Forty years ago this weekend, on Saturday Sept. 14, 1985, a new sitcom, The Golden Girls, debuted on NBC. The show was an instant smash, thanks to sharp writing and one of the best casts in TV history. The show was also boosted by a pitch-perfect theme song, Andrew Gold’s “Thank You for Being a Friend.”
Gold didn’t write the song for the show. He had released it as a single in 1978, when it did moderately well, reaching No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100. (While you don’t want to knock a No. 25 hit, that was well below Gold’s 1977 single, “Lonely Boy,” which had reached No. 7, so “Friend” was a bit of a disappointment for Gold and his record label, Asylum, at the time.)
The Golden Girls is one of the few major TV shows to utilize a pre-existing song as its theme song. Others include Happy Days (which used Bill Haley & the Comets’ “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around the Clock)” in its first two seasons, before swapping it out for an original title song); the Atlanta-set Designing Women (which used “Georgia on My Mind”) and The Wonder Years (which used Joe Cocker’s version of “With a Little Help From My Friends”).
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The Golden Girls could have commissioned a newly-written theme song, but why would they when Gold’s song fit the show so perfectly?
In an essay on the song that ran just before Thanksgiving 2018, Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger observed: “ ‘Friend’ was an ideal match for the classic sitcom, about four female companions of advanced years sharing a home: Its charming and quirky mushiness led naturally into a show that, while unconventional and occasionally tart in its plotting and humor, never lost its core sweetness.”
Unterberger also contrasted Gold’s airtight “Lonely Boy” with his notably looser recording of “Thank You for Being a Friend.” “Unlike the immaculately crafted ‘Lonely Boy,’ ‘Friend’ kind of ambles, loose and free-associative.” (Peter Asher produced “Lonely Boy,” which featured Linda Ronstadt on background vocals. Gold produced “Friend” with Brock Walsh.)
If you only know “Thank You for Being a Friend” from the version heard on The Golden Girls, you may not fully understand what Unterberger meant. The Golden Girls team smartly zeroed in on the parts of Gold’s song that would work best for the show. Obviously, they couldn’t use the whole thing. Gold’s single ran 3:57. The opening credits sequence, which featured a vocal by Cynthia Fee, ran just 41 seconds.
Andrew Gold poses for a portrait circa 1978 in Los Angeles.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
I interviewed Gold for Billboard in March 1986, when The Golden Girls was nearing the end of its first season. The main thrust of the interview was an album Gold had recorded (under the group name Wax) with Graham Gouldman, who was formerly in 10cc. (The piece ran in the issue dated April 12, 1986, under the headline “Wax Works Well as a Team”) But as an OG Golden Girls fan, I couldn’t resist asking about “Thank You for Being a Friend.”
“They called me up and said they wanted to use it, and I said fine,” Gold recalled. “It’s great. If I have a stroke or something, that will pay my hospital bill.”
That was a joke, but the way Gold downplayed it also seemed to suggest a slight embarrassment at doing something so commercial and mainstream as selling your song to a network TV sitcom. But if you’re going to do that, you can do worse than selling it to one of the most successful and acclaimed sitcoms in TV history.
The Golden Girls ranked among the top 10 shows of the season in the Nielsen ratings in each of its first six seasons. It won the Emmy for outstanding comedy series in each of its first two seasons. By the end of Season 3, all four principal cast members had won Emmys.
“Thank You for Being a Friend” isn’t the only No. 25 hit from 1978 that is famous today. Village People’s “Macho Man” is also well-known, thanks in part to its improbable use at Donald Trump rallies. “Theme from Close Encounters” is also very familiar, though more for John Williams’ original version from the film than Meco’s discofied cover.
But most No. 25 hits from 1978 are known today only to pop obsessives of a certain age. Among them: Rita Coolidge’s “You,” Wings’ “I’ve Had Enough” and Barbra Streisand’s “Songbird.”
Gold was a second-generation music star. His father was composer Ernest Gold, who won an Oscar for best original score for Exodus. His mother was singer Marni Nixon, who dubbed the singing voice for such non-singing actresses as Deborah Kerr in The King and I, Natalie Wood in West Side Story and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady.
Andrew Gold died of heart failure in 2011 at age 59. But his mid-level Hot 100 hit song will charm audiences for as long as people like to laugh and spend time in the company of friends. Now, let’s slice up that cheesecake.
