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Dory Previn - Mythical Kings & Iguanas (1971)

Mythical Kings and Iguanas is Previn's most consistent and accessible album, one on which the confessional tone of On My Way to Where is more tempered by craft. Like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, the singer is concerned with intimate relations on such songs as "Yada Yada La Scala," "The Lady with the Braid," "Angels and Devils the Following Day," and "Lemon Haired Ladies," adopting the persona of a needy older woman contending with a young, heedless companion. But she also finds space for "Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign," a commentary on her adopted hometown, and "Stone for Bessie Smith," which reflects on the then recent death of Janis Joplin.

Track Listings

01. Mythical Kings and Iguanas

02. Yada Yada la Scala

03. Lady With the Braid

04. Her Mother's Daughter

05. Angels and Devils the Following Day

06. Mary C. Brown and the Hollywood Sign

07. Lemon Haired Ladies

08. Stone for Bessie Smith

09. Game

10. Going Home

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In the early 1970s (probably 1971) I first heard a song by Dory Previn entitled "Mr. Whisper" played by D.J. Allison Steele on WNEW fm in New York City. I called the station and Allison Steele, who was known as the "Nightbird" (she had a late night show) answered. No, it was not a producer or engineer, but Allison herself who picked up the phone. Anyway, I asked her who that was I had just heard and she said "Dory Previn." I immediately went out and bought two of her albums. I was, and still am, mesmorized by the Mythical Kings album. Incidentally "Mr. Whisper," a great song, is not on this album and as much as I like that song, I nontheless believe that this album is her best.

Dory's lyrics can be piercing. The song "Lady With the Braid" gives me chills when her gentle, almost cozy invitation to spend the night suddenly and stunningly implores "Do you care to stay til sunrise? It's completely your decision. It's just the night cuts through me like a knife, like a knife. Do you care to stay a while and save my life?" Let me tell you: those lyrics cut through ME like a knife!!! Similarly the tragic song of an old maid, "Her Mother's Daughter," becomes so intense, I almost can't listen at times (and I'm a happily married guy who, presumably, should not be able to relate to the song).

The title song is about keeping firmly grounded in reality and not seeking mystical escapes. Rather than seek mythical kings, we should look to the earth where iguanas live. The final song on the cd reprises the song "Mythical Kings" and then moves on to a repetitive refrain from "Lady With the Braid." The repetitive, chorus like lyrics, "going home is such a ride, going home is such a ride. Isn't going home a low and lonely ride," make for an almost sing along around the campfire ambience.

When I was in college, a good three decades ago, I turned my friends on to Dory and they too were fascinated by her lyrics. Dory had previously suffered a nervous breakdown and was twice hospitalized. Furthermore, she suffered the breakup of her marriage to Andre Previn who cheated on her in an affair with Mia Farrow (who became pregnant). Some of her dark, and ironic lyrics are quite likely reflective of her experiences. But, she also has uplifting songs too, e.g, "Yada Yada Scala." She never sold many albums, her best seller was perhaps 50,000 copies, but those of us in this group of 50,000 were true blue, hard core fans of this great musical and lyrical genius. Mythical Kings is truly a work that will never grow old.

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Review by Charles Donovan

A year on from her debut, Previn's cupboard was still bursting with demons. This time out, though, she put her childhood anxieties on hold and dealt with more immediate concerns -- the quest for spiritual fulfillment and the simple need to find a healthy, loving relationship -- in a series of mostly dark, experimental folk ballads. The record bore a more muted sound than its predecessor, but lyrically it was as incisive as ever. With beguiling candor, Previn neatly pinned down the inevitable inequalities of an affair with a younger man ("Whatever you give me/I'll take as it comes/Discarding self-pity/I'll manage with crumbs") on "Lemon Haired Ladies." "Angels and Devils the Following Day" remains a great modern-day fable about psychological abuse versus physical abuse -- wisely concluding that a few punches are nothing compared to chronic mental torture. Mythical Kings and Iguanas also contained "Lady with the Braid," the closest Previn came to an adult radio hit.

Biography by William Ruhlmann

Dory Previn was a successful lyricist for motion picture theme songs during the 1960s and early 1970s, earning three Academy Award nominations for best song; in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, she published books of memoirs and wrote and performed in musical theater works. But she remains best known for the six albums of original songs and one live album she released in a confessional, singer-songwriter style between 1970 and 1976.

