"Wilson, F Paul - Nyro Fiddles - ss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson F. Paul)Nyro Fiddles F. Paul
Wilson This
little piece - somewhere between story, diary entry and autobiographical
episode - may seem quiet on a first reading, but we think it sets up resonances
which can be heard throughout the stories collected in In
Dreams, encapsulating in a few words the seeds which grow into, say, the
stories by Lewis Shiner, Andrew Weiner, or Nicholas Royle. F. Paul Wilson is
best known as the author of The Keep, The Touch and other fine horror
novels, but he has never been content to settle easily into genre, and his
short fiction - collected in Soft - covers an extraordinary range of
effects and approaches. ‘“Nyro
Fiddles”,’ he tells us, ‘is true. Mostly. For those not in the know or too
young to remember, Laura Nyro was a cult phenom of the sixties. Find her old
Verve and Columbia records and listen to that voice - she did all her own
harmonies; listen to those lyrics and consider that they were written by a
teenager. Many of her devotees were other musicians who had hits with her more
commercial songs - “Stoned Soul Picnic”, “And When I Die”, “Stoney End”, “Eli’s
Coming”, to name but a few. She dropped out of the scene in the early seventies
but recently started touring with a quartet. I caught her show at the Bottom
Line in Greenwich Village and it brought back the night I dropped in on one of
her recording sessions. I wrote the piece as if I had the old Crawdaddy
in mind as a market. Here’s how it went down . . .’ * * * * CBS Recording Studios The New York Tendaberry sessions July 20,1969
e were
supposed to go to Studio A but there didn’t seem to be a Studio A in this
building so Mary asks the guard where’s the Laura Nyro session and he says it’s
in Studio B on the second floor. A placard by the guard’s desk reminds us that
Arthur Godfrey broadcasts from the sixth floor. We sign
in and take the elevator. The
main double door to Studio B opens into a sort of T-shaped vestibule with the
sound studio to the right and the engineer’s booth to the left. I hesitate
outside, not sure we should walk in because it’s in use right now and we had
been told to go to Studio A in the first place. The guard could be wrong
(it’s been known to happen) and the studio could be filled with strangers and I’d
feel dumb walking in and then just turning around and leaving. Then
through the door window I see Jimmy Haskell walk by from the sound studio to
the booth and I know this must be the place. Jimmy’s arranging the horns for
Laura. He’s a sweet, easy-going, middle-aged guy with a salt-and-pepper beard
and he’s wearing a beanie with propellers sticking out each side. They spin
deliriously as he walks. Laura
likes everyone to be happy at her sessions. We walk
into the booth and there’s Laura and a friend smoking a little pipe. The friend
has longish hair and a moustache, both brown, and is wearing one of those
knee-length Indian style coat-shirts, and I think he looks a lot like a guy who
used to play lead guitar in my band. Laura
sits by the console in her full-length black dress and black lace shawl and
that incredible black hair and I think maybe she’s put on a few pounds since
last I saw her. There’s
also this German shepherd bitch running around and it has what looks like an
old Sara Lee coffee cake tin in the closet filled with dog food and every so
often it goes over and chomps some down. Laura tells us the dog’s name is
Beauty Belle (or did she say Bill?). It’s
eight o’clock and the session was supposed to start at seven but the engineers
are having trouble setting up the second eight tracks and Laura Nyro, who’s
usually fairly talkative, is preoccupied tonight. Dallas - could be the city, a
guy, or a gal - is on the phone and Laura’s telling he, she, or it how stoned
she is. The engineer’s on another line with someone named Danny explaining that
he doesn’t see how he can mix the new album this week because his kids are out
of school and he’s gotta spend some time with them. Indian Coat was trying to
persuade him on this point earlier but Indian Coat is now out in the sound
studio talking to Twin-Prop Jimmy while the musicians sit around bullshitting,
trying each other’s instruments, and getting paid scale for it. Beauty Belle
(Bill?) is watching Indian Coat very intently through the glass. A young
photographer approaches the console and waits for the lady to get off the
phone. He shows her some shots he took of her a while back and she picks out
some she likes and says she doesn’t want to give this one or that one to Vogue
because they’re very personal-type pictures, you know? Indian Coat strolls
in and says he wants that one blown up for his wall and Laura says he’s got to
be kidding. She hates that picture. Well, she doesn’t really hate it, it’s just
that she likes others better and I get the impression she’s uncomfortable with
the word hate. Break
time rolls around for the musicians so they interrupt their bullshitting in the
studio and move it out to the hall where they regroup around the soft drink
machine. I go over and hang with one of the trumpets I know who with a couple
more years could be old enough to be Laura’s father and he tells me it’s
anarchy, pure and simple anarchy but wait and see… they’ll start to play and
