\n\tEveryone remembers the exact moment they first heard Laura Nyro<\/a>. Growing up on Miami Beach, hit songwriter Desmond Child was at the home of his friend Lisa Wexler, daughter of famed producer Jerry Wexler, when she played him Nyro\u2019s 1967 debut, More Than a New Discovery. \u201cIt awakened me as a human being,\u201d Child says. \u201cSuddenly I was somebody, something. She was magical, and I knew there and then that the effect she had on me was what I wanted to do with my life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tComedian Sandra Bernhard was working on a kibbutz in Israel in 1973 when her friend Emily turned her onto Eli. \u201cThe rawness and street savvy was not a normal thing for a woman of that age and that generation,\u201d Bernard says. \u201cShe was gritty \u2014 a rose in Spanish Harlem. And culturally, there was such a mix. Was she Jewish? Was she Italian? You didn\u2019t really know. And that added to the mystery.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTodd Rundgren was a member of the rock band the Nazz when his manager snagged him an early copy of Eli before its release in March 1968. \u201cI was transported to this whole other place,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was such a complete vision, and so completely different from everything else that was out then. It was a Beatles moment for me. Suddenly, I had to listen to the record over and over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\tNyro was a child prodigy who immersed herself in jazz, classical, soul, R&B, and Broadway musicals, and spent her high school years singing doo-wop with Puerto Rican teens in subway stations and on street corners. That very New York upbringing is reflected in her first four albums, all highly influential: 1967\u2019s More Than a New Discovery, 1968\u2019s Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, 1969\u2019s New York Tendaberry, and 1970\u2019s Christmas and the Beads of Sweat. The albums showcased her extraordinary, three-octave mezzo soprano voice, and wild, often unexpected, tempo changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIf you listen to any of them, you might expect that this talent would put Nyro alongside superstar Seventies singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Carole King, whose work has endured through generations. But she never got there. Instead, her songs were made famous by others, including Barbra Streisand, the 5th Dimension, Three Dog Night, and Blood, Sweat & Tears. In November 1969, three different Nyro covers landed in the Top 10. According to Alice Cooper, Nyro is more like a female Burt Bacharach. \u201cMany people had hits with her songs,\u201d he tells me. \u201cBut her versions were always better.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tNyro and Geffen in September 1969.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \n\tGeffen signed Nyro as one of his first management clients, but they had a falling out in 1971, which he describes as the betrayal of his life. \u201cI had devoted myself to her,\u201d he tells Rolling Stone. \u201cAnd by the way, after she broke up with me, she never had another success in her life.\u201d That\u2019s only a slight exaggeration. Nyro briefly retired later that decade, then continued to make albums through the early Nineties. She died in 1997 at age 49 from ovarian cancer \u2014 the same disease her mother died from, at the exact same age.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\tDespite her posthumous induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, Nyro is still severely underappreciated. \u201cOne thing that I\u2019ve always wished would happen would be that younger generations would know about [her],\u201d says her brother, Jan. \u201cIt\u2019s a very steep drop-off. You have boomers, and then it\u2019s almost nobody underneath that.\u201d But we\u2019re on the cusp of a possible renaissance, thanks to recent reissues<\/a>, an Elton John\/Brandi Carlile tribute song<\/a>, and a new documentary that is currently in the works.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAfter that night at Nyro\u2019s midtown apartment, Calello got the gig, and he produced Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. He spent so much money on it that Columbia fired him, but he didn\u2019t care. \u201cWhen I walked out of Columbia Records, I said to myself, \u2018I made history,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI knew I would never, ever, ever come close to making another record like that. We caught lightning in a bottle.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cLAURA WAS WEIRD,\u201d says her friend Janis Ian<\/a>, a statement that echoes the nearly 25 participants I interviewed for this story. Nyro was known \u2014 and beloved \u2014 for her quirks. Friends recall that she preferred to travel around the city by horse-drawn carriage, and that in one of her apartments, she turned her hallway into a bamboo path. And her distinctive, at times gaudy fashion sense is still a frequent topic, all these years later.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhen I think of Laura, I think of a long, black, figure-hugging dress, ample hips, and a gash of lipstick,\u201d Ian says. (The lipstick was sometimes purple, with Christmas ornaments for earrings, and plaster-of-paris fruits sewn onto her dresses.) \u201cIt didn\u2019t tally with the way other people dressed or wore makeup,\u201d Ian adds. \u201cShe was really being herself \u2014 her true self.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNyro\u2019s sense of style drove Geffen mad. \u201cShe had horrible taste,\u201d he told Michele Kort in her fantastic, densely detailed 2002 Nyro biography, Soul Picnic. Once, he even sent Nyro home from the studio after she showed up in a gown that was four sizes too small. \u201cShe said to me, \u2018Listen, I\u2019m going to tell you something, and I want you to get this,\u2019\u201d he recalled in the biography. \u201c\u2018When I looked in the mirror this morning, I thought I looked great, or I wouldn\u2019t have come out.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn a 1970 interview for Life, titled \u201cThe Funky Madonna of New York Soul,\u201d Nyro took the reporter, Maggie Paley, to a Los Angeles boutique before her show at the Troubadour. She designed \u201cfive or six dresses for herself by telling the salespeople what she wanted while they sketched,\u201d then paired the outfits with cheap silver platform shoes with rhinestone clips attached. \u201cI\u2019ve always had a flair,\u201d Nyro told Paley. \u201cBut my flair is only a part of me. People who just look at my flair are looking at me in a superficial way.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRundgren remembers meeting her in person for the first time at her apartment, right after Eli was released. \u201cShe had very long hair, very dark eyebrows, and very long fingernails \u2014 so long, they curled over,\u201d he says. \u201cShe made tuna fish casserole, and she played the piano and sang oldies. I was flabbergasted.