The Roches Are Back (Kind of) With a New, Posthumous Solo Album From a Dearly Departed Sister

If you don’t know The Roches, you really need to stop what you’re doing and listen to, say, “Hammond Song" The Roches were three sisters from what they described as “deepest New Jersey” who learned to sing harmony in the back of their parents’ car on the New Jersey Turnpike and then grew up to sing songs that were so clear and sure and so not like other songs in the early ’80s in New York City. The first Roches album was born of failure: Maggie and Terre Roche had gone to England to record as a duo. They’d gotten a record deal thanks to one of their mentors, Paul Simon, who they sang backup for on There Goes Rhymin’ Simon. Record companies wanted a certain kind of album from two women in the early ’80s—i.e., something with an equal amount of power chords and frizzed-out hair—and when the Roches did not appear to be delivering, they were called back from England. “I think the record company was trying to get them to wear certain clothes,” Suzzy Roche, the youngest of the Roches, recalled when I spoke to her the other day. “And at one point the company had one quote unquote coach come in and try to get one of them to get down on her knees during a song. You know, it was weird.”

Thus, the two sisters returned to New York, and their little sister joined up with them. “They said, ‘Screw the music business—we’re going to sing in the streets!’ ” The Roches were born. They started to busk. It was near Christmas. They busked singing holiday songs. Crowds gathered, big crowds. The holidays passed and they added to their repertoire, and, in 1979, the three of them made an album, a crazy beautiful album that was produced by Robert Fripp, who would work with Blondie and Bowie and would say of the Roches (in Suzzy’s recollection): “You will never be hugely successful, but you will influence many people coming after you.”

Maggie Roche 'Where Do I Come From' will be released October 26. 

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