The great photos of Olivier Durand and Laurent Pardo are by Dany Wilmet whose credit was mistakenly left off the CD.
GB Music in the USA is proud to announce the release of three ELLIOTT MURPHY CDs:- Elliott Murphy - The most recent studio album.
- Just A Story From New York - A brand new full band live album recorded in New York last December.
- Apres Le Deluge - A remastered reissue of the rare and out of print classic.
All three cds are in digipacks.There is also A Deluxe Signed Limited Edition of the new live Just A Story From New York. This 2 CD version has 4 bonus tracks and is limited to 100 copies. Each copy is hand signed by Elliott and comes with a print of the setlist from the show, hand signed and numbered as well. To order please go to the GB Records site.
Just like Mark Twain – Every Elliott Murphy concert is unique but this sold-out event, which was held on the vintage Swedish steamboat Blidösund on July 20, 2011, was very special indeed. The packed boat circled the incredible archipelago of Stockholm while Elliott played two personalized solo sets to the accompaniment of an awe-inspiring sunset. Everyone who returned to port said their life was indelibly changed for the better. We are trying to make it an annual event!
New Video! Watch the new video for Elliott's new single "Counterclockwise" by French director Ronan ... Time will fly by! [watch now]
New iTunes Exclusive Album! Elliott Murphy & The Normandy All Stars featuring Olivier Durand recently spent a day in an Amsterdam studio for the legendary 2 Meter Radio show. They recorded 7 songs including David Bowie's "Heroes" as well as selections from the recently released Elliott Murphy album and a slow, soulful version of Elliott's classic "Green River" and you can get it now on iTunes: 
New Album! Elliott Murphy's new 2011 album, although musically rich and lyrically intense, has a very simple title - Elliott Murphy - and begins a new cycle in the Murphy career and legend as it was produced by none other then Elliott's 20 year-old son Gaspard Murphy. Once again featuring virtuoso guitarist Olivier Durand and The Normandy All Stars, the album was recorded in Le Havre, New York City, and Paris with guests Kenny Margolis on keyboards (Willy DeVille) and backing vocals by Laura Mayne (Native), Alain Chenneviere (Pow Wow) and Lisa Lowell (Bruce Springsteen). 11 Unforgettable songs like "Poise 'n Grace" and "Rock 'n Roll 'n Rock 'n Roll." A classic in the works!
Order the CD now from the website store!
It's also available at iTunes:
Fall Shows: Elliott Murphy and the Normandy All Stars featuring Olivier Durand will be playing shows all over Europe in anticipation of the January 2011 release of Elliott's new album simply titled Elliott Murphy and produced by Gaspard Murphy. Hear many of the new songs performed live! Check the tour section for details.
Elliott Immortalized: Hard rocking Bob Dye & The Usual Suspects have written and recorded a moving homage to Elliott with their incredible song "The Last Rock Star." Check out news section for song lyrics and links to the MP3.
Summer Shows: Elliott Murphy and the Normandy All Stars featuring Olivier Durand are about to start hitting summer festivals all over Europe - France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Sweden. Check the Tour section for details.
The 2010 Annual Birthday Show: For Elliott's European fans (or those visiting Paris from the US) be sure not to miss his annual and legendary show at New Morning in Paris on Saturday March 27, 2010. (click on the image for a bigger version)
The Unfished Complete Lyrics Of Elliott Murphy Lenoir Ediciones announces the publication of The Unfinished Complete Lyrics of Elliott Murphy featuring the lyrics of 231 songs album by album. With a beautiful cover photo by Jack Mitchell from the Aquashow sessions and full of photos from all periods of Elliott's career inside. All the words from Aquashow to Notes From the Underground! Now available in the store on this site.
EM COME HOME...Elliott Murphy and the Normandy All Stars featuring Olivier Durand will play seven shows in the Northeast USA early December. Be there! Click on image for full schedule.
