Stoned Soul Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim's birthday, March 22, is a sort of national holiday, at least in my corner of the internet: a day to publish fave songs and tributes, to note the curious convergence of his birthday and Andrew Lloyd Webber's, to repost my in-depth Q&A with the Bard of Turtle Bay, now 10 years old.

This most recent occasion, the man's 91st, was also the day an old friend-of-a-friend and journalist colleague, Mark de la Viña, happened to post the above photo on Facebook. "Is this real?" I asked him. He, and a Google search, confirmed that it was: One day in the late 1960s, the great Laura Nyro hung out with Sondheim at his famous midtown townhouse. It looked like a whole thing, a summit or a photo shoot, and it also looked like they had a lot to talk about.

More Googling of "Nyro Sondheim" turned up this extraordinary quote of his about her song "Stoned Soul Picnic," apparently from the biography Soul Picnic: "In economy, lyricism, and melody, it is a masterpiece." I mean, I agree, but I would not expect Sondheim to have such a warm opinion about a pop song—he has claimed that the music of the rock era has no purchase on his imagination, because he was too old to have absorbed at the right age, but between this unexplored Nyro love and the Harry Nilsson "Marry Me a Little," I'm beginning to have my doubts.

I wanted to know more—what were the circumstances of this shoot? Were the two friends? Who is the other woman in the photos? I emailed Sondheim and haven't heard back, but I was able to track down the photographer, Stephen Paley, on Twitter. A friend of Nyro's who shot a number of her album covers (including the priceless Gonna Take a Miracle shot), Paley told me, "Laura was a fan of Lorraine Ellison and wanted to meet her, so when I got the assignment to shoot her album cover I asked Laura to come with me, as I was going to do it in Sondheim's backyard in Turtle Bay." This was in 1968, by most reckonings, and this was the Lorraine Ellison record cover in question:

Paley also directed me to a 1970 Life story for which he shot some photos and Maggie Paley wrote the words; none are from this shoot, though.

We may never know what was said that sunny afternoon in Sondheim's townhouse, but it's fun to imagine, isn't it? (As one person wrote in reply, "I'm getting a contact high just looking at this photo.") To witness this cozy summit of sui generis musical geniuses certainly brightened my March (and that of many others, as this is one of my most shared tweets).