'80s duo rewriting musical legacy
Published: Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Updated: Wednesday, April 1, 2009
At an age where fame can be easily drunk in with wide-eyed naivety, being soaked by the sexually acidic, "Purple Rain" of Prince at the height of his fame was like being in a fish bowl. The image, the sound, the revolution — it was the public's to gaze upon and feed into, but it was the women's to create and theirs to live within, even when the water got dirty.
Now established with a prolific scrapbook of musical accomplishments, Melvoin and Coleman, known together by their band name Wendy and Lisa, sat down last night in the Geoffrey Cowan Forum at the Annenberg School for Communication for the Popular Music Project's presentation of "The Art and Business of Song," a personal conversation with the duo led by chief pop critic of the Los Angeles Times, Ann Powers. There was talk of love, fame, sound and ego: a rarely glimpsed insight into the long-standing careers of these two under-the-radar industry expressionists.
In speaking of their past with Prince, there was little nostalgic tone. Once called "Prince's Women" on their Rolling Stone cover with Prince in 1986, Melvoin and Coleman were instrumental, both literally and figuratively, in the formulation of Prince's signature funk-pop sound. Their unique vibes are best realized on "Parade" and "Under the Cherry Moon," and they introduced Prince to the Fairlight, a then-groundbreaking computer video instrument heavily experimented with on "Around the World in a Day." It would be surprising, though, if much of the public even knew their names.
One year post-Prince, there was huge buzz surrounding the women, but even larger misconceptions about the direction of their artistry. A bidding war between major labels for their first solo album eventually landed them at Columbia Records. Coleman recalled that it was exciting, but "the worst thing that could happen to an artist." There were too many surface expectations to fulfill, and now, they know better than to try.
It was more their tales of other female culture icons, rather than of themselves, that showed attendees just how infused Melvoin and Coleman are with some of the greatest known music of the past two decades.
Recently requested by Madonna to play guitar on her most recent record, Melvoin said that the pop icon, with whom she has spoken to on and off for years, entered the room "looking very cute in her white outfit — very sporty." This information is offered in a breezy way that only someone with humbling self-awareness could say about such an intimidating ego.
Melvoin and Coleman have practice, though, with the big egos of the music industry — from Eric Clapton to Grace Jones. "It doesn't cost me anything," Melvoin said in the take-note tone of a mentor, "to facilitate the part of them that needs to be the top dog." To listen to Melvoin and Coleman is to see talent, and not ego, talk for itself.
To allow expression, in all forms, the freedoms to not just assimilate into but become blatant identifiers of one's public image is nestled at the core of Wendy and Lisa (the band and the women). "We spent the beginning of our careers homophobic to our own lives," said Melvoin. With age and time, however, came the strength to expand the frame of their art by pushing emotional boundaries. Their later albums, all consciously self-released, are testaments to this.
Powers stated that on their new album, "White Flags of Winter Chimneys," an almost ethereal ride into the depths of their partnership, that they were "challenging the shape of a pop song." But they have also, through their body of work, challenged the socialized shape of what it means to be a working female musician in an industry that would have typically spit them out back in 1987.
Currently, Melvoin and Coleman are scoring their third season of the NBC epic "Heroes," and will be the sound behind Showtime's "Nurse Jackie." They are also working on a "Heroes" album. Each track will be named for a character on the show that a miniature score will then be built for.
The track for Hiro Nakamura, a Japanese character that can stop time, travels from Tokyo to New York to ancient Japan — all the while listeners journey with him on "emotional beds" of unearthly audible renderings. Melvoin and Coleman have a honed ability to create images, not sounds, which they owe, as they do much of their modern career, to computer technology and its ever-increasing impact on music production and distribution.
Songwriters, instrumentalists, producers, lovers, mothers: Melvoin and Coleman put much about the industry into perspective, but it was their perspective on being an artist that will most resound. The truer you are to yourself, the truer the music and the greater the legacy.
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