Previn was born on October 22. Different sources list the year of her birth as early as 1925, though 1929 seems most probable. She was deeply influenced by her father, who was mentally disturbed due to his experience in World War I, and she had a difficult childhood. She began to perform in her teens and after high school attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for a year. Thereafter, she was worked as an actress and a dancer, until she began writing song lyrics, which landed her a job at MGM where she wrote under the name Dory Langdon. She was assigned to collaborate with composer André Previn, with whom she became romantically involved. In May 1957, she recorded an album of her songs, The Leprechauns Are Upon Me, with Previn and Kenny Burrell accompanying her, for Verve Records. She and Previn married on November 7, 1959.

In 1960, continuing to use the name Dory Langdon, she began to get frequent assignments to write lyrics for songs used in motion pictures, usually in collaboration with her husband. That year, the Previn-Langdon song "The Faraway Part Of Town," sung in the film Pepe by Judy Garland, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. The Previns' "A Second Chance" from the 1962 film Two For The Seesaw earned them another nomination. They also wrote independent songs, and during the early 1960s they had cuts on albums by Doris Day, Eileen Farrell, and Jack Jones, while their film songs were recorded by such performers as Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Eddie Fisher. In 1964, Dory Previn collaborated with Harold Arlen on "So Long, Big Time!," which was recorded by Tony Bennett for his album The Many Moods Of Tony. In 1965, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized briefly. Nevertheless, she continued to write with her husband, and began to use the name Dory Previn professionally for the first time. Frank Sinatra recorded their song "You're Gonna Hear From Me," from the 1965 film Inside Daisy Clover, on his 1966 That's Life album. The Previns' last creative work together was some of their most popular: In 1967, they wrote five songs for Valley Of The Dolls. The Valley Of The Dolls soundtrack album spent six months in the charts, and Dionne Warwick scored a Top Ten hit with her recording of the theme song, while her own Valley Of The Dolls LP went gold.

In the late 1960s, André Previn made a transition from composing music for films to conducting orchestras worldwide, while living abroad. He took up with 24-year-old actress Mia Farrow, and when it became known that she was pregnant by him, he and Dory Previn separated in the spring of 1969. Their divorce became final in July 1970, and he married Farrow. Dory Previn expressed her outrage in the song "Beware Of Young Girls."

Buffeted by the dissolution of her marriage, Previn, after being institutionalized again, returned to writing for films in an increasingly introspective style typified by both "(Theme From) Valley Of The Dolls" and her next major film song, "Come Saturday Morning" (music by Fred Karlin) from The Sterile Cuckoo (1969). The Sandpipers, who sang the song in the film, recorded it for a Top 40 hit, and it earned Previn her third Oscar nomination.

She signed with the new Mediarts company founded by former Capitol Records executive Alan Livingston and producer Nik Venet. The result was Mediarts Records' first release and her first album in 13 years, On My Way To Where (July 1970), which sold 25,000 copies. The album's lyrics were published in book form in 1971. Previn sold more than 50,000 copies of her second album, Mythical Kings And Iguanas, released in 1971. Mediarts was then sold to United Artists Records, which reissued her first two albums and released her third, Reflections In A Mud Puddle/Taps Tremors And Time Steps, later in 1971. In 1972 came Mary C. Brown And The Hollywood Sign, a thematic album about Hollywood misfits whose songs were intended for a musical revue that ran briefly in Los Angeles in November 1972. Meanwhile, Previn's screenplay, Third Girl From The Left, was filmed and broadcast as a TV movie on ABC on March 10, 1973; she also wrote the title song and sang it in the film.

Previn, who refused to fly, rarely performed live, which tended to limit her commercial success (though four of her albums just missed charting among the top 200 bestsellers). But she did do a few shows, and on April 18, 1973, she performed a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York that was recorded and released later that year as a double LP, Live At Carnegie Hall. She then switched to Warner Bros. Records and released Dory Previn in 1974, followed by We're Children Of Coincidence And Harpo Marx in 1976. That year, she published her first autobiography, Midnight Baby. It was followed by a second volume, Bog-Trotter, in 1980. Also in 1980, she performed in a musical revue of her songs, Children Of Coincidence, in Dublin. The show was filmed and broadcast on Irish television under the title Hunky Dory.

Previn was not much heard from after the start of the 1980s, though she performed in London as late as 1986 and wrote a stage work, The Flight Of The Gooney Bird. In the late 1990s, her publishing came under the aegis of Williamson Music, the publishing arm of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, which published The Dory Previn Songbook, featuring illustrations by her husband, Joby Baker. Meanwhile, BGO Records in England licensed and reissued her United Artists albums on CD.

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