‘Brandy' Singer-Songwriter Elliot Lurie Talks Enduring Popularity Of Proto-Yacht Rock Hit More Than 50 Years Later: ‘Good, Tight Storytelling'

Forbes

14 hours ago

Fifty-three years ago today, a New Jersey-based band called Looking Glass debuted its first and self-titled studio album.
The second track on the LP told the story of a heartbroken barmaid pining after a sailor who refused to give up his nomadically maritime lifestyle for her. That song, of course, was 'Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)", a primordial yacht rock hit that quickly shot to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1972.
'I guess a romantic tragedy is a good way to describe it,' Looking Glass founder, songwriter, and frontman, Elliot Lurie tells me over Zoom. 'From the sailor's point-of-view, it's about a guy who really does love a woman but can't get tied down … I think it's a really good, really short story. The challenge of telling an entire story with a beginning middle and end — and two characters you can relate to in a musical setting that lasts three minutes — I think that's pretty good, tight storytelling."
While some artists come to revile their most popular compositions after a few decades of playing them non-stop in front of crowds, Lurie says his fondness for 'Brandy' has never waned in the last half century. In fact, he even named his publishing company 'Braided Chain Music' after the piece of Spanish jewelry the sailor gifted to Brandy.
'It's my one really big hit and if anybody comes out to see me, that's what they want to hear. I'm perfectly happy to play it for them,' he says. "I always enjoy doing it. I mean, people love it.'
Lurie later adds: 'I always get emails and notes on social media saying, 'I was in the Navy in 1972 when it came out. Everybody played it all the time and we loved it.' I get a lot of that from people who are associated with the Navy or shipping or sailing.'
Filmmaker James Gunn isn't a salty sea dog, but he loved the song so much, that he made it a crucial part of both the screenplay and soundtrack in his Marvel Studios sequel: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Lurie, who 'loved the way that all the '70s music was used' in the first movie, admits he disappointed that his retro chart-topper was not included in Peter Quill's (Chris Pratt) initial 'Awesome Mix Vol. 1' tape.
'I was a little bit upset that they hadn't used 'Brandy,'" he shares. 'I said, 'I had a great '70s song, why didn't they use it?' And then about a year later, I got an email from my publisher saying that they wanted to use it in the second movie. I was thrilled. Then I started to see the script pages they sent me and it was fantastic because not only was it used as the opening song in the movie, but they discuss the lyrics [later]
In particular, the lyrics are ruminated on by Quill's long-lost father, Ego (Kurt Russell), a living planet and god-like being who empathizes with the sailor in the story, owing to the fact that he's visited countless worlds and fallen in love, but never stayed to put down roots. Well, proverbial roots, anyway. 'When my wife and I saw the clip of that before they released the movie, our mouths were hanging open,' Lurie remembers. 'We were like, 'What?!' There's a line in the movie where [Ego] calls it 'Perhaps Earth's greatest composition.' My wife and I heard that and went, 'Whoa!''
Lurie wrote the song shortly after graduating from Rutgers University with a degree in sociology, which 'left lot of time for rehearsing,' he quips. 'We played all the fraternity parties and all the local bars. Those were our main gigs.'
Before going out into the real world to find jobs, however, he and his three bandmates — two of whom were also Rutgers graduates — rented 'a big old farmhouse' in Glen Garden, New Jersey, in which to write, practice, and record demos. 'We would occasionally drive up the Jersey Turnpike and try to get a record deal in New York City,' Lurie adds. Their big break ultimately came in the form of producer Clive Davis, who signed them up at Epic Records, a subset of Columbia Records.
Lurie crafted 'Brandy' with an acoustic guitar in one of the farmhouse's upstairs bedrooms, relying on his usual method of experimenting with guitar chords 'until I get a couple of chords that go together that I'm kind of liking. And while I'm doing that, I'll sing nonsense lyrics over the music," he explains. The name of the titular character, meanwhile, was inspired by a high school girlfriend he'd had named Randye. 'I was just singing her name along with some other things. And when the song started to come together, I said, 'Well, I can't use Randye, because that could either be a male or female name, and if it's going to be a bartender, she should be Brandy.' So that's where the name came from and then the story continued to evolve from there.'
