Ned Doheny
A Southern California singer and guitarist whose Hard Candy (1976), produced by Steve Cropper, opens with "Get It Up for Love", a song other artists recorded before he did.
Asylum and Columbia
Patrick Anson Doheny, known as Ned, was born on March 26, 1948; Wikipedia gives Malibu, while his own biography says Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. He played on an album at Paxton Lodge with Jackson Browne, toured and recorded with Charles Lloyd, and studied classical guitar for a year with Fred Noad. Browne's connection to David Geffen brought a contract with Asylum, and the debut Ned Doheny (dated 1973 by Wikipedia, though its own text says 1972) drew praise from Rolling Stone but sold poorly. In 1971 Dave Mason recorded an early Doheny song, "On and On".
Hard Candy followed on Columbia in 1976 and Prone, recorded in 1977, in 1979, both produced by Steve Cropper. Elkie Brooks recorded "Learn to Love" in 1978, and "What Cha' Gonna Do for Me", written with Hamish Stuart, became a Chaka Khan hit in 1981. From 1978 Japanese interest led to a working relationship that ran into the 1990s: Life After Romance (1988), Love Like Ours (1991) and Between Two Worlds (1993), and from April 1990 to September 1993 he hosted the radio show Postcards from Hollywood on Yokohama FM.
Rediscovery
The Darkness Beyond the Fire came out in 2010. In 2014 the Numero Group released the compilation Separate Oceans (19 tracks mixing album cuts and demos, with an essay of about 8,000 words), Be With Records began vinyl reissues with Hard Candy in September 2014, and Prone was reissued in April 2015 with a tour of the UK and Europe. Numero calls him the unsung hero of breezy West Coast rock and roll and the first overview of this unheralded marina rocker. Other artists who have recorded his songs include George Benson, Melissa Manchester and Johnny Rivers.
Setlist.fm has 39 setlists, with sets in 2024 at In Sheep's Clothing in West Hollywood, the Jazz Cafe in London and the Lodge Room in Los Angeles, and in 2018 at Summer Sonic in Tokyo. Browne reportedly wrote a tribute to him in Rolling Stone in 2014, which we could not locate.
Albums
Songs
- Get It Up for Love Hard Candy · 1976
The opening track of Hard Candy, a song recorded by a string of other artists before Doheny's own 1976 version.
Sources
- Ned Doheny, Wikipedia
- Hard Candy (Ned Doheny album), Wikipedia
- Ned Doheny, Blue Desert
- Ned Doheny, Separate Oceans, Numero Group