Cafe Heartbeat Concert On A USB Stick: Radio T in Chemitz, Germany recently recorded an Elliott Murphy And The Normandy All Stars Featuring Olivier Durand show at the great Cafe Heartbeat in Zwonitz and to satisfy the fans who wanted to take that great night home with them Radio T immediately burned engraved USB sticks to purchase after the show. The set list is:
1. The Valley Below
2. O Wyoming
3. A Touch of Mercy
4. Green River
5. Sonny
6. Pneumonia Alley
7. The Day after Valentine's Day
8. Razzmatazz
9. Canaries In The Mind
10. You Never Know What You're In For
11. The Last of the Rock Stars
12. On Elvis Presley's Birthday
Here's the link to purchase the USB. They still have a limited supply left so act fast.
We're so East Coast! Elliott Murphy will be returning to the East Coast of the U.S.A. for five shows in mid April 2009 on his Memory and Desire tour. Elliott will be performing with his incredible French backing band The Normandy All Stars featuring his amazing guitarist Olivier Durand. Once again, opening the show will be singer-songwriter Jann Klose and expect some surprises during Elliott's encores. Dates are confirmed in Fairfield CT, Fall River MA, Asbury Park NJ, Hoboken NY and Amagansett NY - check Tour section for details. These will be Elliott's first USA shows with a band in over a decade. For booking/gig information Anne Leighton and stay tuned for more information. "We're so East Coast - So here's a toast - Here's to everything that I wanted the most." ("Change Will Come")
Crawdaddy! Feature Article: One of the true original and long standing American rock 'n roll mags, Crawdaddy!, has posted a long interview and feature article on Elliott on their site written by legendary rock writer and long time Murphy admirer Mick Skidmore. Check it out.
I wish they all could be California Girls! Elliott Murphy will be playing his first West Coast shows in the U.S.A. in twelve years in January 2009 on his Hollywood Tour! Opening the show will be up and coming singer songwriter Jann Klose and Elliott will be appearing as a duo with his amazing guitarist Olivier Durand. Dates are confirmed in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Tehachapi, San Diego, Long Beach and at the NAMM show in Anaheim - check Tour section for details. Plans for an April 2009 Mid West tour with band are in the works. For booking/gig information Anne Leighton and stay tuned for more information. Hollywood - you shaped my life with a technicolor carving knife ...
Hometown boy makes good! The Marie of the 6th Arrondisement in Paris, along with the University Paris Diderot, will host a two week long exposition honoring the 35 year career in music and literature of Elliott Murphy from September 10 - 26, 2008 entitled Elliott Murphy - Last of the Rock Stars - Retrospective that will culminate with a live concert on 26 September. It will be located in the beautiful Mairie (town hall) of the 6th Arrondisement in Paris right near the famous cafés of St. Germain. If you're planning a trip to Paris and you're an Elliott Murphy fan it's a great time to visit the city of light which Elliott has called home for the past 18 years. Right click on the image to download a full size, press quality PDF poster. (It's a big file.)
Elliott, Gaspard and Bruce: On June 27, 2008 Elliott Murphy and his talented guitarist son Gaspard Murphy joined Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band for "Born To Run" in front of 50,000 ecstatic fans at Parc de Princes in Paris, France. When Bruce invited Elliott to join him on stage shortly before the show and suggested "Born to Run" Elliott thought he might be unsure of the chords but Gaspard piped in that he could teach Dad as he knew the song by heart. And Bruce, in an incredible gesture of generosity, said "Well, if you know the song Gaspard then you can come up and play it too!" An unforgettable night for a father and son reunion and a memory that will last forever. See a larger version of the photo.
US radio airplay! "What's That" - an exciting up-tempo track from Elliott's recent release Notes From The Underground in which he sings his way through the entire alphabet ("A is for amazed when you walk out of the show - B is for bedazzled its the witching hour") is receiving airplay on NEXT: A New Music Show on radio station The Peak 107.1 from White Plains, New York. If you listen to The Peak and would like to hear more Elliott Murphy music on that great rock station send them an email at studio@1071thepeak.com and let them know.
