Christopher North, who played keyboards as a founding member of the soft-rock group Ambrosia, died Monday in a hospice in Los Angeles. He was 75.
His death was confirmed by Ambrosia’s Joe Puerta, who said the cause was throat cancer. According to Puerta, North was seriously injured late last year when he was hit by a car as he walked into Fromin’s deli in Santa Monica.
In a post on Ambrosia’s Facebook account, the band described North as “the Hammond B3 King” after his preferred instrument and said his “sonic architecture defined a generation of progressive and soft rock.” North “was a keyboard wizard,” the group added, “who brought an unmatched intensity and emotional depth to every performance” and whose work “created ‘aural landscapes’ that balanced virtuosity with soulful, radio-friendly hooks.”
Purveyors of the breezy, lightly soulful sound that also brought success in the mid-1970s to acts like America and Seals & Crofts (whose Dash Crofts died last week), Ambrosia scored a string of top 40 hits in the second half of that decade, including two that went to No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100: “How Much I Feel” and “Biggest Part of Me,” the latter of which was nominated for a Grammy Award for pop performance by a duo or group with vocals.
Today both songs are regarded as key examples of the style that became known retroactively as yacht rock; on Spotify, each has more than 120 million streams.
North was born Jan. 26, 1951, and grew up in San Pedro. He formed Ambrosia in 1970 with Puerta on bass, singer and guitarist David Pack and drummer Burleigh Drummond. The group’s self-titled debut album came out in 1975; at the time, the band had a more ornate sound à la Genesis. Yet it had smoothed out by 1978’s “Life Beyond L.A.,” its first LP for the Warner Bros. label.
“What we didn’t like about progressive rock was that it was too flamboyant without substance,” Pack told The Times in 1999. “Those bands dated themselves by making the arrangements more of the central focus than the quality of songwriting. I think that we were different in that respect.”
The album “One Eighty” came out in 1980 and yielded a second hit after “Biggest Part of Me” in “You’re the Only Woman (You & I),” which peaked at No. 13 on the Hot 100. The next year, Ambrosia’s song “Poor Rich Boy” appeared on the soundtrack of the movie “Arthur” alongside Christopher Cross’ chart-topping “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do).”
Ambrosia broke up in 1982 but reunited in 1989; Pack later left, though the band’s other three founders continued to perform. North’s survivors include a brother and two children.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
