Montage 3: Mother Lyrics – Chorus Line, A

Song Overview

“Montage: Mother” is the razor-edged heart of A Chorus Line’s coming-of-age sequence, splicing teenage static into music that keeps a steady pulse while memory fractures. In the show order, “Mother” is the third slice of the larger Montage, following “Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love” and “Nothing,” and preceding “Gimme the Ball.” On record, especially in Masterworks Broadway’s 40th Anniversary reissue, you’ll often find it broken out as its own track - a welcome invitation to hear how Marvin Hamlisch and Edward Kleban braid jokes, shame, and longing into something clean and singable. The lines come fast: movie-star crushes, bra trauma, fly jokes, Roseland recollections, and, above all, Maggie’s small, piercing hymn to her mother across the sea.

Review and Highlights

Quick summary

1. Placement in show: Part 3 of the Montage sequence - the adolescence block where family rules and body changes collide.
2. Voices: a collage of the line - Maggie’s message home threads through quips from Bebe, Sheila, Val, Judy, Al, Greg, Cassie, and others.
3. Writers and album context: music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban; recorded for Columbia Masterworks with Goddard Lieberson producing.
4. On disc: the 40th Anniversary edition explicitly titles “Montage Part 2: Mother” from the 1975 session tapes; later cast albums and scores label it “Part 3.”
5. Style: pop-theatre patter riding a mid-tempo groove - dialogue-like verses snapped to downbeats, refrain lines that briefly open and float.

Creation History

A Chorus Line began as taped confessions from dancers. Hamlisch and Kleban’s job was to keep the grit while finding a musical spine. In “Mother,” the spine is Maggie’s old-fashioned letter - the tune you can hum - and around it the others fire off the jabby ephemera of adolescence: “Wash the car,” “Locked in the bathroom with Peyton Place,” “Tits! Where are my tits?” The album was cut June 2, 1975 at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio - the Church - with veteran engineer Frank Laico on the board and Lieberson shaping a document that feels like a roomful of people thinking out loud in tune. The reissue decades later teased apart the original Montage to reveal “Mother” as a freestanding track, a reminder of how exact the writing is when you strip away scene changes and choreography.

Why it lands

Because it refuses to blink. The humor isn’t a curtain - it’s a metronome. Everyone fronts their family story, from petty humiliations to weaponized advice, and the music never lets the beat wobble. When Maggie sings “Please take this message to Mother from me,” Hamlisch gives her just enough melody to stand upright, then lets the collage crash back in. It’s documentary theatre with a backbeat.

Key takeaways

• Structure-as-truth: overlapping fragments mirror the way teen memories intrude, contradict, and loop.
• Character in one-liners: McQueen vs. Goulet, a fly that will not zip - tiny details that sketch whole homes.
• Maggie’s anchor: a simple, old-world address to “Mother” that softens the edges without ever going soft.
• Album archaeology: later remastering surfaces “Mother” as a discrete cut, revealing how tightly it’s built.

Song Meaning and Annotations

Plot

The dancers are asked for their lives. They answer with shards. “Mother” lives inside the larger adolescence montage, where the company ricochets from parental edicts to pop idols to sexual firsts. The segment pivots on Maggie. Her verses - a quasi-folk message sent across the blue sea - float between the quips, turning the clamor into a prayer. Around her, the others flash moments: Judy’s petty revenge, Val’s late-blooming panic, Al’s Roseland anecdote, Sheila’s acid one-liners. The effect is a chorus room that sounds like a family kitchen when everyone talks at once.

Song Meaning

“Mother” is about the backs you grew - and the hands you didn’t have. Maggie’s letter lays out the loss without melodrama; the company’s interjections explain the armor each of them built. It’s not a tidy scene, and that’s the point. Families don’t hand you clean plot. They hand you tics, rules, and stories you can’t unknow. The music accepts that mess and insists on order anyway - square bar lines, steady pulse, voices passing the ball on time. That tension is the A Chorus Line signature: chaos tamed by count-off.

Annotations

“Steve McQueen”

Not just a crush cue. He’s a shorthand for a new, flintier screen masculinity - cool, taciturn, anti-Goulet. Sliding him into a teen’s hierarchy of idols places the scene in a very specific cultural moment and tells you how fast tastes are flipping.

“Troy Donahue”

A prior era’s heartthrob. Pairing him with McQueen, a dancer jokes that the carousel of taste spins whether you’re ready or not. Pretty boys out, dangerous cool in. The gag has teeth because it doubles as survival advice in the audition room: trends move; keep up.

“Roseland”

Roseland Ballroom was New York’s long-running dance palace, a place where Dad takes Mom to twirl and she comes home with “her shoes on her hand.” A detail that does two jobs - comic image and a wink at the adult night world the teens can only imagine.

“Fly”

Yes, the zipper part of the pants. Sheila’s line - “Your father went through life with an open fly” - is a sniper’s one-liner: sexual sloppiness turned into a family crest. It is both a joke and a summary of a man.

“Listen to your mother / Those stage and movie people got there / Because they’re special”

Cassie’s quoted advice lands like a syrupy platitude, but the show later flips it on her: Zach calls her “special,” and she pushes back - everyone on the line is. The lyric plants the seed for that argument, undermining the myth that success is magic dust rather than grind.

