Laurie Anderson

Avant-garde performance artist Laurie Anderson had a British pop hit with her 1981 recording "O Superman" (b/w "Walk the Dog"). Like all her music, "O Superman" was just one aspect of a larger multimedia oeuvre - in this case a seven-hour work in four parts called United States, I-IV, which premiered at the Brooklyn Academy of Music early in 1983. (A lavishly illustrated book about the show was published shortly thereafter, as well as the five-record United States Live.) With background music performed on various electronic keyboard instruments and woodwinds, and Anderson's speaking and singing voice (sometimes electronically treated), "O Superman" was one of the year's more unusual hits.

Anderson studied violin through her teens, and moved from Chicago to New York in 1967. She earned a B.A. in art history from Barnard College in 1969 and an M.F.A. in sculpture from Columbia University in 1972. She then taught art history and Egyptian architecture at City College. Anderson’s works incorporate graphics, sculpture, film, slides, lighting, music, mime, and spoken and printed language. She claims that all her pieces are based on words and their declamation. In 1973 she began performing her works publicly, and by 1976 she was performing in museums, concert halls, and art festivals around the United States and in Europe. “O Superman” sold over 30,000 copies in Europe in 1981, reaching #2 in Britain, and Anderson signed for an album with Warner Bros. The American response to the single was considerably milder.

In 1982 Warner Bros. released her debut album, Big Science. Its followup, a collaboration with Peter Gabriel entitled Mister Heartbreak, was Anderson’s only LP to chart in the Top 100, peaking at #60 in 1984. She composed the musical score for director Jonathan Demme’s 1987 film of monologuist Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia and, later, Gray’s Monster in a Box (1991). On Strange Angels she abandoned her electronically treated vocals for her regular singing voice. Bright Red was inspired by her brush with death while mountain climbing in Tibet in the early ’90s. The album, recorded with Brian Eno, also featured Lou Reed, with whom Anderson was romantically involved. The two-disc set Talk Normal: The Anthology was released in 2000. Also in 2000, she signed with Nonesuch.

Anderson consistently has toured with various pieces including “Talk Normal” (1987–88), “Speaking Japanese” (1989), “Empty Places” (1990), “Voices From the Beyond” (1991), “Stories From the Nerve Bible” (1993), which appears on The Ugly One With the Jewels, and “The Speed of Darkness” (1997–98). In addition, she has also collaborated with Interval Research Corporation, a research and development lab, on new creative tools, such as the Talking Stick. Among her books are The Package: A Mystery (1971), Transportation (1974), Notebook (1977), Words in Reverse (1979), Home of the Brave (1986), Empty Places (1991), Stories From the Nerve Bible (1994), and Laurie Anderson (2000), which offers the first major career retrospective of her visual work.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)