Julee Cruise at the London Palladium on Feb. 17, 1991

Following the success of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks, Julee Cruise went on tour performing songs from her 1989 album, “Floating Into The Night” in late 1990. On February 17, 1991, she held a one-night-only show at the famed London Palladium. While I’ve been unable to locate any photos from this show, I have uncovered plenty of reviews and other details from this special night with the voice of love.

JULEE CRUISE LIVE AT THE PALLADIUM IN LONDON | ADVERTISEMENTS

For the first time ever, Julee Cruise would bring the music of Twin Peaks to the United Kingdom with a performance at the London Palladium on Sunday, Feb. 17, 1991.

The Grade II* West End theatre, located at 8 Argyll Street, London, in Soho, was designed by Frank Matcham and opened on Dec. 26, 1910. Hundreds of performers have played in the auditorium that holds 2,286 people.

An advertisement for Julee’s one-off show first appeared in The Independent on Jan. 4, 1991. The band Faith Over Reason were advertised as special guests, which some papers confused with the band Faith No More whose song “Epic” was at the top of the charts in the early 1990s.

Faith Over Reason was a short lived band fronted by Moira Margaret Lambert who went on to perform with Saint Etienne. This band released two albums and three EPs in the early 90s on the London-based label Big Cat. Hearing their song “Blind,” one could see why they were paired with Julee Cruise at the Feb. 17 concert.

Another ad for the show appeared in The Guardian on Jan. 17, 1991.

The Independent ran this ad on Jan. 27, 1991. Paul Charles formed a promotion agency, Asgard, with associate Paul Fenn. Their first big signings were English punk bands Radio Stars and the Buzzcocks. Today, Charles is still in the promotions game with performers such as Tom Waits, Ray Davies, Waterboys, Nick Lowe, Ronnie Spector, Ani DiFranco and others.

The NME advertisement from Feb. 16, 1991 includes a photo of Julee taken by David Lynch.

JULEE CRUISE LIVE AT THE PALLADIUM IN LONDON | PRE-CONCERT PRESS

Bruce Dessau wrote about Julee Cruise’s upcoming show at the London Palladium in the Feb. 14 edition of “The Guardian.”

“It seems the Gulf War has scared mere American superstars away from Europe but it takes more than that to put off David Lynch’s bizarre menagerie of pop icons. Chris Isaak tours in March and this Sunday Julee Cruise arrives for a one-off show.

The spectral vocalist, last seen singing in Twin Peaks, may laugh in the face of terrorism but she does have an inordinate fear of plug-holes. One of the less curious Cruise-facts is that she alleg-edly hasn’t taken a bath for over 20 years. This has, however, had little effect on the purity of tier music.

Her debut album, Floating In The Night, may have been largely written by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti but Lynch’s muse has proved herself to be a singer of some mettle. Her gossamer vocals barely skim across the sultry jazz and pervert’s blues soundtrack yet, like fairy rings, they never fail to leave their mark.

Following her Twin Peaks cameo in the Road House, her gig at the London Palladium should provide a more suitably graceful setting for this unique singer. Dare we say it, a damn fine prospect. Juice Cruise plays the London Palladium on Sunday.”

It’s interesting to note that Chris Isaak would visit London in March 1991 before he was cast as Special Agent Chet Desmond in Lynch’s 1992 film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

Joseph Gallivan offered another preview for “The Independent” on the day of the concert. The show was reported to begin at 7:30 p.m. and it appears some seats were still available.

“JULEE CRUISE, the shock-haired “Girl Singer” in David Lynch’s pseudo-soap Twin Peaks, is taking her UK debut seriously. She has given up a 60-a-day cigarette habit to ensure that her astonishing four-octave voice will survive her one-off London Palladium performance tonight.

Formerly a ‘belter’ (she played the part of a lusty Janis Joplin off-off-Broadway), Lynch’s lyrics and Angelo Badalamenti’s Martian-style arrangements demand that she reduce her voice to an intense ethereal whisper. Cruise, who sang the two most preposterous songs in Lynch’s Blue Velvet, is known in Britain for her single ‘Falling’ which was one of the Twin Peaks themes with words, and for her acclaimed album Floating Into The Night (WEA). She found that the only way to convey the wistful yearning of these naive love songs was with that spaced-out teeny tremelo. It’s all very good on CD, but can only be done live once in a blue moon, such are the demands even on cleaned-up vocal chords.

