WILDE DANNY

You know Danny Wilde from The Rembrandts. One of a number of Los Angeles musicians who began cranking out great music in the late Seventies and never stopped, he was a founding member of The Quick, a power pop band whose members would later form legendary LA bands like Cruzados and The Three O’Clock. After The Quick recorded its debut and only album, Mondo Deco (1976), and disbanded, Wilde landed in another LA power pop outfit, Great Buildings, with future Rembrandt Phil Solem. Great Buildings would record two albums, Apart From the Crowd (1981) and Extra Epic Everything (1982), before splitting up.

Wilde released his debut solo album, The Boyfriend, in 1986, then amicably parted ways with Chris Blackwell and signed with Geffen, where he recorded Any Man’s Hunger and Danny Wilde (1989) before Geffen sent him packing. By the next year, he and Phil Solem were already working on the demos that would become the first Rembrandts album, The Rembrandts (1991). The rest, of course, is the stuff that dreams are made of – The Rembrandts would record a number of hit albums, including the wonderful Untitled (1993) and L.P. (1995), where “I’ll Be There For You,” the theme to Friends, resides.  

The Boyfriend is a great album! It's a sin and crime that Danny Wilde did not become a superstar. After Great Buildings broke up in 1982, he started working on solo material. That’s when a friend of his invited him to a Christmas party at Island Records in Hollywood. He has a cassette of his first collection of solo material on him, which he gave to Chris Blackwell. About a week later he got a call from Island saying they would like to sign him. A couple of weeks after The Boyfriend was released the president of the label and the head of promotion for Island were fired. Danny Wilde’s manager, George Ghiz, thought Island was too artsy and more of a boutique outfit, and that Danny needed to be on a label that had bags of money to throw at promotion. Blackwell agreed, and Island sold the deal to Geffen.

The only hooks to story about Danny Wilde are the ones you hear in his songs. Every morning , the energetic singer/ songwriter/guitarist gets up, walks into his studio and writes those seemingly simple, straightforward musical and yrical catchphrases that put the 'pop' in pop music. He's written them for many top performers, including Robert Palmer, Charlie Sewton, Jane Wiemldin and Peter Frampton