Before she had post-working day fun with the girls; before she made her true colors shine; before we looked and found her time after time, pop iconoclast Cyndi Lauper cut her musical teeth fronting a nostalgic yet dynamic quintet that enthralled New York at the dawning of new wave.
As Lauper prepares to enter the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, it seems only fitting that we take a journey back and uncover what made this band, Blue Angel, go tick, tick, boom after three years and only one album together.
Looking and sounding like both a greaser group and the progeny of Sha Na Na, Blue Angel was tight, to the point, and instantly distinctive. Before the masses would proclaim, “She’s so unusual,” about Lauper’s look, personality, and voice, elements of each were already cemented in the work she was doing with this band. Like the Pretenders, Lauper was a leader of men. Unlike Chrissie Hynde though, Lauper didn’t need leather, raccoon eyes, and accompanying snarl to get her musical points across. Her voice would always hold your attention. Just take a listen to the final minute of “I’m Gonna Be Strong” for proof as her vibrato climbs registers and never falters.
Blue Angel members included Lauper, keyboardist and sax player, John Turi, who would co-write songs with Lauper, guitarist Arthur Neilson, Johnny Morelli on drums, and bassist Lee Brovitz.
“I had actually seen Cyndi in a cover band in a local bar in Queens a few years before Blue Angel and I was very impressed with her voice,” Arthur Neilson, 72, recalled recently in an email. “So when she, John, and Johnny approached me after a gig I was playing at Trax in New York City, I was very interested.”
Neilson, based in Brooklyn and guitarist for blues icon Shemekia Copeland for close to three decades, joined the group in the fall of 1979. He adds that before the established lineup of Blue Angel formed, the group had a “much heavier” sound before shifting to rootsier rock and roll. From its original configuration, only Lauper and Turi remained.
Lee Brovitz, a Rochester, New York-native and friend of Turi’s, would be the last to join the group as it prepared to take New York by storm. Blue Angel’s name stems from two influences — Roy Orbison’s own song “Blue Angel,” as well as the Marlene Dietrich movie The Blue Angel.
“Those were the days of big hair. I remember walking down the street with the band; we were going to grab something to eat and Cyndi said, ‘You can be in the band but you gotta get that haircut,’” Brovitz told me recently with a laugh. “It took me about three haircuts to get it down to where she liked it.”
While harkening back to an earlier era of music might seem passe, the group would pave the way for other bands like The Stray Cats to flourish in the early 1980s.
“That was part of their love of that music. It was the new wave but there were no limits to that,” said Brovitz, a musician and producer based in Florida. “There was that retro thing happening within the new wave genre.”
Yet the band wasn’t a gimmick — they wanted to authentically harken back to an earlier time in rock and roll and let that aesthetic permeate every pore of their recordings. For Lauper, Edith Piaf would prove as much of an influence as any current contemporary.
“We’d go down to the Village and get old 50s records or Cyndi would find some female singer she had heard about and we would bring the stuff back and listen to it,” Brovitz said. “Cyndi listened to vocal runs and how people would do little hiccups from a lot of those early acts like Wanda Jackson and Connie Francis. We kind of wove those into the songs.
“Even though we were in the moniker of that new wave thing, we were more of a retro, golden age of rock and roll band,” he adds. “We were listening to everything from rockabilly to Tin Pan Alley stuff. Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Roy Orbison, Wanda Jackson, Etta James.”
Before signing with a major label, Blue Angel would diligently rehearse to hone their craft. “Five nights a week,” according to Neilson. Eventually, the group would become a staple at local city venues like Trax, Private’s, and the Mudd Club.
“We were just itching to play to start with. We wanted to get some kind of visibility and some kind of buzz happening. It was important to do that to get the record companies to look at us,” Brovitz told me. “When we did Private’s, I think we were the best draw there. We played there a few times when that was open and we had lines around the block to see the band. It was different, it was exciting, and it was fun. We had fun on stage. Cyndi’s a great entertainer and so was the rest of the band. The other plus on that was our keyboard player John also played sax. That just added another coating of icing on the cake.”
“Everything happened quickly,” Neilson adds.
While Blue Angel definitely embodies a “whole is equal to the sum of its parts” standard, group members acknowledge that band chemistry, plus Lauper’s unique voice, helped fuel the band to want to succeed.
“Cyndi’s voice was always, from day one, one of the premier draws of that band. We were doing something different and I liked that. It was something that was totally out of the realm of what I was doing at the time,” Brovitz says. “The band had a lot of energy. Live, the band had so much energy. Everybody in the band. They had acumen on their instruments and vocals. There was a chemistry that happened with that band from day one. I don’t know why but I fit right into it. It was great – we were friends and we had a really good bond from the start, not just with the music.”
Within a year of forming, Blue Angel would ink a record deal with Polydor. Per Brovitz: “The band had a five-year, six album deal. One of the albums was supposed to be a double. I still have the contracts — 42 pages. I bought my first house with that contract with no money.”