In performance, Cruise draws heavily on Lynch’s big-bucks surrealist style. In his music video Industrial Symphony No 1 she sings dressed in a white party frock dangling from wires 40 feet up, while a salaryman floats by and a topless girl embraces an old automobile. Such perversity almost certainly won’t be visited upon the Palladium, but Cruise will be wear-ing a space-age outfit. At 33, she might still be just the ribbon on the Lynch package, but her extraordinary voice should ensure there is life after musicals and soaps.”

JULEE CRUISE LIVE AT THE PALLADIUM IN LONDON | FEB. 17, 1991 CONCERT

Thanks to concert attendee John Collins, here is a look at the ticket stub from Cruise’s one-night show. It appears seats may have cost about £11.50.

Thanks to long-time Twin Peaks fan Pete Vilmur, below is an updated set list from Julee’s performance. The listing from Setlist.fm is currently incorrect:

• I Float Alone (Setlist.fm states “Floating” was first)
• The Nightingale
• Blue Velvet (Arthur Prysock cover – he published the original, not the more famous Bobby Vinton version)
• The ‘In’ Crowd (Dobie Gray cover) / Kool Kat Walk [mash-up]
• Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart
• The World Spins
• Floating
• Falling
• Mysteries of Love [Encore]

It’s interesting to note that “Kool Kat Walk” contained the lyrics eventually heard on “The Voice of Love” released in Oct. 1993.  An instrumental version of this song appeared on the soundtrack to David Lynch’s Wild At Heart. Pete said, “She basically stuck [Kool Kat Walk] right in the middle of “In Crowd,” with that song introducing and closing the cue. This could mean Julee was already working on new material for her sophomore album as early as Feb. 1991.

Andrew Sheriff from the U.K. band Chapterhouse attended the show on Feb. 17. He offered a tidbit about the performance in “Sounds” on Mar. 23, 1991: “I mean, I went to see Julee Cruise at the Palladium. Everyone was just seated, and she was just singing. She wasn’t dancing up and down, and the music wasn’t particularly energetic, but that kind of force. . . It was so much more powerful than any band I’ve seen this year.”

YouTube user BossGotheric posted this video of Julee Cruise performing “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart” live in London. The video and performance isn’t dated so I’m assuming this is from the 1991 show.

It appears there was a broadcast of the show at 10:00 on Saturday, April 6, 1991 via Radio 1 in the U.K. I would love to find a full recording of the broadcast but it’s highly likely it doesn’t exist and the YouTube video above is the only artifact that remains.

JULEE CRUISE LIVE AT THE PALLADIUM IN LONDON | REVIEWS

Max Bell offered a review in the “Evening Standard” on Feb. 18 titled “Spine-tingler in Stilettos.”

“The Peaks freaks were out in force for Julee Cruise’s Palladium debut—a surprisingly low-key event in the circumstances. There were no donuts on sale in the foyer, no coffee either, but the folks had dressed up and that’s important.

Ms Cruise is perhaps too mature to be labelled a David Lynch acolyte, though she is definitely his mouthpiece. Lynch’s coolly effective text and the of-ten disturbing scores of Angelo Badalamenti pro-vided the hard core of a concert in which the singer was paramount, a study, in perfect concentration from the tips of her painted nails to the points of her stilettos.

Entering to the sombre, cloud-swept chordings of the main Peaks theme, Cruise unravelled a set drawn from her Floating Into The Night album with a few chilling electronic treatments from the Industrial Symphony Number 1. Sadly, she didn’t materialise in mid-air on a harness wearing that sugar-plum fairy dress, but there was the bonus of Blue Velvet to get lost in, a hypnotic reading of The World Spins and a spine-tingling I Remember. A good night for little red birds.”

The Daily Telegraph‘s Chris Heath offered this review on Feb. 19.

“Life has been kind to Julee Cruise. Until she was sucked into the eerie, and these days exceedingly fashionable, world of film director David Lynch, she was a jobbing singer in New York whose chances of individual stardom seemed long pant.

