Julee Cruise Interviewed for The Boston Globe, June 1, 1990

In homes across the United States in spring 1990, Julee Cruise’s voice floated through the air each week when ABC Television aired David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks aired on Thursday nights. The show rocketed her to stardom and newspapers were clamoring to talk with this angelic performer. On June 1, 1990, Boston Globe Reporter Jim Sullivan published his interview with Julee titled, “Julee Cruise: Beyond ‘Twin Peaks.’ Here’s a closer look at that story along with a black and white photograph taken by a legendary rock ‘n’ roll photographer

THE BOSTON GLOBE, “JULEE CRUISE: BEYOND ‘TWIN PEAKS'” | JUNE 1, 1990

From 1979 to 2005, Jim Sullivan was a music journalist reporting about music and pop culture for The Boston Globe. He is also the author of the two-volume “Backstage & Beyond: 45 Years of Classic Rock Chats and Rants,” a collection of his interviews with musicians (find the books HERE). Today, Sullivan is a Music Writer for WBUR.org. In 1990, he spoke with Julee on May 30 while she was at the Parker House in Boston, known today as the Omni Parker House.

Julee Cruise is not the ethereal new-age waif she sounds like on her debut album, “Floating Into the Night,” or looks like on TV, as the nightclub singer in “Twin Peaks.” “Maybe people are disappointed when they meet me,” muses Cruise, who was in town at the Parker House Wednesday. “I’m like this McDonald’s counter girl, a ’50s sort of girl with lots of makeup.”

Disappointed? No way. Cruise, guest of honor at a Warner Bros. party later that night at M-80, is a gas. She’s done standup comedy, wants to act on Broadway, has a four-octave range, owns a 14-year-old dog named Rudi, participates in anti-crack rallies in her Manhattan-bordering-on-Chelsea neighborhood, wears torn T-shirts when not in black cocktail dresses and sings mu-sic, she says, “for the black turtle-neck crowd.” She also confesses to being afraid of virtually everything – she’ll vomit before performing – and has a special fear of the monsters that lurk in bathroom drains. “I’m a tortured soul,” she sighs. “This girl has some pretty dark, deep thoughts.”

Cruise’s album – a collaboration with “Twin Peaks” co-creator David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti – is on the charts, having sold 65,000 copies, nearly all of which sold after the “Twin Peaks” phenomenon. “This is an overnight sensation,” she says, “right out of left field.”

Lynch, Badalamenti and Cruise are a team. “I’m the actor, the interpreter,” Cruise says. Badalamenti does the music, Lynch the words and visuals. Like everyone involved with Lynch, she treasures “the dark thread running through someone who appears to be normal.”

Cruise, who jumped at the chance to appear on the infamous Andrew Dice Clay “Saturday Night Live” show when Sinead O’Connor backed out in protest, says she was encouraged to do so by her friend and show boycotter Nora Dunn. Of Clay, Cruise says, “I don’t necessarily find his work amusing; he just doesn’t threaten me in any way.”

Right now, Cruise is getting used to fame. “I was in Soho the other day having brunch with my husband and three people came up to me and said ‘Are you Julee Cruise?’ and I thought, ‘Did I wait on you once? How do you know me? Did my husband put you up to this?’ Then, you feel embarrassed and think, ‘God, I’m not that important, are you making fun of me?’ ”

Expect a tour late summer/early fall.

JULEE CRUISE’S HEADSHOT BY ERIC ANTONIOU

Julee’s black and white headshot in the Sullivan’s article was taken by Eric Antoniou, a Greek immigrant who began shooting for the newspaper while still a student the New England School of Photography. He launched a Go Fund Me page in support of Rock to Baroque, a stunning 240-page tribute to legendary live performances, featuring icons like David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Johnny Cash, Leonard Bernstein, Frank Sinatra, B.B. King, Dizzy Gillespie, Bob Dylan, Donna Summer, Kurt Cobain, and many others.

Former Global journalist Jim Sullivan along with Jon Garelick, Lloyd Schwartz, and Ted Drozdowski provided insightful captions.

A donation helps fund the design, production, printing, and exhibition of Rock to Baroque.

The book’s cover features an image of another star from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, David Bowie. It’s unclear if Julee’s Globe article photo is in Eric’s book. I would love an original copy since I’ve not found another example of it via internet searches.

JULEE CRUISE ON SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE ON MAY 12, 1990

Julee’s appearance on Saturday Night Live on May 12, 1990 took place between the airing of Twin Peaks episodes 1.005 (May 10) and 1.006 (May 17).

Cruise stepped in to fill the spot held by Sinead O’Connor who backed out of performing on Wednesday, May 9. Rehearsals were already in progress for the Saturday night broadcast which means Julee only had a handful of days to prepare for the show.

By this time, “Falling” was heard in households across the nation as viewers pondered the question, “Who killed Laura Palmer?” While the song appeared on her 1989 album “Floating Into The Night,” it would be about another month until her vocal rendition of the “Theme to Twin Peaks” would be released as a single on Tuesday, June 12 (Tuesdays used to be the day for all new music releases in the early 1990s).

As for Cruise getting on the show, she told Barry Walters from the San Francisco Examiner in a June 15, 1990 article that she begged a Warner Bros. executive to get on the show after hearing Sinead dropped out. I wonder if that executive was Kevin Laffey who originally signed Lynch and Cruise.

“When I heard the news,” Cruise recalls, “I woke up a Warner Bros. executive and begging him to get me on the show. Nora [Dunn] called me up sort of embarrassed, but she could not deny I was making the best move I possibly could I thought Clay would lash out at me, since I told the New York Post I didn’t think he was funny. But believe me, honey, 20-million viewers was all I cared about.”

Dunn, a good friend of Cruise, had backed out of performing on Saturday Night Live earlier that week on Monday, May 7.

JULEE CRUISE ON TOUR IN FALL 1990

Sullivan’s Globe article closes with a mention of a tour in late summer/early fall. Thanks to a post from Fickle-Garage-8441 on Reddit in 2022, it appears Julee Cruise did tour in 1990.

I found a listing for “Julee Cruise – The Music of Twin Peaks” held on Nov. 12 at 9:00 p.m. in Gaston Hall on the campus of Georgetown University.

This was the program from that Georgetown Concert. I need to dig deeper to find more about this concert. Interestingly, she performed two days after the iconic Twin Peaks episode 2.007 aired on ABC, where we heard both “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart” and “The World Spins.” What I’d give to attend that show in 1990!

I love finding these early articles about Julee Cruise and Twin Peaks as they contain long forgotten details of my favorite show.