March 1980: Ambrosia Release BIGGEST PART OF ME

For Ambrosia's David Pack, hit song "Biggest Part of Me" came to him in a flash at the most inopportune time: right as he was set to head out on a family road trip.

"It was the Fourth of July in 1979. I was waiting for my family to get in the car so I could go to a Fourth of July celebration in Malibu," Pack remembered to the Tennessean in 2014. 'They were taking too long, and I realized I had left all of my gear on in the studio, so I run back to my separate studio building and just sat down at the piano for some reason, and the chords popped out. I kind of went, 'Uh oh, where's the tape recorder?' I turned on my reel-to-reel, wrote the chords and the melody in literally five to 10 minutes. A substantial portion of the lyrics just kind of fell out. I turned off my machine, heard the car horn honking for me."

When Pack finished the song, he had a crisis of confidence. Was it horribly cheesy? He turned to a good friend for advice: Michael McDonald. "We had been touring a lot together. We were writing for the first time together, and I wasn't happy with the lyrics," Pack explained. "So I played it for Mike at his home. I said, 'I wrote this song. I don't like these lyrics, but the song is pretty cool.' He heard it and said, 'Are you kidding me? (The lyrics) are probably the reason the song is going to be a hit!' For me I'm a perfectionist, so I thought they were too Hallmark Card-sounding lyrics. I said, 'Mike, I can imagine a band singing this in a Holiday Inn.' He goes, 'Well, that's a good thing!' (laughs). Of course, Mike was right, and I was wrong."

Released as a single on March 19, 1980, Ambrosia's smooth and silky "Biggest Part of Me" yacht-rocked right up the charts, sailing to a peak position of #3 for the week of June 7, 1980. The two songs that blocked Ambrosia from #1? Paul McCartney's and Wings' "Coming Up" (#2), and Lipps, Inc.'s "Funkytown" (#1).

"It's hundreds, if not (more). A lot of people," Pack revealed when asked how many times people have told him that they fell in love or got married to the tune. "It's great when you've touched somebody's life in that way, even once in your life."