The Bread frontman turned solo artist who gave us 'Take Me Now' and 'Everything I Own'.
For the Bread sound, 'Make It with You' is the obvious touchstone. For his solo work, start with 'Take Me Now', it's the one that actually topped the charts.
Gates wrote songs that became part of the soft rock fabric without ever shouting about it. 'Take Me Now' spent four weeks at number one in 1975, but it's the way his melodies settle into memory that sticks. He gave Bread their gentle signature sound, then kept writing those same kind of straightforward, melodic ballads on his own.
He helped form Bread in 1967, and their first album arrived in 1969 with 'Make It with You'. After the band broke up in 1973, Gates went solo and kept recording through the 1980s and 1990s, putting out albums like 'Love Is Always Seventeen' in 1989. He toured regularly, playing his older material for audiences who remembered the Bread years.
Keep it compact: a lyric you come back to, a live memory, or the part of the catalog you would point someone toward first.
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