Phoebe Snow: A movingly candid interview

[Laughs] Nothing’s indestructible, baby. It just so happens that I’m a big fan of vocal technique. I train every day. It’s based on classical technique, operatic. I’ve been doing that seriously for more than 12 years. I have a couple of different coaches. I do sing arias now and then.

It’s well known that you pretty much scaled back your career in the mid 1970s after your daughter was born with severe brain damage. Do you mind sharing what her condition was like?

Her brain damage came as a result of neonatal malpractice. Valerie far exceeded everyone’s prognosis. She learned to walk at the age of 9; she had very good visual perceptions, they were incredibly acute. She could see things that I couldn’t see.

How was her speech?

She never spoke. Toward the end of her life, she had an operation to remove an adenoid from her sinuses. It was extremely large and probably blocked her ear canals her whole life. They said her window for assimilating language had closed at age 12 or 13. Near the end of her life, she was making baby gibberish sounds and I thought, “My God, she’s going to talk.”

How did she die?

[Pause, choked voice] Brain hemorrhage. [Pause] It was sudden, very rare. We don’t know why she had it. She was on an upward spiral at the time of her death — healthier, better. I don’t understand. I’m still in shock over it. I can’t process it.

Has getting back on stage helped your recovery?

Maybe a little. I just have to wait it out. I was in an extreme state of shock soon after she died, and I told myself that I should go back to work, that it’ll help. But I really wasn’t thinking clearly. I sort of had this sense of urgency to fill the vacancy, to do something right now. I didn’t think personally I could survive her passing. It was too shocking for me. It still is.

How does songwriting fit into the picture at the moment?

I’m trying to figure that out too. I’ve stockpiled books of potential lyrics. I’m a musical person, so you’d think the melodies would come to me. But I get lost with melodies.

Did you ever have a song just sort of tumble out, finished?

The ones that I think are the better-constructed songs, I usually get a phrase, with a melody and lyric in it.

I think “Poetry Man” is an exquisite tune. I’ve never gotten tired of it. I listened to it maybe 10 times or so in the last few days. Can you tell me how the song was written?

Sure. [Laughs] That was the second song I ever wrote in my whole life; the first one so lame I hardly remember it. It was just an exercise for me. I was trying so hard to be this hip and a groovy person. I was so stupid.

The second one, “Poetry Man,” came about because I was really getting the hang of guitar picking and I had these open chords, not open tuning, open chords. And I was having a relationship with somebody. From the words you can probably deduce that the guy was married. It was a bad thing to do. But I got a lovely romantic sonnet out of it.

As it turns out, he was not a particularly great guy either. I turned it into this ode to romance. It’s funny looking back on it — I sat there and hunched over the guitar and said "I’m gonna finish this." I was in the throes of young romance.

How old were you?

Twenty or 21. It came right out, a finished product, within an hour or so. I played it for my mother, and she stopped me. “Who is this about?”

I said, “Well, what about the song. Do you like the song?” She said, “What are you doing and who are you doing it with?”

Everybody’s a critic.

At the time I was playing amateur nights in the Village — at the Gaslight and the Bitter End and places like that. There was this group of people who were bandstand regulars. They were more experience and more polished than me, and I looked up to them. I was just this hippie from New Jersey who didn’t have it together.

So all my mother wants to know is am I getting laid? I’m not gonna talk to her anymore about the song. So I went to play it for these people. A bunch of hippies. I sat down in an apartment and played it. There was this one woman, she was beautiful and an incredible singer, and I put her on a pedestal.

So I said, “OK, what do you think? She said, “You want me to be honest with you? You sound like bad Carole King imitator."

That was almost the end of a promising career. They all said the song was so pedestrian, not very good. It was “Phoebe forget it, stick with the blues covers.” I was performing Delta blues stuff by Memphis Minnie and Big Bill Broonzy and the like. That was my hook. I was a decent blues guitar player.

