Lotti Golden

1969 SOUL-BEAT-PSYCH MASTERPIECE

Lotti Golden’s landmark 1969 debut album, Motor-Cycle, produced by the legendary Bob Crewe, is a singular record of the singer-songwriter era. The combination of Golden’s poetic temperament and Crewe’s bold vision was truly unique. Crewe wanted the vocals raw and real, true to Motor-Cycle’s story, and Golden unflinchingly held her own in the studio. Crewe insisted on recording Golden’s vocals live in one take, an experience she had described as akin to “performing an entire Broadway musical, live in the studio.” By pushing Golden’s voice to its emotional limits, Crewe achieved the desired effect, a spontaneous authenticity that remained true to her poet-outlaw narrative. From her R&B inflections and velvety rock intonations to gospel riffs, Golden’s vocals are nimble and dynamic, giving every song exactly what it needs.

In certain respects, Motor-Cycle was meant to challenge the listener, especially during an era when pop singles rarely topped the three-minute mark. With its ambitious and eclectic musical arrangements, extended instrumental interludes, vivid cast of characters, and storylines that span multiple songs, Motor-Cycle may well be the first rock concept album by a female artist, chronicling the ecstasies and tribulations of a scrappy cohort of outsiders as a metaphor for resurrection and redemption.

Lotti Golden

Motor - Cycle

An ambitious suite of phenomenal pop power and originality, Motor-Cycle chronicles Lotti Golden’s immersion in New York City’s late-Sixties counterculture. Underscored by a genre-bending soundscape, the action plays out from New York’s East Village and Lower East Side all the way to North Carolina and back, populated with a coterie of philosopher-lovers, faux gurus, grifters, malcontents, and groupies. Golden would later say that she wrote her memoir as music and lyrics because “a book is too flat.”