Gene Cornish

Gene Cornish, born May 14, 1944, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, is a Canadian-American musician and guitarist best known as a founding member of The Young Rascals. He relocated from Ontario to Rochester, New York with his mother early in his life, where he developed skills on both guitar and harmonica. As a teenager in the early 1960s, he performed at local clubs and bars in the Rochester area, working with various bands and occasionally as a solo act.

Cornish's recording career began in 1962, when he released "Winner Take All" backed with "Since I Lost You" on Vassar 319 under the name Gene Cornish with The Gene Cornish Nobles. The B-side was composed by R. Cornish and G. Cornish and arranged by Lew Douglas in a white doo-wop style. In 1964, he became a member of Joey Dee and the Starliters, where he met vocalist Eddie Brigati and keyboardist Felix Cavaliere. During that same period, Cornish fronted his own group, The Unbeetables, whose name was a play on The Beatles, and the group released the single "I Wanna Be a Beatle" in 1964. By the end of that year, Cornish, Brigati, and Cavaliere had joined with drummer Dino Danelli to form the group that would become known as The Young Rascals, with the band officially beginning to perform in February 1965.

From 1965 to 1970, The Young Rascals recorded eight albums and placed thirteen singles on Billboard's Top 40 chart, establishing themselves as one of rock and roll's leading acts of the era. Brigati departed the band in 1970, and Cornish followed in 1971. He subsequently formed the band Bulldog, and after that group disbanded, he and Danelli formed Fotomaker. Cornish later joined the group G.C. Dangerous. In 1974, Cornish and Danelli co-produced April Wine's first live album, followed by the group's "Stand Back" album in 1975.

In 1988, Cornish reunited with Danelli and Cavaliere for a Rascals reunion tour, which ran for four months before being cancelled. Cornish and Danelli then formed The New Rascals featuring Gene Cornish and Dino Danelli, which expanded in 2005 to include Bill Pascali of the Vanilla Fudge and Charlie Souza, formerly of Tom Petty's Mudcrutch. In 1997, Cornish was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a founding member of The Rascals. That same year, he released "Live at Palisades Amusement Park," an album of pre-Rascals recordings that included "I Wanna Be a Beatle," "Rockin' Robin," "Peanuts," "What'd I Say," "You're Gonna Cry Someday," and Cole Porter's "I Love Paris."

On April 24, 2010, all four original members of The Rascals reunited at New York's Tribeca Grill for the Kristen Ann Carr benefit, performing a set of more than one hour drawn from their 1960s catalog. The full reunion continued when the band appeared at the Capital Theater in Port Chester, New York, for six shows in December 2012. Those performances led to a Broadway engagement: The Rascals played fifteen dates at the Richard Rodgers Theatre from April 15 through May 5, 2013, in a production titled Once Upon a Dream. The show was produced by Steven Van Zandt and his wife Maureen, both long-time fans of the band. The production also toured North America, with stops in Toronto, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Chicago, Detroit, Rochester, and New York City.

On September 7, 2018, Cornish collapsed onstage at the Alberta Bair Theater in Billings, Montana, as the band began their opening song of the evening. He has been a resident of North Bergen, New Jersey, and has continued to perform with Felix Cavaliere and Gene Cornish's Rascals, a group that also features drummer Carmine Appice.