\u201d Nyro called two weeks later to ask him to be her bandleader, but the Nazz had just gotten signed. \u201cIt was such a torturous thing for me,\u201d he says. \u201cIf there was another thing that I would\u2019ve done in the entire world, it would\u2019ve been her bandleader.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIan, a prodigious New York songwriter<\/a> herself, was introduced to Nyro through Geffen in 1968. She invited Nyro over for dinner that September, at the Upper West Side apartment she was renting. But Ian was puzzled when Nyro arrived for their spaghetti dinner with a portable television set in hand. \u201cShe explained that her close friend Peggy Lipton was in this new show called The Mod Squad,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was premiering that night, and she didn\u2019t want to miss it. What was odd was that Laura would assume that people didn\u2019t have TVs.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIan and Nyro had both attended the city\u2019s prestigious High School of Music & Art, but they didn\u2019t cross paths there. (Ian, who had written \u201cSociety\u2019s Child,\u201d a controversial hit about an interracial romance, at age 13, only spent a year there before she says she was asked to leave.) \u201cIt\u2019s funny, because now they have a plaque of me, and it says, \u2018This could be you one day,\u2019 with a gold record. And I\u2019ve written them twice saying, \u2018Take that goddamn thing down,\u2019\u201d Ian says. \u201cI hated it, and I know Laura was not fond of it.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDavid Gahr\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \n\tNyro barely graduated from Music & Art, but she never required musical training anyway. \u201cShe had this natural, very powerful gift that was percolating inside of her,\u201d her brother says. \u201cReally like a child prodigy in a way.\u201d She was born Laura Nigro on Oct. 18, 1947, named after Otto Preminger\u2019s 1944 film Laura. Her father Lou was a half-Italian, half-Russian Jewish trumpet player and piano tuner, while her mother, Gilda, was a Russian Jewish bookkeeper.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMusic permeated the family\u2019s Bronx apartment, from Lou\u2019s trumpet practice to his and Gilda\u2019s record collection, which included jazz, opera, show tunes, and classical LPs. Jan, three years younger than Nyro, shared a room with his sister. \u201cWe always had a ton of rock & roll 45s all over the floor, and a little record player we\u2019d play them on,\u201d he says. \u201cLots of doo-wop, early girl groups, and Elvis and the Everly Brothers. And all of that music \u2014 between my parents and our stuff \u2014 found its way into Laura\u2019s musical life. Her writing is such a unique fusion of all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe siblings both took lessons on an old Steinway grand piano in the living room, but they didn\u2019t stick for Nyro. \u201cShe only lasted about a year,\u201d says her brother, who is now a musician and educator. \u201cI think her piano teacher yelled at her or something. I remember she told my parents, \u2018I don\u2019t want to do this anymore.\u2019 She continued, just not schooled.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNyro was an intensely introspective kid, later describing herself in an album bio<\/a> as \u201ca very sad little girl. Sometimes I had good times\u2026. I was always in a dream world\u2026 I guess I still am.\u201d She was also hungry for experience to better serve her songs, exclaiming to her Aunt Esther, \u201cI\u2019m 14 years old, and nothing has happened to me yet!\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat changed in the summer of 1964. During one of her family\u2019s annual stays in the Catskills, Nyro fully realized her gift. The siblings were participating in the Color War, an end-of-summer competition at their camp, and a teenage Nyro was tasked with coming up with songs for the green team, which she named the Green Utopians. \u201cIt was Color War, so the songs were about how great your team was and how you were going to kick the other team\u2019s butt,\u201d her brother says. \u201cJust pretty lighthearted stuff. But she wrote these incredible songs that had harmonies, and she conducted us. And we completely wiped out the other team.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe Green Utopians lost the Color War \u2014 the opposing team were better athletes \u2014 but it didn\u2019t matter. \u201cThat was an epiphany of her musical power,\u201d her brother says. \u201cIt was instrumental in her realizing that she had this thing that had to come out. When we got back to the Bronx after that, she started to write in earnest.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAfter graduating high school, Nyro made the decision not to go to college, and began meeting with publishers. But not before making one pivotal change. \u201cThe last name \u2018Nigro\u2019 was mispronounced throughout our lives,\u201d Jan says. His sister had a list of possible stage names, but one stood out, and Laura Nyro was born.<\/p>\n \n\tSEVERAL MAGICAL MOMENTS came out of Nyro\u2019s father\u2019s job as a piano tuner. Desmond Child \u2014 who is such a Nyro superfan that he once stood outside her apartment and waited two hours for her to emerge, and later named his son Nyro \u2014 hired Lou to tune his piano in college, \u201cjust so we could get Laura Nyro stories out of him.\u201d Lou\u2019s work is also how, at age 18, in the summer of 1966, Nyro was discovered.<\/p>\n \n\tWhen he arrived at the office of Artie Mogull \u2014 an aptly named record executive who had signed Bob Dylan to his first publishing contract with M. Witmark & Sons a few years earlier \u2014 the piano tuner insisted on introducing Mogull to his daughter. Though Mogull later told Kort that he thought Nyro was \u201ca rather unattractive girl,\u201d he was stunned by her songs, thought she could be a female Dylan, and immediately locked her into a recording, management, and publishing deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNyro\u2019s debut, More Than a New Discovery, arrived in February 1967. Released on Verve Folkways, it can be best described as an introduction to her incredible talent, yet one that didn\u2019t showcase it well. Nyro doesn\u2019t play piano on it (the first and only time that happened), and, in an effort to make her more radio-friendly, her compositions were restructured and polished. You can hear the stark contrast between the official versions and her magnificent demos on her audition tape, which Omnivore Recordings released in 2021 under the title Go Find the Moon<\/a>.