Her new career started when, during the filming of his psycho-drama Blue Velvet, Lynch sent the composer Angelo Badalamenti a short poem on the back of an envelope with the instructions: ‘Make it like the waves of the ocean. Make the music like a beautiful wind and like the song chanting through time. And cosmic.’

Badalamenti set to work and came up with the haunting song Mysteries of Love. He found his singer, Ms Cruise, in the chorus of an off-Broadway musical and instructed her to substitute her normal belting voice with one of angelic frailty. The combination of Lynch’s lyrics, Badalamenti’s echoey tune and Cruise’s wispy vocals worked gloriously.

Then came Lynch’s TV soap opera, Twin Peaks. Cruise’s song entitled Falling was a hit late last year after the instrumental version was used as the Twin Peaks theme (she also plays the character Girl Singer in the soap).

At the London Palladium, for her first British performance, one feared that Cruise would make the mistake of thinking it was her, and not the strange persona her sponsors had created, that had drawn the audience. But from the moment she wandered on to the stage like a lost, bewildered ballerina, her ghostly white face bathed in icy blue light, it was clear that she knew what to do. Faithfully she reproduced her haunting records, interspersed with the occasional associated cover version like Bobby Vin-ton’s Blue Velvet.

The only problem, and hardly one she could help, was that she was there at all. On record, she becomes a highly effective disembodied voice. If you lent back into your comfortable Palladium seat and shut your eyes you could still savour that spooky flavour.”

In “Peaks and Throughs” by Lloyd Bradley for “The Independent” on Feb. 19, he offered more insight about Cruise’s first-ever performance in Britain. It appears Faith Over Reason performed for 40 minutes before Julee took the stage.

“The support band for Julee ‘the girl singer in Twin Peaks’ Cruise announced themselves, with a worrying absence of irony, as Faith Over Reason. After 40 minutes of watching their pretty, intense girl singer hugging her-self and her acoustic guitar in a series of pretty, intense neo-folk-meets-U2 songs, largely about the sky, Palladium punters were get-ting restless. They wanted weirdness, damn it. If not an unexplained dwarf or two, then something considerably stranger than this. But when Cruise took the stage, few were disappointed. The weirdometer went past the red line.

Opting for hair tamed into (almost) a flicked-up peroxide bob and a twee, black cocktail frock, with her five-piece band favouring matching cinema usher-style purple jackets, set off by fascinatingly horrible white shirts and dark ties, the effect was of a 1950s Madison Avenue executive’s wife, white-slaved into a sleazy cabaret somewhere. Meanwhile the three key boards shrouded in heavy black drapes. the queasy blue lighting, Cruise’s jerky moves and the organ-heavy arrangements gave the impression that if Dr Phibes had been born much later, his steam-driven machines might have looked and sounded like this.

The eerie Floating into the Night album occupied the set, and translating it into live performance was never going to be easy. Angelo Badalamenti’s ethereal arrangements and Cruise’s un-nerving, breathy, Betty Boopish intoning of David Lynch’s ludicrous lyrics was a combination born for the studio. Yet it was put across to staggering effect and it was Cruise’s voice that made it possible.

Apparently four octaves in range and schooled in the power-dependent world of stage musicals, it had the force to hover above the swelling keyboards with enough in reserve still to sound fragile — like a frightened little girl trapped in a world of enforced melancholy. The band concentrated on seemingly straight doo-wop or Fifties-style hipster jazz arrangements, but with exactly enough woozily tremeloed guitar, discordant sax or spooky key-board chords to make it genuinely alarming. Indeed, while the al-bum blends these ingredients and makes them sound somehow sexy, tonight such songs as ‘Falling and Floating’ were janglingly pitiful. Most remarkable was a surreal rendition of ‘Blue Velvet’ that took the song to a pitch redo-lent of shattered dreams.

It was a faultless show, largely because, unlike her lyrical sponsor. Cruise had eased up on the usual strangeness. Her videos have appeared so well-Lynched that it distracted from what was being presented, but here every-thing seemed that bit weirder be-cause it was so deadpan, though tweaked just out of whack. As she walked off stage, Cruise’s parting gesture was probably the evening’s oddest action: a cheery grin and a perky thumbs-up. Could it be that this nightmare version of Doris Day is, underneath it all, a bit of a laugh? Weird.”

