One challenge with historic research from before the digital age is finding photos. Today, everyone is photographer, capturing every detail of daily life via mobile phones. But in November 1990, these digital devices were only the dream of tomorrow. When Julee Cruise first played at Symphony Space in her home town of New York City on Nov. 15, the only images I’ve found are through descriptive language found in newspaper articles from the time.
JULEE CRUISE AT SYMPHONY SPACE IN NEW YORK CITY ON NOV. 15, 1990
In the Daily News on Nov. 1, 1990, the Extra Entertainment calendar for November had a brief mention about Julee Cruise performing in concern at Symphony Space on Thursday, Nov. 15, 1990.
Symphony Space is located at 2537 Broadway at 95th Street. Julee’s concert would begin at 8:00 p.m. and tickets were only $18.50. A short calendar listing in “The Times” on Nov. 14 stated she was “featured on the ‘Twin Peaks’ soundtrack.”
Founded by Isaiah Sheffer and Allan Miller, Symphony Space is found on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Today, performances take place in the 760-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theatre (also called Peter Norton Symphony Space) or the 160-seat Leonard Nimoy Thalia, named after the iconic Star Trek actor in 2002 for his generosity as a patron.
The building can trace its history to Vincent Astor who spent $750,000 of his personal fortune on the failed Astor Market between 1915 and 1917. His intention was to sell fruit, meat, fish, produce, and flowers at inexpensive prices, achieved through large economies of scale. Astor sold the market to Thomas J. Healy who demolished the market stalls and converted the main space into the Crystal Palace, a skating rink. The smaller basement area became the restaurant, Sunken Gardens. Both were turned into movie theaters years later with the rink becoming Symphony Theater. In 1931, the restaurant was turned into Thalia Theater.
By the 1970s, this venue was used for boxing and wrestling until playwright and director Isaiah Sheffer and conductor Allan Miller hosted a Wall to Wall Bach, a free 12-hour music festival featuring audience participation, on January 9, 1978. The event was incredibly successful so the duo immediately decided to lease the building and transform it into a permanent cultural venue.
DAILY NEWS: ‘JULEE: WHEN SEX AND SEXLESSNESS COLLIDE’ | NOV. 14, 1990
A day before Julee’s performance at Symphony Space, Daily News reporter Michael Saunders published an interview with the angelic artist titled, “Julee: When sex and sexlessness collide.”
“Like a silky night mist put to music, Julee Cruise’s ethereal voice is the perfect match for the haunting theme of “Twin Peaks,” the ABC-TV hit comic-thriller that dissects the dark and slightly rotten side of small-town life.
Both Cruise and director David Lynch grew up in small towns, a common ground that opened the door to a mutual understanding, Cruise explained. “We clicked right away. My work isn’t as overtly weird as David’s, but I can carry out what he wants.” For proof, listen to Cruise’s penetrating singing Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” a seamy tale of sexual obsession that uses her voice to help lull viewers into an uneasy calm.
Cruise will perform at Symphony Space tomorrow, her first show in New York, her adopted hometown. The show will be all singing, Cruise promises, a nearly continuous hour of flowing music. “I won’t be flying in on wires, no doughnuts, no shtick.”
“Twin Peaks” fans are familiar with the instrumental version of “Falling” that opens the show. Cruise sings the words in the video clip featured on VH-1. She got the chance to take her act directly to “Twin Peaks” during last week’s pivotal episode, appearing as “The Singer” in a smoky roadhouse.
Her first album, the aptly titled “Flying [sic] Into the Night,” was released in August 1989 [ed. note – it was released on Sept. 12, 1989], months before the debut of “Twin Peaks.” The album, produced and partly written by Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, reflects much of the atmospheric quality of the show, Cruise said. No surprise: Both men penned the music for “Twin Peaks.’
“The lyrics lend themselves well to the music,” Cruise said. “They’re sexy and sexless at the same time — sort of quietly, desperately romantic”
All of this is a long way from Creston, Iowa (pop. 8,000), about 75 miles south-west of Des Moines, the small town where Cruise grew up.
Life in Creston was some-thing out of a Rockwell paint-ing. Her father was the town doctor, her mother used to drive her to music lessons.
Her first musical loves were brass instruments. She played several by age 5 and later grew proficient on French horn. She even at-tended Drake University as a French-horn major.
“I was going to go the classical-music route but I didn’t get invited to join the Chicago Symphony,” Cruise said. “I decided to stop playing my horn eight hours a day and look for work as an actress.”