she’ll point things out and say do this and try that and before you know it
everything falls into place and it’s beautiful, man. The girl’s crazy but she
sure as hell knows her music. Back in
the booth they’re blasting ‘Time and Love’, the song that’s to be rerecorded
tonight. The back-up tracks were laid down at an earlier session but something
didn’t click and so they’re going to be done again tonight. Laura’s tracks with
her piano and vocal won’t be touched and the band will play off them. After the
second run-through of the tape Mary turns to me and says it sounds familiar and
I say I guess it does have a few phrases reminiscent of ‘Flim-flam Man’,
especially in the fade. After
more replays the band thinks it’s ready and they try it. It’s about nine now
and Laura wants to finish by ten (definitely no overtime tonight) but
the drummer isn’t the same one as last time and he’s doing some of his own
thing (like doubles on the downbeat) and Laura wants to know the drummer’s
name. Jimmy tells her it’s Maurice and she gets on the mike and tells Maurice
what she wants. Her speaking voice is soft, almost sibilant, and I can never
get used to associating it with the power, range, and clarity that explodes
when she gets behind her piano. She tells Maurice to do it like Gary Chester
did at the last session, keep it simple and easy and light and happy and no
cymbals except for a bam-bam-crash in the chorus and only a one-stroke
downbeat, okay? At
first I think the doubles on the downbeat sound better than the singles Laura
wants but as the session wears on I come around to agreeing with the lady in
black. Many more tries follow and one sounds perfect until Maurice forgets the boom-boom
on his bass that leads into the fade. It’s nine fifty and Laura swears she’s
not going into overtime again. Everything’s going to stop dead at ten whether ‘Time
and Love’ is finished or not. Okay now, everybody be happy and light, everybody
smile, and one of the percussion men sticks his head out from behind some
baffling and flashes Laura this hideous shit-eating grin and everybody laughs. At ten
fifteen the musicians take another break and Laura is asking about overtime. At
ten thirty all the musicians pile into the engineer’s booth to hear the last
take. It’s crowded and Mary and I have other stops to make tonight so we leave
without goodbyes because no one could hear us over the replay anyway. Art
Garfunkel comes in as we’re leaving and asks if the Nyro session is here and I
tell him yes. He shakes his head and says he heard it was Studio A. Outside
the moon is high and bright and I remember hearing that somebody might be
walking on it tonight. I also hear that Laura Nyro sleeps in a coffin. I don’t
know. * * * * Nyro Fiddles F. Paul
Wilson This
little piece - somewhere between story, diary entry and autobiographical
episode - may seem quiet on a first reading, but we think it sets up resonances
which can be heard throughout the stories collected in In
Dreams, encapsulating in a few words the seeds which grow into, say, the
stories by Lewis Shiner, Andrew Weiner, or Nicholas Royle. F. Paul Wilson is
best known as the author of The Keep, The Touch and other fine horror
novels, but he has never been content to settle easily into genre, and his
short fiction - collected in Soft - covers an extraordinary range of
effects and approaches. ‘“Nyro
Fiddles”,’ he tells us, ‘is true. Mostly. For those not in the know or too
young to remember, Laura Nyro was a cult phenom of the sixties. Find her old
Verve and Columbia records and listen to that voice - she did all her own
harmonies; listen to those lyrics and consider that they were written by a
teenager. Many of her devotees were other musicians who had hits with her more
commercial songs - “Stoned Soul Picnic”, “And When I Die”, “Stoney End”, “Eli’s
Coming”, to name but a few. She dropped out of the scene in the early seventies
but recently started touring with a quartet. I caught her show at the Bottom
Line in Greenwich Village and it brought back the night I dropped in on one of
her recording sessions. I wrote the piece as if I had the old Crawdaddy
in mind as a market. Here’s how it went down . . .’ * * * * CBS Recording Studios The New York Tendaberry sessions July 20,1969
e were
supposed to go to Studio A but there didn’t seem to be a Studio A in this
building so Mary asks the guard where’s the Laura Nyro session and he says it’s
in Studio B on the second floor. A placard by the guard’s desk reminds us that
Arthur Godfrey broadcasts from the sixth floor. We sign
in and take the elevator. The
main double door to Studio B opens into a sort of T-shaped vestibule with the
sound studio to the right and the engineer’s booth to the left. I hesitate
outside, not sure we should walk in because it’s in use right now and we had
been told to go to Studio A in the first place. The guard could be wrong
(it’s been known to happen) and the studio could be filled with strangers and I’d
feel dumb walking in and then just turning around and leaving. Then
through the door window I see Jimmy Haskell walk by from the sound studio to
the booth and I know this must be the place. Jimmy’s arranging the horns for
Laura. He’s a sweet, easy-going, middle-aged guy with a salt-and-pepper beard
and he’s wearing a beanie with propellers sticking out each side. They spin
deliriously as he walks. Laura
