Demo That Got The Deal for Laura Nyro as told by Alan Merrill

[@mysterytrain3]

I read that Laura's biggest selling hit was 'Up on the Roof', a Carole King cover she did for her album "Christmas and the Beads of Sweat". I wasn't aware that anything from "Gonna Take a Miracle" charted. In my opinion, EVERYTHING on that great album of covers should have charted. Laura's obvious love of soul and rhythm 'n blues and La Belle's exquisite stylings and harmonies made that recording irresistible--in particular, their version of "The Bells".

[@bryancee5150]

mysterytrain3 It's my favorite album of hers!

[@chickchanteuse1]

Omg, 'The Bells' kills me every time I hear it!

[@royanderson9536]

A moving and evocative tribute to our beloved Laura. I have the cd of Laura's demo tape.

[@oughtssought1198]

always rubs me wrong to hear people say Laura's versions of her songs were ignored. if it is in fact accurate that none of her songs "charted" except the2 covers mentioned in comments here; it is also true that, at least in SF BayArea where I was for HS '68 to '70, most of her 1st album cuts got AMpop radio play. so did several tunes from her 2nd + 3rd albums ... Stoned Soul Picnic, Sweet Blindness, Eli, Luckie, Time and Love, Save The Country all got significant AMradio play. A few of her more personal songs, Gibsom Street for example, got some air play also. it wasn't as if she was ignored in her early career; that came later as she persisted in being more emphatically vocal about Vietnam carnage + govt violence towards civil rights + anti-war protesters.

[@aleecat75]

Anyone with access to Verve Folkways archives please look for a 1966 tape, a reel to reel demo with the Laura Nyro song "Stand Straight, Fly Right" on it. That's the 3 song demo I played Hohner blues harmonica on with Laura singing and playing piano. I played on two songs. Laura did one alone. Please contact me on my website email address if you have a copy of this music.

[@vivicola]

OMG please if anyone out there has this tape please make it public!

[@aleecat75]

***** Thanks you very much! I will try that contact email. Much appreciated.

[@jamessonhil5291]

aleecat75 I've heard rumours that Laura recorded the whole Eli and the thirteenth confession album on Verve/folkways before re-recording it with Columbia. Can you confirm this mr Merrill?

[@aleecat75]

That's a rumour, not the truth.

[@jamessonhil5291]

aleecat75 Ok thanks for the response! :)

[@Primalonna]

Alan Merrill is the signer of the original first version of the song "I Love Rock N Roll", he's not just the songwriter. He released the song in 1975 on RAK records with his band the Arrows and was the group's lead singer. The Arrows release of the song got the band their own weekly television series in England in 1976.

[@aleecat75]

Yes, Americans seem to have a hard time understanding that I was the first person in the world to sing the song "I Love Rock N Roll" on record, an a-side 45 rpm single that was produced by Mickie Most on his label RAK records in the UK '75. I'm always marginalized as the "co-writer" of the song in the USA. Without my many performances on British TV of "I Love Rock N Roll" Joan Jett would have never heard the song. My performance of the song on the TV show "45" as the front man / lead singer of the Arrows in 1975 got our band a weekly TV series in England in 1976. This is where Joan Jett first heard the song, from her watching my TV show.

[@lloyde.scottsnewchannel8303]

+aleecat75 Good to know. Thanks for clarifying that for us. Awesome!

[@lloyde.scottsnewchannel8303]

+aleecat75 Good to know. Thanks for clarifying that for us. Awesome!

[@lamper2]

@@aleecat75 Joan made a lame song great

[@jimmytman]

This is bullshit. Artie Mogul got Laura her first deal at Verve Folkways Records and Milt Okun, who shared an office with Artie on 46th street off Fifth Avenue, did her first demos. I was there, then known as Jim Taylor, working for Artie mostly as a "gopher" during the summer of 1966 and the following year while I was going to graduate school at NYU in the Village. Laura and I became good friends during those years, and her talent was so astonishing that I know I fell in love with her. After I got my Masters degree, I went to teach English Lit for three years at a small school in upstate New York, Cazenovia College, where I also wrote the score for an anti-Vietnam War musical that was produced by the drama students there. Later, in 1970, I moved to Los Angeles to work with my brother, Skip Taylor, managing and producing Canned Heat, Harvey Mandel, Sugarcane Harris, Flo & Eddie, and a few local bands. Around 1974 I went off on my own and made a deal for Neil Merryweather and the Space Rangers at Mercury Records with Denny Rosencrantz, where we delivered two albums that are still regarded as underground masterpieces and classics, even though neither received the recognition they deserved. Then I produced an album by Cheryl Dilcher for Butterfly Records and then became Butterfly's in-house remix producer for many of the disco albums for that label by THP Orchestra, St. Tropez, Tuxedo Junction, and my own extravaganza "Bernadette" by JT Connection (me and a bunch of the guys from Flo & Eddie's band and a guy named Ross Salomone, who played drums and co-produced the album with me.) When disco was declared "dead" in 1981, I sold everything I owned and moved to Maui with my boyfriend, and that was the end of my music business career, though I later wrote and recorded many songs in my home studio in Westlake Village, California that were too far ahead of their time to achieve any success. Now I'm retired and live in Tucson, Arizona.

