Whatever happened to Lene Lovich?

Is that a strange question to ask, I wonder.

I mean, maybe it sounds a bit rude, as if Ms Lovich has disappeared off the face of the Earth, when it could be – probably is – me who has disappeared. Or at least, to be fair, it's probably more objective to say that myself and Ms Lovich have probably simply ended up on different faces of the Earth, each invisible from the other. And on that side – her side – there's probably no one asking, "Whatever happened to Quentin S. Crisp?", least of all Lene Lovich, who has never met me.

I began thinking about Lene Lovich because I heard some music and thought it reminded me of something. Some other names came to me relatively quickly. Cyndie Lauper and Kate Bush, I think they were. But I knew that something in my mind was trying to grasp for something else. And then it found it – Lene Lovich. (Although I must confess the name first came back in the form 'Lena Lovett'.) I hadn't thought of Lene Lovich for years – how strange to have something lying, perfectly (well, perhaps not perfectly, but relatively) intact in my memory all these years without me dusting it off once. And yet, all my associations with the name were positive and quirky enough for me immediately to wish to look her up, so to speak, but not in a Mae West sort of way, just on Google and Youtube, as that was basically what was available to me.

Let me tell you first how I remembered Lene Lovich. I remembered her as a weird, famous-but-obscure female singer with a distinctive voice, whom I associated slightly with Kate Bush. I couldn't actually name any of her songs. What I remembered in particular was finding a home-taped cassette of her album Flex (I couldn't remember the title), in the house where I was living at the age of about twenty. It must have belonged to someone in my family. I remember that I picked it up, and seemed at the time to know the name, and, in curiousity, played it. I'm not sure I can describe what I remember of my reactions. There was a sense that I might or might not like the music. It was different to anything I had heard before. Thinking about it, I probably had her pegged for a flash-in-the-pan version of Kate Bush, who nonetheless had something (and something that I couldn't quite get a handle on). That seemed to be the prejudice I carried with me when I looked her up this time. Although, it wasn't only that. I must have felt some peculiar kind of pleasure in listening to her music at that time, because I was also looking forward to re-discovering it. I don't know how many times I listened to that tape, but I imagine it was not many. It was not enough to overcome the conservatism of youth, and the hesitation that comes with wondering if this is quite hip enough to listen to (not that I was ever really hip). Which is a shame, because I had managed to overcome that conservatism on many counts previously.

I'm not sure there was much more to my memory of Lene Lovich than that, apart from the tickling in my brain of a melody, or a style of melody, that I couldn't quite bring into full consciousness.

I have now listened to quite a few Lene Lovich tracks on Youtube. The peculiar thing is, that although I think that Bird Song was the one I listened to most, and which I most enjoyed, as a melody, rather than an impression, it was the one I remembered least this time out of the two that I definitely remember. It is still, however, the one I like most out of those I have recently listened to.

I was already thinking of writing a blog entry on her, and probably saying that she was as good as, or better than I had remembered, but, after all, still a little too bound by pop convention in terms of genre, beat and so on, to be as good as Kate Bush, but now I'm beginning to wonder. For one thing, Lene Lovich could not have been a Kate Bush clone, even if she sounded identical, which she doesn't, because they both had their first hit singles in the year 1978 [I got that date from Wikipedia and I'm very suspicious of it; I suspect the actual date is, in both cases, is 1979, and that some conspiracy is at work here]. Now, I haven't yet pinpointed this in terms of month, week and day, so I don't know which entered the charts first, but I believe I'm right in saying that Lene Lovich already had some involvement with musical releases, though perhaps not solo, before that year. She is also about nine years older than Kate Bush. Kate Bush is often presented as being the first original wailing madwoman to enter the pop charts, and Lene Lovich is seldom mentioned in this connection (that I've noticed), although there was, of course, that association of the two of them in my mind from somewhere.

What really made me understand who Lene Lovich is, however, was when I looked up, again, the song Lucky Number. How could I have forgotten this? This lip-synched version shows Lene in some very Bush-like poses. Yes, I knew this song. I must have heard it quite a few times when it first came out – when I was about six. My juvenile emotional responses to the song came back to me. I'm not sure I can describe them, except that there was definitely a response to the transition from the lucky number being one, to it becoming two. I believe I understood the sacrifice of independence that the song was expressing – one is good, but two, to Lene's surprise, is also good. I also remembered the line, "There's something in the air besides the atmosphere", with its slightly 'close encounters' spooky feeling, reminiscent, yes, please forgive me, in tone and delivery of some of the songs on Bush's first album, The Kick Inside, such as Kite, Them Heavy People and Strange Phenomena. (In the promotional video for Lucky Number, at around 18 seconds, you can see the band (?) bowing to Lene – behind her – in a we're-not-worthy fashion, as well they might.)

Okay, inevitable Kate Bush comparisons out of the way, I hope. I really like this stuff! I think the same fear that made me secretly like, without even knowing it, Adam and the Ants for years without acting on that attraction, was at work here, all those years ago. But now I'm old enough to know – most of the time, I think, with music and stuff, anyway – when I like something, and not care about other people's stupid tastes. Why has it taken me so long?

I had other comparisons in mind to make concerning Lene Lovich, too, but I will refrain. There seems no point. I could say that she appears to me now a neglected missing link in pop music between, well, all sorts of things, really, and I noticed she's worked with another childhood hero, Thomas Dolby. But, more than a missing link, she now appears simply as Lene Lovich.

As to my original question, whatever happened to Lene Lovich, well, I don't actually make much of a point of keeping in touch with this scene or that, so if I wonder what happened to someone it doesn't necessarily signify anything apart from my own lack of attention. However, I did look up some biographical material. It appears that after Flex (I'm going to have to check this again), the album to which I listened, amongst other things, she took time off to raise a family. I mention other things, but in no particular order (and probably including things from before Flex, too), these seem to include dubbing screams onto horror films, being a gogo dancer, co-writing and performing in the musical/play Mata Hari and bringing out a new album, Shadows and Dust in 2005. So, maybe I should ask what didn't happen to her. I am tempted to say – but I don't really have much evidence yet, just a desire to say it – that perhaps what didn't happen to her is that she didn't sell out, and that's why I haven't heard her name on people's lips for a while.

And now I'm thinking about all the things that haven't happened to me, too. Like being a gogo dancer, for instance. Is it too late?