Julianne's words sum it up: "I think it's about time something really definitive was written, especially for the people that will be reading this," she says thoughtfully. "This is probably the one time it's going to be done properly."

And so it was to be, so sit back, put your feet up and enter the enchanting world of ALL ABOUT EVE...

It would appear almost obligatory to begin any Eves story with Julianne, probably following the old adage "ladies first" but for once we'll break the mould and put "age before beauty" by beginning with Mark.

THE PRICE OF FAME
Mark Gerard Price was born on the 10th of August 1959 in the small town of Nelson, near Burnley in Lancashire, and has always shown a love of music, even at a very early age. "I used to hit settee arms with knitting needles or lock myself in the pantry and hit the spin-dryer and pans, but I didn't think at that point that I was going to become a drummer", Mark reflects with a smile. "My first real involvment in music was during the summer school holidays of 1973. My friends all had guitars and things and they used to mess around at one of the lad's houses, but one day this lad, who had a small drum kit, couldn't be there so they asked me to join in. So I did. We couldn't really play or anything, but I sort of hit everything at the same time and really enjoyed it."

By the time Mark's fourteenth birthday had been and gone, he and a few mates who had stuck together formed a band. "One of my mates' stepdad was a guitar/vocalist in the Working Men's Clubs" Mark remembers, "And he was the one who took me to buy my first kit 'cause he had a car. He used to say to us about getting a few bookings in the WMC's but we thought it was a bit scary, although we eventually did."

"They have these sort of auditions every Sunday afternoon where bands go and play in front of all these concert secretaries who book the acts for their clubs, so it's a bit of a cattle market really. If they like you they book you for various dates throughout the next few months."

"We had a novelty 'cause we were all fifteen and had a little girl singer, we could play a bit," Mark says, "but we had to play stuff that was pretty easy like 'Billy don't be a Hero', but that's what people wanted in those clubs."

"My personal choice in music at that time was Quo. I had just got their album 'Piledriver' and thought it was the best thing I'd ever heard, so we used to learn a few of the songs and sneak them into our set. It was that which started me really wanting to do it properly, y'know?"

"The band was called 'Exodus' and it lasted about three years in total, although we did split for a while, reforming as 'Exodus II'." Mark chuckles. "How pretentious can you get at fifteen?"

Eventually the band members either left the area or did something else, so the band folded. Mark managed to get a place at Manchester Polytechnic, but his invovment in music ground to a halt, as he reflects. "I played a bit with a couple of lads but only in someone's fromt room. It wasn't until I moved to London in 1980 that anything serious started to happen. I was supposed to get a job in advertising having studied graphic design at college and the idea was to slog around these studios with my potfolio, but I did it for a day and thought 'sod this.' I just didn't want to do it so I began going for auditions instead and the first band I tried gave me the job. This was the end of 1980 and the band was called 'The Motives' though the only thing we really did was make loads of demos."

It was during this period that Mark first worked with Tony Phillips who was later to become sound engineer on the first Eves album, as Mark explains, "Tony had a little demo studio that we used in Ipswich and we made us of his services loads of times over the next two years as well as playing small clubs and pubs, but despite our manager spending about £12,000 on us, we just didn't get anywhere. By 1983 I was on the dole and thinking "What am I going to do?" I couldn't practice or anything so I wasn't exactly brilliant and despite going for a few auditions I failed to get anywhere"

Then Mark's luck changed, and so did the tone in his voice which was understandable when you hear of the events that were to follow.

"Just before Christmas 1983, I went for an audition with a band called 'Downbeat', who had the same management as Nik Kershaw, and was offered the job. Kershaw had just begun to make a name for himself having recorded his first album and just released the single "I Won't Let the Sun Go Down". I went home that Christmas to my parents and on my return made a call to the manager. Immediately he said, "Actually I don't want you to play for the Downbeats....How do you fancy playing for Nik Kershaw?"

Mark's reply was the obvious one. So the Kershaw band was put together to tour and promote the new 'Human Racing' album with the intial gigs to be fairly small clubs, but the single flew into the charts at number four. Suddenly the style of venue changed to the Hammersmith Odeon scale as well as prestigious concerts like Wembley Stadium supporting Elton John to a crowd of 80,000 people. With the release of the classic album 'The Riddle' Kershaw's popularity went from strength to strength. European tours were followed by world tours taking in countries like the USA, Canada, Japan and Australia continuing right through until late 1987.

