Rupert Holmes

Rupert Holmes, born David Goldstein on February 24, 1947, in Northwich, Cheshire, England, is a British-American composer, lyricist, book writer, playwright, singer-songwriter, and author. His father, Leonard Eliot Goldstein, was a United States Army warrant officer and bandleader, and his mother, Gwendolen Mary (née Pynn), was English; both parents were musical. Holmes holds dual British and American citizenship. When he was six, the family relocated to Nanuet, New York, where he grew up and attended Nyack High School before enrolling at the Manhattan School of Music, where he majored in clarinet. In 2021, the Manhattan School of Music awarded him an honorary Doctor of Musical Arts degree.

Holmes married childhood friend Elizabeth "Liza" Wood Dreifuss, an attorney, in 1969. Their daughter Wendy died in 1986 at the age of ten from an undiagnosed brain tumor. Holmes and his wife have two sons, Nick, a filmmaker, and Timothy, who is autistic. The family lived in Scarsdale, New York, from the time of Wendy's death until 2009, when they moved to Cold Spring, New York. Holmes's brother Richard, a principal lyric baritone with the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, has performed with regional opera companies including Glimmerglass, Lake George, and Virginia Opera, and has appeared with the Metropolitan Opera.

In his twenties, Holmes worked as a session musician, producing, writing, arranging, singing, and playing multiple instruments. In 1969, he and Ron Dante of the Cuff Links recorded "Jennifer Tomkins," which Holmes subsequently released under the studio name Street People after Dante was forced to withdraw from the project. The song appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 for fifteen weeks beginning January 3, 1970, reaching number 36 in the United States and number 21 in Canada. A follow-up single, "Thank You Girl," reached number 96 on the Billboard pop charts in April 1970. Holmes also played piano for the Buoys, for whom he wrote "Timothy," a song about human cannibalism that intentionally drew controversy and spent seventeen weeks on the Hot 100 beginning January 2, 1971, peaking at number 17. Additional songs he wrote for the Buoys include "Give Up Your Guns," "The Prince of Thieves," "Blood Knot," and "Tomorrow." He also composed jingles and pop material for artists including Gene Pitney, the Platters, the Drifters, Wayne Newton, Dolly Parton, Barry Manilow, and the television program The Partridge Family, as well as the score for the 1970 western Five Savage Men, starring Keenan Wynn.

Holmes broke through as a recording artist with his 1974 debut album Widescreen on Epic Records. Barbra Streisand discovered the album and asked to record songs from it, and Holmes subsequently arranged, conducted, and contributed songs to her 1975 album Lazy Afternoon as well as five additional Streisand albums. Some of his songs also appeared in the film A Star Is Born. Holmes produced Lynsey de Paul's album Tigers and Fireflies, which included the radio hit "Hollywood Romance" and the co-written song "'Twas," and he produced Sparks' 1976 LP Big Beat. In 1975, together with Jeffrey Lesser, he produced the UK band Sailor's album Trouble. His fifth album, Partners in Crime, contained "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)," which became the final Hot 100 number one single of 1979, and "Him," which peaked at number 6. Holmes also charted in the top 40 with "Answering Machine." In 1986, his composition "You Got It All" became a top-three hit for the Jets and was later recorded by Britney Spears for the internationally released edition of Oops!... I Did It Again in 2000. His song "The People That You Never Get to Love" appeared on four albums by Susannah McCorkle and was recorded by Frank Sinatra Jr. on his 2006 album That Face! During the 1980s and 1990s, Holmes performed in cabarets and comedy clubs primarily in New York City, presenting autobiographical anecdotes alongside his songs.

Holmes made his professional playwriting debut with the musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood in 1985, after Joseph Papp and his wife attended one of Holmes's cabarets in 1983 and encouraged him to write a musical. The work, loosely based on Charles Dickens's unfinished novel and informed by Holmes's childhood memories of English pantomime, became a hit in New York's Central Park before transferring to Broadway. Because Dickens left the novel incomplete at his death, Holmes devised a structure in which the audience votes each night on which suspect committed the murder, producing alternate endings. The show earned Holmes the 1986 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical and the 1986 Tony Award for Best Original Score, as well as Drama Desk Awards for lyrics, music, book, and orchestrations. The musical has received London and Broadway revivals, the latter earning an additional Tony nomination for Best Revival.

Holmes wrote the comedy-thriller Accomplice in 1990, which received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the second of his plays to earn that honor after Drood. Solitary Confinement played on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre in 1992, having set a new Kennedy Center box office record prior to its Broadway engagement. Say Goodnight Gracie, based on the relationship between George Burns and Gracie Allen and starring Frank Gorshin, opened in 2003; it was that Broadway season's longest-running play, became the third-longest-running solo-performance show in Broadway history, received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play, and won the National Broadway Theatre Award for best play in 2004. Holmes also wrote the book for the musical Marty in 2002, starring John C. Reilly, and the book for Swango: The Theatrical Dance Experience, a swing-tango piece inspired by Romeo and Juliet that premiered Off-Broadway in 2002 and has had several revivals. His play Thumbs became the most successful production in the history of the Helen Hayes Theatre Company.

Holmes joined the creative team of the musical Curtains after the deaths of original book writer Peter Stone and lyricist Fred Ebb, rewriting Stone's book and contributing additional lyrics to the show. In 2025, he received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Adaptation.