Pete provided an image of an article by Bob Stanley for “Melody Maker” published on Feb. 23, 1991 that recapped the concert.

A photo of Julee Cruise by Stephen Sweet accompanied the story.

“The sound of suburban Surrey is an odd but intriguing choice as support for Julee Cruise’s lone British appearance. Contrast and compare: on the one hand we have David Lynch’s Martian soul music, on the other, Moira Lambert’s pressed-flower folk, no artificial additives. But being a moody bunch of sods, Faith Over Reason conjure up some atmosphere. Amid a crate-load of new songs, a couple are quite startling. One is untitled and relies on an Opal-like hypnotic wash of organ and interstellar electric guitar, while ‘Slowfall’ marries waltz-time acoustic niceties with a thunderous chorus, Moira teasing ‘Taste so good I could eat you, you drive me wild’. The switch from The Falcon to The Palladium seems natural enough, and, the cold nervous croak aside, this was a triumph. Just one thing’s not right- if the band are so adamant they don’t want to be treated as Moira plus three backing musicians, why do the others dress in black and refuse to look at the audience? Lighten up, laddies.

While Moira Lambert is a teenager who gives the impression of having seen and done everything several times over, Julee Cruise is a middle-aged session singer who, for the sake of a demented film director, has been coerced into singing like a 14-year-old innocent. And that voice takes centre-stage tonight. None of the tricks used in Lynch’s ‘Industrial Symphony No 1’ video (Julee hanging 40 feet in the air singing in a white party frock) are employed tonight, not even the promised ‘space age’ dress. Instead there are four backing musicians, all looking emotionless as possible in matching burgundy jackets: imagine a swing version of Kraftwerk. Julee sports a bouffant and an economical black dress, a cross between a schoolma’am and the radiator girl from ‘Eraserhead’. Motion Incorporated would not have been the ideal support band. Apart from the odd hand and face movements from Jules, visually this is the whole trip. Within three minutes you have nothing else to concentrate on but the music.

No bad thing, of course. Julee had to put on hold her 60-a-day cigarette habit to get her voice in shape for this show, the result being that her voice sounds more wispy and squeaky-clean than it does on CD, affected but effective. The songs – all of the ‘Floating Into The Night’ album is played – has a similar, unnerving approach. It’s a trick used in the best horror films – throw in something as absurdly innocent as a child’s toy and it assumes supernatural creepiness. Lynch and Badalamenti use the milk’n’cookies appeal of Fifties high school ballads, add a few subtle industrial whirs and diminished chords and create a music that’s as eerie as hell. Look at it a certain way- the poker-faced musicians, the corny Casiotone drum patterns – and this is as comical and exaggerated as Raw Sex. Look at it another, and the understatement of ‘The World Spins’ is as tearful and moving as the most wracked Roy Orbison song. The undercurrent of humour comes to the fore with a cover of Dobie Gray’s ‘(I’m In With) The In Crowd’, surely a comment on the Lynch connection. But the highlight is an encore of the awesome ‘Mysteries Of Love’ from ‘Blue Velvet’ with Julee, now in red dress and red shoes, conducting her three-piece synthesiser orchestra. Mesmeric, plastic, beautiful, artificial, magical. And none of those words were insults. Very special.”

Pete also provided an image of the “New Musical Express” article by Terry Staunton published on Feb. 23, 1991 titled, “Torched by the Hand of Odd.”

There is an additional photo of Julee in her black dress taken by Tim Pato. The article opens with a quote from Deputy Hawk from Twin Peaks episode 1.004, his poem about his girlfriend Diane Shapiro.

“One woman can make you fly like an eagle, another can give you the strength of a lion. But only one in the cycle of life can fill your heart with wonder, and the wisdom that you have known a singular joy.”

“A GIRL with a trembling lip and a guitar with a tremelo arm. A sparse stage shrouded in darkness, with a hint of dry ice floating above. Jet black sheets are draped across keyboards and music stands. The visual presentation has been planned with cinematic precision, and David Lynch is never very far away.

