Unique Woodstock performer Melanie dies, aged 76

“Right now please permit us, her household, privateness as we grieve for her, keep in mind her, and determine the right way to navigate this loopy world with out her. Thanks all in your love – you meant so very a lot to her.”

Born and raised in Queens, New York, Melanie began out acting at people golf equipment in Greenwich Village within the mid-’60s earlier than signing with Columbia Data and later transferring to Buddah Data.

The singer was certainly one of solely three feminine solo artists to carry out on the authentic Woodstock competition in 1969 alongside Janis Joplin and Joan Baez.

She launched her worldwide breakout hit ‘Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)’ the next yr, with the music peaking at Quantity Six on the Billboard Scorching 100. It was impressed by the Woodstock viewers, who lit candles whereas Melanie was performing.

The artist later shared the only ‘Peace Will Come (In accordance To Plan)’ and a canopy model of The Rolling Stones‘ ‘Ruby Tuesday’, with the latter incomes Melanie a prime 10 within the UK.

Melanie based her personal report label, Neighborhood Data, in 1971. Its largest hit was the singer-songwriter’s monitor ‘Model New Key’, which went to Quantity One within the US, and Quantity 4 within the UK.

In accordance with Variety, Melanie had been within the studio earlier this month engaged on a brand new album of covers referred to as ‘Second Hand Smoke’. The challenge would have marked her thirty second full-length LP.

It was as a result of be launched by way of Los Angeles-based label Cleopatra, which had additionally deliberate to reissue nearly all of Melanie’s again catalogue.

Melanie had reportedly already recorded some songs for ‘Second Hand Smoke’, together with new variations of Morrissey‘s ‘Ouija Board Ouija Board’, Radiohead‘s ‘Creep’ and Depeche Mode‘s ‘Take pleasure in The Silence’.

Per The Guardian, Melanie beforehand described her Woodstock look as “an unbelievably scary day”.

“I by no means even felt like I used to be a hippy, I didn’t just like the time period,” she remembered. “If something, I used to be the beat era – individuals within the Village expressing themselves in so some ways, not being pigeonholed.”