Over Easy:Laura Nyro
This was the first music that brought me to tears.
The Beatles awakened the rock ‘n’ roll spirit in me and Bob Dylan revealed the power of language, but it was Laura Nyro who showed me the well of emotion that lived in a song.
When I first started listening to music, really listening to it, often one of the main attractions of an artist was that I had no idea where the music came from, what their sources were, how they learned to play that way. The best example of that was when I discovered Laura Nyro.
She could create a world in a song, one that followed only its own rules. I knew that, as moved as I was, I couldn’t copy her songwriting style, but I remember wanting my songs to come from a mysterious place, for them to be these tiny musical miracles like the ones Laura Nyro created. I think all I succeeded in doing was, as the expression goes, ‘muddying the waters so they appear deep’.
An 8 LP vinyl reissue arrived last month and I’ve rediscovered some of those first feelings in listening again to her music. If the name doesn’t register, her songs might– from “Wedding Bell Blues” by the 5th Dimension to “Eli’s Comin’” by 3 Dog Night, and “Stoney End” by Barbra Streisand. The first song she wrote, at 17, “And when I Die”, was a hit for Blood, Sweat & Tears. She had songs recorded by Chet Baker, the Supremes, Carmen McRae and The Staple Singers.
I found out that she had learned her sense of harmony as a teenager while singing with the Puerto Rican boys in the NY subway, relishing the reverb in those cavernous spaces. You can hear those roots on the “Gonna Take a Miracle” album of soul and R&B classics that she did with Labelle.
There is no other songwriter I know whose work traverses the emotional distance from pure joy to deepest sorrow, from “Stoned Soul Picnic” to “Poverty Train”.
I first saw Laura Nyro at Massey Hall on November 17, 1969 and years later, at one of her last shows in the 150 seat backroom at McCabes Guitar Shop. Those songs are timeless, and the rapture she created singing them was undiminished.
When asked to name great performer/songwriters who have largely been ignored, Elton John cited Nyro. He said she was “the first person for whom there are no rules”. He also addressed Nyro’s influence on his 1970 song “Burn Down the Mission“, from “Tumbleweed Connection”, in particular. “I idolized her,” he said, “The soul, the passion, just the out-and- out audacity of… her rhythmic and melody changes.”
I can’t say that Laura Nyro hasn’t been recognized. Bette Midler’s speech, inducting her into the R&R Hall of Fame was, as you would expect, funny and incredibly touching. Nyro was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2010, but I think her importance is underappreciated.
Perhaps the only singer songwriter who she might be considered alongside, Joni Mitchell, said this, “Laura Nyro you can lump me in with, because Laura exerted an influence on me. I looked to her and took some direction from her. On account of her I started playing piano again. Hers was a hybrid of black pop singers, Motown singers and Broadway musicals.”
Both artists fiercely guarded their independence in the studio. Joni continues,
“It used to be embarrassing to myself and to Laura Nyro in particular to play with technical musicians in the early days. It would embarrass us that we were lacking in a knowledgeable way and that we would give instructions to players in terms of metaphors, either colour descriptions or painterly descriptions.”
Laura notoriously bent the talents of the players and producers to her will. Charlie Calello, who produced “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession” tells this story.
“I got a call from the legal department when they found out I had spent $28,000 and I still wasn’t finished,” says Calello. “The head of business affairs said, ‘You’re over budget. What are you doing here?’ I said, ‘We’re not making music, we’re making art.’ And he said to me, ‘We don’t make art here. We make money.’” Callelo collected his pink slip.
If you’re a Nyrophyte maybe start with “Eli and the 13th Confession”. From that album, the song “Emmie” is the one that overwhelmed a young songwriter, and as I listened again half a century later, it had the same beautiful, devastating effect.