The music of Angelo Badalamenti and the voice of Julee Cruise were brought together initially to provide evocative sounds to accompany Lynch’s images, but tonight they emerge from their celluloid chrysalis to become something very special and individual.

Cruise is so much more than mere soundtrack music. She is a consummate visual performer with the same mesmeric qualities as Elizabeth Fraser or Mary Margaret O’Hara. But where the latter possesses a kind of unhinged spontaneity, Julee Cruise’s performance is much more contrived and carefully choreographed.

Like android head waiters, her five-piece band wear well-tailored suits but not the hint of an expression. Then, once the ice cold and clinical scene is set. Cruise strolls on stage and wraps her velvet voice around the microphone. For the next hour or so 2,000 pairs of eyes have only one place to look. They’re transfixed, trapped, helpless; held prisoner by their fascination with one frail woman.

Cruise is a vision of ash blonde hair and ivory skin, wearing a dark, funeral prom dress, like some afterlife Barbie doll. Her arms wave gently to the music, perfectly symmetrical; each movement caressing the space around her. Its vogueing at its most vague, but nobody is here to dance and Julee is here to entrance.

To fully reproduce the magic and wonder of her ‘Floating Into The Night’ album, Cruise indulges heavily in vocal trickery and there is perhaps a slight over-reliance on backing tapes. That’s not to say that tonight’s show is a carbon copy of her finest recorded moments. There are a few surprises, although the influence of David Lynch is evident throughout.

She sings ‘Blue Velvet’ to remind us exactly where we heard her first, and it neatly slips into a curious and highly original reading of Dobie Gray’s ‘The In Crowd’, accompanied by a robotic bossa nova dance.

Cruise relishes the role of torch singer on the more recent Lynch/Badalamenti number ‘Up In Flames’, first performed by Koko Taylor in Wild At Heart. Julee mourns the loss of her man with all the pain and suffering of an albino Billie Holiday.

The spell is broken only once, when Cruise forsakes the reverb button and introduces her band. We’re reminded that there is actually a human being behind this aural splendour. Similarly, Cruise endears herself to us when the backing tapes for the ‘Mysteries Of Love’ encore fail to start. Once the temporary glitch is corrected, she gives us a wink and an almost inaudible giggle before mock conducting the band for the remainder of the song.

Whether she personally has the invention and inspiration to build on what Lynch has already achieved for her remains to be seen. The director may opt to channel his maverick talents in other directions in the future, and it will be up to Cruise to prove that she is more than a were receptacle for one of his flights of fancy.

Time will answer that for us in due course. Right now, however, Julee Cruise is one of the most stunning and captivating artists around, effortlessly filling our hearts with wonder. A most singular joy.”

I found one final review by Darren Cook published a few weeks later in the “Record Mirror” on Mar. 2, 1991.

“Gliding onstage to a smooth, smoochy jazz backing, Julee puts her right hand to her ear, affects an expression that lies between agony and ecstasy and opens her mouth. What issues forth is sweet and lovely but tinged with sadness. ‘I Float Alone’ opens this one-off live performance.

Aided skillfully by five suitably cool musicians who recreate Angelo Badalamenti’s smokey arrangements to perfection, the peroxide-bobbed pixie from beyond whispers her way through some choice material. Singles ‘Falling’ and ‘Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart’, as well as The World Spins’, are faithfully rendered, but it’s the non-album material that glitters darkest – music from “Wild At Heart’, ‘Industrial Symphony No.1’ adding all-important texture.

‘I wore Blue Velvet’ she sings with that strange look on her face, explaining later that she’s ‘In With The In Crowd’ whilst doing the Cool Cat Walk’. Occasional violent instrumental bursts add contrast to a laid-back performance, the person in the next seat covering her ears and grimacing at one point – perversity reminiscent of – shhhh – David Lynch Ltd.

A smoochy blue celebration of eternal love as well as a jazzy requiem to the lost variety, this show was disappointingly low-key at the time but, oddly enough, haunting the next day. Love is…”

I wish I could find photos from Cruise’s one-off show. If you attended this event, I’d love to hear about your experience. Please share in the comments below.

June 8, 2025 at 7:27 p.m. – This story was updated with two articles and two photos from Julee Cruise’s concert shared by Pete Vilmur. Thanks, Pete!