Born in Paris in 1951, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and Germany, Goldman learned piano and violin as a child, then discovered pop music -- specifically, Aretha Franklin -- at the age of seventeen. He attended college during the early '70s and spent time in the French Air Force as well. In 1975, he answered an advertisement from two Vietnamese brothers, Khanh May and Tai Sinh, to play in the group Tai Phong (Vietnamese for "high wind"). The band released several albums during the late '70s, but Goldman left the band by the following decade.