Lotti Golden

Lotti Golden (born November 27, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, poet and artist.

Music critic Path, of Tiny Mix Tapes, explains how Motor-Cycle plays like a musical, transporting the listener to the late 1960s underground: "Golden gets help on Motor-Cycle from an impeccably arranged Atlantic Records session band… with a flawless, swinging rhythm team. Then, at key moments, the curtain goes up and they've got rows of saxes, trumpets, vibes…and you begin to realize that this is not the same song and dance… it's as if The Velvet Underground recorded for Motown."

Golden writes of a "season in hell " she somehow manages to survive.

"It's an extraordinary evocation of a life-style… and one girl's plunge into and out of it."

Golden signed a publishing deal as a staff writer with Saturday Music during her senior year of high school.

One afternoon as Golden was riding the elevator to her demo session, the company's owner, Bob Crewe stepped in while Golden was singing.

When Crewe nodded his approval, Golden seized the opportunity, and in one breath told Crewe she was a staff writer at his publishing company and working on material for her own artist album.

Voted Most Likely to Succeed, Golden graduated with honors in 1967, winning the Creative Writing medal, the Lincoln Center Student Award for Academic Excellence, the Scholastic Magazine Award for National Achievement in Art, and a New York State Regents Scholarship.

Golden was awarded the National League of Pen Women Prize for poetry and went on to attend Brooklyn College.

A birthday gift (a guitar) from Golden's parents at age eleven would chart her future course.

Golden studied classical guitar and voice, but needing more of a creative outlet, soon found her niche as a singer-songwriter, using her abilities as both wordsmith and vocalist.

To sing her compositions on demos Golden spent hours using a reel to reel tape recorder to perfect her vocal craft: "When women talk of their idols and influences…they tell stories about singing along with records, trying to emulate someone's voice…until they can begin to develop their own style."

Golden explains: "I would practice singing to Aretha, Ray Charles, and the Marvelettes, till I could sing all of their licks and runs… the girls' bathroom in high school was a great place to try it out."

By the age of fourteen Golden was making forays into Manhattan, singing on demo sessions and peddling her songs to publishers, landing her first cover by Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles.

By the time Golden completed high school, she had the beginnings of a musical autobiography about her adventures in New York's East Village and Lower East Side where she was a resident member of the Henry Street Settlement Playhouse, honing her skills as an actress and playwright.

This would become the basis of her Atlantic Records debut LP, Motor-Cycle.

Intrigued, Crewe set up a meeting: "When Lotti brought her material to Crewe in the fall of 1967, he exclaimed, 'Good God, who are your friends?'" referring to the outrageous characters populating Golden's songs.

Crewe was sold on doing the project, but asked Golden if she could wait one year while he cleared his schedule, and in 1968 the pair began recording Golden's autobiographical opus, Motor-Cycle, "a synthesis of funky singing and honest hip lyrics about urban teenage trauma."

Atlantic Records moguls, Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegün bought the [demo] tapes after one hearing, with Wexler "modestly telling his staff Golden would be the greatest single pop artist since Aretha Franklin."

Golden is best known for her 1969 debut album Motor-Cycle, on Atlantic Records.

Winner of the ASCAP Pop Award for songwriting and RIAA certified Gold and Platinum awards as a writer/producer, Golden has written and produced Top 5 hits in the US and abroad.

Credited for her innovative work in early electro and Hip hop music, Golden is featured in the Rap Attack 3: African Rap To Global Hip Hop by David Toop, and Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: True Life Stories of Women of Pop for her pioneering work as a female record producer.

Golden's songs have been recorded by Grammy Award winning artists: Diana Ross, Celine Dion, Al Green, Patti LaBelle, BB King, Patti Austin, Sheena Easton and more.

Lotti Golden was born in Manhattan to Sy (Seymour) Golden and Anita Golden (née Cohn), the elder of two daughters.

Golden's parents, a strikingly handsome and fashionable pair, were avid jazz aficionados and foreign film buffs.

Golden soaked up the sounds of Billie Holiday and John Coltrane from an early age developing a lifelong passion for music and the arts.

Golden grew up in Brooklyn, New York where she attended Canarsie High School, serving as the school's Poet Laureate.

Released on Atlantic Records in 1969, Motor-Cycle is a chronicle of Golden's life informed by New York City's counterculture.

"It was a strange, way out scene for pretty, 19-year-old Golden," who wrote her memoir in music and lyrics because, according to Golden, "a book is too flat."

The songs on Motor-Cycle deal with subjects like gender identity ("The Space Queens (Silky is Sad)"), drug use ("Gonna Fay's"), and urban alienation ("Who Are Your Friends").

So essential was Golden's poetry and lyrics to the project, that a lyric sheet insert was included with the original release.

The back cover of the LP contains the poem, "Night was a Better Blanket," alluding to the LP's backstory.

Golden was part of a new wave of female singers who began to shake up the status quo in the late Sixties.

Breaking from the confines of pop they defined themselves by their confessional lyrics, taking on new controversial subject matter.

In July 1969, Newsweek ran a feature story, "The Girls: Letting Go": "There has surfaced a new school of talented female troubadours, who not only sing, but write their own songs. What is common to them – to Joni Mitchell and Lotti Golden, to Laura Nyro, Melanie, and to Elyse Weinberg, are the personalized songs they write, like voyages of self-discovery, brimming with keen observation, and startling in the impact of their poetry"

Listed among the most influential albums of the era in The New York Times, "The Best of Rock: A Personal Discography," by music critic Nat Hentoff, Motor-Cycle is a synthesis of stream of consciousness confessional poetry, R&B infused vocals and a "sometimes satiric mélange of rock, jazz, blues and soul" with lyrics that evoke "a Kerouac novel."

On an album of "restlessly epic roadhouse suites" Golden uses the story-based format, featuring a cast of archetypal characters while playing the part of "emcee" of her own "aberrant cabaret."

Golden's coming of age saga is likely the first rock concept album by a female recording artist.

The release of Motor-Cycle in 1969 generated considerable media interest in Golden.

Look magazine described Golden's songs and poetry as "rich in metaphor and starkly descriptive of people and places," stating: "Even in her musically precocious generation, she [Golden] stands out as a singer composer of phenomenal power and originality."