Genre and feel

Pop-theatre collage over a moderate clip. The engine is patter - clipped diction landing on the beat - while Maggie’s lines step out in longer notes that hover, almost folk-like. Orchestration keeps the drum chair simple, piano punching entrances, winds and strings stitching sustains under the letter.

Emotional arc

The segment enters with jokes and exits with ache. You arrive laughing at the audacity of teen self-reporting, then catch the catch in Maggie’s voice. Few numbers move this fast from snark to nakedness without tipping over. This one does because it trusts detail over declaration.

Historical touchpoints

Mid-60s to early-70s pop reference points - McQueen cool replacing square-jawed crooners, paperback scandal like Peyton Place - and a New York geography where Roseland still holds court. The material grounds itself in objects - rollers, cars, bras - that anyone who grew up in that window can smell.

Key Facts

• Artist: Original Broadway Cast of A Chorus Line
• Featured/credit: Produced for record by Goddard Lieberson
• Composer: Marvin Hamlisch
• Lyricist: Edward Kleban
• Release Date: October 1975 (original cast album); “Mother” explicitly titled on the 40th Anniversary reissue released October 23, 2015
• Genre: Broadway, show tune collage
• Instruments: Pit-sized studio orchestra - piano, strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion
• Label: Columbia Masterworks (original); Masterworks Broadway (reissue)
• Mood: sardonic, confessional, clear-eyed
• Length: approx. 2:41 (2015 “Montage Part 2: Mother” track)
• Track #: 6 on many digital breakouts of the Montage block (numbering varies by edition)
• Language: English
• Album: A Chorus Line (Original Broadway Cast)
• Music style: Moderato patter with interleaved lyrical refrain
• Poetic meter: Mixed - prose-like speech rhythms set inside regular 4-bar accents

Canonical Entities & Relations

• Goddard Lieberson - produced the original Broadway cast album for Columbia Masterworks.
• Frank Laico - served as recording engineer at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio on June 2, 1975.
• Michael Bennett - conceived, directed, and choreographed the stage production that “Mother” serves.
• Marvin Hamlisch - composed music for the score of A Chorus Line.
• Edward Kleban - wrote the lyrics for the score.
• Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival - produced the original Broadway run.
• Shubert Theatre, New York - Broadway home of the original production.
• Masterworks Broadway - issued the 40th Anniversary Celebration reissue, titling “Montage Part 2: Mother.”

Questions and Answers

Where does “Mother” sit inside A Chorus Line?

In the show’s numbering, it’s “Montage Part 3: Mother,” the third panel in a four-part adolescence block. On some album editions - especially the 2015 reissue - it’s labeled “Montage Part 2: Mother” because the larger Montage is presented in three internal slices.

Who gets the spotlight?

Maggie’s letter home is the melody everyone remembers, but the whole line chips in - Judy’s rant, Val’s body-clock panic, Al’s dance-hall memory, Sheila’s sniper one-liners.

Is this a ballad?

No. It’s a collage. The tempo sits moderate and square while stories cut in and out. Maggie’s lines open up briefly - that’s as close as it gets to ballad territory.

How does the 1985 film handle it?

The movie collapses and replaces most of the Montage with a new number, “Surprise, Surprise.” A verse of “Hello Twelve” survives; the rest of the montage material, including “Mother,” is largely displaced or spoken elsewhere.

Is there a standalone single?

No. The track lives on the cast album. The 40th Anniversary edition however breaks out “Mother” explicitly as its own cut for streaming and download.

Any notable alternate recordings?

The 2006 New Broadway Cast album records “Montage, Part 3: Mother” with the revival company. Numerous regional and university productions post performance clips, but the commercial releases to watch are OBC 1975 and the 2006 revival.

What makes the text sticky?

Concrete nouns and unvarnished wit. The show trusts specifics - McQueen, Goulet, rollers, Roseland - and lets you supply the rest.

What is the vocal ask?

Ensemble precision: patter in time, crisp consonants, and the discipline to let Maggie’s line breathe without dragging the groove.

Awards and Chart Positions

The song itself was never a single and did not chart on its own. The A Chorus Line original cast album, however, peaked at No. 98 on the U.S. Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart and has long been one of the best-selling cast recordings; Playbill tallies it as certified 2x Multi-Platinum in the U.S. The show around it won nine Tony Awards in 1976 and the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The 1985 film adaptation carried an altered score to cinemas.

Additional Info

On the recordists: Goddard Lieberson’s reputation as the great Columbia cast-album producer didn’t end in the 1960s; A Chorus Line was his final Broadway cast album. The session at the 30th Street Church with Frank Laico at the console carries that old-school clarity - voices natural, rhythm section honest, air around the strings. You can hear the room in the rests.

On film vs. stage: when Richard Attenborough’s 1985 movie swapped out most of the Montage for “Surprise, Surprise,” it made a cleaner screenplay and a less revealing adolescence. If you grew up on the film, the 1975 album is where you’ll meet “Mother” in full voice.

On reissues: the 40th Anniversary Celebration didn’t just remaster - it reframed. Breaking the Montage into clearly labeled parts lets listeners track the braid. It also appended archival work-reel pieces that show Hamlisch and Kleban trying material on for size - useful context for how a collage like “Mother” is engineered.

Sources: Masterworks Broadway; Playbill; Wikipedia; Tony Awards official site; Pulitzer Prize resources; Discogs; CastAlbums.org; IMDb/Apple Music film soundtrack listings; Musicals101; Stereophile.