‘Eli’s Comin’’ is a love song with an ominous sound, that begins with a quiet warning then builds into an explosion of aggressive harmonies. Laura Nyro was able to write songs that would speed up and slow down, setting the mood with the tempo concluding with a well paced climatic ending that is unparalleled by her peers. The tempo in this song gets faster and faster as the relationship between the womanizer Eli and the woman who was warned to hide her heart intensifies. Three Dog Night, with Danny Hutton, Chuck Negron and Cory Wells singing lead vocals did a high energy and a fast pace cover of this song on their 1969 studio album, Suitable For Framing. Negron used to watch Nyro perform in New York City and he liked her sound. He brought this song to the group, thinking it would be a good fit for Wells’ voice. Most of the lyrics in this song are clear cut, being a prediction about Eli who is coming and that he will break this girl’s heart unless she is able to hide from him, except for one line. I read an article by WordPress blogger and music aficionado John Holton which stated that the lyrics “Apollo by the bay” according to Answers.com is a place by the water in Australia. Actually, the Temple of Apollo by the Bay of Baiae (now the Bay of Naples) was in ancient times considered to be one of the entrances to the Underworld. However, I discovered something slightly different, being that the line “I walked to Apollo by the bay” comes from the story of Daphne and Apollo, which was an essay written by Patricia Spence Rudden. The Roman and Greek god Apollo mocked Cupid the god of love for using his bow and arrow. Cupid got insulted, so he shot Apollo with an arrow making him fall in love with the river nymph Daphne. Cupid then shot Daphne with a different kind of arrow which caused her to reject Apollo. Apollo appeared in the shape of a man and Daphne called to her father to save her. Apollo used his powers of eternal youth and immortality to render Daphne into an evergreen. For this reason, the leaves of the Bay laurel tree do not decay, and this became sacred forever thereafter to Apollo. Laura Nyro was a proud feminist and women’s rights activist who dug into the sexist assumption that the only thing that causes a young woman heartache, or makes her hide her loving heart, or that can give her a broken heart is a man. From: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2019/06/14/elis-comin/
