A Star is Born – Julee Cruise’s Interview With Greg Kot from Chicago Tribune, June 17, 1990

Interest in Julee Cruise’s first album “Floating Into The Night” grew exponentially following the success of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks. The album was originally released on Sept. 12, 1989 but once audiences heard her music featured during the show’s first season, she became the talk of the town. On June 17, 1990, former rock music critic Greg Kot spoke with Cruise for his column in the “Chicago Tribune.” As part of Julee in June on Twin Peaks Blog, here is a closer look at their conversation captured in the early days of her success.

WHO IS GREG KOT?

Greg Kot served as the music critic for the “Chicago Tribune,” covering popular music from hip-hop to rock to dream pop artists like Julee Cruise. He also reported on music-related social, political and business issues for the paper. Born in Syracuse, New York, Kot graduated from Marquette University and started his reporting career at the Quad City Times in Davenport, Iowa in June 1978. He then joined the Chicago Tribune in 1980. Ten years later, he became the music critic for the windy city until he took a buy out in 2020.

Kot has also co-hosted the radio show Sound Opinions since its 1993 launch. This syndicated radio program airs on 150 radio stations nationwide and also exists as a weekly podcast. He has authored six books, including acclaimed biographies of Mavis Staples (“I’ll Take You There”) and Wilco (“Learning How to Die”) and a history of the digital music revolution (“Ripped”).

In episode 499 of Sound Opinions, Kot’s co-host Jim Rogatis mentioned Julee Cruise’s “Falling”:

“Recently Jim re-watched David Lynch‘s ’90s  supernatural TV show Twin Peaks. The program uniquely incorporated music to complement its twisted murder-mystery storyline. Singer-songwriter  Julee Cruise frequently offered her vocals to the show’s soundtrack and collaborated with producer Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti on her debut album Floating into the Night. The single ‘Falling,’ featuring Lynch’s haunting lyrics and Badalamenti’s dark composition, was used as the theme song for Twin Peaks throughout its run and remains one of Jim’s favorite tracks.”

A STAR IS BORN – JULEE CRUISE INTERVIEWED BY GREG KOT

Greg spoke with Julee Cruise for his article titled “A star is born” published in the “Chicago Tribune” on June 17, 1990. The article is subtitled, “‘Twin Peaks’ did for Julee Cruise what her record alone couldn’t.”

I love these early interviews with the people who contributed to Twin Peaks as their stories and memories are more fresh.

This article is filled with several insights from the angelic singer about creating her iconic album “Floating Into The Night. Let’s take a closer look.

The photo accompanying the story was taken by David Lynch and used as Julee’s publicity shot for her Freshman album.

It could well be a plot summary of “Blue Velvet,” or perhaps “Twin Peaks”

“It’s all about relationships – inside and outside the company. Famous film directors. Composers. Me. It’s so complicated and giant and strange.”

But it’s actually Julee Cruise, the diminutive musician-actress whose angelic voice has graced the provocative “Blue Velvet” movie and the hit “Twin Peaks” TV series, talking about life with David Lynch.

After being released to critical raves and commercial indifference last year, Cruise’s “Floating Into the Night” (Warner) album has cracked the Top 100 pop charts, thanks in part to the success of “Twin Peaks.”

“Floating Into the Night” provides theme music for the show, and Cruise appeared in an episode of the Lynch-produced series as a roadhouse singer. The album, full of deceptively straightforward romantic lyrics written by Lynch and an alternately lulling and jarring score composed by Angelo Badalamenti, sounds like nothing else in pop music.

Cruise sings in a soft, child-like soprano over a cushion of purring keyboards and percussion, only to have myriad sound effects disrupt the mood: guitars out of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti westerns, early ’60s girl-group choruses and Big Band horns.

It’s not unlike watching a Lynch movie: Just when you think you have a handle on things, something strange and discomforting happens.

“The person singing those songs is very lonesome; in fact, she’s losing her mind,” Cruise said with a laugh.

It’s clear that besides being a mesmerizing singing performance, “Floating Into the Night” is also a first-rate acting job.

“Technically this music is so delicate that it’s a challenge just to sing it,” she said. “But at the same time, it allows me to be more dramatic, more psychotic than if I were just singing ‘Oh, baby, baby’ into the microphone.

“Certain things you can’t overact while you’re singing. This, I can overact and get away with it. I can stylize it.”

Cruise met Lynch after he had hired her friend, Badalamenti, to work on the score of “Blue Velvet” in 1986.

“David wrote the lyrics out on a napkin and gave Angelo a few instructions,” she said. “Angelo wrote the music based on that.”

She rounded up some other singers, none of whom could negotiate the nebulous, free-floating rhythms and subdued, dark textures of the song, “Mysteries of Love.” Finally, she tried it herself.

“There was just the hint of a melody, no breaks in the music, no place for a singer to breathe,” she said. “At first I said I couldn’t do it. I didn’t think I could hold my breath that long.”

But she so impressed Lynch and Badalamenti with her interpretation that they insisted on pushing the project further, into a full album.

While the record deal took shape, Cruise took a job as a Janis Joplin-style singer in a New York play and “completely butchered my vocal cords.”

“I had to hit rock bottom and almost lose my voice b-fore I could learn how to use my voice for this album,” she said.

She also gave up smoking, and as the album progressed, her voice grew stronger. “On half of the album, they had to overdub my voice three or four times to make it sound strong enough,” she said. “But by the last half of the recording, my voice was strong enough to stand on its own.”

This footage from the 1988 documentary, Don’t Look at Me: David Lynch features Julee Cruise in the studio with David Lynch and producer Art Polhemus at Excalibur Studios in New York. Recorded in December 1988, Julee demonstrates how she recorded song for “Floating Into Night.” Kevin Laffey, who was the Warner Bros. Records who signed the trio commented on this video:

“The footage is actually from 1988. We recorded Floating Into The Night that winter at Excalibur near Times Square. The album didn’t come out, though, until September 1989. It was delayed in anticipation of the first season of Twin Peaks in 1990. At least three songs from the album were used in the series, and Julee also appeared in the show to perform them, as you know. I only know because I did A&R for Warner Bros. Records and signed David, Angelo and Julee in 1988. I was there.”

Kot’s “Chicago Tribune” article concludes.

The album’s unique mixture of sounds, its undercurrent of stylized madness, evolved as the three worked together.

“There were times I was worried that it was going to sound too cliched, too bland,” she said. “The track ‘I Remember,’ for example, sounded like something out of a bad soap opera at first. Then, by accident, we came up with these weird synthesizer notes that transformed the song into something credible, something with real bite to it.”

Though critics loved the album, commercial radio didn’t know what to make of it. But the success of “Twin Peaks” has rekindled interest in all things Lynch.

“I wasn’t counting on `Twin Peaks’ changing anything for me,” Cruise said. “I didn’t think it would be a hit except with the black turtleneck crowd.”

The series’ broad-based appeal ensures that a second Cruise album will appear next year (“the same voice but with a different feel”), and that she’ll be singing in the “Twin Peaks” roadhouse next fall.

Though she has risen to the level of collaborator with Lynch, Cruise still remains a fan of his work.

“I turn out all the lights, climb in my favorite chair and watch ‘Twin Peaks’ on Thursday night just like everybody else,” she said. And the notorious “Blue Velvet”? “It frightened and fascinated me,” she said. “It took me somewhere else.” The same could be said for Julee Cruise’s intensely introspective music.