The METROPOLITAN Opera House in New York was invaded by aliens on Sunday, Oct. 6, 1974. A funky band replaced the orchestra that night; West Village drag queens sat next to Puerto Rican couples and Black Power glam rockers from uptown.
The crowd watched as two women -- wearing so many feathers they looked like birds -- descended from the rafters to join a third onstage. The trio's harmonies were so close that their voices seemed to merge in a swirl of gospel, rock and soul.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, October 12, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 33 words Type of Material: Correction
Labelle: An article in today's Arts & Books section about the vocal group Labelle said its new album, "Back to Now," is being released on the Vanguard label. Verve is releasing the album.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, October 19, 2008 Home Edition Sunday Calendar Part E Page 2 Calendar Desk 1 inches; 29 words Type of Material: Correction
Labelle: An article last Sunday about the vocal group Labelle said its new album, "Back to Now," was being released on the Vanguard label. Verve is releasing the album.
This was Labelle in the mid-1970s. They were not just a pop group with one enormous hit, "Lady Marmalade," but a phenomenon whose music helped change the very idea of what pop and the artists who made it -- especially women singers previously confined to "girl groups" -- could be.
"People were looking for three outrageous women who might sing and say anything," said Patti LaBelle in a recent interview, reflecting on the emergence of the group she'd formed with Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash when they were teenagers, and which has reunited for a new album, "Back to Now," to be released Oct. 21 on Vanguard Records.
"The idea was for artists to sing what they live and write the songs they live. And we really treated it like a band, not a girl group," said Hendryx. "Three minds, but one mind at the same time. And that did allow for different things to be said."
During the mid-1970s Labelle stood alongside David Bowie and George Clinton's P-Funk as visionaries of spectacular, genre-blasting pop.
"Alice Cooper and David Bowie, they were doing their thing," Clinton said by phone from a spot on his current tour to promote his new project, the doo-wop flavored George Clinton and his Gangsters of Love. "That whole period, everybody was going for theatrical rock. So we just said, 'Let's go all the way with it. Let's do it all.' That's what we did, and that's what they were doing too."
After spending the 1960s as the vocal group Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles (who, among other accomplishments, toured with the Rolling Stones), the group guided by manager Vicki Wickham enacted one of pop's most remarkable transformations. They traded in their wigs and satin gloves for futuristic costumes by rock designer Larry LeGaspi, began recording Hendryx's politically forthright and erotically charged songs, and developed a stage show that was part gospel revival, part circus, part love-in.
