[msb-alumni] Maggie Roche Dead at 65
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2017 13:52:32 -0500
BlankI remember listening to a few soungs from one of their first albums when I
went to work at Kaiser. The two chemists that picked me up every other week
used to play them along with Dark Side of the Moon.
I just saw my email yesterday from the "Who's Dead and Who's Alive" mailing
list, it just stated on Saturday January 21,
Maggie Roche, folk singer (The Roches), of cancer, 65.
Here is a link to just one of their many songs "The Married Men"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDPFrtQH6lI
Maggie Roche, Who Harmonized With Her Singing Sisters, Dies at 65
By JON PARELESJAN. 21, 2017
Photo
Maggie Roche, center, in 1985 with her sisters Suzzy, left, and Terre.
Maggie Roche, the songwriter whose serene alto anchored the close harmonies of
the Roches, her trio with her sisters, Terre and Suzzy, died on Saturday. She
was 65. Suzzy Roche said in a statement that the cause was breast cancer. She
did not say where her sister died.
“She was a private person, too sensitive and shy for this world, but brimming
with life, love, and talent,” Suzzy Roche wrote on the Roches’ Facebook page.
“She was smart, wickedly funny, and authentic — not a false bone in her body —
a
brilliant songwriter, with a distinct unique perspective, all heart and soul.”
Ms. Roche developed a pop-folk songwriting style that could be droll or
diaristic, full of unexpected melodic turns and often inseparable from the way
the sisters’ voices harmonized and diverged.
On albums from the early 1970s into the 2000s, her songs chronicled a woman’s
life from early stirrings of independence (“The Hammond Song”) and amorous
entanglements (“The Married Men”) to thoughts on longtime connection (“Can We
Go
Home Now”). They often mixed heartfelt revelations and flinty punch lines.
In “Broken Places,” recorded on a 2004 duo album with Suzzy, she sang:
I love you for all of this
Struggling towards happiness
When the chips are down we play our aces
Hiding them in our broken places.
With the Roches, and in duos with each of her sisters, she released more than a
dozen albums. The Roches never had a major hit but maintained a devoted
following. They shrugged off disappointments in “Big Nuthin’,” a song the three
of them wrote together.
Photo
The Roches, from left, Maggie, Suzzy and Terre, at Town Hall in 2005, with
Garry
Dial on piano. Credit Erin Baiano for The New York Times
“We’d like to make a million dollars and be set for life,” Maggie Roche told
The
Los Angeles Times in 1995. “We’ve been lucky, though. We have a career, and
that
is a gift. I guess I want things to be easy, but that’s not the way it is.”
Margaret Roche was born on Oct. 26, 1951, and grew up in Park Ridge, N.J. She
and her two younger sisters sang in Roman Catholic church choirs, and she
started writing songs after getting a guitar for her birthday in 1964. She and
Terre formed a duo, performing at first for Democratic Party fund-raisers in
New
Jersey.
They attended a songwriting seminar given by Paul Simon at New York University
in 1970, and he had them sing harmony on his 1972 album,“There Goes Rhymin’
Simon.”
Mr. Simon signed them to a production company he had formed for young
musicians,
and he was also among the producers of Maggie and Terre Roche’s album
“Seductive
Reasoning,” released by Columbia in 1975.
Suzzy Roche joined her sisters in 1976 and, as a trio, the Roches became a
local
sensation at clubs in Greenwich Village. One of their onstage favorites was a
snappy three-part-harmony version of the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s
“Messiah.”
Their debut album, “The Roches,” released in 1979, was produced by Robert Fripp
of the band King Crimson. It included “The Married Men,” which was also later
recorded by Phoebe Snow.
Despite modest sales, the Roches persisted, making albums for Warner Bros. and,
later, MCA and Rykodisc. Their songs appeared in the soundtrack to the 1988
film
“Crossing Delancey” (in which Suzzy Roche appeared); in 1991, they provided the
voices for a trio of animated cockroaches on an episode of the Steven
Spielberg-produced cartoon series “Tiny Toon Adventures.”
The Roches released a Christmas album, “We Three Kings,” in 1990, and a
children’s
album, “Will You Be My Friend?,” in 1994.
The trio disbanded after the release of “Can We Go Home Now?” in 1995, but
Maggie and Suzzy Roche recorded albums as a duo in 2002 and 2004, and the
Roches
released a final trio album, “Moonswept,” in 2007.
In addition to her two sisters, Ms. Roche is survived by her partner, Michael
McCarthy; her m
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