likes everyone to be happy at her sessions. We walk
into the booth and there’s Laura and a friend smoking a little pipe. The friend
has longish hair and a moustache, both brown, and is wearing one of those
knee-length Indian style coat-shirts, and I think he looks a lot like a guy who
used to play lead guitar in my band. Laura
sits by the console in her full-length black dress and black lace shawl and
that incredible black hair and I think maybe she’s put on a few pounds since
last I saw her. There’s
also this German shepherd bitch running around and it has what looks like an
old Sara Lee coffee cake tin in the closet filled with dog food and every so
often it goes over and chomps some down. Laura tells us the dog’s name is
Beauty Belle (or did she say Bill?). It’s
eight o’clock and the session was supposed to start at seven but the engineers
are having trouble setting up the second eight tracks and Laura Nyro, who’s
usually fairly talkative, is preoccupied tonight. Dallas - could be the city, a
guy, or a gal - is on the phone and Laura’s telling he, she, or it how stoned
she is. The engineer’s on another line with someone named Danny explaining that
he doesn’t see how he can mix the new album this week because his kids are out
of school and he’s gotta spend some time with them. Indian Coat was trying to
persuade him on this point earlier but Indian Coat is now out in the sound
studio talking to Twin-Prop Jimmy while the musicians sit around bullshitting,
trying each other’s instruments, and getting paid scale for it. Beauty Belle
(Bill?) is watching Indian Coat very intently through the glass. A young
photographer approaches the console and waits for the lady to get off the
phone. He shows her some shots he took of her a while back and she picks out
some she likes and says she doesn’t want to give this one or that one to Vogue
because they’re very personal-type pictures, you know? Indian Coat strolls
in and says he wants that one blown up for his wall and Laura says he’s got to
be kidding. She hates that picture. Well, she doesn’t really hate it, it’s just
that she likes others better and I get the impression she’s uncomfortable with
the word hate. Break
time rolls around for the musicians so they interrupt their bullshitting in the
studio and move it out to the hall where they regroup around the soft drink
machine. I go over and hang with one of the trumpets I know who with a couple
more years could be old enough to be Laura’s father and he tells me it’s
anarchy, pure and simple anarchy but wait and see… they’ll start to play and
she’ll point things out and say do this and try that and before you know it
everything falls into place and it’s beautiful, man. The girl’s crazy but she
sure as hell knows her music. Back in
the booth they’re blasting ‘Time and Love’, the song that’s to be rerecorded
tonight. The back-up tracks were laid down at an earlier session but something
didn’t click and so they’re going to be done again tonight. Laura’s tracks with
her piano and vocal won’t be touched and the band will play off them. After the
second run-through of the tape Mary turns to me and says it sounds familiar and
I say I guess it does have a few phrases reminiscent of ‘Flim-flam Man’,
especially in the fade. After
more replays the band thinks it’s ready and they try it. It’s about nine now
and Laura wants to finish by ten (definitely no overtime tonight) but
the drummer isn’t the same one as last time and he’s doing some of his own
thing (like doubles on the downbeat) and Laura wants to know the drummer’s
name. Jimmy tells her it’s Maurice and she gets on the mike and tells Maurice
what she wants. Her speaking voice is soft, almost sibilant, and I can never
get used to associating it with the power, range, and clarity that explodes
when she gets behind her piano. She tells Maurice to do it like Gary Chester
did at the last session, keep it simple and easy and light and happy and no
cymbals except for a bam-bam-crash in the chorus and only a one-stroke
downbeat, okay? At
first I think the doubles on the downbeat sound better than the singles Laura
wants but as the session wears on I come around to agreeing with the lady in
black. Many more tries follow and one sounds perfect until Maurice forgets the boom-boom
on his bass that leads into the fade. It’s nine fifty and Laura swears she’s
not going into overtime again. Everything’s going to stop dead at ten whether ‘Time
and Love’ is finished or not. Okay now, everybody be happy and light, everybody
smile, and one of the percussion men sticks his head out from behind some
baffling and flashes Laura this hideous shit-eating grin and everybody laughs. At ten
fifteen the musicians take another break and Laura is asking about overtime. At
ten thirty all the musicians pile into the engineer’s booth to hear the last
take. It’s crowded and Mary and I have other stops to make tonight so we leave
without goodbyes because no one could hear us over the replay anyway. Art
Garfunkel comes in as we’re leaving and asks if the Nyro session is here and I
tell him yes. He shakes his head and says he heard it was Studio A. Outside
the moon is high and bright and I remember hearing that somebody might be
walking on it tonight. I also hear that Laura Nyro sleeps in a coffin. I don’t
know. * * * * |
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