Telegraph Weekend Magazine Interview with Julee Cruise on Jan. 26, 1991

In anticipation of her first concert in England, David Gritten interviewed Julee Cruise for the Telegraph Weekend Magazine on Jan. 26, 1991. This short profile of the voice of love contains some interesting details about her career along with a fantastic black and white photo by Jillian Edelstein.

“FALLING IN WITH THE LYNCH MOB” BY DAVID GRITTEN, JAN. 26, 1991

The Weekend Telegraph magazine was first published on Sept. 25, 1964 as a weekend supplement to the Sunday Telegraph newspaper in the United Kingdom. It later became the Sunday Telegraph magazine.

According to his LinkedIn page, David Gritten worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner from 1983 to 1989, serving as Editor of the Style section until 1986 and as a TV Critic until 1986. From 1990 until 2009, he was the London-based arts correspondent for “The Los Angeles Times.” Gritten was also contracted to the “Daily Telegraph” as a film writer and critic for more than 20 years before resigning his contract in 2014. He is a contributing editor on “Written By,” a highly-regarded monthly magazine for members of the Writers’​ Guild of America West, writing long-form profiles of screenwriters.

In January 1991, he caught up with Julee Cruise for an interview titled “Falling in with the Lynch Mob” which was published on pages 46-47 of the Telegraph Weekend Magazine on January 26. Below is an annotated transcript of the article.

“It is a surprise to learn that Julee Cruise was born on the right side of the tracks, and grew up respectably as the daughter of a doctor in a small town in Iowa. Surprising because she has made her name with a hit record of music from Twin Peaks, writer-director David Lynch’s warped TV soap opera which peels away the sunny, innocent veneer of American small-town life, exposing murderous corruption and squalor beneath.

It is two years since Cruise recorded Floating into the Night, an album of songs by Lynch and Twin Peaks composer Angelo Badalamenti, which was released before the television series was made. Lynch then put three of the songs into the show; one of them, Falling, the series’ theme tune with words, bounced into the UK charts late last year and landed Cruise on Top of the Pops. Next week she will try to repeat the trick with a new single, also taken from the album, called Rockin Back Inside My Heart.

Julee Cruise appeared on “Top of the Pops” on Nov. 22, 1990 where she performed “Falling” in the #11 spot. Created by the BBC, this British record chart television program aired weekly between Jan. 1, 1964 and Jul. 30, 2006.

You can see Julee’s performance in this YouTube video.

Julee Cruise is a key member of the Lynch Mob, as the American media call them — a coterie of actors which includes Dennis Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini. Cruise, who has appeared in a couple of scenes in Twin Peaks billed as The Girl Singer, says: ‘I wanted to be one of David’s company desperately.’ But membership is clearly a mixed blessing, partly because of Lynch’s proprietorial instincts. When she auditioned for an American TV comedy series, Lynch was peeved: ‘We just don’t talk about it. I think he looks at it as a threat. He doesn’t want any of his people to get away from him. There’s a certain possessiveness.’ But it cuts both ways: ‘If David got another blonde singer of my age, I’d be enraged. I’d be threatened and hurt.’

The “Lynch Mob” reference might come from one of the earliest mentions of “Northwest Passage” in The Los Angeles Times from Jan. 29, 1989. This wasn’t the first time that “Lynch Mob” was mentioned in an article related to David Lynch’s work. Pat Berman used the term “Lynch Mob” in his review of Lynch’s Dune in The State on Dec. 21, 1984 – “Lynch mob hangs Herbert’s ‘Dune’ out to dry.”

But the Los Angeles Times mention was more in line with the term used to describe the group of actors (and crew) Lynch regularly used in films. Interesting side note, the report names Mark Frost as “Mark Forest.”

Before she met Lynch the 34-year-old New York-based actress-singer starred in Little Shop of Horrors on Broadway, as well as plays and musicals off-Broadway. Her husband is Edward Grinnan, a Yale graduate, playwright and senior editor on a non-denominational religious magazine in Manhattan. ‘We’ve been married three years,’ she says. ‘No kids yet. We thought we’d wait a couple of years.’

All very sensible. But where is the dark side in all this? Julee Cruise’s appearance demands one: a shock of blonde hair, inquisitive, pointed features, a large red mouth and bright eyes circled by enough mascara to shock Dusty Springfield. Not an average Iowa doctor’s daughter. Then there is Floating Into the Night, an odd assignment, even by Lynch’s standards. He asked Cruise, a throaty Broadway belter, to sing high, clear and breathy, like an angel. She didn’t understand the songs at first: ‘I thought it was antsy elevator music,’ she says.

At first hearing, that is exactly how it sounds, with Cruise’s ethereal, four-octave voice wafting over Badalamenti’s lush yet minimal orchestrations. But on closer inspection Lynch’s lyrics seem to follow a cracked internal logic of their own; the songs re-run naggingly in the listener’s mind, like images from a feverish dream. ‘It’s not just pretty music,’ she agrees. ‘It’s not exactly positive underneath. My husband says that on one song, I Remember, an alto sax comes in and an image comes to his mind of a salesman in a sleazy motel room with a 14-year-old stripper.’

Thus the album complements Twin Peaks; the more one studies Lynch’s evocation of the town’s bucolic surface beauty, the more the unpleasant hidden truths are revealed. ‘Exactly,’ says Cruise. ‘There’s the dark side.’ Her relationship with David Lynch might never have developed; three years ago Cruise nearly lost her voice for good. She was playing raspy soul singer Janis Joplin in an off-Broadway play, smoking almost three packs of cigarettes a day, and realising with alarm her voice was going swiftly downhill.

‘A voice teacher told me I had to be silent for two months or undergo laser surgery.’ She finally gave up smoking, and says otherwise she could not have sung on Floating into the Night: ‘It’s too soft, too contained, too perfect.’

The album sold 40,000 copies in the US when it was first released but sales soared to 250,000 when the television series opened last spring. Now she is set to perform the songs with a five-piece band in a concert at the London Palladium early next month. ‘It’s quite a jump for me,’ she admits. ‘When I did Top of the Pops, I had a feeling of “What am I doing here?” But then I’ve had that feeling ever since I started on the record. Ever since I met David Lynch, actually.’

Rockin Back Inside My Heart is released on Monday.

Julee Cruise appears at the Palladium on February 17.

You can read more about Julee’s performance in London in this Twin Peaks Blog article.

JULEE CRUISE PHOTO BY JILLIAN EDELSTEIN

London based Jillian Edelstein took the photo of Julee Cruise for the publication. She began working as a press photographer in Johannesburg, South Africa. According to her website, she attended the LCC photojournalism course after graduating The University of Cape Town with a degree in Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology Social Work.

Jillian’s portraits have appeared internationally in publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The FT Weekend Magazine, Vanity Fair, Interview, Vogue, Port, The Guardian Weekend, The Sunday Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Forbes, GQ and Esquire.

I’ve been unable to find a better version of this image online, which may make this image the only copy from the early days of Julee’s career.