Julianne Regan

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Julianne Regan

Julianne Regan is an English singer, song writer, guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboard player, originally from Coventry.
She is best known for being the lead singer and driving force of the band All About Eve.

1 Early Life (1962-1981)
2 From Zig Zag to Swarm (1982 - 1984)
3 All About Eve (first era) (1985 - 1992)
4 Into the Wilderness (1993 - 1995)
5 Mice (1995 - 1997)
6 All About Eve (second era) (1999 - Present)
7 The Future
8 Album Discography
9 See also
10 External links

[edit] Early Life (1962-1981)

Julianne Regan was born on 30 June 1962 into a working class Catholic family. It is written in the sleeve notes to the All About Eve anthology Keepsakes that her family's roots were impoverished to the point that as a boy, her father had to share a single pair of shoes with his siblings. Little else about her childhood is on the public record other than that she has a younger sister, Lise, who married All About Eve's first full-time drummer Mark Price in 1989. They are now divorced.

[edit] From Zig Zag to Swarm (1982 - 1984)

Julianne circa 1982

Regan moved to London aged 19 and found work as a journalist for music magazine Zig Zag, while also studying at the London College of Fashion. In her journalistic capacity she was given the task of interviewing Gene Loves Jezebel and then subsequently joined that band on bass guitar. Soon after, apparently unhappy with the group's increasingly populist sound, she would leave to make music with good friend and former Xmal Deutschland drummer Manuela Zwingmann, while working in a book shop in Hampstead after Zig Zag went bust. It was during this period that she would meet, though friends of friends, both Andy Cousin and Tim Bricheno then both playing for goth band Aemotii Crii. The band that resulted, at first consisting of Regan, Zwingman, Bricheno and James Richard Jackson was originally called The Swarm but was changed to All About Eve following Julianne and Manuela viewing the classic film at Julianne's parents house in Southport.

[edit] All About Eve (first era) (1985 - 1992)

See main article All About Eve.

The first line up of the group hit the studio in 1985 to record the first single D For Desire, but following a falling out between Manuela and Julianne, the former would leave the band. Soon after Andy Cousin would replace Jackson on bass thus creating the first well-known All About Eve line-up of Bricheno, Cousin & Regan, plus a drum machine. The group recorded demos and played several well-received gigs.

In 1986 Regan met a girl known to the wider world only as Crazy Rachael and her boyfriend ex-The Sisters of Mercy guitarist Wayne Hussey. Wayne was at the time recording the first Mission album God's Own Medicine and was so impressed with Julianne's voice that he asked her to contribute backing vocals to the song Severina. This started a close collaboration between the two bands that continues to this day, and at the time got All About Eve signed to the Mission's record label (on the back of them being support to the Mission's first tour and Julianne appearing on several TV programmes with the Mission for performances of Severina).

During production of the first All About Eve album (simply called All About Eve, Julianne formed a relationship with Simon Hinkler, a Mission guitarist. Meanwhile a full time drummer Mark Price was recruited to the band in 1988, who would go on to date and then marry Julianne's sister.

All About Eve soon hit the big-time with the first album and the single Martha's Harbour both going Top 10 along with four other Top 40 singles between the summers of 1988 and 1989. Fame, however, did not seem to sit all that well with Julianne. She broke up with Simon Hinkler (who would later pen Mission song Butterfly on a Wheel about the end of this affair - a song that is often viewed as a direct response to All About Eve's song Dream Now though it contains references to several others) and a short time later started a relationship with her own guitarist Tim Bricheno.

All About Eve circa 1988

It was the collapse of this relationship with Tim that plagued the recording of the second album Scarlet and Other Stories. It is on record that Regan suffered something of a breakdown during this time and would later say "I don't think I've wept as often in my life as I did during the making of Scarlet and Other Stories." Understandably therefore, the lyrics to the songs on this album reflect the unhappiness of their author, particularly in Scarlet, December, Drowing (December's B-Side) Pieces of Our Heart, Road to Your Soul and Only One Reason.

With Regan and Bricheno unable to speak to each other, the latter would leave the band at the end of 1990 (and join The Sisters of Mercy), to be replaced by Church guitarist Marty Willson-Piper. On All About Eve's third album Touched By Jesus (1991), two of Julianne's songs, Strange Way and Farewell Mr Sorrow, both concerned the end of this relationship: however this was not an entirely bitter work for she would also write the concluding song, Are You Lonely? for her father.

