NEW YORK — Maggie Roche, the songwriter whose serene alto anchored the close harmonies of the Roches, her trio with her sisters Terre and Suzzy, died Saturday of breast cancer, Suzzy Roche said. She was 65, and had lived in New York City.
“She was a private person, too sensitive and shy for this world, but brimming with life, love, and talent,’’ Suzzy Roche wrote on the Roches’ Facebook page. “She was smart, wickedly funny, and authentic — not a false bone in her body — a brilliant songwriter, with a distinct unique perspective, all heart and soul.’’
Ms. Roche developed a pop-folk songwriting style that could be droll or diaristic, full of unexpected melodic turns, and often inseparable from the way the sisters’ voices harmonized and diverged. On albums from the early 1970s into the 2000s, Maggie Roche’s songs chronicled a woman’s life from early stirrings of independence (“The Hammond Song’’) and amorous entanglements (“The Married Men’’) to thoughts on longtime connection (“Can We Go Home Now’’). They often mixed heartfelt revelations and flinty punch lines.
With the Roches, and in duos with each of her sisters, she released more than a dozen albums. The Roches never had a major hit, but the group maintained a devoted following. They shrugged off disappointments in “Big Nuthin’,’’ a song the trio wrote together. “We’d like to make a million dollars and be set for life,’’ Maggie Roche told The Los Angeles Times in 1995. “We’ve been lucky, though. We have a career, and that is a gift.’’
Margaret A. Roche grew up in Park Ridge, N.J. The sisters sang in Catholic church choirs, and Maggie started writing songs after getting a guitar for her birthday in 1964. She and Terre formed a duo.
They attended a songwriting seminar given by musician Paul Simon at New York University in 1970, and he had them sing harmony on his 1972 album “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon.’’ Simon signed them to a production company he had formed for young musicians, and he also was among the producers of Maggie and Terre Roche’s debut album, “Seductive Reasoning,’’ released in 1975.
Suzzy Roche joined her sisters in 1976 and, as a trio, the Roches became a sensation at clubs in Greenwich Village. Their 1979 debut album, “The Roches,’’ was produced by Robert Fripp.
