Julianne Regan (born 30 June 1962, Coventry) - singer, song writer, guitarist, bass guitarist and keyboard player, is best known for being the lead singer of the band, All About Eve.
Regan moved to London at the age of 19 and found work as a journalist for music magazine Zig Zag, while also studying at the London College of Fashion. In her capacity as a journalist she was given the task of interviewing Gene Loves Jezebel and then subsequently joined that band on bass guitar...
All About Eve (first era) (1985-1992)
The first line-up of the group hit the studio in 1985 to record the first single "D For Desire", but following a falling out between Zwingmann and Regan, the former left the band. Soon after this Andy Cousin replaced Jackson on bass, thus creating the first well-known All About Eve line-up of Bricheno, Cousin and Regan, plus a drum machine. The group recorded demos and played several well-received gigs.
In 1986 Regan met a girl known to the wider world only as "Crazy Rachael" and her boyfriend ex-The Sisters of Mercy guitarist Wayne Hussey. Hussey was at the time recording the first Mission album God's Own Medicine and was so impressed with Regan's voice that he asked her to contribute backing vocals to the song "Severina". This started a close collaboration between the two bands that continues to this day, and at the time got All About Eve signed to the Mission's record label (on the back of them being support to the Mission's first tour and Regan appearing on several TV programmes with the Mission for performances of "Severina"). Regan also provides backing vocals on The Mission song "Wishing Well", which appears on the US version of their early songs collection album The First Chapter.
During production of the first, eponymous, All About Eve album, Regan formed a relationship with Simon Hinkler, guitarist with the Mission. Meanwhile a full-time drummer Mark Price was recruited to the band in 1988: he would go on to marry Regan's sister and also have a child, Joe (born 1990).
All About Eve soon hit the big-time with the first album and the single "Martha's Harbour" both going Top 10 along with four other Top 40 singles between the summers of 1988 and 1989. Fame, however, did not seem to sit all that well with Regan. She broke up with Hinkler, a situation which inspired Hussey to pen Mission song "Butterfly on a Wheel": this song is often viewed as a direct response to All About Eve's song "Scarlet", even though it contains references to several others. A short time later, Regan started a relationship with her own guitarist, Bricheno.
It was the collapse of her relationship with Bricheno that plagued the recording of the second album Scarlet and Other Stories. It is on record that Regan suffered something of a breakdown during this time and would later say "I don't think I've wept as often in my life as I did during the making of Scarlet and Other Stories." Understandably therefore, the lyrics to the songs on this album reflect the unhappiness of their author, particularly in "Scarlet", "December", "Drowning" (the B-side to "December") "Pieces of Our Heart", "Road to Your Soul" and "Only One Reason".
With Regan and Bricheno unable to speak to each other, the latter left the band at the end of 1990 (and join The Sisters of Mercy), to be replaced by Church guitarist Marty Willson-Piper. Two songs, "Strange Way" and "Farewell Mr Sorrow", from All About Eve's third album, Touched By Jesus, are concerned with the end of this relationship: however this was not an entirely bitter work for she would also write the concluding song, "Are You Lonely?" for her father.
Touched By Jesus did not quite enjoy the commercial success of the first two albums and All About Eve subsequently changed record labels to MCA in 1992. Here they were to record their fourth (and final) studio album Ultraviolet - a somewhat psychedelic move in which, as Regan later admitted, her vocals were mixed too far down into the swirling guitars, with the net result sounding something akin to Cranes or Spiritualized. This alienated fans, and the record did not make the Top 40. MCA ditched the group, and they split up in early 1993.
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