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \n\tMore Than a New Discovery features \u201cAnd When I Die\u201d \u2014 one of Nyro\u2019s earliest songs, later covered by Peter, Paul and Mary, and becoming a hit for Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1969 \u2014 and \u201cStoney End,\u201d which Barbra Streisand took to the charts in 1970. But it\u2019s best remembered for \u201cWedding Bell Blues,\u201d a charming cut about a woman pleading with her boyfriend, Bill, to propose.<\/p>\n \n\tThe promotion for the single, which was a regional hit in the West Coast, didn\u2019t quite reflect Nyro\u2019s bohemian vibe. The \u201cWedding Bell Blues\u201d poster featured her looking dismayed in a wedding dress, bouquet in hand, with the words \u201cI DON\u2019T\u201d written across. \u201cNot every girl gets her man to say \u2018I do,\u2019\u201d the poster read. \u201cBut every once in a while you hear a young girl who sings and writes songs with a groovy conviction.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAt the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, she had the impossible task of sharing the stage with heavyweights like the Who, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, the Mamas and the Papas, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and others. There was Nyro, performing in a black gown with a single sleeve and red fingernails, backed by her band and two members of the R&B vocal trio the Hi Fashions, who sang on her debut. The performance \u2014 Nyro\u2019s biggest to date \u2014 looked like a slick New York City lounge act smack in the middle of the Summer of Love. Songs like \u201cWedding Bell Blues\u201d sounded painfully dated to a sea of hippies who just wanted to get high and hear \u201cWhite Rabbit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThere were other artists at Monterey who were also somewhat out of place, like Otis Redding and Ravi Shankar, but they matched with the crowd better than Nyro did. \u201cShe was the opposite of all of it,\u201d says longtime fan Rickie Lee Jones. \u201cAnd what courage it took. That\u2019s who she wanted to be onstage. That was elegant and feminine to her.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cShe was somehow not right for the festival,\u201d the Mamas and Papas\u2019 Michelle Phillips<\/a> wrote in her 1986 memoir, California Dreamin.\u2019 \u201cShe didn\u2019t do well, and she knew it. I really felt for her as she came offstage, so I put her in a limo and lit her a huge joint and opened a beer and drove around for about thirty minutes comforting her.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNyro requested her performance not be included in D. A. Pennebaker\u2019s film of the concert, and a rumor that she got booed at Monterey Pop circulated for decades. That was until 1997, when Pennebaker digitized the tape for the movie\u2019s 30th anniversary,\u00a0 debunking the myth that there was ever any booing. In fact, at the end of the Eli track \u201cPoverty Train,\u201d one audience member even shouts the word \u201cbeautiful\u201d several times. \u201cIt\u2019s strange karma to go all those years without that being known,\u201d her brother says. \u201cBut better late than never.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA few days after the festival, Nyro was with the Hi Fashions in her San Francisco hotel room when she decided to re-do her set in private. In attendance was music journalist Ellen Sander<\/a>, who had befriended Nyro back in New York. \u201cWe were eating Chinese food and we were talking about the festival, and she was tired of wondering if everything was going to be OK about that or not,\u201d Sander recalls. \u201cAnd she just said to her backup singers, \u2018Let\u2019s do our set now.\u2019 They opened up these doors out onto a French balcony. Laura loved gestures. And they began to sing a capella, and they were rocking pretty hard. It was just wonderful. One of the best performances I\u2019ve ever heard.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tUnbeknownst to Nyro, the 5th Dimension were on the floor above them. \u201cI said, \u2018Y\u2019all want to cut out all that racket downstairs?\u2019\u201d Billy Davis Jr. tells Rolling Stone. \u201cThey lean their heads over, and come to find out it was Laura Nyro.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGeffen wasn\u2019t at Monterey Pop, but shortly after the festival, his client Steve Binder, a director and producer, introduced him to More Than a New Discovery. \u201cI was blown away by the record,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then I looked her up, got together with her, and started representing her.\u201d They instantly formed a bond, and Geffen made it his mission to save Nyro\u2019s career \u2014 and make her the biggest star in the world.<\/p>\n \n\tBy all accounts, Nyro and Geffen never dated, but they impacted each other\u2019s lives so significantly that they\u2019re often spoken about like exes. \u201cShe was his first big love, his first huge ongoing passion,\u201d Ian says. \u201cThere are marriages in the music business \u2014 Grossman and Dylan, Epstein and the Beatles, and I would say Geffen and Nyro \u2014 that are just astonishing. And when they end, they always end badly. I\u2019ve never heard of one ending well. But when it works, it\u2019s brilliant.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFirst on Geffen\u2019s to-do list: get Nyro out of her contracts with Artie Mogull and his partners, which was cleverly done through a loophole. Then she auditioned at Columbia Records, home to Dylan, Streisand, and Simon & Garfunkel. She met with executive Clive Davis at the label\u2019s headquarters in midtown Manhattan, and requested all the lights be turned off, save for the nearby glow of the television screen. Davis signed her right away.<\/p>\n \n\tGeffen made sure Nyro\u2019s contract gave her full artistic control, and formed a publishing company with her. They called it Tuna Fish Music, alluding to one of Nyro\u2019s favorite foods. (Her friends can recite her tuna salad recipe by heart: Bumble Bee white meat, Hellmann\u2019s mayo, cream cheese, red onion, and a dash of lemon and pepper.)<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe deal that David negotiated for her publishing was extraordinary,\u201d says Ian. \u201cHe was somebody who rabidly fought for her rights as an artist. I mean, rabidly. David would go up against the universe for Laura to be allowed her vision.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to Ian, every musician in New York bought three albums in 1968: Dr. John\u2019s Gris-Gris, the Band\u2019s Music From Big Pink, and Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. \u201cYou basically have Christ singing doo-wop on a street corner,\u201d she says. \u201cThat album is severely unrecognized. Dr. John and Robbie Robertson got all these accolades, but Eli is the late-to-the-party stepchild. It\u2019s not a surprise. God forbid women be recognized for orchestration or arranging.