ABBA

Actress, author, singer-songwriter and violinist from Kibbutz Ayelet HaShahar, Upper Galilee, Israel, who grew up playing classical music and kibbutz harvest music and went on to serve in the Israel military.

She married young, and in 1971, she and her husband Louis emigrated to the U.S. Louis was a recording engineer and in 1973 he began a creative collaboration with Bruce Springsteen. They worked together on The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle and Born to Run. The Boss employed Suki to sing backing vocals on the song, “4^th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” and to play the violin on “Jungleland”. She also toured with the band for six months in 1974 and 1975. Her tenure lasted until 9^th March 1975, and shortly thereafter, the Lahavs moved back to Israel.

Other changes would abound. The pair divorced and Suki entered into a relationship with Moshe Albalek and they raised a couple of children together. She also started going by her birth name, Tzruya, although she retained her married name of Lahav.

Eventually she returned to the music scene, multi-tasking on viola and violin in the Israeli Kibbutz Orchestra. She also did some acting and songwriting, penning “Shara Barkhovot”, a 1990 entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, and “Tfilat Ha’Imahot”.

In 1996, her screenplay for a crime drama, Kesher Dam, hit the big screen. She also wrote a pair of novels, Andre’s Wooden Clogs and The Swamp Queen Does the Tango. For a sampling of her lyrical prowess, check out No Longer the Sea: A Collection of Tzruya Lahav’s Songs.

Her recordings with The Boss have been immortalized on Born to Run and The Essential Bruce Springsteen.

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