New album now available! Elliott Murphy's new album Notes From The Underground is now available in the store here at elliottmurphy.com. It's also available at iTunes:
New online store! We've launched a new store here at elliottmurphy.com. Most of the items are available at our special "nice" price. We'll be adding more items soon. Visit the new store HERE.
Remember though, this is just a small portion of the Elliott Murphy CDs and LPs available. You can find a much larger collection at the "Official" Elliott Murphy store located HERE. You'll also find T-Shirts and books there.
New MP3 of "Canaries In The Mind." A solo acoustic version of the song from Coming Home Again. LISTEN NOW
Elliott Murphy and Red Lounge Records announce the release of The Murphys - The 1973 Aquashow Demos - on a limited Vinyl edition:
The album features a stunning photo from the original Aquashow sessions taken at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and consists of the very high quality demos that Elliott Murphy, Matthew Murphy and friend George Gates recorded before the final Aquashow sessions. Click here for more information and to order.
Purchase Downloads
You can now purchase selected song downloads directly from this site. Currently you can purchase individual songs from Coming Home Again for $0.99 each. More songs will be added in the future.
New CD! Coming Home Again
From the opening drum fill of "Pneumonia Alley" it's clear that Elliott Murphy's 29th album Coming Home Again is something very special in the career of this legendary singer-songwriter. Coming Home Again is already being talked about as a return to the classic Murphy songwriting style that marked his early albums Aquashow and Just A Story From America. Recorded in Le Havre, France with a talented crew of musicians from Europe and America including virtuoso French guitarist Olivier Durand and New York keyboardist Kenny Margolis. In this impressive collection of 13 new songs Murphy tips his hat to cultural icons as diverse as Hemingway and Paris Hilton and exotic locales from India to Veracruz although the music and words belongs to that mythical place his fans now call Murphyland. They will even give you a passport if you ask!*
Coming Home Again features moving anthems ("Pneumonia Alley") and righteous rockers ("Marianne's Garage Sale") and of course the tender ballads Murphy is famous for "(Making Friends With The Dead" & "Home Again") as well as a eulogy to a fallen musical comrade ("Jesse"). The album includes a track so radio-friendly ("A Touch of Kindness") that perhaps we'll be hearing Elliott Murphy back on the radio all over the world once again as with his FM hits of the past "Drive All Night" and "Anastasia."
Murphy (who with guitarist Olivier Durand plays over 100 shows a year all over Europe) says that most of the songs were recently written on the road: "After my blues album Murphy Gets Muddy I wanted to get back to a rich and diverse sound and I was confident that my current band (drummer Alan Fatras [ex-Moon Martin] and bassist Laurent Pardo [ex-Kid Pharoen] and of course guitarist Olivier Durand could give me what I wanted to hear when we went into the studio. In fact, I could hear the finished songs in my head even before we began recording and all the musicians seemed to read my mind. We recorded in-between tours at Florent Barbier's [ex-Roadrunners] brand new studio in Le Havre. For many years now I've been an expatriate American musician living in Paris and on the road and to tell the truth I don't know where home is anymore. But I know that Coming Home Again is where I want to be."
Come home to the legendary sound of singer-songwriter Elliott Murphy with Coming Home Again and you'll never want to leave!
iTunes! Almost all of Elliott's albums are now available for purchase at iTunes, both in Europe and the US. 24 albums are currently available, including the "Vintage Series" releases (which are available at a special low price). You can purchase entire albums or individual songs. And the best part is all the proceeds go to Elliott, not some record label somewhere. Click this button to view Elliott's albums at iTunes.
New MP3 of "Open City." A radio performance of "Open City" By Elliott and Olivier Durand at Radio Paradiso on Suisse Radio recorded February 24, 2006. LISTEN NOW
Read Elliott's thoughts about Paul Nelson who died recently. Paul was important to Elliott in the early days of his career and without Paul's help Elliott would probably never have been noticed by the rock critics who were so influential at the time. Read Elliott's essay HERE.
Download Elliott's original handwritten lyrics for "Winners, Losers, Beggars, Choosers."
Franck Dumaine was kind enough to send us the original handwritten lyrics for this classic song. We've reproduced them as a PDF file which you can download HERE.
