Branching out with All About Eve

Some of this may be a bit out chronologically but it’s how it sits in my brain right now… July 2012, 43 years old….bear with me, it’s been a while…

It’s 1987 and I am 18 years old and into my live music in a big way.  I went to my first gig in 1984 which was Big Country at the Bournemouth International Centre and since then had been hooked on travelling to see live bands all over the country.  Examples of who I’d seen were the aforementioned Big Country as well as The Alarm, The Cult, The Mission, U2 (pre-up own arse days), Iron Maiden and Stiff Little Fingers.  In 1987 I discovered The Wonder Stuff (before they went all fiddly-dee and duets with Vic Reeves etc) and had toured the whole of Britain becoming acquainted with motorway service stations, £7 a night B&B’s and YMCA’s where I’d woken to find someone with size 11 feet had nicked my shoes, necessitating a barefoot walk into Manchester to buy some more.

So, lots of bands, lots of gigs and look at the list – all guitars and all rock/punk/metal and one more thing – all male.  Testosterone and aggression was the order of the day and jumping up and down like a loon, losing a stone in fluid at every gig and coming home with deafness, a sore throat and the flu from sharing tight sweaty places with lots of like minded souls.

I found myself at a Mission gig, in a room full of people and I stood out as I wasn’t dressed in black and hairspray and eyeliner.  In the bar I ask my mate if he knows who the support band are. “All About Eve mate, dunno what they’re like…. shall we have a look?”…”Guess so, if they’re shit we can come back in here “.

So, I’m stood at the side, quite a long way from the stage and in a cloud of dry ice, three long haired blokes come onto the stage and a drum machine starts up.  “They’ve got no drummer… this’ll be shite”.  I look at my pint and pondered it and the band start to play.  The guitar and bass came in to join the drum machine and then “where have the flowers gone, sun children…”.  It’s a shock to say the least as this voice fills the air... ok, you now have my full attention as it’s evident that the third, smaller bloke is in fact a girl.  We perform the well practiced manoeuvre of swerving through gaps that don’t exist and get to the front and I’m transfixed.  What a singer… what a voice ….and she’s beautiful… (and I thought it was a bloke) … and the band are great.

The rest of the 35 or so minute set passed by and aside from the voice (and the naff drum sound) I remember Julianne between songs, being very quietly spoken and almost shy, like she didn’t feel it was her place to be up there singing, despite what was (for a support band) a very appreciative crowd.  The last song was ‘Our Summer’ which I thought must have been a single as it was familiar to me so I must have heard it somewhere.  The Mission played and were great live and Julianne reappeared for backing vocals (I assume on Severina).

A subsequent trip to the record shop in my town realised a CD single of the new ‘Wild Hearted Woman’, and 12” singles of ‘In the Clouds’ and ‘Flowers in Our Hair’.  If was a time of multiple formats of every single and you could have an entire sizeable record collection, all with the same lead track.  Being a teenager I spent a lot of time in my bedroom, listening to music at a volume that left no one else in the house or the street unaware of what I was listening to.  Instead of ‘She Sells Sanctuary’ or ‘The Number of the Beast’, there was now ‘Appletree Man’ and ‘Wild Flowers’ and quizzical looks from my parents and sister who either thought someone else had moved into my room or that it was a phase I’d grow out of.  A trip to a Record Fair saw my Iron Maiden ‘Live After Death’ 5 foot by 3 foot poster replaced with the same sized poster advertising the ‘All About Eve’ album which had just come out.  I think my Dad saw it as proof that his son definitely wasn’t gay as finally there was a picture of something other than a hairy bloke, a footballer or a monster on my wall.  I just thought that a picture of Julianne was infinitely preferable to one of Eddie emerging from a grave.

The first headlining tour took in Southampton University which is a tiny room with a low ceiling and this makes for a loud but sweaty gig experience.   None of my mates who I went to gigs with were interested in going but being the independent sort, in a raised middle finger gesture I decided to go on my own.... another first.  I had heard through the music press that the drum machine had been replaced with a human being and this made for a very solid sound but the mix was perfect and the Julianne’s voice stood out.  Knowing all the songs helps massively as well and that’s a funny thing.  If I knew the song and one of my usual bands were playing then I would be yelling my head off along to it and tunelessly bellowing every word, very much to the detriment of the person in front of me who is not only pissed off that there’s a heavy bloke leaning on them but that they also have to deal with the early onset of tinnitus.  At an AAE show, I didn't feel that I should sing or yell the words, you listen and soak it up as there is no way you can add to or distract from the voice that’s coming at you from the stage.

Martha’s Harbour was released as a single and playing that one in my room made my Dad repeatedly check on me to see if I was alright as this wasn’t the son that he knew.  ‘Son goes out and kicks hell out of people on a football pitch - son then listens to acoustic ballad with girl singer – son must be ill’.  It was a Thursday night ritual in our house, to watch Top of the Pops even though 90% of it was abysmal and it used to offend me in my musical snobbery that even bands that could play live,  had to mime along.  Anyhow, Martha was storming the charts so I thought the band may be on there.  Of course they were and most people know what happened with the music not being heard in the studio but only on the TV so they didn’t start ‘performing’ until the song was nearly over.  It was horrible.  I didn’t of course know Julianne (nor Tim for that matter) but I felt I knew enough about them through interviews and the gigs I’d been to, to know that they would have been mortified and I just felt so sorry for them as they died on their arses.  I bet deep down that Andy Cousin was thinking “thank fuck I wasn’t out there”.  Of course they got the chance to play it again the following week but who remembers that?  Why couldn't it have been some shitty band who had this happen to them?  Christ knows there were enough to choose from.