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tCalello remembers recording Eli as if it happened yesterday. \u201cPeople who play me records I did in the Sixties, I can\u2019t remember who the artist was,\u201d the producer, 87, says on a Zoom call from his home in Florida. \u201cBut with Laura, every detail stuck with me.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWorking with her at Columbia\u2019s studios in early 1968, Calello tried to make Eli sound almost exactly like the intimate performance he first heard that evening in Nyro\u2019s apartment. \u201cMy contribution to making the Laura Nyro record was to stay out of her way,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tUnlike on her debut, Nyro got to play her instrument this time, much to her delight. As Calello recalls, \u201cShe said, \u2018So I could play piano?\u2019 I said, \u2018Of course you can play piano. Why?\u2019 She said, \u2018Because they didn\u2019t let me play piano on my first record.\u2019 I said, \u2018That\u2019s what was wrong with the record. They took you out of the equation.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLetting Nyro be Nyro also led to some shenanigans in the studio, like the time she rolled two joints, wrapped them together, and got stoned with her band. Calello, who didn\u2019t partake, recalls Nyro becoming increasingly giddy, staring at the piano keys. \u201cHere we are at CBS,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019re talking about a public company, an icon. And the engineers were union guys with shirts and ties. They don\u2019t know how to react to this. And David walks in. He hits the roof. \u2018Charlie! You can\u2019t stop this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tReleased on March 13, 1968, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession is often regarded as Nyro\u2019s masterpiece. \u201cI wasn\u2019t at Monterey,\u201d Jon Landau wrote in Rolling Stone\u2018s review later that year. \u201cConsequently, I don\u2019t really know what Laura Nyro did there that turned so many people off. She must have done something, because the word was so thick that it convinced me that there wasn\u2019t any point bothering with her first album. It took a lunatic friend of mine, barging into my apartment a couple of weeks ago, frothing at the mouth about the record, to get me to listen to it seriously. All I can say is I\u2019m glad he did.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAlice Cooper says Eli is his favorite album of all time. With her long black gowns and dark lipstick, he says, her image was \u201cvery goth.\u201d The two met in Los Angeles in the late Seventies, backstage after one of Nyro\u2019s shows. \u201cI brought her a rose,\u201d the shock-rock godfather says. \u201cAt that time, I was on the cover of every magazine, so she knew about me. She was stunned. She was going, \u2018You listen to my music?\u2019 I went, \u2018I devour your music.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDavid Gahr\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \n\tBY THE FALL OF 1968, Nyro had left her Eighth Avenue studio for a 17th-floor penthouse on West 79th Street. It had a terrace with a black water tower, and a view that overlooked the Upper West Side, an area she nicknamed \u201cuptown downtown.\u201d She did an interview with The New York Times at the penthouse, where she told writer William Kloman her \u201cgroovy\u201d plan to secretly paint all the water towers in the city different colors and patterns (hers, she said, would be red). She served her usual tuna fish, as well as Sara Lee blueberry cheesecake, chocolate ice cream cones, and, according to the Times story, canned elephant meat, which she ended up feeding to her German Shephard, Beautybelle.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Times gave that story the headline \u201cLaura Nyro: She\u2019s the Hippest \u2014 and Maybe the Hottest?\u201d She was at the height of her career. Eli was far from a hit, barely making a dent in the Billboard 200, but artists were covering her songs and racking up hits of their own \u2014 especially the 5th Dimension<\/a>, a vocal group who were still looking for an identity of their own after an early hit cover of the Mamas and the Papas\u2019 \u201cGo Where You Wanna Go.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGeffen brought \u201cStoned Soul Picnic\u201d to the group, and they were floored. \u201cWe said, \u2018Oh, my God, this is really good,\u201d says the 5th Dimension\u2019s Davis Jr. \u201cLaura\u2019s writing had a lot of R&B flavor to it, and that\u2019s what we were looking for, because we needed to cross over to our own folks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe 5th Dimension would go on to cover several Nyro songs, including \u201cWedding Bell Blues\u201d \u2014 a Number One hit that later appeared in 1991\u2019s My Girl \u2014 and \u201cSweet Blindness,\u201d which they performed with Frank Sinatra on his 1968 television special<\/a>. \u201cOne thing that\u2019s so beautiful is that whenever we go out to perform, people are always looking forward to us doing her music,\u201d Marilyn McCoo says. Adds Davis Jr.: \u201cWe can\u2019t get offstage without doing [\u2018Wedding Bell Blues\u2019]. There\u2019s still a lot of Bills out there.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBlood, Sweat & Tears<\/a> gained a massive hit around the same time with Nyro\u2019s \u201cAnd When I Die,\u201d but Nyro\u2019s relationship with the jazz-rock band goes much deeper than that. When they needed a new lead singer in 1968, following the departure of co-founder Al Kooper, Nyro was their first choice. They arranged a rehearsal at the Caf\u00e9 Au Go Go, and kicked off with \u201cEli\u2019s Coming.\u201d As drummer Bobby Colomby recalls, \u201cShe sits at the piano \u2014\u00a0\u2018Eli\u2026\u2019 \u2014 and we start playing. It\u2019s magic. It is ridiculously great\u2026. David and I were talking and he\u2019s saying to me, \u2018It\u2019s going to be the biggest thing of all time.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut Nyro, Sweat & Tears was not to be: \u201cThe next day Laura calls me and says, \u2018I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to work,\u2019\u201d Colomby continues. \u201c\u2018What are you talking about?