It’s an easy mistake to make, imagining that Julee Cruise might have a personality as serene and otherworldly as her singing. Not only has her actual voice aged into a wine whose label reads “Takes No Shits,” after years of onstage experience, she often speaks with a bracing candor. “The majority of the U.S. does that line-dancing stuff and listens to country,” says Cruise, calling from her home in the Berkshires. “They don’t know who the fuck I am. And I don’t want to know them, either.”
Born in Creston, Iowa, the 61-year-old Cruise has led the life of a Renaissance woman: She is a renowned singer, multi-instrumentalist, actress of both stage and screen, former touring member of the B-52’s, pilot, and dog trainer. She recorded two gorgeous and haunting dream-pop albums with David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti: 1989’s Floating into the Night and 1993’s The Voice of Love, the latter of which has recently been reissued. She also cut two highly underrated albums on her own: 2002’s The Art of Being a Girl and 2011’s My Secret Life. Both records steer away from the ethereal qualities of her early music to embrace an earthier, playful sound that’s rooted in lounge jazz and electronica.
It is her work on Lynch’s “Twin Peaks,” though, as the disembodied voice soundtracking key moments (and the occasional Roadhouse singer) that made her something of an underground icon. As detailed in Martin Aston’s Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD, Cruise’s artistic alliance with Lynch and Badalamenti was a happy accident. Unable to get the rights to This Mortal Coil’s celestial cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” to use in his 1986 film Blue Velvet, Lynch enlisted Badalamenti to create a new song that had a similarly ethereal vibe. Both Cruise and Badalamenti were New York theater veterans; performing in a Janis Joplin stage revue at the time, Cruise was approached by Badalamenti. It was then that she turned her brassy belting into a voice floating eternally in the astral plane.
Cruise’s close association with “Twin Peaks” has garnered an intense interest in the singer from the show’s fans, which is one of the reasons why she leads a somewhat reclusive life. “I get a lot of stalkers,” she says. Cruise isn’t exactly easy to reach, either, but when we finally did, she opened up about her music, her “big brother” Lynch, and her preferred final resting place.
Julee Cruise: Well, my back is narrowing because of the lupus. And the steroids make your bones crumble—I had the bones of an 85-year-old woman at 33! It’s hard to walk right because I’ve got a pinched nerve running down my right leg. So I take mega amounts of anti-inflammatories. It’s going to give me liver cancer before I ever die of kidney failure from lupus. I’m fucked either way, but I still look great [laughs].
I decided to retreat because I hadn’t stopped since I was three. I don’t have anyone to impress anymore: Mom’s gone, Dad’s gone. I thought, why am I doing this? I’m a clown for a living, basically. I love being onstage; I don’t love having to go in to Bucharest and trying to explain to the sound guy what to do.
I record once in awhile if it’s a really good one or if I believe in something and get to work with someone who will give me a challenge. But if you fuck with me, I will sue you. I mean it, I will take your toothbrush. I’m really good at pushing lawyers around, let me tell you… But right now, I’m interested in the big challenge of delving into covers.
I’m not telling you [laughs]. They’re ones that no one wants to touch. But you either fall on your ass or you soar; I’d rather give it a try than not.
I still need to watch this new season—I haven’t seen it. But, um, I didn’t want to do any interviews for it. I didn’t want to go to any of the goddamn fan things like I had for years and years and years. But I do love the Seattle event. The last time I went was like a year ago and they treated me like a queen. I had the best audience of my life—they were so appreciative. There was a couple there, shivering in the alley as I was sitting inside, you know, drinking a Diet Coke. They waited so long in the rain for me to come out to the bus. Through tears, they said: “You’re the sound. You’re the soundtrack to our lives.” I don’t want that responsibility.
It’s like I’m his little sister: you don’t like your older brother telling you what to do. David’s foppish. He can have these tantrums sometimes. And have you ever seen his temper? Anybody can look funny when they get mad. But I love him.
I knew David when he didn’t have cameras on him at all times to record his life. The first thing he said to me was, “I have $700,000 in the bank.” This was after Blue Velvet. Angelo and I had just done that song [for the movie], “Mysteries of Love.” When David came into the studio [for Floating into the Night], it made a big difference. It was really a great team because Angelo and I are so malleable and so good at being chameleons. If you want me to sing a high A flat, I’ll do it. If you want me to weigh 80 pounds, I’ll do it. I’m an actor, I’m a musician, I’m a writer. I’m anything anybody wants me to be and I’m going to be the best there is.
I think Floating into the Night is one of the best albums, front to back. It’s beautiful and I’m so proud of it. And I didn’t do it—I played my instrument and I interpreted it. David is such a great lyricist. To do simplicity is the hardest thing. “The things I touch are made of stone/Falling through the night alone.”—it’s simplicity in such a beautiful way.
It was lots of fun, but it also turned into a boys’ club. There was a lot of things that now I could go, “Hey, wait a minute. You can’t say that to me.” Our guitar player, Vinnie Bell, said that he had a wet dream about me. I wanted him out, right away. I thought he was a creep.
Yes, but it’s not really about David or Angelo. It’s about how we’re perceived as women and also how we love women. It’s about how I watched my predecessors fight: Madonna, Kim Gordon, Kate Pierson—who is a god and a force to be reckoned with. We’re not followers, we’re front-runners. I came out of the womb with my fists.
Second album syndrome. It sounds like soup and the songs are bad. They put on too much fucking reverb. They did it in L.A. with some turd in a suit cause the studio was cheaper. If you don’t get the right chorusing and the right mixing to make three voices sound like a single voice, it sounds like soup.
I’ve been flying since I was 16. It’s easy once you’ve studied clouds, the atmosphere, and what to do just in case. I’m a good pilot in situations that are really dangerous. I like those; I like to drive 120 miles an hour.
My dad used to take us up to the Arctic Circle in his plane when I was little. He died when he was 51. That night he passed, I flew by myself up to Minneapolis in my Piper Cub that Dad gave me. We have our own great graveyard there… But I’m not gonna get buried. I’m going to have my ashes mixed in with my dogs. They’re gonna spread my ashes across Arizona, and Arizona is going to turn blue. It’s not gonna be a red state anymore.
