01/03/2019 | Page 2 of 2

Singer and pianist Daryl Dragon, best known as the Captain of 1970s soft rock duo the Captain and Tennille, died Wednesday at age 76, his publicist said.

Dragon died of kidney failure in Prescott, Ariz., publicist Harlan Boll’s statement said.

The Captain and Tennille were best known for their Grammy-winning 1974 hit Love Will Keep Us Together, as well as the hits Muskrat Love in 1976, and Do That to Me One More Time in 1980.

They also hosted their own television variety series from 1976 to 1977.

Toni Tennille, who married Dragon in 1975, was with him when he died.

“He was a brilliant musician with many friends who loved him greatly. I was at my most creative in my life when I was with him,” Tennille said in a statement.

The couple divorced in 2014 but remained friends.

Tennille said in a 2010 blog post that Dragon was suffering from an unspecified neurological condition that gave him hand tremors, seriously affecting his ability to play keyboards.

Dragon said in 2017 that his problems were a result of medication and that he was better.

Classically trained

Dragon was a classically trained pianist but preferred to play blues and boogie woogie instead of Bach and Beethoven. He played with Fats Domino and B.B. King and was also a backup keyboard player for the Beach Boys in the mid-1960s and early 1970s.

It was with the Beach Boys that Dragon got his stage name, thanks to his habit of wearing a ship captain’s hat while performing.

He met Tennille when they both toured for the Beach Boys, and they began performing together. They signed a record deal in 1974, releasing Love Will Keep Us Together, which held on to the No. 1 spot on the charts for eight weeks in the summer of 1975. The Captain and Tennille also toured England, Australia and Japan.

In 1976, they sang at the White House during the bicentennial celebrations of the American Revolution.

Wednesday’s obituary said that at Dragon’s request there would be no services, and it suggested donations to organizations conducting research into neurological conditions.
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Apple on Wednesday cut the revenue forecast for its latest quarter, citing fewer iPhone upgrades and weak sales in China, and its shares tumbled in after-hours trade.

The company forecast $84 billion in revenue for its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 29, which is below analysts’ estimate of $91.5 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Apple originally forecast revenue of between $89 billion and $93 billion.

“While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in greater China,” Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said in a letter to investors. “In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad.”

Wednesday was the first time that Apple issued a warning on its revenue guidance ahead of releasing quarterly results since the iPhone was launched in 2007.

Sharp drop

Apple shares, which had been halted ahead of the announcement, skidded 7.7 percent in after-hours trade, dragging the company’s market value below $700 billion.

A slew of brokerages reduced their first-quarter production estimates for iPhones after several component makers in November forecast weaker-than-expected sales, leading some market watchers to call the peak for iPhones in several key markets.

On Apple’s earnings call in November, Cook cited slowing growth in emerging markets such as Brazil, India and Russia for the lower-than-anticipated sales estimates for the company’s fiscal first quarter. But Cook specifically said he “would not put China in that category” of countries with troubled growth.

That all came before the damage to the Chinese economy from trade tensions with the United States became clear. On Wednesday, China’s central bank magazine said the country’s economic growth could fall below 6.5 percent in the fourth quarter as companies face increased difficulties there.

Apple has held firm on its premium pricing strategy in China despite the risk of a slower economy, a factor that has been exacerbated by the strong U.S. dollar. Apple tends to set its prices in U.S. dollars and charge a broadly equivalent amount in local currencies.

“The question for investors will be the extent to which Apple’s aggressive pricing has exacerbated this situation and what this means for the company’s longer-term pricing power within its iPhone franchise,” James Cordwell, an analyst at Atlantic Equities, told Reuters.
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