\u2019 She goes, \u2018Well, David doesn\u2019t think that you guys are going to make it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNyro went on to date the band\u2019s bassist, Jim Fielder, who briefly moved into her Upper West Side penthouse (she was also romantically linked around this time to Jackson Browne, as well as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young drummer Dallas Taylor). They\u2019d take Beautybelle for walks around the city, sleep in and get stoned, and eat her favorite meal. \u201cShe\u2019d always have a whole tray of tuna fish sandwiches ready whenever I came up there,\u201d Fielder says. \u201cShe was an easy person to spend time with. I always loved her, and I still listen to her songs and get a real queasy feeling in my stomach. I mean, gosh, I was there for all that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCalello briefly began production on Nyro\u2019s next album, New York Tendaberry, but backed out after seeing the state of the songs, and feeling that Nyro was listening to too many people. \u201cI saw the whisperers gathering around her and I saw that what she was going to do would be OK, but it wasn\u2019t going to be Eli,\u201d he said. \u201cI just said to David, \u2018I can\u2019t do this.\u2019\u201d Instead, Nyro and Geffen enlisted producer and engineer Roy Halee, who was working on Simon & Garfunkel\u2019s Bridge Over Troubled Water at the same time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe recording process was strenuous and stretched on for months, as Nyro was meticulous with her vision. In the Life interview, she\u2019s seen standing in the studio in a black jumpsuit and headphones, reading from a notepad titled \u201cVery Important Plans.\u201d Since Nyro had a form of synesthesia \u2014 a neurological condition in which sound elicits an experience of color \u2014 she\u2019d command the musicians to add a little more blue here, a little yellow there. \u201cI have my own language,\u201d she told the magazine.<\/p>\n \n\tBefore Calello left the project, Ian remembers him inviting her to come down to the studio. \u201cWhen I walked in, there were all these musicians sitting around, and Charlie was literally carrying a screaming Laura out of the studio over his shoulder,\u201d Ian says. \u201cI asked her what the problem was, and it was essentially that the musicians persisted in not understanding what she wanted the feel of this song to be. I asked her to explain it to me, and she said that she wanted it purple.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tJoni Mitchell, who has spoken highly of Nyro\u2019s influence many times, also has synesthesia. \u201cIt used to be embarrassing to myself and to Laura Nyro in particular to play with technical musicians in the early days,\u201d she said<\/a> in 1988. \u201cIt would embarrass us that we were lacking in a knowledgeable way, and that we would give instructions to players in terms of metaphors.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tStill, the sessions had their moments, like when Nyro\u2019s hero Miles Davis paid a visit. He almost added a trumpet solo to one track, but changed his mind after hearing it. \u201cI can\u2019t play on this,\u201d he said. \u201cYou did it already.\u201d (He\u2019d later open for her at the Fillmore East in the summer of 1970.)\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tIn the studio with Miles Davis, July 1969.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMichael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \n\tNyro knew her unwillingness to compromise had paid off, and that she had another masterpiece on her hands. \u201cI\u2019ve always had my own\u2026madness\u2026somewhere in my mind, and people were always frightened to let me try things,\u201d she told Life. \u201cWith this album, at the beginning nobody knew what I was doing. Nobody. I knew what I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u00a0She went on to point out the blatant sexism in the music industry: \u201cIt\u2019s usually men that you associate with hard work, with really crushing things. But women have a great capacity for things \u2026 certainly women have a great capacity for pain and if doing what I do is a painful process, a woman can take it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNew York Tendaberry arrived in September 1969, the same month as Abbey Road and the Band\u2019s self-titled. It became Nyro\u2019s highest-charting record, peaking at Number 32. With the exception of the jovial \u201cSave the Country,\u201d most of songs on the record \u2014 the gorgeous, almost vampiric \u201cYou Don\u2019t Love Me When I Cry,\u201d the highlight \u201cCaptain for Dark Mornings\u201d \u2014 are chilling and dark, the perfect companion for a snowy evening in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt had what I needed, the strains and colors of music that moved me as a kid,\u201d says Rickie Lee Jones. \u201cI\u2019d never heard anything like it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn the October 1968 New York Times interview, Kloman wrote that Monterey affected Nyro so strongly that she had \u201cnot been willing to perform publicly since.\u201d But that was about to change. She returned to the road while making Tendaberry, and performed two sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall over Thanksgiving weekend in 1969. \u201cIn this town, when you open your windows, it doesn\u2019t smell like flowers,\u201d she told the crowd. \u201cIt smells like \u2026 pizza.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFans were ecstatic over the shows, giving ovation after ovation, but critics were less than kind. Writing for Rolling Stone, critic Vince Aletti noted that Nyro was \u201cnot just another chick singer but a woman of some complexity.\u201d And yet his description of her was devoid of any complexity at all, reducing her to her looks. \u201cWith her black hair falling over her plump white shoulders, she looked like an Italian housewife-whore or real life lady madonna,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tJanis Joplin, another artist on Columbia, reportedly didn\u2019t take a liking to Nyro, either. In his memoir, Davis remembers bringing Nyro backstage at one of Joplin\u2019s concerts so the two could meet, but Joplin reacted coldly, swigging sips from her bottle of Southern Comfort. \u201cI can see I\u2019m not the number-one female in your eyes anymore,\u201d Joplin later told Davis over the phone. \u201cYou\u2019re turned on to Laura now.\u201d In December 1969, Nyro attended a party Davis threw for Joplin after she headlined Madison Square Garden, but ended up hiding in one of the bedrooms. When Bob Dylan found her there, the two ended up chatting for an hour.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1970, the Young Rascals\u2019 Felix Cavaliere received a call from Geffen. \u201cThese are his exact words: How would you like to produce the most difficult person you\u2019ve ever met?\u201d he recalls. But Cavaliere instantly took a liking to Nyro and agreed to produce her next album, Christmas and the Beads of Sweat. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say I fell in love with her at first sight,\u201d he says, \u201cBut I fell in love with her at first sight. She was just a magical human being.