Jazz Latin New Age. Aggressive Bittersweet Druggy. Energetic Happy Hypnotic. Romantic Sad Sentimental. Sexy Trippy All Moods. Drinking Hanging Out In Love. Introspection Late Night Partying. Rainy Day Relaxation Road Trip. Romantic Evening Sex All Themes. Articles Features Interviews Lists. In she broke her silence with the release of Mother's Spiritual, described by Columbia as "a major work of 14 original new songs.
The lyrics of Mother's Spiritual were presented on the walls of the Chicago Peace Museum as a feminist vision By , however, Nyro was back on the tour circuit, playing 35 concerts in major cities around the United States.
David Nathan of Billboard described her concert at the Mayfair Theater in Santa Monica: "Nyro's appeal lies as much in occasional on-stage glimpses of her off-stage persona as it does in her pointed, image-provoking material; her easy camaraderie with both musicians and audience and a wry humor are very endearing.
But it was Nyro's poetic imagery coupled with her distinctive vocal delivery that made her show simply spellbinding. She explained to reporters that she wasn't ready for another studio recording because of a strong urge to "be singing and to be a musician again, but in a soulful way.
In Nyro recorded her first studio album in nine years, Walk the Dog and Light the Light, after working on it with Gary Katz for a year and a half. A Rolling Stone reviewer called the album "irresistible" and a writer for People magazine described it as "seductive. Her new songs showed concern for many contemporary sociopolitical issues; for example, she wrote the Native American protest song "Broken Rainbow" for the Academy Award-winning documentary of the same name, and an animal-rights song, "Lite a Flame.
Nyro's feminist concerns emerge with "A Woman of the World," a song, Nyro said, about "healing, asking more joy for yourself Nyro described "Art of Love" as a "holiday song and a peace song. These voices represent the voice of people with a "Peace on Earth" vision of life--"just decent people," Nyro elaborated, "the man on the street, the child from the school down the block.
Nyro described her career in the early s to Bessman: "I have complete freedom as a songwriter, which is a very good feeling I can take a 'Mother Earth' approach to its children, write about the environment, about peace. I look at my music as 'soul talk,' a healing using the language of love, and I think there's more of that kind of feeling in it now.
When Nyro's contract with Columbia Records expired in , she told Contemporary Musicians in a telephone interview that she felt this was the appropriate time for her to review her options and search for alternatives "that fit me a little better.
Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, New York Tendaberry, Barbra Streisand Stoney End was Broadway royalty. In the public mind, their superficial showbiz gloss transferred to the writer. Nevertheless, shortly after Monterey, Clive Davis also signed her following a private audition in which he was impressed by her conviction. The songs she wrote for her Columbia albums continued to mine deeper feelings.
She cast a golden glow on female friendship in the exquisite Emmie and stripped away all ornamentation to sing about addiction in Been on a Train. Gone to Spanish Harlem, gone to buy you pastels, gone to buy you books.
As she grew, she listened to the doo-wop groups whose songs she and her school friends practised in the subways. Miles Davis and John Coltrane were among her musical heroes. But in , without a hit of her own from four albums of original songs, she decided to make an album of covers reflecting her roots, sourced from Motown, doo-wop and uptown soul, with harmonies supplied by her friends Patti LaBelle , Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash, collectively known as Labelle.
Dismayed by its commercial failure and the acrimonious end of her close relationship with Geffen, she took initial comfort from a marriage to David Bianchini, a handsome young college drop-out who had served in Vietnam and worked sporadically as a carpenter.
They moved to a house in Danbury, Connecticut and she disappeared from view. By the time she re-emerged in , promoting a new album titled Smile, the marriage was over.
I hadn't really contemplated being famous. I was writing music, I was just involved in the art of it at that young age. Then, when it all happened, I didn't know how to handle it.
She moved to New England, married, had a child. And, when the fancy took her, she still made records. Nineteen seventy-five's ironically-titled Smile reflected on the break-up of her marriage and her disillusion with the music industry. Three years later, Nested saw her muse soar again; "American Dreamer" and "My Innocence" proved she hadn't lost her sense of wonder. In , she cut Mother's Spiritual and in , released Live At The Bottom Line, a concert recording which contained some of her classics and new songs with an ecological message "The Wild World".
Her spellbinding three-octave range was still intact and the influence she'd had on the likes of Rickie Lee Jones, Patti Smith, Kate Bush and Suzanne Vega was as obvious as ever. Stoned Soul Picnic: The Best of Laura Nyro, a song retrospective, was issued a few weeks ago on Columbia's Legacy label and earned the singer plaudits the world over.
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