Aquashow featured in Uncut magazine. The April 2006 edition of the UK's Uncut magazine features a full page article on Aquashow under the heading "All-Time Classics." We've reproduced it as a PDF file which you can download HERE.
Join the new Elliott Murphy Mailing List. We'll keep you updated with news and information about Elliott, tour dates, CD releases and more. JOIN NOW
Download Elliott's original liner notes for the Velvet Underground's 1969 Live
Elliott recently came across his original liner notes for the Velvet Underground's 1969 Live album. We've reproduced them as a PDF file which you can download HERE.
Hotel de la Paix
Evening has come surprisingly fast as I sit here at the desk of my finely appointed very mauve hotel room. In front of me, just out the window there, the long lights of Geneva's opposite shoreline arc around the lake and almost every formidable building I can see is crowned with the logo of a Swiss watch manufacturer - Hublot, Patek Philippe, Rolex. There's the whooshing sound of traffic coming up three floors to my room from the lakeside drive below which, bizarrely enough, I find comforting. Through the other window I can glimpse the famous fountain of water that spurts up one hundred and forty meters out of the lake, the universally recognized symbol of the city, and tonight, for some reason, its bathed in blue lights. Now I know that today is Armistice Day in France, but that shouldn't affect Switzerland, which has been neutral forever. Maybe they're celebrating the blues just because I'm in town - I'm often mistaken for a bluesman, and I guess, in a way, I am, because a bluesman is by definition someone who sings songs about the reality of the conditions around them, no matter what your class strata may be.
Now it being the 11th of November 2011 means that tonight at eleven-eleven the time and date will be 11:11 11/11/11. I like things like that, makes me smile, makes me feel like I caught up with time for one fleeting moment; like I made sense of the utter haphazard arc of my own life. And today I did stop time and that brings me back to the Hotel de la Paix in Genève. Yes, I stayed here before, in another lifetime, and there's something else, truly mind-blowing, which I'll tell you later.
Now Geneva, Switzerland is a quiet city by anyone's standards, especially mine, after living in New York and Paris, and I feel like I'm here on vacation. But I'm not. I'm here on business, to do a presentation of my latest album Elliott Murphy in the local FNAC, a French multi-media store with branches all over Europe. But that event takes place tomorrow so tonight I'll just stay in, reminisce and watch the small ferrys that lazily cross the lake. The last time I stayed here, at the Hotel de la Paix, was exactly forty years ago, in a small single room, in the midst of a European and then American voyage that changed my life. There were two of us back then, Geraldine and I, staying here in a small room because I had checked in as a single to save money. Back then we stayed in many a small bed together in fine hotels like the Hotel de la Paix because we had wide and luxurious dreams, and this was where Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald stayed back in the 1920's. The problem was that we had to make these expensive dreams work on a very inconsequential budget. Foolishly, we spent most of what small funds we had staying a mere weekend at posh ski resort in the Swiss Alps and I didn't even ski at the time. Or was it foolish when the memory is priceless and I can write about it now? Anything I can write about, in song or prose, has to be worth the money, that's my motto. Anyway, after a few months Geraldine and I left the fluffy pillows of Europe and headed for the mean streets of San Francisco with some flowers on our hair - but that's a different story.
To prepare for my European journey I had bought a very nice oak leather suitcase from the Salvation Army in Hempstead, Long Island, something like Ernest Hemingway would carry in Africa, and I shined the brass latches and used it to carry the seeds of my rock wardrobe, a few pairs of velvet pants, oriental vests & scarves (you remember the look) plus a cassette recorder. All of this came with me to Europe where I figured I'd be staying a few years at the minimum. This was my return voyage after spending most of a year in Rome and my first stop was London where I left a red 1962 Fender Stratocaster Guitar with a friend to sell. I bought the guitar for three hundred dollars back on Long Island, knowing it would sell for triple that amount in London. I've always imagined it was the guitar that Mark Knopfler bought and played on "Sultans of Swing." Today, a vintage Strat like that would fetch ten thousand dollars easily - maybe more. So there I was with my Sun Also Rises suitcase and another guitar too, an acoustic Epiphone Frontier, and I went looking for Geraldine who was literally locked up in a boarding school outside Montreux. Her parents had put her there, thinking it would keep her out of trouble and it read very well on paper; the brochure was enticing, but the reality was she was holed up with the daughters of the latest crop of South American dictators. The only diploma the school guaranteed was that any girl who arrived a virgin would leave in that same condition.