[@ShaggyDawg]

Why would you leave Westlake Village? Nice town!

[@davester1432]

In 1970 there was no "Flo & Eddie". There was The Turtles. So if this guy is "bullshit" about what he remembers 50 years later, then so are you. No offense. :-)

[@TerriBingham]

@@davester1432 Alan acknowledges in the interview that he's getting old and can't remember everything, easy!

[@reghunt2487]

Alan Merrill's mother was the singer Helen Merrill, who supposedly inspired the song "Wedding Bell Blues" because she was having an affair with a married man named Bill.

[@samkohen4589]

His death must have hit her hard

[@aryehfinklestein9041]

Fascinating...thanks.

[@SuperZimbba]

So sad that Alan is gone now too - his wife posted a horrific story about not getting treated for COVID in time - what a talented family.

[@seeburg10]

He sounds like a warm, generous soul.

[@samkohen4589]

@@seeburg10 Left a daughter named Laura (guess why). Also a very talented singer and a drop gorgeous woman

[@gailkinney8683]

I was shocked when I read about Alan's death. Apparently he went to a hospital ER sick from Covid. He was a victim of triage. The hospital was swamped with Covid patients, and Alan was lying on a gurney for 11 hours without receiving any treatment, and he eventually succumbed to Covid. It was beyond tragic.

[@dgrjazz]

I just read elsewhere that her only hit hit was Up on the Roof... Carole King I think

[@edwardanthony7283]

What a lucky guy!

[@Derry_Aire]

Yep. Imagine being "dragged" to parties and concerts by Laura - and, well, just knowing her.

[@edwardanthony7283]

It was a great learning experience for him. Laura's music is still state of the art today & I was a young kid when most of it was covered by major groups like The 5th Dimension & 3 Dog Nite with many of her songs hitting the Top 20 or higher... Too bad she's been gone for 20 years already.

[@samkohen4589]

Son of Helen Marshall, also a great artist. His passing must have hit her hard

[@DexterHaven]

3:20 that is not true at all. Geffen did not switch her to Columbia records. Geffen desperately wanted Laura, his close friend, to sign with his new label, but Laura jilted him, he said, and signed with Columbia, which made him cry, as if betrayed by a friend. Laura resented that Geffen had already taken half her money from the sale of her songs to CBS. So she felt used by Geffen.

[@rogerdodger6025]

Geffen got Laura the deal with Columbia. It was a few years later after he made money from her publishing and started Asylum records where she was slated to be the flagship artist but changed her mind and stayed with Columbia. That's when they had a falling out.

[@GeeBee909]

@@BonRain8734 Was that "other guy" Johnny Rivers???? He owned a record co. back then called Soul City Records (I think) that the 5D recorded for and I believe released Stone Soul Picnic on

[@samkohen4589]

She was at that time planning to quit the whole industry, as she was just fed u with the whole music industry. She was 24 years old.

[@frederickglasser5617]

This guy's musing about Laura as an 18 year old, no mention about her writing And When I Die as a 16 or 17 year old.

[@royanderson9536]

I find the comments from 'o' about the way he/she perceives the way that Laura delivers her songs frankly insulting.

[@oppothumbs1]

For some reason Laura didn't do well at Monterey despite her talent.

[@reghunt2487]

That's actually a myth. Footage of that performance shows she was received well.

[@stevenfitzpatrick5800]

because Janis Joplin played for the very first time at Monterey Pop and STOLE THE SHOW. Laura felt "less than" after Janis. and honestly.... who wouldn't ??

[@frederickglasser5617]

This guy is on drugs, the song is Straighten Up and Fly Right. Marvin Gaye has done a version of it. And And When I Die isn't morbid. How about brilliant. Or precocious.

[@sportsmediaamerica]

Laura Nyro did NOT write "Gonna Take a Miracle."

[@ronster369]

Why don't you scream at me too for thinking Laura wrote O-O-H Child after I made the mistake after she sang it and was rudely corrected by an acquaintance 20 years ago. Go ahead. Get it out of your system finally once and for all.

[@davester1432]

Laura didn't write a single song on that album. The whole point of the album was that they were doing covers of other songs.

[@rogerdodger6025]

He stated that the only hit she had wasn't written by her when he mentioned that song. Try listening.