I asked Mark what it had been like. "It was a brilliant start for me, from being on the dole one week, to touring the world...and they were such a great bunch of people. We were all just like mates at school or something, y'know? We were all in it together...Brilliant!" Unfortunately all good things tend to come to an end and this was to be no exception.

"Nik's third album hadn't done anything much and his popularity was going right down and the last thing I did with Nik was a tour of Israel during April 1987. After that he just couldn't afford to pay our retainers anymore to keep the band together" Mark says with some sadness in his voice. "Nik wanted to take a long time off to write his next album, like a year...so we just had to call it a day."

Mark found himself out of work once again having been a part of one of the most successful bands of that era.

We'll pick up on the next stage of Mark's career after we have looked at the background of the other Eves members, beginning with Andy.

ANDY KICKS OFF
Born "just plain" Andy Cousin (how he can describe himself as plain with a taste in shirts like his, I'll never know) on 28th June 1963 in Lincoln, which Andy is quick to point out, is a little known fact. "Everyone thinks I come from Huddersfield, in fact I've even said it myself in interviews for some reason, but I guess having moved to Murfield at the age of six, and thinking nobody will have heard of Murfield, I've said Huddersfield instead..."

I started by asking Andy whether music had been a subject of any interest to him during his educational years?

"Actually no", Andy replied. "I didn't really discover music until quite late on as I was really into football having been led that way by my Dad. He managed a local team when I was in my teens and I just loved playing. I wasn't really interested in girls or anything, I was just football mad."

"Music was an afterthought really... Having left school, I went on to Huddersfield Technical College to take a foundation course in graphic design, but eventually dropped out when I met Tim."

Timothy John Brickend, born on the 6th of July 1963, was a local lad who had played in a band at the age of fifteen at his school, having begun on an acoustic guitar which cost him the massive sum of £20, and then moving up to a Woolworth's 'Raver' electric guitar along with the almost compulsory Fuzzbox. Punk had been his main influence, working on covers of songs by such bands as the Sex Pistols and the Clash. As soon as Andy and Tim's paths crossed they became great mates, Julianne describing them as "being tied at the waist for years". Andy picks up the story. "I played guitar when I first got together with Tim, but I was sort of forced to play bass. Tim was a better guitar player than me and we did need a bass player, so I took it on and it worked out."

"My first bass was a catalogue job, a Hondo out of Kay's catalogue...I've still got it to this day and in fact it was that bass that was used for all the early Eves gigs. I couldn't afford back-up amps, " he explains, "so I used to borrow old WEM amps and the likes...anything I could get my hands on. We used to practice in my front room, during covers of Dire Straits' songs and other chart stuff."

Tim, it's reported, left the area for a while and moved to Brighton joining a band called 'The Ear Sight' first of all, which he later referred to as his first 'real band'. Eventually returning to Huddersfield, Andy and Tim once again joined forces in a band called 'Amoettii Crii', this time having the luxury of a damp cellar to rehearse in, Andy living in the flat above.

Unlike their previous venture, which had been called 'The Urban Maggots' (which we can thank Miss Regan for letting slip) the new band actually gigged.

I asked Andy what sort of music they were producing?

"The style was post-punk, sort of UK Decay, Bauhaus stuff...the darker side of Punk...early Goth, y'know. Pretty horrible really...wailing guitars and maybe a few acousitcs thrown in."

"We moved over to a place called Colne in Lancashire (the next town to Nelson. Remember Mark's story?) and began playing a few gigs. We met this guy who owned a nightclub called 'Franks' and he began to manage us. We played at his club as well as a few small dives around the area."

What was the line-up at that time?

"There was Rob Moles on vocals, a guy called Rob Stroud on drums who had previously been with the Sex Gang Children, Tim on guitar and myself," explained Andy. "That was my first contact in London as Rob Stroud had lived down there before moving to Colne. We all stayed together for a couple of years in total before it all fell apart. Rob then moved back South to Essex, and I followed not long after."

