Ambrosia

Ambrosia plays pop with classical flourishes and is best known for its late-'70s hit singles. David Pack and Joe Puerta met in high school and were later joined by Burleigh Drummond and Christopher North. Three months later, while helping check a new sound system in the Hollywood Bowl, renowned classical-music engineer Gordon Parry heard them play and arranged for them to perform at UCLA. Parry arranged for Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Zubin Mehta to attend the performance, and Mehta then invited the group to participate in his All American Dream Concert in the Hollywood Bowl soon thereafter. In 1973 Ambrosia performed in the debut of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC.

The four members play a total of 72 instruments, and their songs often contain literary allusions such as “Nice, Nice, Very Nice,” a line from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. The group contributed to the soundtrack of All This and World War II. Its hit singles include “Holdin’ On to Yesterday” (#17, 1975), “How Much I Feel” (#3, 1978), “Biggest Part of Me” (#3, 1980), and “You’re the Only Woman (You & I)” (#13, 1980). Ambrosia broke up in 1984, but the four original members reunited in 1989 and continue to tour. They contributed three new songs to a 1997 best-of anthology.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)