Labelle's future is 'Now'
POP MUSIC
Some said the spacey-sexy, rock-soul trio was ahead of its times in the '70s, but a new album, 'Back to Now,' from Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash may find its audience in '08.
THE METROPOLITAN Opera House in New York was invaded by aliens on Sunday, Oct. 6, 1974. Silver gleamed in nearly every seat, but the shine didn't come from musty family heirlooms. Instead, a multiracial crowd sported the finest in space-glam fashion. West Village drag queens sat next to Puerto Rican couples and Black Power believers from uptown.
A funky band replaced the orchestra that night, and as the group played an electric groove, 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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
