Laura and Todd

Laura Nyro and TR were born only eight months and 90 miles apart. She came into the world—the Bronx, I think, in October of 1947, and he was born in Philadelphia in June 1948.

That she is a noteworthy figure in his universe is not news; her music is the subject of the song “Baby Let’s Swing” on Runt, his first solo album. Runt was my introduction to TR. I had plucked it from a stack in the $1.99 cut-out bin at Soundtown, and I was already a huge fan of hers. While I don’t remember where I first heard her, by this time I had logged a number of hours in my room, like thousands of other moody adolescent girls, with the lights out, listening to her remarkable third album, New York Tendaberry. Over and over.

I remember my mother coming in, as was her wont, and saying cheerily, “I’m just going to turn this down a little. You don’t mind, do you?” Then she would slowly turn down the volume until the only sound came from the needle itself on the vinyl. “That’s better,” she would say, withdrawing with a smile.

LN’s influence on TR has been come up periodically in interviews. Sometimes it can be heard explicitly, as you will see in sound clips below. The influence goes far beyond explicit musical elements, though.

I don’t want to overstate the influence thing. Laura Nyro is not the answer to what made Todd Todd—there is no single answer for that, any more than there is for any other real artist. And I don’t want it to sound like being influenced by her makes him all special. She cut quite a swath in popular music in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and occasionally thereafter. Her most successfully realized work still sounds fresh and thrilling—the mark of real art, which is impervious to time—and her unique sound made a strong impression on a lot of songwriters: Dylan, Barry Manilow, Ricki Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell, Phoebe Snow, Suzanne Vega… the list goes on.

But in researching this piece I found that Laura and Todd have a great deal in common, striking similarities that were not apparent at first glance.

Both found early success as songwriters. The first song she sold was “And When I Die…,” to Peter, Paul, and Mary, for $5,000 at the age of 17. I believe he was busy finishing his lackluster career at high school at the time. But only a few years later he would be cranking out songs, writing most of the material that appeared on the three Nazz albums. His first hit, “We Gotta Get You a Woman,” was on Runt, which was released in 1970, when he was an old man of 22.

Both are eclectic stylists, whose musical sensibility bears the marks of Ravel and Debussy, Brill Building songwriters, and Broadway and Tin Pan Alley composers, along with gospel, doo wop, and jazz. I think this is where her influence on him can most be felt. He says that hearing her changed his songwriting, immediately and radically. I think she provided a bridge between the theater music he listened to as a kid and the music that was pouring out of his head. To him, influence is all about possibility—not “I want to sound like that,” but “How can I use this? What is this best suited to expressing?” It’s all about expanding the potential means to expressing ideas.

They are both extraordinary blue-eyed soul singers.

Both were uncompromising in their artistic vision. According to her father, “She should have had as many gold records on her wall as Neil Sedaka…. She didn’t like collaboration. She didn’t like compromise. She was an artist, and she didn’t like—hated—the show-biz part. She never wanted to change a single note or a single word in her songs.” TR’s inability or unwillingness to compromise his vision is legendary. According to bass player John Siegler (a member of the first lineup of TR’s band, Utopia, who also played on several of TR’s solo albums), it wasn’t that Todd didn’t want hits; he just wanted them for the records he made, his way. Period. Which inexorably leads us to…

Both rejected stardom. She withdrew from the business in the mid-’70s and built a full life, returning occasionally to record or perform live in a hospitable venue. After her death from ovarian cancer in 1997, at 49 (her mother died of the same disease, at the same age), her family said that she “opted out of the music business because its crassness and commercialism increasingly and unbearably offended her artistic soul.” TR pissed off a legion of record company executives (and more than a few fans) by refusing to churn out the delicious pop candy that he could write with his eyes closed (As Paul Fishkin, president of Bearsville Records and a longtime associate, said, “This guy could shit hits.”) His retreat was more metaphorical than hers. While he refused to be pigeonholed by fan or industry expectations, he continued to work at a feverish pace, recording and touring as a solo act and with Utopia and producing records for other people, for well over a decade before subsiding into a level of activity well beyond that of any normal person at their peak.

Unlike Dick Clark and Don Cornelius, Todd Rundgren and Laura Nyro are not the same person. They have been seen together, most notably when he produced her 1984 album “Mother’s Spiritual.” Among their notable differences: She seems to be very earnest, perhaps a little humorless. I didn’t know her, and maybe she was funnier than she seems, but damned if I can find a ghost of it in her work. For TR, on the other hand, humor is central. Those big waves of intense emotion are countered by a wryness that seems central to his being.

Here’s Laura singing her “Sweet Lovin’ Baby,” from New York Tendaberry:

(1970).

Here’s TR serving up a straight shot of Laura-infused mystery music, in “Say No More,” from Runt (also 1970):

Here’s Laura’s “Lonely Women,” from “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession” (1969), the album TR cites as being most influential on him:

TR’s “Who’s Sorry Now,” from 2nd Wind (1990). The Laura moment starts at app. 3:00. A lovely song, though, well worth hearing in its entirety.

Laura’s “Save the Country,” the ecstatic peace anthem that ends side one of New York Tendaberry:

Finally, TR’s “Shine,” from Healing (1981). I only picked up the (obvious) LN qualities a few days ago (d’oh!), after listening to the song hundreds of times and seeing it live three times in the past month. The opener is very Laura, with its solo piano and highly emotive vocal, and the ecstatic conclusion reminds me very much of the final minutes of “Save the Country,” with its obsessively repeated phrase on the horns.

A last note: Laura and Todd couldn’t be more different in one thing: She comfortably inhabited her image as earth mother, exemplified by her song “The Descent of Luna Rosa,” which she introduced as being “dedicated to my period.” Todd, on the other hand, found earth so baffling that he couldn’t quite reconcile himself to being a naturalized citizen (see Oops! Wrong Planet‘s “Trapped” (“Trapped in a world I never made”). He has only gradually, in the past couple of decades, become a little more at home in our messy midst.

In the end, it’s less about influence than about affinities, musical and temperamental. They have a number of common musical passions and Laura Nyro and Todd Rundgren are both stubborn American originals, both eccentric artists who protected their deepest selves, the uncharted origin of their art, from outside interference.

Posted in: art, Bearsville Records, Laura Nyro, pop music, theater, Todd Rundgren, Uncategorized