‘Scarlet and Other Stories’ was released and I was relieved to find enough good tracks to make it work, having not been a massive fan of the lead single ‘Road to Your Soul’ as it contained a bit too much bluster for me and veered a bit close to Heart or Starship.  Then there was the video for another epic song ‘December’ in which Julianne looked totally uncomfortable all dolled up and permed.  In my mind they didn’t need a (s)wanky video to sell a song and I blamed the record company.  To me all seemed like a band that was struggling with its control over its direction a bit.  Unperturbed, I was at the Portsmouth Guildhall, again on my own for the tour and the gig was marvellous with December instantly becoming a favourite which it still is to this day.

The Albert Hall gigs were memorable for the wrong reasons for me as I couldn’t go.  It was the first time that life had decided to dictate what I was able to do and at the time, my job was important as I was young and conscientious and not grumpy and cynical like I am now but soon afterwards, the press were reporting that Tim Bricheno was out of the band and was ultimately replaced by Marty Willson-Piper.  There’s always a worry that a key member leaving one of your favourite bands will bring the death knell but a new album was upon us and the singles that came out beforehand were different but still unmistakably AAE.  It was a bit of a false dawn though.  I saw a gig on the Touched by Jesus tour in Birmingham and though Julianne was still marvellous, I felt that something was missing.  Not being a muso, I couldn’t tell you who is technically the better guitarist but I’m guessing it’s Marty.  Tim though was part of the story from the start and to my mind, All About Eve would always be stronger as band with Julianne, Tim and Andy in place.  I generally prefer bands to individual performers and hold with the theory that the magic of a band is in the sum of the parts – think R.E.M. after Billy Berry left; still pretty good but not quite as inspired.

I bought the Phased EP when it was released and though the lead track was good in its own dark way, the voice was buried in the mix and not what I wanted really.  To me it could have been any girl singing and I knew that it wasn’t just any girl.  When ‘Ultraviolet’ came out, the album tracks and extra tracks on the singles, which had once been so strong on earlier releases were distinctly average and the music buying public at large seemed to give up on the band which was a massive shame and then the record company did as well and by the end of 1992, All About Eve had gone.

I’d read that Julianne had a new project with Mice but hadn’t managed to hear any releases and therefore hadn’t gone to any gigs they may have played so the next time AAE were on my radar was in about 1999 when I found myself reading a ‘Where are they now?’ section in a magazine and All About Eve and Julianne in particular were featured; she was currently a cleaner.  There is a misconception amongst people who are not in and don’t understand the music industry that artists who have had a measure of success like Julianne had, should be financially comfortable enough to not have to worry too much about the shit that ‘normal’ people have to.  This of course if complete bollocks but it saddened me to read that she’s fallen out of love with performing and singing and was struggling along doing a job which I can’t imagine she thought she’d be doing 12 years earlier.  To my mind, she (and other people who have made others happy – whether I like them or not) deserved to be comfortable as a reward for the music she gave to me and others.

For me, 1999 to 2005 were virtually gig free due to life sticking its oar in again with the onset of children, mortgages and the poverty that comes with it.  With that came ‘not keeping in the loop’ and to my shame, I heard of the reformation for the Mission gigs and the acoustic shows, approximately 5 years after they had happened.  Well done me!!! The hastily purchased ‘Acoustic Nights’ CD proved to me that the voice was still in fine working order but having caught up with events, it was a shame to find that for now anyway, there’d be no more… or would there?

Facebook and Twitter have their irritations but one advantage is that you now have no excuse to be out of the loop.  It’s been recently mooted that there may be an All About Eve reunion as it’s 25 years (shit!!!) since the debut album.   Julianne is wrestling with the should we / shouldn’t we question and I totally get that.  On the face of it though, I think that if you have talent and something that people want to see then get back out there.  Twenty years ago I hated all the bands that were dragging the life out of it but age has mellowed that stance.  The bottom line is that if you can do justice to the material then your legacy as a band will be safe so go for it, especially if no one has died and you can get the original band together – hopefully the drum machine has died though.  However, if the reformation prospect fills the artist with dread then I completely understand.  I would hate to be expected to work with people I’d left behind 20 years ago but then, I hated most of them at the time.

So, this is a little story about how my testosterone soaked musical tastes were softened a bit by the introduction of something new to my sonic palette…. I guess the word is ‘beauty’... though there must be a better word than that!!!  Of course, if Julianne had been singing disco shite or some other abysmal genre then I wouldn’t have looked or listened twice (and AAE wouldn’t have been supporting The Mission in the first place) but the combination of her and the band and the songs they were playing was stunning.  She wasn’t the first female singer I’d ever heard of course but the bottom line was that I didn’t like the others and never seen them live. She was the first female singer on any record I’d ever bought and All About Eve opened my ears and encouraged me to branch into other areas and acknowledge that loud guitars and aggression wasn’t the only way to go and there was space for other things.  However, looking at my last few Facebook ‘likes’ brings us The Offspring, The Hives and Public Image Ltd… but it also shows Imelda May who I possibly wouldn’t have given a listen to if it wasn’t for the first female singer I ever really liked.  Julianne Regan and All About Eve were never trendy, either with the music press or with the people I hung out with but they struck a chord with me and it remains struck to this day.  They encouraged me to branch out and were different and for me, that really counts.

Glen de la Cour (July 2012)