Well, it’s good you didn’t listen to them? Do you remember what it was like when the song became a hit?

There was this one promotions person — I reconnected with her a few years ago. She was either at Shelter [Records] or their parent company, MCA. This woman, Linda Alter, she worked the Southeast. She fell in love with the album just when it was a fledgling thing.

She took it around to [radio] stations single-handedly. She was responsible for breaking the single and the album. I never knew her; she was just part of the support team. I got in touch with her later. I missed certain opportunities because I was really busy with my daughter. I called her and I cried: “You’re the one.”

How did the label in general get behind it?

The project took a year to do. It was acoustic, on an amazingly low budget. No one had high hopes for it. But there was this one gal who saw something in it.

Was there a situation where you heard “Poetry Man” on the radio for the first time, or did you follow all the radio adds and stuff like that?

A little of both. My first major North American tour was opening for Jackson Browne in 1975. The album [Phoebe Snow] was released at the end of ’74. We were on tour in Florida, I’m pretty sure. We were out there doing so many dates and I was pregnant with Valerie at the time, although I didn’t know it. So I was totally off balance. And some guy comes up to me backstage and hands me a piece of paper with all these positions on different charts. And I said, “I don’t know what all this means.”

A little later, we were driving in the van, this horrible utility van with a fanbelt that kept breaking, and the radio’s on. The announcer goes, “That was ‘Poetry Man.’” I was like “Oh my God, that’s me!” Then he says, “That’s the new one from “Phobie” Snow. I said, “Pull the van over.” I called the station, and either talked to the DJ or his engineer, and said, “It’s Phee-bee, not Phobie!” I didn’t even tell him who I was.

Do you ever think about what might have been with your career if you hadn’t made the decision to care for your daughter — not in a regretful way, but just a what-if?

[Quietly] No. Ah, 20 years ago maybe. I was a little bit more ego-driven. But overall, nah.

Does performing on stage offer a brief reprieve from your grief?

To some degree. But I’m very clear, I state it in the show, that my ability to appear there, to perform, is all a tribute to my daughter. I invoke her spirit. She was the role model. She was the parent a lot of the time. She was the teacher. She was the guide, the gift.

Whatever courage I have that makes me do what I do in the state of mind I’m in most of the time, it’s all due to her. I draw upon those lessons. So I do have to think about her on stage.

[Pauses] I don’t know if I can do this, but …

Don’t feel the need to.

No I should. [Choking up] Next week is her birthday. She would've been 33. So I’m in particularly bad shape right now. I just got through with a therapy session. I left an urgent message for my grief counselor: “I need help.” I know I can start going under again. There are tough times ahead. I get it. But it hasn’t gotten any better.

I’m not going to even attempt a platitude like ‘It’ll get better with time,’ but I’m very sorry about your situation. It breaks my heart. Let me switch into another area to finish up. One of my favorite artists is [the late] Laura Nyro. I know you’re a bit younger than her, but you’re both from the New York area, and I sort of see you two as kindred artists. I was wondering if you knew her.

Yeah. Not well. I sort of started getting to know her better at the end of her life. (Nyro died of ovarian cancer in 1997 at age 49.) She was incredibly compassionate and supportive. She was also brilliant. She did reach out to me. Raising my daughter was never in question, but it was very difficult, and I wasn’t getting a lot of support. She always said, “If there’s anything I can do, don’t hesitate to ask.”

The last time I saw her, she was brilliant. I saw her perform at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel (in New York). It was just her and her keyboard. She and Desmond Child were doing retrospectives of their material. All she had was her keyboards, three woman backup singers and a percussionist. And it was so good. The audience was beside themselves. We called her back for four encores.

Afterward, I hung out with her a little. She said, “What are you up to?” I said, “I’m taking opera lessons?” She looked at me like I was crazy.

That’s funny, because Nyro’s voice has often been described as operatic.

Yeah, well she wasn’t going there that night.