She struggled to find acting and singing work in Minneapolis, then landed a job in New York in the chorus of a country-Western musical.
Soon after arriving in the city, she met Badalamenti, the music director for a small theater in the East Village. They stayed in touch when she moved back to Minneapolis, and he kept her in mind when he began collaborating with Lynch on the music to “Blue Velvet.”
Cruise was asked to recruit singers for a song on the soundtrack, “Mysteries of Love,” but ended up doing it herself when no one else worked out.
The measured precise sound on “Mysteries of Love” and “Falling” is a departure from the stage-tune song-belting she was used to, Cruise said.
She admits being unsure whether the whole moody ef-fect would draw an audience. “I figured [“Floating Into the Night”] would be an album they play at 3 a.m. on some offbeat station,” Cruise said. “I didn’t think it would do as well as it has, nor did I think that “Twin Peaks” would be so popular. It’s a good thing no one listened to me.”
DAILY NEWS: IN THE MOOD WITH JULEE | NOV. 17, 1990
Two days after her performance, Matthew Auerbach wrote about the show in the “Daily News”
“If you saw last week’s episode of “Twin Peaks,” you saw Julee Cruise as the blond nightclub chanteuse with the breathless, little-girl voice singing “Back Inside My Heart.” She played Symphony Space Thursday, and her set was the aural equivalent of the cult TV show.
Cruise’s music, with lyrics by “Twin Peaks” creator David Lynch and music by his partner, Angelo Badalamenti, is an interesting, moody mix of ’50s styles and evocative synthesizers. Picture a combination of Duane Eddy’s trebly, twangy, heavily reverbed guitar with a jazz backup and a synth creating sweeping, almost “windy” lines, then top that with Cruise’s controlled vocals; it’s mood music of the first order.
And that described this show – you had to be in the mood. Yet with everything played at the same tempo and Cruise’s deliberate stage movements more and more stylized, the show, with its introspective tone, became more of a theater piece than a concert.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES: REVIEW / MUSIC; TORCH SONGS WITH ‘TWIN PEAKS’ OVERTONES | NOV. 17, 1990
There was a brief recap in “The New York Times” on Nov. 18, titled, “Review/Music; Torch Songs With ‘Twin Peaks’ Overtones.
“Like almost everything else connected with the television series “Twin Peaks,” its wafting, saccharine background music composed by Angelo Badalamenti has an air of deadpan parody about it. Taking the elementary melodic style of early 1960’s rock-and-roll ballads, Mr. Badalamenti has softened its edges to create a surrealistic elevator music with quasi-symphonic textures that border on kitsch. And in Julee Cruise, the angelic-voiced soprano who sings occasionally on the series, he and David Lynch, the director and lyricist, have found a vocalist whose affectless delivery recalls early rock-and-roll singers at the same time that her tonal purity evokes loftier genres.
Watching Ms. Cruise perform with a five-member band at Symphony Space on Thursday evening, one had the sense that she was playing a role that had been as carefully developed as any of the regular characters on “Twin Peaks.” Wearing a black cocktail dress, which she later exchanged for a red one of similar design, Ms. Cruise looked like an early-60’s party doll viewed through the skewed lens of 90’s fashion.
Rolling her eyes and self-consciously clasping her hands while crooning songs from her debut album, “Floating Into the Night,” which was written and produced by the Badalamenti-Lynch team, she suggested an amusing post-punk caricature of a torch singer. Her detachment was an effective counterbalance for Mr. Lynch’s purple lyrics, in which “love has set our hearts aflame” and “sad dreams blow through dark trees.”
The sense that it was all partly a put-on extended to the band arrangements, which injected marshmallow sweetness with dissonant fanfares that sounded like a stripped-down spoof of film noir soundtrack music.”
I wish I had a photo from this show but nothing has turned up following exhaustive internet searches. The image above was taken by Michel Linssen possibly in early 1991, so it was around the time when Julee performed. Only a handful of days later, Julee would be in the United Kingdom performing “Falling” on the BBC’s “Top of the Pops” on Nov. 22.
If you attended the Symphony Space show in 1990, I’d love to hear your story. Please share in the comments below.
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My friend and I had just finished driving across the country that summer. We camped often and always listened to Julie Cruise around the campfire. We were obsessed with the music, the vibe. I bought tickets to the show, probably at the box office when they went on sale because we sat in row B. I still have the ticket stub. After the show I recognized Badalamenti. My friend and I walked up to him and shook his hand. He was gracious. I miss not having new music from her.