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tCavaliere recruited arranger Arif Mardin (\u201cI knew I was going to need a little help with this lady\u201d) and got to work in the spring. The album marks a slight return to the sunniness of Eli, from the rollicking \u201cWhen I Was a Freeport and You Were the Main Drag\u201d to the blissful \u201cBlackpatch.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tYou can credit that joyous rock & roll vibe to the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, who played on the record\u2019s first side. \u201cThey were Southern gentlemen,\u201d Cavaliere says. \u201cWhen she would come up with these nuances, they said, \u2018Yes, ma\u2019am. Whatever you want, that\u2019s what we\u2019ll do.\u2019\u201d More special guests continued on Side Two, including guitarist Duane Allman on the groove-heavy \u201cBeads of Sweat\u201d and Alice Coltrane providing harp magic on the eight-minute \u201cMap to the Treasure.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tChristmas and the Beads of Sweat arrived on Nov. 25, 1970, and is considered the end of the classic trilogy that began with Eli. Nyro refused to change the album title, despite warnings that it could limit her sales potential. \u201cShe could give a damn if she had a hit record or not,\u201d Cavaliere says. \u201cClive Davis said, \u2018If you put \u201cChristmas\u201d on the album, then after Christmas season\u2019s over, they\u2019re going to pull it off the shelves.\u2019 Well, you see how much that mattered.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThough she remained uncompromising in the studio, Cavaliere describes the recording as a blast. And as usual, on at least one evening, Nyro got all of the musicians stoned. \u201cThe next day, Arif comes in and says, \u2018Laura, you know the marijuana you had last night? I drove to Queens,\u2019\u201d Cavaliere remembers.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSOME PEOPLE JUST aren\u2019t made to cook,\u201d Patti LaBelle tells me. \u201cLaura was not made to cook.\u201d The legendary soul singer attempted to teach Nyro in the early Seventies, but even an easy dish like creamed corn proved difficult. \u201cYou have to cut the corn off and cream it and then put it in the pan with butter, salt, and pepper and cook for about five minutes,\u201d she says. \u201cShe never really even learned that. And she definitely couldn\u2019t fry chicken, so she would wait for me to cook it. She loved to eat, and I loved cooking for her. I mean, she was like one of my sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe two singers\u2019 paths intersected early in LaBelle\u2019s career, several years before her group \u2014 also named Labelle \u2014 released the funk classic \u201cLady Marmalade.\u201d They met through LaBelle\u2019s manager, Vicki Wickham, and quickly became best friends. \u201cWe\u2019re at each other\u2019s houses all the time, and we exchange tips on food, men, and babies,\u201d LaBelle told Rolling Stone<\/a> in 1975.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAfter years of other artists scoring hits off of her songs, Nyro was finally taking a stab at some cover songs herself \u2014 an entire album full. She enlisted LaBelle, and her bandmates Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash, for her fifth album, Gonna Take a Miracle, a collection of standards and Motown classics she grew up listening to in the Bronx. \u201cShe had this soft quality of bringing the songs to life and making them sound so different,\u201d LaBelle says. \u201cThey were her songs. She had that ability.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tProduced by Philly soul architects Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff, the album contained classics like \u201cSpanish Harlem\u201d and \u201cDancing in the Street,\u201d and it glistened with hand claps and warm melodies. Reviewing for Rolling Stone, Lenny Kaye wrote that Nyro had \u201cthe best record collection on Central Park West.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAfter the covers album, Nyro and LaBelle remained close, even traveling together to Japan. \u201cMy son Zuri was made in Japan, thanks to Laura Nyro,\u201d LaBelle jokes. They became godmothers to each other\u2019s sons, and she remembers Nyro taking care of her when she was suffering from postpartum depression. Nyro would stay with LaBelle at her home in Philadelphia, rocking her baby on the swing in the front yard. \u201cShe had that soothing power,\u201d she says. \u201cShe was just all that and a bag of chips. So talented and so earthy, and so mellow and everything good. And when she passed, it was very hard for me to accept. It left a big empty hole in me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tNyro and David Bianchini in New York, 1971.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe Estate of David Gahr\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \n\tThe early Seventies brought two pivotal changes for Nyro, involving two different men who were both named David. The first, David Bianchini, would become her husband. They met in 1971, while she was visiting her great-aunt and uncle in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Bianchini had just returned from Vietnam, where he served in the Army in the long-range reconnaissance patrol, making more than 60 missions to gather intelligence behind enemy lines. Twice, he says, he was the only member of his group to survive, which left him with severe post-traumatic stress disorder.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThey might not have been an obvious match \u2014 a Vietnam vet and a free spirit who wrote hit songs \u2014 but they instantly fell in love. \u201cShe detested the music business,\u201d Bianchini tells me. \u201cAnd I was different, and she could trust me.\u201d The couple traveled the world together and embarked on wild adventures, like the time they briefly lived on a houseboat in Kashmir, or when they visited the grave of Hermann Hesse in Switzerland. Nyro was insistent on getting married, and they finally tied the knot that fall in Alexandria, Virginia, before throwing a celebration at a hotel near Central Park. Fittingly, Nyro performed \u201cWedding Bell Blues\u201d at her own party.<\/p>\n \n\tThey moved into a home in suburban Danbury, Connecticut, purchased from the yoga guru Swami Satchidananda, where Nyro would live the rest of her life (she still kept a Manhattan apartment on Central Park West). Bianchini taught the lifelong New Yorker how to drive and how to ride a bicycle. \u201cOne thing about Laura, she was always working,\u201d Bianchini says. \u201cI could be going down the road with her at 100 miles an hour, and she\u2019d be sitting there, writing.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAmid all this happiness in her personal life, Nyro experienced a major shift in her career. Her contract with Columbia expired after Beads of Sweat, and Geffen wanted to make her the first signing at a new label he was starting with help from Atlantic Records.