Eric Carmen obituary

Eric Carmen in the 1970s. Music was in his veins; aged 11 he began learning the piano and was soon writing his own songs. Photograph: Tom Hill/WireImage

Long before the term “classical crossover” was invented, Eric Carmen, who has died aged 74, showed everybody how to do it with his 1975 single All By Myself. An international hit that reached No 2 in the US and 12 in the UK, it borrowed the melody from the second movement of Sergei Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2 in C minor for its verse, and for good measure included a classical-like piano interlude.

Proving that no musical idea need ever go to waste, Carmen also revisited Let’s Pretend, his 1973 Top 40 hit with his band the Raspberries, and reworked it for the chorus of All By Myself.