Once down there Andy joined up with Rob and his girlfriend, Michelle Yee-Chong, in a band called Pink and Black
Andy casts his mind back to that period: "It was totally different music to anything I'd ever done before...totally Pop and commercial. I'd had enough of that Goth sort of stuff and I just wanted to try something different, something new, y'know? This was round the time of Duran Duran and the likes, but Pink and Black didn't use guitars at all...just keyboards.
Andy had joined that band just after they had recorded their first single 'Sometimes I Wish' which was released in 12" format with Andy on the picture sleeve. Andy makes it clear he did not play on the recordings at all. This part of Andy's career lasted for around eighteen months and is a good point in time to leave his story for a while whilst we look at the early years of Julianne.

THE JOURNEY OF A JOURNALIST
Born Julie Ann Regan on the 30th of June 1962, in the city of Coventry, she openly admits to having little interest in music during her school days.
"In Junior school I learned the theory of music and how to play the recorder and I did have a couple of violin lessons, but I was made to do it...I didn't really want to. I just couldn't really be taught, so any skills I have acquired are as a result of teaching myself...just banging away on the piano and tinkling away on a guitar to a standard where you get to write things. The biggest factor," adds Julianne, "is you're doing it because you want to...it's just for love."
Later on during Secondary School, Julianne specialised in the Arts and dropped music completely, having also found a real passion for English. By the time Julianne sat for her A-Levels it was clear she wanted a career as a journalist.
"I just wanted to write for the New Musical Express or something...that was my big dream, y'know?" Julianne remembers. "I came down to London to do a course in fashion journalism as this was the only course I could get with one A-Level, but I only stuck around long enough to get a basic knowledge and meet a few people. I then dropped out and did a few pieces for Zig-Zag magazine as was, which I really enjoyed. That was how I met my first band...by interviewing them."
The band was Gene Loves Jezebel and the period was around February 1982. They were in need of a bass player as Julianne explains. "After I did an interview with the band, they kind of took a shine to me...we just had a lot of chemistry. We thought about and talked about the same things...soap-box intellectuals we were at that time."

"They just said," Julianne continues, "Can you play bass?" and I said "No", so I practised very hard and went along to the next rehearsal and got the job. It was a very experimental band...very left field. A bit of a baptism by fire really, but I did learn a lot about how songs were constructed...from doing nothing to taht was phenomenal. I think it was then that I knew that I wanted to do more than just play bass...I really wanted to write and open my mouth...and sing."
Julianne remained with the band for the rest of the year before going into her 'wilderness' period. "This was a very cloudy time for me," Julianne comments, "I mean, I can remember it all, but time seemed to flit by...eighteen months, maybe two years where I fiddled around not knowing what I wanted to do. I had a nanny job and I worked in a bookshop," she recalls, "but it was nothing to do with music. It was still tugging at me though so I knoew I had to do something with it, the only problem was I had no musical friends at all."
"I went off and did a little project with the keyboard player from Gene Loves Jezebel, a Belgi chap who now makes dance music...I think he's very successful now in a band called 'The Weathermen'. We tried to do something that was a bit jazzy, a bit weird, and I could do it, but it wasn't a passion so I dropped it".

