"Always looking for something or someone" - A Laurie Styvers Postscript

Bass player Spencer Pyne [below right - Ed.] answered an email I sent him after finding his name in a comment to a defunct blog. From his email:

 

I knew Laurie. We played in a band together for about two years from 1971 to 1973 in Colorado. It's amazing to me how many people have approached me about Laurie and her music. Before she died in 1997, she gave me a reel-to-reel tape with a bunch of her new songs [see comments - Ed.].

I have also attached a piece by a British writer, David Pearson, that appeared in issues number 64 of Shindig Magazine.  I helped David research this article.

Apparently, there is also now some interest in releasing Laurie's music on CD.  Writer and rock historian Barry Alfonso has been in touch with me recently about this and also a book he has written that has a chapter about Laurie.

She was a sweet soul who died way too young without realizing her musical dreams.  I will always miss her.

 

Spencer Pyne

 

The following is edited down from

 REMEMBERING LAURIE STYVERS

©David Pearson for Shindig Magazine

In the late 1960s Laurette Stivers was a student at the American School in London.  Born in Texas in 1951, Laurette would make frequent trips to London, as her dad was in the oil business and his company had a head office there. In 1968 she was living in Hampstead and already writing songs. She responded to an ad in the press looking for a female vocalist for a group called Justine. [After making the album] she continued a personal and professional relationship with [producer Hugh] Murphy, and the two of them set to work on an album of songs she had written.

Hugh shared a flat with American producer Shel Talmy, and through him secured a deal for Ms Stivers with Chrysalis Records. The result was Spilt Milk, released in 1972. Laurie was very pleased with the final album, but felt, as Leigh Stevenson puts it, that “it was a learning curve and she wanted to improve. She was never that interested in fame – what was important to her was simply making a living out of doing what she loved, getting her feelings out and expressing them through her songs."

Laurie received some solid promotion in the music press but the album did not sell particularly well. She returned to the USA and began her studies at the University of Denver. She divided her time between visiting Hugh and going off on camping trips in the mountains she loved so much

The deal with Chrysalis continued and in 1973 came her second album The Colorado Kid, again produced by Hugh Murphy. Laurie felt it was more satisfying artistically than the first: by now Hugh was working with her on the music and lyrics. Heavenly Band was about Little Brown’s Electric Band. They came from Colorado and Laurie worked with them off and on for a number of years. They often opened concerts by some big name singers and groups. Band member and noted bass guitarist Spencer Pyne recalls that “Laurie was really inspired by Colorado, and the time she spent there was a learning experience. She wrote most of the songs for the second album while living in Denver and playing with LBEB.” 

The band had hoped that Laurie’s deal with Chrysalis would be their ticket to fame but Hugh Murphy insisted on using studio musicians. But once more sales were poor and Chrysalis lost interest. Laurie herself was very disappointed in sales but also seemed disappointed in the album itself. Spencer Pyne recalls that “she wanted to make music more like the British band Renaissance, and that the album was too pop and didn’t have much sophistication.” 

Laurie returned to the USA, and began to take her university studies more seriously. She studied meteorology, telling Leigh Stevenson that she wanted to be “a singing weather girl”. She maintained sporadic contact with LBEB. She was always hopeful of another record deal and in the late 70s approached Spencer to see if he could stimulate some interest in her. However the late disco-obsessed 70s were not suited to her songwriting style and so nothing came of it. She ended up back in Huntsville, Texas, where she had a house near her parents and a dog named Teddy. She was going to start a kennel business with her dad’s help. She took up stained glass- making. The final years were tough, characterised by ongoing health problems and hospitalisation. Her body eventually gave up on her and she died in 1997.

As Leigh Stevenson puts it, “most of her songs were about relationships, unfaithfulness, her own shortcomings and short attention span with men. Some were about drugs and creativity.”  Running through both albums are strong melody lines and thoughtful lyrics that would chime well with the singer/songwriter genre that was emerging in the early 70s.

In the over forty-five years that have passed, neither album has ever been reissued, nor made available on CD. Both deserve to be rediscovered, and Laurie herself deserves to be remembered for two fine albums of which she could feel justifiably proud. Spencer Pyne remembers her with sadness but great affection: “Laurie was a real romantic and she wrote her songs from the heart. She seemed to me to be always looking for something or someone, and I don’t think she ever really succeeded in finding them. She was sad and melancholy much of the time. She was not a very confident person. She was trying to figure everything out just like we all were in our early 20s.”