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Arts & Entertainment

Looking Glass, of 'Brandy' Fame, Plays Saturday at Village Theater

Musician Elliot Lurie has teamed up with a Michigan group to play at Canton's Village Theater.

A chance phone call for a job has brought singer/songwriter/guitarist Elliot Lurie, the man behind the 1972 hit Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl), to annual tour dates in Michigan.

Lurie will appear with his band, Looking Glass, now made up of him and three Detroit-area musicians at the Village Theater at Cherry Hill on Saturday at 8 p.m. Reserved tickets are $15.

Looking Glass was formed in the early 1970s from an incarnation of a frat-party band that Lurie founded while attending Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1969. The band had commercial success with Brandy, which sold more than a million records, and the Top-40 song Jimmy Loves Mary-Ann, both from the Looking Glass album the group made in 1972.

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The band didn’t last long, however, and after a failed solo album, Lurie began a career as a music producer for films. He was named head of the music department at 20th Century Fox in 1985, and since then has been the music supervisor for movies such as “Stuart Little,” “Riding in Cars with Boys,” “Die Hard 2,” and the remake of “Miracle on 34th Street.”

Most recently, Lurie worked on the music arrangement for “Vamps,” a movie starring Alicia Silverstone and Sigourney Weaver that was shot in the Detroit area.

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The female vampire movie wasn’t the first Detroit link for Lurie, however. In 2002, Warren resident and musician Jeff Lehman called Lurie to pitch his music for the movie industry. Lehman said the talk turned to Lurie’s past. “I asked him whatever happened to Looking Glass, and he said he’d be interested in trying to put something together again,” Lehman said.

Lurie said the call came at just the right time. “I had been busy raising kids and working at the other full-time job, but things were changing, and the kids had grown, and I thought it would be fun to do. These guys, who were a half a generation younger than me, knew all my music. We communicated by phone and email and started putting the band together,” Lurie said.

Lehman made a demo tape of himself and Detroit musicians Craig Williams and Eric Mackey playing Lurie’s songs, and Lurie flew in to try out the band. It fit well, Lurie says, and by 2005 the group was playing small venues in Michigan. “The urge to play live never leaves you. It’s a great time to do this again,” Lurie says.

One reason Lurie had left playing live in the first place was the difficulty in recreating the 1970s-era Brandy sound live, he said. Looking Glass had really been more about rock and less about pop, and it was too difficult to get that sound while playing live, he said.

Now, technology allows the new band to bring his former hits to the live audiences, Lurie said. “We were even able to secure from the record company some of the original horn and string parts from the original recordings, and we use them as samples while playing live. We can better produce the vibe of the records,” he said.

The group plays a handful of shows every year, mostly in the Midwest, because, as Lurie said, “it’s easier for me to come to them than for them to come out to Los Angeles.” Both men said that on Saturday the group will play the hits off of Lurie’s albums, as well as some covers from the period and some new material.

Lehman, who works as a computer software teacher at Dorsey Schools in Roseville, said it’s a dream to play onstage with one of the stars of music made during his formative years. “It’s just amazing to be on stage playing with Elliot. These were songs I grew up with,” Lehman said.

Looking Glass takes the stage at Village Theater at Cherry Hill, 50400 Cherry Hill Rd., on Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets cost $15 and can be purchased online at www.cantonvillagetheater.org or by calling 734-394-5460.

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