Parle Of Wisdom
She’s been beaten up and bruised by the record industry but now, after a multitude of set-backs, Luane Parle is finally getting her career on track. She talks about the long road to redemption.
Colm O Hare, 09 Nov 2010
A little over six years ago, things could hardly have looked any better for Luan Parle. Barely 20, the Wicklow singer-songwriter was signed to Sony Ireland, and had arrived in LA to collaborate with Billy Steinberg, composer of such classics as Madonna’s ‘Like A Virgin’, The Bangles’ ‘Eternal Flame’ and Cyndi Lauper’s ‘True Colors’.
She soon found herself in a studio in Mendocino, Northern California, working with Bill Bottrell, the hottest producer around. As well as producing and writing regularly with Michael Jackson, he had overseen the Grammy-winning Tuesday Night Music Club album for Sheryl Crow, and had just scored a Grammy for his work on Shelby Lynne’s acclaimed I Am Shelby Lynn.
“It was an incredible experience,” Parle recalls. “Here I was, making an album with the same musicians who had worked on Tuesday Night Music Club. The sessions were going really well and everyone seemed to be happy. I think Bill saw me as his next Sheryl Crow-type project.”
After nine months in the studio, the album was finally completed and she returned to Dublin to hand the finished product to her label. That’s when things started to go wrong.
“They wanted a more commercial sounding album for Ireland and they didn’t think this was it. As far as I was concerned it wasn’t meant to be an Irish album. It was an international album. They had the opportunity to release it in Ireland and it was a back door into America, which is what I thought was going to happen. It came as a big shock to realise it was never going to be released.”
Sony suggested Parle assemble a more ‘commercial’ album using a couple of the Bill Bottrell tracks and some newly recorded material. Not surprisingly Bottrell vetoed this plan.
“It all got messy with lawyers,” Parle explains “Bill didn’t want the tracks to be used individually with other stuff that he wasn’t involved in, which I can understand. There was a lot of time wasted – you lose momentum and you lose heart. I had already gone to the press about this American album and people were beginning to think I had made it all up.”
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