Lasley wrote songs with a variety of partners, including Vandross, Kiki Dee and Scaggs, and in 1980 joined Geffen Records as a recording artist. He was in such demand that at one point he featured on 13 of the Top 25 songs on the US Billboard singles chart. Photograph: Mark Hanauerīy the time he began working with Taylor in 1977, he had also appeared on such chart landmarks as Odyssey’s Native New Yorker and Vandross’s Stop to Love, and even sang (uncredited) on the Ramones albums Leave Home and Rocket to Russia. He gained prestige as part of a quartet of singers (including Luther Vandross) who featured on Chic classics such as Everybody Dance and Le Freak, as well as Chic-produced hits such as Sister Sledge’s We Are Family.Īt one point David Lasley was in such demand that he featured on 13 of the Top 25 songs on the US Billboard singles chart.
With his remarkable four-octave vocal range and distinctive falsetto, Lasley worked steadily as a songwriter while developing a spectacular career as a backing singer. The writer and producer Desmond Child, renowned for his work with Meat Loaf, Cher, Aerosmith and many more, observed that Lasley “sang and wrote on many of the classic records across the last five decades that have become the soundtrack of our lives”. Lasley also became an indispensable part of James Taylor’s band, and Taylor would introduce him on stage as “a great singer-songwriter in his own right”. Among the headlining names he worked with are Chic, Joni Mitchell, Whitney Houston, Burt Bacharach, Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Todd Rundgren, Herb Alpert and Boz Scaggs. Though never a solo star, David Lasley, who has died of cancer aged 74, was regarded as an invaluable backing singer, songwriter and collaborator by some of the most prestigious names in the music industry.