Some people are just born to music.

When you’re the child of an Oscar-winning composer (Ernest Gold) and the most sought after ghost singer in Hollywood (Marni Nixon — see The King & I, West Side Story, My Fair Lady), you have two choices: reject everything your parents love and become a tax attorney, or embrace your genetic and environmental gifts and devote yourself to music. Luckily for fans of Linda Ronstadt and The Golden Girls, Andrew Gold chose the latter.

Beginning as a teen, Gold learned to play a multitude of instruments and started to write his own songs. By 16, he already had a recording contract with Polydor and an unsuccessful first single. But it was a start.

Living in Los Angeles in the early 70s, Gold played in a couple of groups with other talented musicians who would find their own success later, and in 1973, Linda Ronstadt was so impressed after seeing him at a gig that she asked him to join her band. He played with her on the road and in the studio for the next five years. On Ronstadt’s albums, he would be credited with everything from drums to guitars to keyboards, helping to shape the sound of numerous huge hits.

Gold released his first solo album in 1975 on Asylum Records and two years later scored a Top 10 hit with “Lonely Boy.” This is the song that still receives radio and streaming play, but his biggest cultural impact would occur in the 80s, based on a smaller hit released in 1978.

“Thank You For Being A Friend” took about an hour to write and was a moderate hit at the time, reaching #25 in the US. Like all songs with only a modicum of success, it was soon forgotten by all except devoted fans. Cut to 1985.

The producers of a new sitcom called The Golden Girls needed a theme song. They wanted to use a track by Bette Midler called “Friends,” but the cost for licensing this particular song was prohibitively expensive and a lot of the show’s budget was going to the star-studded cast. Someone then suggested that if they wanted a song with the word “friend” in the title, how about Andrew Gold’s “Thank You For Being A Friend” from seven years ago?

This song proved much more affordable and the producers hired Cindy Fee, known at this time for singing commercial jingles, to record a new version. History was made. The Golden Girls was a big hit and turned the song into an instantly recognizable pop culture classic.

(It would not be Gold’s only brush with TV fame. Seven years later he wrote the theme for the sitcom Mad About You. This time, he sang it himself.)

So travel down a road and back again… with Andrew Gold.