Helming production of the group’s debut album would be Roy Halee, best known for working with renowned 1960s acts like Simon and Garfunkel, the Byrds, Laura Nyro, and Blood, Sweat & Tears. The band made sure never to lose its focus and drive in the studio.
“We were under a budget. Unlike the big bands, we didn’t sit around and do drugs and alcohol instead of recording and then jam and pick a song out. We went in with intent to do a good record,” Brovitz said. “We were excited about it. We were young. For some of us, it was our first big record deal so we were excited about it and we put the energy on the record. Cyndi sang great.”
“It was early in my career and I hadn’t had a lot of experience in the studio, but Roy Halee made it easy,” Neilson adds. “Roy had a thing he would say when he liked something. He would say, ‘Are you sick?’. In the song ‘Late,’ you can actually hear John say, ‘Are you sick?’ in the last 20 seconds of the song as Cyndi is singing the refrain.”
In listening to the album, you can easily pick up on Blue Angel’s own “Wall of Sound” aesthetic. “Maybe He’ll Know” could be the 80s equivalent of Danny and the Juniors’ “At The Hop.” “I Had a Love” is the Ronettes for 1980. “Late” recalls Wanda Jackson, right down to Lauper’s vocal hiccups.
While band members say they made a good album, Brovitz adds it didn’t quite capture the group’s live spirit.
“In retrospect, we should have gone to Memphis and recorded at Sun Studios or gone to some studio that had old tubeboards and really done it the authentic way to get that authentic sound. We were in a big room – Media Sound had big, vaulted ceilings, a big ambient room. A beautiful studio in New York. Cyndi wanted to stay in New York; she thought that we needed to have the New York groove. But Roy used some different techniques,” he said. “To be honest with you, I believe that the album was a little lackluster. I think the band was so much more exciting live than it was on record.”
Upon its release, the group would work on establishing its presence in Europe, opening for acts like Joe Jackson and Squeeze and creating music videos for European TV.
“We did what everybody did at the time because touring was not about making money in those days, it was about promoting the record,” Brovitz said. “It was promote the record and you get the airplay and the sales.”
While the group never lost its star power in the Northeast, even being voted the number one band in 1981 by New York radio station WNEW based on the strength of its debut album, a more muted reception awaited the group when they toured spots on the West Coast and in the Midwest.
“We were only popular in the Northeast. They took us out to California and we did a West Coast tour and we did some Midwest clubs, but to be honest with you, we couldn’t get arrested out there. We didn’t have a big draw,” Brovitz said.
“The Ramones shows that we did were interesting,” Neilson adds. “Their fan base did not want to hear anybody but the Ramones. So the first 20 rows of seats were mostly guys in black leather jackets giving us the finger for most of our set. We had our fans there too, but they were sitting further back.”
Not long after, cracks began to form as the band prepared to work on a second album with producer Jimmy Iovine. In addition to Polydor losing both its president and vice president, the group would soon part ways with its management.
Brovitz adds that Polydor, upon its restructuring, seemed more interested in pushing Lauper forward as a solo act of Barbra Streisand caliber. One act of rebellion on Lauper’s part would actually work to her advantage upon her mainstream arrival with her debut solo album She’s So Unusual.
“Cyndi decided that she was going to dye her hair brassy brassy blonde and go in and dress her normal wacky self and just tell the label that they’re not going to turn her into that. And it turns out her hair turned orange after she did that. It gained a lot of notice from concert reviews and from people so I think that’s where some of that image came from — from that mistake.”
Members agreed to split up in the summer of 1982. To this day though, there remains no hard feelings.
“I’m still good friends with all of them,” says Neilson. Adds Brovitz: “There were no internal problems.”
It turns out, Lauper’s star was only just beginning to rise. With the strength of MTV and an anthemic ditty called “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” Lauper would sell seven million copies stateside of her debut album and win two Grammy awards, including one for “Best New Artist.”
“It was one of those songs that I didn’t like because I just thought it was personally kind of a cartoon song. It turned into an anthem, so what do I know?,” Brovitz says with a laugh. “Cyndi’s talent is off the charts so I wasn’t surprised. I was surprised it was that song. ‘Time After Time’ is another story — now you’re talking about one of the most well-written, wonderful songs ever. That’s the Cyndi I know.”
For Blue Angel’s members, when thinking about the group and what it strived to accomplish, the nostalgia is nothing but warm, convivial, and something to celebrate.
“We were very influential without knowing it. We were just doing something unique and enjoying it because that’s where our roots were. And people were copying it. That’s the sincerest form of flattery to have people do that but it was after the fact,” Brovitz says.
“It’s a fun record to listen to,” he adds. “For a band that wasn’t together more than a couple of years with one album, there’s lots of history there. There is still a lot of interest in that band. It was like a rocket — straight up… then straight down.”
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