![]() Foley sang a duet with Meat Loaf on the biggest single, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.”įoley followed up that success by landing a role in a Broadway revival of Hair. Steinman then wrote the songs for Meat Loaf ’s 1977 album Bat Out of Hell, which went on to become one of the best-selling rock albums of all time. In that show, her castmates included Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman. “That’s where I got my equity card, it was my first union gig, and it really paid off in spades,” she says. In the mid-‘70s, Foley’s big break came when she was cast in That National Lampoon Show, a comedic musical theater production. ![]() Simultaneously, she performed in a band with her boyfriend, playing gigs around the region. I knew something was going to happen, and it did.”įoley certainly put in the work necessary to make things happen: she threw herself into the New York scene, studying with Uta Hagen (an actress famed for originating the role of Martha in Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf ). “It was one of those things, what else am I going to do? This is what I’m good at, and I really had confidence,” she says. In fact, Foley says there was never anything that caused her to doubt her decision to come to New York to follow her dream of becoming a performer. Even in the dirty ‘70s, I thought it was beautiful.” “I thought it was the greatest place in the world. They lived in a spartan place in the city’s Upper East Side neighborhood: “It was a railroad apartment and the bathtub was in the living room,” Foley says.Įven though New York was notorious for high crime and urban blight at that time, Foley still felt immediately at home. Louis, Missouri to New York in 1972 (the day after she turned 21 years old) with her boyfriend. This album is the latest installment in a storied career that began when Foley moved from her native St. It was a very cool, relaxed way to do it.” “You have your ProTools on your laptop, but then he brings in a really good mic so you might as well be in a studio.” Doing things this way, she says, made her feel “So comfortable, and I think that’s really reflected in the album. “We did the vocals in this room,” she says of the living room in which she’s sitting. Once that was done, Foglino came to Foley’s apartment to help her record her parts. Antonakos (guitar), and Ula Hedwig (backing vocals). Roth (bass, keyboards, drums), Steve Goulding (drums), Stephen B. įoglino brought other accomplished musicians on board to record Fighting Words, including C.P. When that show ended, Foglino suggested they work together on more music, resulting in her last studio album, 2013’s About Time. It was at La MaMa, the experimental theater down on the Lower East Side, which is the premier Off Off Broadway since the ‘60s,” Foley says. So he feels like he’s overrun with hormones!” Ellen Foley’s Fighting Words will be available on August 6th via BandCamp and other fine digital and physical retail outlets (Image: Prime Mover Media)įoley and Foglino first met in 2005, when “He wrote the music for a show I was in called Hercules in High Suburbia. As for how he manages to capture the female perspective so well, Foley says, “He lives with three women, his wife and his daughters. “There’s a lot of humor – he’s very funny and very witty,” she says of Foglino. “This was all done pre-pandemic, but it was done during the reign of Voldemort,” she says, referring to ex-President Trump, “so it all has that theme of survival and friendship and putting a hand out.”Įven so, there’s a certain lightheartedness to much of this material, which Foley credits to Paul Foglino (formerly of the band 5 Five Chinese Brothers), who wrote these songs for her. Themes of empowerment and empathy run through these tracks, which Foley said had been done in deliberate protest. There was, she says, never any question that she would continue to push herself creatively, choosing songs that showcase her emotive vocals: “This is what I do best, and so there’s no choice,” she says. AUDIO: Ellen Foley “This Won’t Last Forever”Īs its title suggests, Fighting Words is full of powerful tracks that prove Foley is far from mellowing, even as she enters her fifth decade in the entertainment business.
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