He subsequently brought the song downstairs to hone it further with the rest of the rest of the group, though 'the final recording that you hear on the radio was a little different than the way we worked it up in the living room,' he reveals. 'We added the background vocals and the groove to it and all. But then in the production of the final record, we added a horn section, opened up a lot more background vocals, and mixed it six or seven times before we got the version we wanted. So it went through quite a few changes, but the song basically stayed the same."
Davis knew the song would be a hit, but the band, not wanting to be mistaken as a pop-focused group, decided to release the bluesy, rock and roll-inspired "Don't It Make You Feel Good" as a single first. 'It didn't do a thing,' Lurie says of the highly underrated track. 'So then they released 'Brandy,' and that made a big difference.'
The song began to pick up traction after being played on the radio in the Washington, D.C. and a handful of other American cities. After calling the band into a meeting the executives at Epic proclaimed, 'Your record is going to go to Number One. It's going to sell a million copies,' Lurie recalls. 'And we asked, 'How do you know that?' They said, 'Listen, we do this for a living, and we can tell you that if it's getting the kind of reaction it's getting in that city and a couple of others, it's going all the way.''
He modestly continues: 'I don't consider myself a great singer, but my tone is kind of distinctive, and it worked very well on the radio — especially back then on the AM radio, it cut real well. And also, the production on the record is interesting. When you listen to some other slick pop records from that era, the production on 'Brandy' is a little different [by comparison]. It sounds a little bit garage band-y, it sounds a little bit pop. It's kind different-sounding than some of the other records from the era. That may be part of the reason why it's hung in there.'
'Brandy" continued to gain momentum until it was ubiquitous on AM stations that summer. The public loved it while the guys of Looking Glass understandably felt a little burnt out. 'We had worked on it for so long, that we wound up changing the station when it came on, because we were sick of it at that time,' Lurie confesses.
In the decades since its release, 'Brandy' has been deemed an early example of yacht rock, a form of soft rock that didn't become a prevalent genre until later in the decade. Lurie, on the other hand, thinks it falls more into the pop category, but has 'no problem" if others want to consider it a yacht rock antecedent, particularly because its story centers around nautical exploits.
'Sometimes I'm surprised that it's included [in that genre],' he says. 'I guess it has to do with the lyrics [but] it's a little early for yacht rock. It came out in 1972 and most yacht rock stuff is from the late '70s and early '80s. Also, most of the great yacht rock singers are high tenors like Daryl Hall and Michael McDonald. I'm a baritone. So it's little different than a lot of yacht rock songs, but I'm happy to be on the list.'
Starting in the 1980s, Lurie left the recording side of the industry when he became head of the music department at 20th Century Fox (now branded as 20th Century Studios under Disney's ownership). For close to three decades, he worked on such high-profile projects as 9½ Weeks, Die Hard, Home Alone, and the Lizzie McGuire television series (for which he wrote the main theme).
'I hadn't really played or sung in 25 years. When I retired from that, I got back into performing, and I'm still doing it fairly regularly," he says. "It's very cool to have been able to have those two separate careers and then come back to the writing and performing.'
The musician concludes our interview by mentioning the fact that his self-titled solo album (released in 1975, two years after Looking Glass's second and final record: Subway Serenade), is now available to stream via Spotify after years of being unavailable to the public.
'The solo album didn't sell anything, but it used some of the great session musicians in LA, many of whom were in that yacht rock documentary,' he finishes. 'So I'm going to plug the Elliot Lurie solo album from 1975 which, after 50 years, is finally available again — and includes some really, really great yacht rock session players from LA."
Information on Lurie's live shows can be found on his official website