Eric Carmen

Real Name: Eric Howard Carmen
Birthday: 11 August 1949
Hometown: Cleveland, Ohio
Biggest Hit Single: All By Myself, number 12, 1976
Career Highlights: Recording Hungry Eyes for the Dirty Dancing film soundtrack in 1987

 Eric Carmen was obviously a musical genius from birth. Aged two he was making his parents laugh with Tony Bennett impersonations. By the age of three he was enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and at six he began learning violin.

Eric then mastered the guitar and piano, and although was classically trained, changed his style after buying a Beatles record. From there he invested in a musical songbook of the band and taught himself all their biggest hits.

After forming a string of college bands during the 60s, most famously The Raspberries, Eric decided to go it alone in 1975. He left all the hard rock ballads he’d written in The Raspberries and started penning soft rock stormers like the classic All By Myself. Although that release was the only charting single for Eric in the UK, he had loads of Stateside success with Never Gonna Fall In Love Again, She Did It and Make Me Lose Control.

But Eric is best loved on both sides of the Atlantic for his single Hungry Eyes, which made it on the Dirty Dancing film score. The movie, starring Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, was a box office smash, and the soundtrack is one of the best-sellers of all time, going multi-platinum and reaching out to romantics around the globe.