It's Up to You... Lon-don, Lon-don

Twenty years after she poured me beers at a bar in New York, LP is a rock star. Just not yet in New York

The New York born and bred, LP (aka Laura Pergolizzi), who is now an international music sensation.

Dear friends and fellow countrymen,

Just about wherever you go in New York — the subway, the Apple store, the neighborhood CVS — an encounter with celebrity can await, even if you aren’t in the journalism profession. In the days after 9/11/01, I had my first celebrity sighting when I almost ran into Marisa Tomei at the LGBT community center for a “WTF just happened” meeting. In the same West Village neighborhood, I have seen Susan Sarandon walking at least twice. Both times, she caught the glint of recognition in my eye, casting them immediately away to not engage. At the Apple store, I once felt a tap on the shoulder only to have a fellow writer whose book about the fall of the Wall Street Journal I was reviewing ask me how I had a copy before they were on the shelves. Both of us needed our Macs fixed.

But less common is the encounter with the person who comes to Manhattan dreaming big and then actually making it. The city is full of millions of these types, myself included — writers, filmmakers, actors and journalists, unwilling to settle for a chance of being noticed in say, Theatre Tulsa’s performance of “The Guys” or as a standout musician at the Tulsa State Fair. I can imagine these types saying, as I once did, “I am going to pack up my guitar/typewriter/movie collections, load up my car with my earthly possessions and make my way in New York, New York.” Kind of like the cliche of Frank Sinatra, except he only had to take a ferry across the Hudson.

As a result, the city is also full of “almost wases” and “could-have-beens”. Some stay until the bitter end. Others get out. But occasionally, someone actually makes it — and sometimes, it’s everywhere but New York.

LP, aspiring musician and Henrietta Hudson bartender in her salad days. Photo: IamLP Blog.

I first met Laura Pergolizzi in summer 2003 behind the bar at Henrietta Hudson’s, a West Village lesbian watering hole where she poured beers and mixed drinks. It was also the place to which I often drifted after spending afternoons selling my hand-typed, hand-copied short stories in the 42nd street subway. Between attempts at flirting and paying for beers with wads of $1 bills, I would often attempt to drum up conversation with the young, thin, curly haired barkeep. One night I finally asked her what else she did besides work at Henrietta’s. “I have a band,” she told me in a matter-of-fact Long Island accent. Didn’t they all, I thought to myself. I still nonetheless asked if she was writing, performing, releasing LPs — the thing she felt born to do. “Yeah,” she replied. “We’re going to be big someday.”

At the time, I had some confidence in my own writing and some exposure from the New York Times article on my subway story-writing business. I had actually modeled it off of busking musicians, believing that I could not only make a little coin, but also have two or three hours to riff on stories. After a few months, however, I started to feel balled up and tossed away by New York. If I stayed, I figured, my writing voice would just be drowned out by the millions of others like me. I needed a real job, so in late 2003, I did the practical thing — I took a staff job as a writer for the Washington Blade, a national LGBT newspaper.

Washington DC was not New York. Full of lobbyists and politicians and Mr-Smith-Goes-to-Washington types, it lacked an indigenous arts and music scene, leaving us adrenalin junkies reliant on a couple of Georgetown galleries devoted to Pop Art and the 9:30 Club for traveling bands. Somewhere, somehow — in the days before Facebook and any kind of app — I saw that LP was doing a CD release party at a local Borders bookstore. I snuck out of work to see the release party and made the very end before LP packed up. But she recognized me when I said hello and embraced me with enthusiasm. I picked up a CD and pledged to one day write a story. That was the last I heard of — or even thought about — LP.

Years passed, as did girlfriends, jobs and stories, and I moved back to New York to pursue freelance journalism. I met someome in 2018 and we started something that would last the next three years. The next year, in a piazza in Milan, Italy, we walked by some skateboarders and when one almost knocked me over, I noticed his t-shirt: a silk-screened image of the woman who served me drinks in Henrietta Hudson’s in 2003. Of course, I googled her. Her story proved a odyssey of perseverance. She had been promised all the right things by all the right people; incited bidding wars between major labels; and was signed six different times. Meanwhile, LP paid the bills by writing hit songs for the likes of Rihanna, Céline Dion and Christina Aguilera.

LP on the July 2021 cover of Spin magazine.

As it turned out, she had moved to LA and been resigned to remain behind the curtain. But in summer 2016, LP’s persistence paid off. An old song of hers took off in Greece, then Italy and then around the world. Five years later, LP has been catapulted into a form of global superstardom with music streaming figures in the billions and her sixth studio album, Churches, on the airwaves earlier this month. “My life has been an exercise in waiting,” LP told Spin magazine in July, making the cover. “You wouldn’t believe the things people have whispered in my ear. And then nothing happens.”

But while big in Europe, LP still has to break the U.S. market, specifically the hometown crowd in New York, less than 50 miles from where she grew up. She recently turned up at Omeara, however, a South London club that lends itself to rising stars and bands having a second act. After a move to London earlier this year, I thought I would stop by to see the new LP — the one that filled arenas and theatres all over Europe. I’m not the only one who has done this. I had missed my chance to get tickets weeks before and the show was sold out. But two hours before doors opened, I strode up to the back door and staked out a spot. The groupies kept coming, however — women from Germany, Italy and other parts of the UK decked out in all sorts of LP memorabilia who had driven and flown hundreds of miles just to see her.

LP, looking every bit the rock star, meets with two other fans from her early days. Photo: IamLP Blog.

I had pitched an article about the rise of LP to several news outlets, but none had exactly gone for it. Without a reason and without my LP bona fides, I started to feel a bit strange about waiting to see someone with whom I had a cursory relationship when we were in our twenties. Moreover, our tables had turned. She had “made it” — just as she predicted in 2003 — gone on to fame and maybe fortune. I had written a few influential articles, but fallen far short of my own expectations. I wound up in London seeking a fresh start — a new market, fertile ground, a place where no one knew me.

The clouds mounted; the drizzle started. I weighed my options. I wrote a note on a business card and left it with her tour manager, not expecting to hear back. I didn’t. LP went on to France and will finish out this leg of her tour in Mexico before coming back to England for a spate of O2 Academy shows in January. I climbed into a Black Taxi with all the various ways of looking at success rolling around in my head. I thought back to sitting at a bar, flirting with a floppy, curly-haired musician talking about dreams. Mostly, I hankered for the experience of seeing someone I once knew soaking up adulation on the grand stage — happy for her, but nonetheless a little envious. Life is full of chances, however. Maybe another show, another day.

The “Bar and Girl” where LP first got her start: Henrietta Hudson in New York’s West Village.

Ever yours,

Adrian

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