, was that
Broadway season's longest running play. He has also written the comedy-thriller Accomplice
(1990), which was the second of Holmes's plays to receive an Edgar Award (following
Drood.) Holmes has written a number of other shows, including Solitary Confinement (2002), which set a new
Kennedy Center box office record before its Broadway run;
Thumbs, the most successful play in the history of the Helen Hayes Theatre Company; and the musical Marty. Holmes
also joined the creative team of Curtains, after the deaths of both
Peter Stone (the original book-writer) and Fred Ebb (the
lyricist). Holmes rewrote Stone's original book and contributed additional lyrics to the Kander
and Ebb songs. Curtains is currently (as of 2007) playing at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on Broadway, with David Hyde
Pierce and Debra Monk in the lead roles. Holmes and the late Peter Stone won the 2007
Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical for Curtains.
Television writer and novelist
In 1996 Holmes created the television series
Remember WENN for American Movie
Classics, writing all 64 episodes of that series. In 2003 he published his first
novel, Where the Truth Lies (later filmed by
Atom Egoyan), followed in 2005 by Swing, a
multimedia release combining a novel with a music CD providing clues to the mystery.
Discography
Does not include singles, others' collections, or albums released without Holmes's participation:
- 1. Widescreen. 1974 (Epic: KE 32864 or AL 32864)
- 2. Rupert Holmes. 1975 (Epic: KE33443)
- 3. Singles. 1976 (Epic: 34288)
- 4. Pursuit of Happiness. 1978 (Private Stock/MCA: MCA 3241)
- 5. Partners in Crime. 1979 (Infinity/MCA: INF 9020)
- 6. Adventure. 1980 (MCA: 5129)
- 7. Full Circle. 1981 (Electra: P-11086E)
- 8. Billboard Top Hits 1979. 1991 (Rhino: 70674)
- 9. Scenario. 1994 (Victor: VICP-5469)
- 10. Epoch Collection. 1994 (Varese Sarabande: VSD-5520)
- 11. Widescreen. 1995 (Varese Sarabande: VSD-5545)
- 12. The Best of Rupert Holmes. 1998 (Half Moon/Universal: HMNCD 037)
- 13. Rupert Holmes / Greatest Hits. 2000 (Hip-O/Universal: 314 541 557-2)
- 14. Widescreen - The Collector's Edition. 2001 (Fynsworth Alley: 302 062 1162) (with eleven cuts not previously
released).
- 15. Cast of Characters - The Rupert Holmes Songbook. 2005 (Hip-O/Universal: B0004263-02)
- 16. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Original Broadway Cast Recording. Polygram
Holmes also wrote and co-produced, and was a keyboardist on, the songs on the disco album
Shobizz, released in 1979 by Capitol Records.
Other works
Theatre
Poster for Curtains on Broadway
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood
- Twelfth Night
- Accomplice
- The Hamburger Hamlet
- Solitary Confinement
- Goosebumps
- Say Goodnight, Gracie
- Thumbs
- Marty
- Curtains
- Swango
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
Film and television projects
- Remember WENN
- Hi Honey I'm Home
- No Small Affair
- Five Savage Men
- A Star Is Born
- Art in Heaven
- The Christmas Raccoons (voice)
Books
- Swing
- Where The Truth Lies
- False Information
External links
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