A DEMO AND IVO
"At around this time I begged my Mum to buy me a four-track machine...I really begged her and she got into a lot of trouble with my Dad, but I got one. That's when I started writing songs, some of which resembled songs, some were just me being very arty so nothing very fruitful came out of it."
"I banged my head against a brick wall for an awful long time," says Julianne, "but I eventually sent a tape to a friend called Ivo of 4AD Records, quite a patron of the arts, who I had befriended during my G.L.J days. He said, frankly, 'Oh dear, Julianne! I had hoped for great things...you have gone down a strange path here!' I think he felt he needed to throw me a line which he did in the form of Manuella's address and phone number." Manuella Zwingman had recently split from her previous band and was looking to get straight into a new venture.
"It was around February 1984 that I met up with Manuella and we just got on really well," Julianne remembers, "although we were poles apart musically, but we were just desperately pleased to have met someone who was a musician...and a female one...it was quite inspiring. We had great dreams and plans, but not an awful lot of musical ability between the pair of us. A drummer and a singer can't really get very far, so we made plans to be augmented by a chap or chapess who could play."
"We met up with this very garrulous Scotsman called Gus Ferguson who is now in a band called Test Department, a very respected band in Europe but very left field, a kind of bangy dustbin lids band! We met him through the 4AD set, a great bass player and quite a catalyst of a person....and there we were...three of us all in need of a guitarist."
Now if you've been paying attention and making notes of all this, things begin to come together around about now, so try and keep up...please....
"I knew a girl," says Julianne, "who's boyfriend, Rob Stroud, had been in a band with Tim and Andy, but I had never met either of them at this point. We had already tried a couple of guitarists, none of which had really turned our heads when we received the tape off Tim, who had been in touch with Rob. We thought it was very good, and he came down for the day and we rehearsed together. To us he was brilliant, definitely the most talented out of all of us. He was very heavy and played Gothic guitar 'cause that was the kind of stuff he'd been playing."
Julianne remembers back and laughs. "So there was this weird punch of people...an ex-Xmal Deutschland, a dustbin lid hitter, Tim the Goth and a singer who couldn't really sing! That really is the most accurate description ever come up with for that line-up." The laugh continues...
"We just bashed about in the studio, the Solid Light in Camden every week. I can only describe what we were doing as Art Rock...I didn't know any chords...I couldn't write anything, in fact there wasn't a writer between us. We just loved making a racket but there was a lot of passion (there's that word again) and it was all somehow really exciting."
Eventually the bassist decided he wanted to go far left field, whilst Julianne wanted to make it more musical, so they shook hands and parted company. Tim also left for a while finding it "difficult to deal with these two women" but as Julianne recalls: "We tempted Tim back with a chicken dinner...that's how cheap he was..." Again we both laugh, something the band members do a lot of...great sense of humour.
Gus was soon replaced by a new bassist, James Richard Jackson, another friend of a friend from the 4AD circuit.
"A really nice guy", Julianne recalls, "and an excellent player, but he didn't stay long. He just had a career going in engineering or something and had to spend more and more time at college."
It was during this line-up though that a demo tape was made and accepted by Red Rhino Records of York and the finance was raised to produce their first single on their own label, Eden Records. Incidentally, it was also at this time that the name "The Swarm" was adopted, but only for as long as it took to post the demos. It had been used only as a name to put on the tapes and after about four weeks was never used again. Recording time was made available for the band at the London-based Southern Studios, and the skills of Mel Jefferson were employed as engineer. Julianne had heard some of his work through a band called 'And Also The Trees', a favourite of hers at the time, and had been suitably impressed. The result was to be their now rare 'D for Desire' 12" single, backed by the song 'Don't Follow Me (March Hare)' with the catalogue number of Eden 1, but upon completing the sessions the band folded.
Julianne explains, "sadly Manuella and I fell out straight after we had gone into the studios, it wasn't a horrible fall out but the sessions brought things to a head. We were going in different directions and she was very disappointed. It had come out in her eyes as too mainstream, which shows you how left field she was, and I really wanted to be more melodic, not the other way...cold and industrial. So she left, staying in music for a while, and then met someone and started a family.
We are still friends to this day...
So suddenly Manuella and James were no more....and then there were two.
"For the first time, Tim and I began to write together," recalls Julianne, "they weren't exactly classics, but they sounded more like songs than anything we had done before. We worked together for a couple of months on the Portastudio and we got enough material together to start gigging really, but with a machine...so we needed a bass player. Tim put forward the idea of his old mate Andy who I had met once through a friend, Michelle, who was in the band Pink and Black with him."
I asked Julianne and Andy what their first impressions of each other had been like?
Andy replied first. "She looked like a typical student. Her dress style has stayed pretty similar...all lace...studenty...Heaven knows what she thought of me...I had short, spiky blond hair and some sort of fancy shirt. I don't know what she thought...you'll have to ask her..."
So I did..."I thought, God! What a tart," as she began to laugh jokingly, "his hair was dyed to death and crimped...lots of jewellery and scarves, y'know, quite glamourous. I was kind of hippyish so we didn't really make much of an impression on each other. Tim was the same, a pair of glam boys really..."
They set about getting a tape to Andy, as he recalls, "Although I only had the single to hear, I really liked what I heard, so when they asked me to join I said yes. We began to rehearse at Julianne's flat on the Carleton Road, Tufnell Park in London, using her drum machine and Portastudio to write songs on."
They also now agreed a name for the band, taken from a Bette Davis film of the same name, All About Eve.....

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