Dory Previn

Best. Lyricist. Ever.

Tony Lazarus

May 13, 2026

lover lover be my cover till the night begins to fade

oh the demons i have danced with lover lover I’m afraid

to fall asleep the night is dark and deep and i am so afraid to sleep

to fall asleep and dream

After a successful career working as a lyricist for the MGM film studio, Dory Previn began her seventies renaissance by writing songs as therapy while recovering from a serious mental episode.

I don’t know who said “talent does what it can; genius does what it must” but I don’t suppose they meant it to have the addendum “… because it won’t be allowed out of hospital otherwise”.

As she cheerfully said herself, Dory quite literally turned her madness into art. The resulting lyrics to her six 1970s studio albums were deeper, more harrowing and more personal than anything she had written previously, and it’s on these records that her reputation rests.

There is a time in the life of all music obsessives, usually some time in your teenage years, when you realise there are worlds and worlds of music out there you have never heard.

We had it tough in the mid-seventies. A kid on pocket money could just about afford to buy maybe four or five LPs a year, plus birthday and Christmas presents. This was no good at all.

My saviour was West Norwood Public Library. For a small fee I borrowed a range of records by artists that sounded interesting and who I’d generally read about in the New Musical Express - John Cale, Hawkwind and Captain Beefheart, all of whom I loved. And also Chicago, The Groundhogs and the Incredible String Band, all of whom I did not love quite so much, shall we say, but a 50/50 hit rate wasn’t too bad.

And then one day I came face-to-face with this intriguing LP sleeve, with the complete lyrics right in yer face.

I’d never heard of her and there was no clue as to what the record would sound like. White woman on the cover, so folk-rock maybe? Hang on, she’s got an Afro. A soul singer, maybe? Not a clue.

I mean, there was an Andre Previn who had been on the Morecambe And Wise Show the other Christmas, but surely this hippie chick with the Dulux dog couldn’t have anything to do with HIM, could she?

(it was much later before I found out they actually knew each other quite well, having written many songs together and subsequently been married for a decade).

And she’d never been in the NME, which to be honest was almost a deal-breaker to this brainwashed teenager. If it wasn’t f the lyrics, I could easily have passed her over in favour of Grand Funk Railroad.

Ah, but the lyrics.

There were songs about horrible relationships at Christmastime (ten years before Fairytale Of New York); people going through terrible mental issues; speculations on what Jesus’ baby sister would have thought of her life in the Saviour’s shadow; and wanting to fuck Marlon Brando.

of course i always told myself you know how women get

i bet i could have handled him if only we had met.

And the darkest of dark humour.

I didn’t quite get some of the lyrical references, on account of being thirteen, but I was already vaguely familiar with Bob Dylan by that time, so that wasn’t a problem. The difference being, I actually understand Dory’s songs now I’m an adult. Not to throw shade at either artist, you understand.

So began a fan affair which has lasted fifty years and counting, but I’ve always cherished this album above all her other music, the first and best Dory I ever heard.

Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Carly Simon form the accepted The Holy Trinity of early 70s women singer-songwriters, all rightly regarded as legends of music.

Dory Previn deserves to stand alongside them. For instance, looking at the 1971 output of all these artists, when you could argue that the Mother, Daughter and Holy Spirit were at their peak, I’d place Mythical Kings And Iguanas at LEAST on the same level as the more famous, bigger-selling Tapestry, Carly Simon and Blue.1

Musically, Dory leans a little to folk rock, but much more to the show tunes she wrote for MGM with Andre. during the fifties and sixties. They met when MGM studios assigned her to write lyrics for his tunes.

And if the tunes often come close to pastiche then who cares? People don’t exactly listen to Bob Dylan for his gift for melody, do they?

Ah, but the lyrics.

Every syllable absolutely crystal clear in the classic tradition, and every word (mostly) unambiguously personal, and indeed mostly autobigraphical, dealing with specific events from Dory’s life.

If you don’t known Dory’s work, there may be something here for you if you like singer-songwriters who write passionately from deep personal experience - not just her better-known 70s peers but also Pulp (Jarvis Cocker is a big Dory fan), Charlie xcx and Taylor Swift, to name a few. Honesty in songwriting counts for a lot.

