Archive
LAURA NYRO
American Dreamer
New boxset invites listeners new and old to give an all-time great the attention she deserves.
By Laura Barton
MADFISH MUSIC
10/10
Songwriter supreme: Laura Nyro, Royal Festival Hall, London, 1971
BARRIE WENTZELL
OVER the years, Laura Nyro has not been short of admirers.There was David Geffen, of course, who managed her. And Clive Davis, who signed her. Peter, Paul and Mary, Barbra Streisand, and Three Dog Night, who covered her songs. And Bette Midler, who inducted Nyro into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by noting how “she could make a trip to the grocery store seem like a night at the opera”. But perhaps the definitive compliment came from Alice Cooper, who once described the experience of listening to Nyro’s second album, Eli And The Thirteenth Confession, with awe-struck simplicity: “You sit there and go, ‘That’s songwriting.’”