The Dustbin
HOW IN THE NAME of god did the music of Dory Previn slip down the culture drain? Probably nobody but Dylan and the Residents have been able to do what she did with a lric.
I dont even know if shes alive. Ive tried to find out on the web, but the few references bounce off each other. Someone thought she died about five years back. Another said she may have changed her name in the last decade, but if so, that name doesnt lead you anywhere either. Her music was nominated for an Oscar, for, of all things, Valley of the Dolls, in 1967. And then she went nuts and was institutionalized because of fear of flying. One of the reasons her music disappeared is that she refused to tour.
The ex-wife of Andre Previn and the victim of Mia Farrow (who stole her husband before casting him off for Woody Allen), Previn, starting in 1970, pushed a quirky, often unfinished voice across maybe a half-dozen albums to record the history of someone who was abused by her father and the Catholic Church long before it became hip.
But Previns much more than that. She drags human disaster into the small room down the corridor and reads to it there from a quiet, penetrating book. A little-girl fear runs through both voice and lyrics, overlaid by cynicism and the wisdom of years. (Previn was about 40 when her first album came out.) I dont know a combination quite like it anywhere else. "Mr. Whisper," on her first album (On My Way to Where, 1970), is an agonizing description of being ripped apart in the shock-therapy mill of mental hospitals. It ends in spoken echoes of extraordinary pain.
"Did Jesus Have a Baby Sister?" she asks on her untitled album (put out without notes to save paper during the energy crisis of 1974, though why its without title is less clear), then tells you what the Holy Siblings life would have been like:
Did she long to be the saviour
Saving everyone
She met?
And in private to her mirror
Did she whisper
Saviourette?
Theres a pacifist sentiment to some of her songs that you could agree with or not, but its not important. The human aspect is foremost. Did Jesus have a baby sister?
Previns few but enthusiastic fans seem to like the album Mythical Kings and Iguanas. I dont, much. She wanders off here from the personally based tales that hit like nails in your feet. I think the untitled album is her best. You could drop a couple of tracks ("New Rooms" and, especially, "The Empress of China"), but whats left is a modern Cole Porter turned confessional. The opening two songs–"Lover, Lover, Be My Cover" and "Coldwater Canyon"–dig deep into the soul. "Coldwater Canyon" is intensely visual, with each image ramming home the underlying emotion:
She ran ran wild
Like a paranoid child
And nothing was aware
Of her flight
Except the eye
Of the sleeping sky
And the ear
Of the infinite
Still and silent night.
Okay, you cant hear the music behind these written presumptions, and the music is vitally important because it sets up something like cognitive dissonance. While she was putting the first album together, she didnt trust herself to compose her own music (or so a reviewer said at the time). But after she heard what her composers had drummed up, she ditched it (except for "With My Daddy in the Attic") and put together her own work. After that, she needed no help.
Much of Previns tunesmithing is bouncy, almost danceable, an easy, conscious affront to the lyrics, including such apparent contextual nonsense as pedal steel. Think of Penn and Teller. Is there any reason these two should make sense together? And is there any way you could improve on their totality?