And of course, if its confessional songs you’re after then who better to listen to than a woman raised Catholic?

it’s the safest way i promise you it’s the only way to fly

my daddy said as he pointed up at the great grey thing in the sky

Dory never flew after witnessing the Hindenburg Air Crash in 1937 as a twelve-year-old, shortly after her Daddy assured her the great airship would be absolutely fine.

Her father had been gassed in WWI, and was convinced that he was sterile as a result. He refused to believe that Dory was his child, and told her so when she was two or three years old. In I Ain’t His Child, Dory ponders who her biological Dad could be.

my hair is curly my freckles are tan - could my daddy be the garbage man

my legs are stumpy my fingers are short like my uncle will who’s the bowling sport

my eyes are slanty like mister woo hey mister laundryman is it you

i’m ugly as steve with the big mustache but mum says poles are a piece of trash

Her marriage to Andre Previn was broken by his relationship with her friend Mia Farrow, who was Frank Sinatra’s wife when the two couples first met.

beware of young girls who come to the door, wistful and pale, twenty and four

delivering daisies with delicate hands

Many of her albums have a loose structure akin to a musical, with a reprise at the end with little bits and pieces of some of the other tunes on the LP coming in.

At the end of her first Seventies album On My Way To Where, the backing music stops and we’re left with a genuinely disorientating moment as four disembodied voices, all played by Dory, talking / chanting the lyrics to several of the album’s songs, 3/4 different songs over each other. Mythical Kings And Iguanas features a closing number which reprises a couple of the album’s songs, including the title track.

1972’s Mary C Brown And The Hollywood Sign took this a step further, being conceived as a full musical show, featuring a song about Marilyn Monroe and one about King Kong with characters that would be called David Lynchian nowadays like The Holy Man On Malibu Bus Number Three and Cully Surroga He’s Almost Blind, and the subject of The Midget’s Lament. The title track and main inspiration came from the tragic suicide of an aspiring actress.

Dory’s unemotional account of this is one of her finest lyrical moments. It’s quite funny in a very dark way until you realise it’s a true story.

mary cecilia brown rode to town on the malibu bus

she climbed to the top of the hollywood sign and with the minimal possible fuss

she jumped off the letter h ‘cause she did not become a star

she died in less than a minute and a half she looked a bit like hedy lamarr…

… when mary cecilia jumped she finally made the grade

her name was in the obituary columns of both of the daily trades

My favourite lyric of hers is Woman Soul from her 1976 album We Are Children Of Coincidence And Harpo Marx which is about her husband Joby Barker, who she was married to for eighteen years until her death and who seemed to “get” her. This lyric describes Joby as a remarkable man, certainly by the standards of the 1970s.

i love him ‘cause he questions all the roles he’s forced to play

grown men don’t cry he sees the lie and cannot change his way

he does the best he can that’s why i love that man

but i also love the woman in his soul

There is an excellent documentary film Dory Previn: On My Way To Where (2024) which you can watch for free here on PBS (available in the US for now unless you use a VPN, although that may be changing soon.

Check out the following substack for the latest details.

The film is astonishing, taking you through Dory’s career, from work as a chorus line dancer through the Hollywood years to her seventies albums. It does not flinch from her difficult childhood experiences and her later traumas and mental issues, all of which Dory is seen discussing calmly and incisively, and with a sense of humour.

I bet I could have gotten on with her, if only we had met.

Links and Notes

Dory Previn: On My Way To Where movie (2024) dir. Dianna Dilworth & Julia Greenberg

Dory left us two volumes of autobiography, Midnight Baby (covering her childhood years) and Bogtrotter (an excellent skip through her career which also includes the lyrics to just about every song she ever wrote. They’re out of print but try ebay and online libraries.

The music speaks for itself, and it’s mostly available on Spotify, from her 1958 debut album now available as “My Heart Is A Hunter” (under her maiden name of Dory Langdon) , through the six studios and obligatory double live album of the 70s to her brilliant, final released work.

Planet Blue (2002) is an angry, 28-minute collage of songs and snippets of songs on as Dory raises her head above the parapet to address the topic of environmental degradation. Think Side Two of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album, but with a coherent, angry agenda. Still unfortunately relevant today - you can find it here.

Not wishing to be arsed with the machinations of the record industry, she made it available as a free download. I have no idea who, if anybody, has the rights to it but it deserves some sort of official release, if only to draw attention to it - even committed Dory-heads aren’t necessarily aware of it.

It’s a shame because its a brilliant epitaph for a unique artist.

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