eli's coming
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Artist:
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Album:Live @ Mountain Stage
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Track:
In episode 19 of the brilliant sitcom 'Sports Night,' co-anchors Dan and Casey have the following exchange:
Dan: Eli's coming.
Casey: Eli?
Dan: From the Three Dog Night song.
Casey: Yes.
Dan: Eli's something bad. A darkness.
Casey: "Eli's coming, hide your heart girl." Eli's an inveterate womanizer. I think you're getting the song wrong.
Dan: I know I'm getting the song wrong, but when I first heard it, that's what I thought it meant. Things stick with you that way.
That Three Dog Night song is, of course, a Laura Nyro song. It is Ms. Nyro's unfortunate fate that her biggest hits came in the form of cover versions good (The 5th Dimension's "Stoned Soul Picnic" and "Wedding Bell Blues"), bad (Blood, Sweat & Tears' "And When I Die," Streisand's "Stoney End") and not-so good but still pretty memorable (The 3DN song above).
Which makes Ms. Nyro a perfect subject for Sunday Under The Covers, since not only were her albums combed through for other people's singles, but she cut her own exceptional album of covers, "Gonna Take A Miracle." And as the medley posted above shows, she continued to visit the soul songbook long into her career.
History tells us that Laura Nyro made a disastrous first impression at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, that her soulful jazz-cabaret vibe didn't go down well with the 'Love Crowd' (as Otis Redding famously addressed them). And among the good vibrations of Monterey, and the different type of theatrics by Hendrix, Joplin and The Who, she must have seemed an odd bird. But you look at the performance now, and she seems more modern than 90% of the acts that played that weekend. And a generation of singer-songwriters from Tori Amos to Fiona Apple to Amy Winehouse owe her a huge debt.
There isn't much Laura on video, but here she is on a late '60s TV variety show singing her own "Save The Country, which charted as sung by The 5th Dimension and Thelma Houston in 1970:
Comments (10)
Always a favorite. Sad that she left us too soon. :=(
Always good to see any comment on La Nigro. You are duly forewarned of a feature I've written on her for UNCUT here in Limeyland. Not sure when they're planning to run it but they muttered something about the 40th anniv of NY Tendaberry. In which connection I may as well plug my new book on Tom Waits, which is excerpted in the new UNCUT (April issue). It's published in the US of A by Random House in mid-May and it's called Lowside of the Road...
She was hard for me to listen to in the day - something about her voice reminded me of an ex-girlfriend who was obsessed with her - as you say, the years have revealed her to be one of the truly great ones. As lightly as this term is thrown around, she was an authentic visionary. One of the great moments in my working life was having a a colleague Bob Cato, who had designed Columbia's LP covers - many of them iconic - in the late Sixties and early Seventies. If he was to be believed - and in that business everyone seems inclined a bit toward taking credit where credit is desired - he shot the "Eli" cover himself. He said he couldn't think of any photographers who could get the sort of Southern Gothic-cum-Hollywood glamour shot he felt reflected the music. Needless to say, he adored her....
She's always been one of my favourite singer-songwriters. I have her "Gonna Take a Miracle" LP and was surprised to see that her backup group was Labelle. Classy.
As for Three Dog Night, that video illustrates some pretty bad lipsynching, but what the hey - they are an example of a group that made their success covering other people's songs, usually very well.
Thanks for this one.
You think the cover would've been any different if Three Dog had taken some physic to work on their bowels?
Kudos, emscee. Any post that brings Barney Hoskyns onto the thread has some gravitas. Nyro was definitely a treasure. The gospel side of her heartfelt soul music probably confused the hippies, but she was a hell of a songwriter, any way you cut it. And yes, appreciated too little and taken too soon.
I enjoyed listening to the song so very much --- fit my mood perfectly today.
One of the all time greats. Someone must have that Monterey footage. Hopefully, it will eventually be seen as part of a great PBS-type story about Laura's life. There were so many threads in her life about the conflict of art and commerce, about being aided and then left by people, etc. (and about dying way too young). I think it's particularly fascinating that such a great songwriter made her most "commercially sounding" album when she recorded one of the all-time great cover albums. Was she more "respectful" of the classics that she grew up with than she was of her own songs?
The Laura Nyro footage is on the deluxe version of the 'Monterey Pop' DVD that came out a few years ago, and it's pretty great. It is interesting that as 'difficult' as her own music was, as far as finding a broad audience, she achieved such widespread success as a songwriter when those songs were done by the 5D, 3DN, BS&T, etc. I don't think it's a matter of being 'respectful' of classic material as opposed to her own stuff, just that her own music was part of such a singular vision, not folk, or soul, or rock, or pop, but a unique hybrid.
I forgot about that DVD; surprising that no one has put it on YouTube. I still hold to my "respectful"point. As a general observation - her vocals (and the background vocals) stay more on the melody on "Gonna Take A Miracle" than on albums containing her own compositions. One reason for the success of the covers of Laura's songs is that those artists (5D, 3DN, BS&T, etc.) really pushed Laura's great melodies (more than she did). My point is that, while the success of the covers compared to the originals of Jimmy Webb, Tom Waits, etc. compositions can be explained by those great songwriters not having a commercial voice, that doesn't really apply to Laura.