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn June 1971, Rolling Stone reported that Nyro would be leaving Columbia for the new Asylum Records. \u201cTwo ladies of two canyons \u2014 Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro \u2014 are rumored ready to split their respective labels, Warners and Columbia, to help assure the success of a new record company started by their respective managers, Elliot Roberts<\/a> and David Geffen,\u201d the piece read.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAccording to Geffen, Nyro had agreed to go with him to Asylum, but then she changed her mind. Bianchini explains it as a simple enough decision: \u201cGeffen was going to California, and she\u2019s not a California person. She\u2019s a New Yorker,\u201d he says. Ultimately, Nyro decided to re-sign with Columbia, and it marked the end of her relationship with her fiercely dedicated manager.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou can\u2019t imagine how heartbreaking it was for me,\u201d Geffen tells me over the phone. \u201cI tried to call her after it happened, and I was informed that she\u2019d left the state and she wasn\u2019t going to come back as long as I was trying to get ahold of her. And that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTuna Fish Music was sold to Columbia, in a seismic deal worth $4 million (roughly $32 million today), which Nyro lived off of for the rest of her life. Asylum became a groundbreaking label credited with shaping the early-Seventies California rock scene, signing the Eagles, Jackson Browne, and Linda Ronstadt, along with cult songwriters Judee Sill<\/a> and David Blue<\/a>. Geffen later founded Dreamworks alongside Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg and amassed a $9 billion fortune, making him one of the wealthiest people in the entertainment industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think the decision she made to re-sign with Columbia and not come with Asylum Records was a tragic decision for her career,\u201d Geffen says. \u201cIt was such a blow and an incredibly stupid thing for her to have done. Even today, for the life of me, I can\u2019t imagine why she made that decision.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGeffen never forgave Nyro. Throughout the years, he\u2019d get offered tickets whenever she played clubs in L.A., and he\u2019d always turn them down. \u201cShe called me a few years later and said, would I like to get together?\u201d he recalls. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018Absolutely not.\u2019 She said, \u2018Don\u2019t you miss me?\u2019 I said, \u2018Why would I miss you?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFifty years later, Geffen says he periodically listens to the four Nyro albums they worked together on. \u201cI remain a huge fan of her music,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m able to listen to her records and enjoy them even now, but I get no emotional charge. None whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFollowing her breakup with Geffen, Nyro retired from the music industry. \u201cShe didn\u2019t like being famous,\u201d Ian says. \u201cSo disappearing is a really good way to stop being famous.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019M STANDING IN a pitch-black living room on the Upper West Side, with a window providing the only source of light. A little eerie, considering it\u2019s exactly how Nyro preferred to perform her music. But I\u2019m not with Nyro. I\u2019m with her 46-year-old son, Gil Bianchini, and he\u2019s fiddling with a standing lamp, searching for an outlet.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tGil wasn\u2019t expecting me on this April evening. But he welcomes me in anyway, wearing a black Champion sweatshirt and Yankees hat, and ends a phone call with his eight-year-old son, whom he lovingly calls Lil Gil.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tGil flips on the light, illuminating the living room. It\u2019s packed with various items that belong to his roommate: a cabinet with dinner plates and a bottle of Hussong\u2019s Tequila, and a rectangular glass table with a white plastic dog figurine perched on top. There are two large stacks of shoeboxes, a vintage blue exercise bike, and a silver boombox on the wooden table. Bianchini tells me he spends most of his time tucked away in his bedroom, with a large TV and a queen-size mattress that has four inches of memory foam.<\/p>\n \n\tUnlike his mom, Gil hates tuna. \u201cHell no,\u201d he says. \u201cI hate everything about it, man. I hate the way it looks. I hate the way it smells. She used to make these huge bowls. We\u2019d be in a hotel room, and I\u2019d be over there by the window, trying to get the fresh air.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut like his mom, Gil loves to get stoned. During both of my visits, he rolls joints from a Mason jar full of weed, and we pass them back and forth as he walks me through his life, which has been far from easy. \u201cIt\u2019s very strange,\u201d he says. \u201cMy mom had a connection to Spanish Harlem, and then I wound up in Spanish Harlem,\u201d he says. \u201cIn the Jefferson Projects on 115th and First. That\u2019s where I grew from a boy to a man.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tOnstage in San Francisco, 1971.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRobert Altman\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \n\tNyro returned from retirement in 1976, when she reunited with producer Charlie Calello for the jazzy Smile, followed by 1978\u2019s Nested. She had divorced David Bianchini (he says his PTSD flashbacks were a major factor), but decided to give Gil his last name. \u201cMy mother was very private,\u201d Gil says. \u201cThat\u2019s why my last name is Bianchini.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGil\u2019s biological father is Harindra Singh, a self-described Indian prince whom Nyro met through her brother, Jan, when he was living overseas. Though their relationship was short-lived, Nyro had been dying to have a child. \u201cShe always wanted to have a baby and a family, and a house with a white picket fence,\u201d LaBelle says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNyro made an entire album about this next phase of life \u2014 1984\u2019s Mother\u2019s Spiritual, which Rundgren was brought in to produce. But he quickly became frustrated and left the project. \u201cThe whole atmosphere was kind of bizarre,\u201d Rundgren says. \u201cShe would have a bunch of girlfriends over for lunch. They would all sit at a table together, and then the males would have to sit somewhere else. So that made me a little bit uncomfortable, too. Essentially, I bowed out and let an engineer finish it. That was pretty much the last time I saw her.