Touched By Jesus did not quite enjoy the commercial success of the first two albums and All About Eve subsequently changed record labels to MCA in 1992. Here they were to record their fourth (and final) studio album Ultraviolet - a somewhat psychedelic move in which Regan made the (with hindsight) mistake of mixing her vocals too far down into the swirling guitars - with the net result sounding something akin to Cranes or Spiritualized. Unfortunately this alienated the fans, which meant the record did not make the top 40. MCA ditched the group, and they split up in early 1993.

[edit] Into the Wilderness (1993 - 1995)

Regan split from the rest of the band during the recording of what would have been All About Eve's fifth album. Marty, Andy and Mark finished it off anyway, and it eventually saw the light of day under the group name and title of Seeing Stars.

For Regan things were not great. She was unemployed, and at one point she found herself working as a cleaner. Under the group name Harmony Ambulance she did release one single very soon after the All About Eve split for Geoff Travis' Rough Trade label. Nature's Way/All This And Heaven was something of a departure from the All About Eve style, and possibly for this reason Regan turned down an offer to work full time with that band.

Regan then dropped off the public radar. Rumours of a collaboration with Suede's Bernard Butler fluttered briefly and then died out. It later transpired that the rumours were true, but that during the recording session she and Bernard had fallen out in a spectacular fashion. "I don't really know why it exploded the way it did, but it did. It was a small thing that turned into a big thing, that turned into an enormous thing." was Julianne's post-mortem of these events.

However, things were soon to pick up when an encounter with old acquaintance and ex-Powder guitarist Tim McTighe led to the creation of Mice.

[edit] Mice (1995 - 1997)

Mice (band) redirects here.

Julianne fronting Mice in concert in 1996.

Revolving around a central core of Julianne, Tim McTighe, former Levitation luminary Christian Hayes (aka Bic) and original All About Eve drummer Mark Price, Mice released their first single Matt's Prozac in November 1995. Countrywide touring followed as did an album Because I Can recorded for indie label Permanent Records. Many collaborators took part in this band, including both Marty Willson-Piper and Andy Cousin which lead to people questioning why this band wasn't launched as another incarnation of All About Eve. Julianne said that this was deliberate in that she had wanted the new band to be just that. Musically it did indeed sound somewhat harsher than All About Eve and Julianne would later say of it "It showed that I could be pre-raphaelitic but I still had to get on the bus and go to Tesco's."

With Because I Can making the Indie Top Ten, the future looked quite rosy for Mice, but for the fact that Permanent Records went out of business in 1997 (owing Julianne and others a lot of money) and leaving the album and the three singles Matt's Prozac, The Milkman and Dear Sir hanging in the shops without promotion or replacement.

There were brief rumours of something being put together with Marty Willson-Piper but - after an apparent fall out between them - this also came to nothing, and Julianne dropped into obscurity yet again, surfacing briefly in 1998 to record lead vocals for two songs on This Burning Effigy's album Descent.

[edit] All About Eve (second era) (1999 - Present)

Despite having previously been on public record expressing absolutely no wish to resurrect All About Eve, in late 1999 a Mission re-launch was underway and Wayne Hussey - in a mirror image of the first time All About Eve hit it big - again asked Julianne if she would like to support him on tour. Though she was already involved with Jules et Jim (they had put out an ep called Swimming earlier in the year) Julianne acquiesced, rounded up Mark (now playing with Del Amitri), Andy and Marty and All About Eve were back.(The full detail of this can be read on the band's main page, but essentially after the Mission shows Julianne, Marty and Andy toured the country acoustically for two years [during most of which time Julianne simultaneously held down a full-time office job] and things grew from there.)

When asked in 2001 why she had had a change of heart in terms of resurrecting All About Eve and their music she replied:

"I think I just really needed a break from it. It had lost its magic for me. Totally. Also, for some reason, I had to have a bit of a rebellion against AAE. Maybe it's something along the lines of why teenagers fall out with their parents and find everything about them embarrassing.... Then they grow up a bit and realise that their Mum and Dad aren't too bad at all."

Since then Julianne, as if determined not to lose them in an Ultraviolet-style cataclysm again, has maintained more or less constant contact with her fans - either via the public forum on her own website or using the All About Eve mailing list.

All About Eve split up again in mid-2004 following a bust-up between Julianne and Andy Cousin but 2006 has seen this rift apparently healed upon the release of Keepsakes - an anthology of the group with extremely honest sleeve-notes. This record has seen even Tim Bricheno recalled to the line-up contributing a new song entitled Raindrops.