What I didn't bring with me on that trip was my own typewriter; a small Olivetti that my parents had bought me many a Christmas before, I think, when my father was still alive. That pale green writing machine had served me well, giving birth to many songs and stories and more. But it was too bulky to carry around while trouncing around the continent and I knew that Olivetti made a smaller, more portable model that I hoped to buy that some day and write detective novels like a modern day Raymond Chandler only living on the island of Ponza. And that was all I needed back then, a guitar, a typewriter and a girl who believed in me. The fact that I brought two guitars and no typewriter should tell you something about my priorities, I suppose, but I hope I've incorporated most of my literary aspirations into my songwriting.
So Geraldine was in her Montreux boarding school where they would let those girls out unchaperoned for just one hour a day - that was it. I camped out in a nearby two star hotel and played guitar, took baths, recorded new songs on cassettes, went to visit the Château de Chillon where Lord Byron carved his name in the wall, and imagined one day playing at the Montreux Jazz Festival (which I finally did in 1983). Geraldine was up in my room one afternoon, during that precious hour of freedom and I played a few of my latest original songs for her: "Peter Rabbit," about a guy I knew from Garden City, a drummer who battled with demons far more villainous then any I've known. He stole a car, got chased by police through three states. And then they shot him dead. I never recorded it. I also played her "Last of the Rock Stars." Her face lit up, she was adamant and said we must go to America and I must become a rock star, right away, for she had a vision, a plan and a mission to fulfill - which was to make me famous. Sounded good to me and we finally made it to San Francisco. But again, that's another story.
Nights in Lausanne were slow with Geraldine in school until I decided to take my guitar into the highlands of Lausanne and do some "busking." I must have stood outside that first Swiss restaurant for a good twenty minutes before I got up the nerve to go in and ask if I could play a few songs and pass the hat. Amazingly, the owner agreed, I sang "Wild Horses" and people put money in my hat and I left feeling absolutely marvelous! Never had stage fright again. I hit a few more restaurants and cafes that night as well and did all right. When I told Geraldine of the money I made, we decided she had to bust out of school right away, no time to lose - this was a sign. We threw all her clothes out the window of her school and took the boat to Geneva. I don't remember how or when but I met a Swiss guy who said he could help me, said I'd make more money if I just played and sang while he passed the hat and cleared things with the owner. My first manager, so to speak! And it worked.
After a few weeks it was time to leave. We got a flight to London where I picked up the cash for the now sold Strat and then on to San Francisco where I quickly began playing in wine bars down by Fisherman's Wharf. I also got a nice case of hepatitis, something I ate, and my skin turned yellow and so after a few months I came back to New York to recover, make a demo, sign with Polydor Records and record my first album Aquashow. It all happened so fast, as if Geraldine's vision was coming true. Maybe it was, maybe it did.
Oh … there goes a small green boat on the Lake, with a green light, at the aft, kind of like the green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan's dock that Jay Gatsby mooned over in a impeccable white suit, hands in pockets, thinking what could have been, what will be. My own green light has kept moving like that on that boat; it always seems to be one thought ahead of me and I can't grab it. Maybe next year on December 12th, when its twelve minutes after noon - 12:12 12/12/12. That will be the day!
So today I checked into Hotel de la Paix today, forty years later, and the attractive assistant director of the hotel was at the reception to welcome us. I told her I had stayed in this same hotel forty years ago. "I bet it's changed," she said. "Everything's changed," I said. She smiled and I thanked her and right before she left, I asked her name.
"Geraldine," she said. And that's the truth!
Read more archived messages from Elliott.
