Judie Tzuke :
UK's 'Wonder' Woman.

England has recently seen something of a renaissance in woman singer songwriters of a reflective pop persuasion, most notably Julia Fordham,Tracy Thorn (of Everything But The Girl),NickyHolland,Beverly Craven,and Lauren Christy. Each pens pithy interior monologues about city-dwelling females in quest of a fiercely independent but romantically fulfilling existance.And each takes a slant that blends blunt stock-taking and sophisticated self-awareness with a certain London-at-dusk dolor;as such,their stuff usually works best when it's simply stated rather than somberly self-dramatizing. Each of these artists also shares,to an often-startling extent,a stylistic link to a newly re emergent British cult figure who long ago perfected the frank,meditative tone for which they all strive.

The lady looming in the shadows is Judie Tzuke,whose 1979 debut album for Elton John's Rocket label,"Stay With Me Till Dawn" issued in the UK as "Welcome To The Cruise" is still a much sought after collectors prize among afficiados of superior pop pensiveness.
Her tenth UK release"Wonderland"recently issued by Essential records,is highlighted by the piquant,disturbing"Man And A Gun,"one of the years best pop ballads.

"Man And A Gun" is about my best friend and also another very good friend of mine" says Tzuke."They're both really bright,clever girls,but they always choose men that are just diabolical to them.Especially my best friend;she constantly ends up being beaten up,and then goes back for more.I wrote the song one day because I was so frustrated:No matter how much I try to talk her out of it,I can't." Pretty and pungent,the unnerving,piano-centered vesper graphically delineates this predicament:"He'll beat you when your up /He'll knock you to the ground/Well he'll hit you anyway just to keep your spirit down/I'm just so afraid of the way that this will run/And that your name might be written/On the bullet in his gun." "The main criticism I get in England is that I'm a bit intense,"Tzuke allows with a soft laugh."Wonderland "was such an emotional album,and while it 's gotten good reviews,so many people are so frightened of admitting they like any theme that's a bit distasteful."

Tzuke notes that another track,"She Loves His Hands,"employs childhood impressions of tenderness to convey the betrayal suffered when an adult abuses a young girls innocent trust." I had to write it,"she says,"because of something that happened to me when I was a child.While it did not involve my father ,who died when I was fifteen,I used the powerful image of a father's hands because they're one of the main things I remember about him,and they seemed to work well with the subject I was writing about ."

Although unrivaled for sheer saturnine effect, Tzuke's handsome-sounding tribulations are always leavened by a disarming directness, as illustrated on "Swimming," an ode to the stresses of self-preservation, To quote a rave London Times review of a legendary live concert that the seldom-touring singer gave at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1985, Tzuke is gifted at "combining a glacial poise with her innate sensuality.She also possesses a winning sense of humor about her own work, freely confessing that a few detractors in the flavor-of-the month British music press find her "rather naff or wet." And while her loyal fans praise her blond, zaftig beauty, she insists--in reference to a "Wonderland" track called "Vivien"--that she "always wanted to look like Vivien Leigh:little, black-haired, and waif-like!"

As for the striking impact she's had on a new generation of British songbirds, she shyly says she "hears that a lot," but confides that the only current English female artist for whom she feels a real affinity is Fordham. "I've met Julia Fordham, and I quite like her music, and I've been told she likes mine, too. Of all those women usually mentioned with regard to me, I prefer her records because they have an honesty and an intelligent tension that separates them from the rest.

"People in the States are far more receptive to my introspective sort of writing than they are in England, where you're rarely allowed to have a mature career beyond the first splash in the pop charts and fan magazines. It's difficult to break out of the "pretty girl at the piano mold that serious women songwriters here can get stuck with once they've tasted commercial success. When the single of "Stay With Me Till Dawn" became a hit in England in the summer of 1979, people wanted me to be just that--a nice face at the keyboards-but my music has always grappled with a lot of touchy issues and topics that make many people uncomfortable."

"In the States, my two albums on Rocket (the second being "Sports Car,"1980)are said to be obscure favorites," she summarizes drolly, "but I'm still the best-kept secret in England."that situation seems ripe for abrupt reversion, since she has recently been signed by Shakespeares' Sister manager John Campbell, and John Reid, Elton John's veteran representative, has also pledged his support. Despite this upturn in her fortunes, though, Tzuke hasn't forgotten the sudden career decompression she underwent in 1980 when Elton jumped from MCA (which distributed Rocket) to Geffen Records. "MCA was angry," she recalls, "and the Rocket artists found themselves in an awkward state, with the MCA reps told not to do anything more for us. I opened for Elton in 1980 at a free concert for 450,000 in Central Park and went over really well but there wasn't a single copy of my albums in the shops"

There were no hard feelings, however, between Elton and Tzuke, who co-wrote material for John's "21 At 33" MCA finale And, with her classic Rocket titles available on CD via PolyGram U.K., everything old is virtually new again. Since Tzuke controls the bulk of her back catalog, including the exceptional "Turning Stones" (Polydor, 1989) and "Left Hand Talking"(Columbia, 1991),a retrospective set is being considered for worldwide release. But Tzuke's blue devils are not so easily dispelled. Maybe it's the split sensibilities of her upbringing, her late father Sefton Myers having been a resolutely practical, Piccadilly-based real estate agent, while her more lighthearted mother, Jean Myers Dishroon is a retired television actress who appeared occasionally on such fond BBC fare as the "Rise And Fall Of Reginald Perring" comedy series.

In explaining herself, Tzuke also describes the essential message underlying "Wonderland": "All my life I've been an adviser and counselor for my friends, trying to sort out their personal pain because I always had the attitude that everything will come out right in the end. Now, I'm at a stage in my life where I don't feel I can either believe or offer that advice anymore. I've come to realize that there are absolutely no guarantees for anything. But somehow that knowledge feels better than all the old assurances."

© 1992 Billboard.
From"Music to my ears" by Timothy White,Billboard magazine,1992. Reproduced with permission of the publisher.