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1Call this an act of love. Call it my memorial to Lily Strang. Call itthe liner notes that will never be printed to accompany the box set ofher compact discs that will certainly be released after her death, after thevultures at Sony Records decide to capitalize on her demise. Death is thebest career move you can make in the music industry. Just look at Elvisor Jim Morrison, both infi nitely bigger stars today than they would bealive, fat, disheveled, playing Vegas along with Wayne Newton. I onceswore to Lily would she never burn out and now she never will.I know what will happen when that box set gets shipped, when theunits, as we say in the Industry, hit the stores. The critics will start toreappraise Lily Strang. ROLLING STONE, which had a love-haterelationship with Lily from the start, will run a two-page spread ofphotographs, some unfl attering, some shot by Annie Leibovitz, alongwith one of their gushing eulogies that sound like they were written inmarshmallow. The highbrow critics who turned on Lily after her fi rstalbum, the NEW YORK TIMES and THE VILLAGE VOICE, willdeclare her a blazing genius once she is safely dead. I know what theTIMES is going to say because a friend there once swiped Lily’s obituaryfor me. I assume the VOICE will be equally sanctimonious. But I can’tforgive the bastards who savaged her best work for years. They made Lilycry, and there’s no greater sin.Lawrence Richette10A lot of people wondered why Lily moved to London after her thirdalbum. She gave a lot of lying answers to the question, like saying shepreferred English TV or Englishmen, when the simple truth was she wassick of feeling gang-raped every time she put out a record in America. Shethought living in London would protect her from all that. In a way it did,because in London she met Nicky Mandrake and fell in love with him,and for a time the two of them lived in a yellow submarine. But eventuallyLily had to record another album, which meant working with me, whichmeant that even if she recorded in London she had to tour in America,which meant facing the lions all over again. And she was scared.When I fi rst met Lily, she wasn’t scared of anything. The fi rst time Iever laid eyes on Lily Strang was a hot, airless July night outside SigmaSound Studios in Philadelphia. I was waiting for David Bowie whosealbum I was assistant-producing. Bowie was late, very late, but stars alwaysmake you wait. One defi nition of a star is that they are people whoseintolerable behavior you tolerate, in fact come to expect as routine. I wasstanding on the sidewalk smoking my fi fth cigarette of the hour when atall redhead in a white sundress walked up to me. Even in my uncarnalmood I couldn’t help noticing how fi ne her fi gure was, her breasts, herlissome legs.'I saw your picture in ROLLING STONE,' she smiled. 'You’re TonyOrfeo, aren’t you?'I admitted that I was. Her smile widened, making her look youngerand more innocent.'You’re working with Bowie, aren’t you?''Offi cially, Bowie isn’t even here.''You can tell me. I can keep a secret.'
