Richard Barone

Since his time leading the Bongos, Hoboken’s leading pop ensemble of the 1980s, Richard Barone has followed a solo route that stayed relatively understated yet earned consistent praise and achievement.

Barone assembled the Bongos in 1980 and steered the band across three releases: the 1982 singles anthology Drums Along the Hudson, the 1983 EP Numbers with Wings whose title track became the group’s signature song, and 1985’s Beat Hotel. That same year he joined James Mastro for a restrained, largely acoustic duo album produced by Mitch Easter, issued as Nuts & Bolts. Mastro entered the Bongos after the group signed with RCA.

Following the band’s amicable dissolution, Barone began his solo work in distinctive fashion. During a 1987 appearance at The Bottom Line in New York City he presented his voice and electric guitar alongside an acoustic guitarist, cellist Jane Scarpantoni of Tiny Lights—who would become the foremost cello voice in alternative pop—and a percussionist devoted to vibraphone and Latin instruments seldom used elsewhere. The resulting live recording, Cool Blue Halo, unites Bongos material, new songs, and striking covers of Bowie, T. Rex, and Beatles tracks to display Barone’s breadth and inclinations; it remains his strongest effort.

Label collapses soon after release left both Cool Blue Halo and the 1990 album Primal Dream hard to obtain. Barone responded quickly with Primal Cuts, a German EP containing remixed tracks, acoustic demos, and new versions of the strongest songs from Primal Dream.

Three years later he returned with the outstanding 1993 release Clouds Over Eden. Dedicated to the memory of his close friend, music journalist Nicholas Schaffner—who wrote The Beatles Forever, The British Invasion, and A Saucerful of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey, as well as the liner notes for Cool Blue Halo and Primal Dream—Clouds Over Eden forms a dark yet ultimately redemptive cycle of grief and acceptance that proves considerably more powerful and personal than Lou Reed’s similar Magic and Loss from the previous year; musically it enlarges and refines the direction first indicated on Cool Blue Halo.

Barone’s next project essentially recreated Cool Blue Halo as a second installment. With an additional cellist replacing the acoustic guitar and percussion, 1997’s Between Heaven and Cello achieves an even more delicate and somber hue than its predecessor, suiting a program drawn mainly from the two prior albums together with selected older and newer pieces.

For several years afterward Barone concentrated on songwriting, co-writing, collaborations, musical and theatrical direction, and production for other artists. He also participated in the Loser’s Lounge, a New York collective of art-pop figures who staged tribute concerts in local clubs. In addition to performing and singing at most of those concerts, Barone produced the collective’s first two albums: 1999’s Simply Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad About the Loser’s Lounge and 2001’s How Can a Loser Ever Win?

Line Records in Germany reissued Cool Blue Halo, Primal Dream, and Clouds Over Eden in 2000 as the three-disc box set The Big Three. In 2004 Barone assembled the solo anthology Collection: An Embarrassment of Richard. He later served as executive producer of the documentary The Nomi Song on Klaus Nomi, for which he also remixed the track “Total Eclipse.” His activities included music direction and orchestration for Bright Lights, Big City at the New York Theatre Workshop, direction and performance in the modern interpretation of Handel’s works titled The Downtown Messiah that aired for six years on public radio, and continued involvement in major events at Carnegie Hall, The Hollywood Bowl, and New York’s Central Park. His first book, Frontman: Surviving the Rock Star Myth, appeared in 2007. Glow, his first proper solo album in several years, was co-produced by Tony Visconti (T. Rex, David Bowie) and released in 2010.