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNyro spent the rest of her life with a new partner, Maria Desiderio, a painter who co-owned a women\u2019s bookstore in Newport Beach, California. \u201cShe said that she was done with men,\u201d Rundgren says. Adds Janis Ian: \u201cIt was an open secret, like the rest of us. But I don\u2019t think she wanted the publicity.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGil lived with his mom and Desiderio in a small cottage on Nyro\u2019s Danbury property, which was located above a pond and waterfall; no longer able to afford the main house, she rented it out. He has fond memories of his childhood in the late Eighties and Nineties \u2014 building forts out of blankets, reading comic books, playing with G.I. Joes, and seeing Alien 2 and Eddie Murphy Raw in theaters. Nyro introduced him to Buddhism, while he exposed her to Tupac (she loved \u201cDear Mama,\u201d he notes) and Aaliyah. He toured with Nyro as well, and traveled to Manhattan to see his mom play the iconic Bottom Line in 1988.<\/p>\n \n\tNyro died of ovarian cancer on April 8, 1997, at 49; two years later, Desiderio died of the same cause. \u201cLaura didn\u2019t want to go to a hospital,\u201d Desmond Child says. \u201cShe slept on a futon bed in this alcove of the house with windows that were all around. She died with dignity in that bed, listening to the water rushing underneath, and looking at the stars above her.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tGil, who faced legal troubles stemming from drug use starting in his teens, spent years in and out of detention facilities and group homes; that\u2019s where he was when he found out his mom died. (Geffen says he read it in the paper, while David Bianchini, imprisoned for owning a marijuana farm in Vermont, was told by a fellow inmate.) But more than anything, losing his mom was the hardest thing he went through.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt was rough times, I guess,\u201d Gil says. \u201cBut the roughest thing for me was dealing with my mom. I was lonely. I was supposed to be playing and having fun as a teenager, but I spent my time crying myself to sleep every night because my mom is dying, and I\u2019m over here locked down.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tGil spent 10 years as a barber, and he\u2019s worked in construction. But his lifelong passion is making rap music. And like his mom, he\u2019s wary of the industry. \u201cI got all the talent in the world,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s not the problem. The only thing is this industry. It\u2019s dirty. I operate off of principles and morals. I\u2019m a little too pure for that shit, for real.\u201d He sends me the track \u201cReminisce,\u201d where he raps, \u201cI remember I was trying to be a kid\/14, talking to my mom in the crib\/Just me and her\/Thinkin\u2019 bout how long she\u2019d live\/Cancer is a bitch, but it is what it is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tPerhaps unsurprisingly, the Laura Nyro estate is a mess; Gil\u2019s lawyer, George Gilbert, confirms that Gil is one beneficiary, alongside a woman to whom Desiderio left her share. Gil never received any of his mother\u2019s belongings, but he doesn\u2019t care. Being her son is enough for him.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI never met my father,\u201d he says. \u201cSo my mom rubbed off on me a lot. In a way, I\u2019m like a version of her \u2014 a different kind of version. So I don\u2019t need her stuff. I\u2019m damn near her.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFOR YEARS, SONGWRITER Becca Stevens had a torn piece of paper taped to her fridge that simply said \u201cLaura Nyro.\u201d At gigs, she\u2019d constantly get asked if she was a fan, but she\u2019d never gotten around to digging into her catalog. That changed when jazz pianist and composer Billy Childs messaged her on Facebook, asking if she\u2019d like to be a part of a Nyro tribute album he was arranging. \u201cI finally started to do my homework,\u201d Stevens says, \u201cand was kicking myself for not doing it sooner.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tReleased in 2014, Map to the Treasure: Reimagining Laura Nyro features Stevens, Rickie Lee Jones, Esperanza Spalding and Wayne Shorter, and others covering Nyro classics. \u201cI like the images that get conjured in my mind when I listen to her music,\u201d Childs says. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like she\u2019s singing to me. Her music is unmistakably human, because it ebbs and flows. It has these vast dynamic shifts \u2014 loud to soft, fast to slow, stops for no reason, and then she starts up again. It\u2019s completely how life is.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tJames Batsford, who was introduced to Nyro\u2019s music by his father, spent years putting together two comprehensive box sets: 2021\u2019s American Dreamer and 2024\u2019s Hear My Song: The Collection 1966 \u2013 1995<\/a>. \u201cAs my career went more into reissuing and putting together catalog releases, I was left thinking, \u2018Why has no one done a collection of her?\u2019\u201d the 34-year-old producer says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLast fall, singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright appeared at Joe\u2019s Pub in New York City, performing a tribute show<\/a> of Nyro songs; she covered \u201cGod Save the Country<\/a>\u201d on The Tonight Show. And more Nyro content is coming to the big screen: The upcoming documentary, directed by Lisa D\u2019Apolito, will hopefully introduce Nyro to younger generations, and make her as cool as Joni Mitchell, Cher, and Stevie Nicks are today.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n \n\tWho knows? Maybe they\u2019ll fall hard for her music the way Desmond Child did on Miami Beach all those years ago. \u201cI wish that more people knew about her, and fell into the potion of her majesty,\u201d Child says.<\/p>\n \n\tBut as every fan knows, Nyro never really needed that recognition. \u201cI don\u2019t think she\u2019d care,\u201d Sandra Bernhard says. \u201cIf she could hover over us and whisper in our ear, I think she\u2019d say, \u2018It\u2019s fine. This is cool. My songs live on, even if people don\u2019t really fully understand where the music came from.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I t happened at 888 Eighth Avenue at 8 p.m. \u2014 the kind of coincidence you can\u2019t make…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[71775,71776,71777,71778,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-177158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-david-geffen","tag-janis-ian","tag-laura-nyro","tag-monterey-pop-festival","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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