She Danced and Danced and Smiled and Smiled
Dory Previn
Happy Birthday Dory Previn, eighty today.
Dory provided a lot of the soundtrack to my teenage years after I was lent “On My Way to Where” and “Mythical Kings and Iguanas” by Mike Graf in East Kilbride sometime before 1976. I saw her in Concert in Glasgow in 1976 and over the years I have never been without her albums which remain amongst my favourites.
Uniquely amongst the confessional singer songwriters of the early seventies, than whom she was notably older, she had a lot of genuine personal pain to write about rather than whiny bedsit angst (“Doom From a Room” as Clive James called it). She also had a succesful foundation of being a three-time Oscar nominated songwriter together with then husband Andre Previn.
Although she was troubled before Andre left for the charms of Mia Farrow, it was the breakdown which followed that event which sparked a remarkable outburst of creativity and songs of immense power. As well as Ms Farrow getting a broadside (“Beware of young girls who come to your door, whistful and pale of twenty and four….”) she wrote directly and frankly about her mental illness and the childhood which gave rise to it. And what songs they are; many of them written during her breakdown, some of them while she was in hospital including the wonderful Mythical Kings and Iguanas.
There are too many songs to mention so let’s content ourselves with an extract from her reflections on her breakdown and the therapy for the voices in her head – Mr. Whisper
The thought
He’ll leave
Just bitterly burns
And my despondence
Grows
I lost my blue buttons
He sent me
Blue Buttons
On my birthday
But my blue buttons
Came loose
Loose
Loose
Lucy Brown
Lucy in the sky
Luce
Lucent
Lucid
Lucidity
Lucifer
Light
Hang luce
Stay loose
I
How did I get this way
I was
What was I going to say
I was on
How did I get in here
I was on my
Wasn’t I here last year
I was on my way
Why have they locked me in
I was on my way to
Who is my next of kin
Christ
Won’t I ever win
I paid
My airplane fare
I was
On my way to where…
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