- Born
- Birth nameLili-Marlene Premilovich
- Nickname
- The Mata Hari of Rock
- Preceding Lene Lovich's emergence onto the music scene, with her 1978 and 1979 hit new wave singles "Home" and "Lucky Number", her existence was already engulfed by her insatiable appetite for the visual and performing arts. In autumn 1973, with her partner-- Les Chappell, she went to London to attend art school. From there, Lovich attended several art schools and lingered through the London Underground; she also performed in cabaret clubs as an "Oriental" dancer and journeyed to Spain where she visited Salvador Dalí in his home. She continued to grab at any artistic opportunity that came her way, such as recording screams for horror films and writing lyrics for French disco star Marc Cerrone (including the sci-fi dance smash "Supernature", which Lovich later recorded). She also worked with various theater groups and a few short-lived musical acts, such as the pub rock group-- the Diversions, and an all-girl cabaret trio-- the Sensations. Alas, the new wave music genre disappeared as did Lovich-- but her distinctive persona continues to prevail as it has impacted several musicians and musical groups, such as Gwen Stefani, Karen O, Björk, PJ Harvey, and The Dresden Dolls.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Faisal Al Rasheed
- plaited hair
- banshee-howl-inflected vocals
- She is of British and Serbian descent.
- Has two daughters from her partnership with musical colleague Les Chappell.
- played at the Royal Festival Hall in London for the Meltdown festival, curated by Yoko Ono. The same year, she established her own publishing label, Flex Music, and released a re-mastered versions of all her previous albums in a limited edition box set.
- made a guest appearance with The Dresden Dolls at The Roundhouse which is featured as an extra on their DVD Live at the Roundhouse.
- contributed to the opera 'The Fall of the House of Usher' (1991) by Peter Hammill and Judge Smith, singing the part of Madeline Usher.
- [on the length of time between the releases of "March" (1989) and "Shadows and Dust" (2005)] Well, I have other priorities, mainly, the family. That's the top of the list and everything else has to make way for it. I have two children: two girls, and it, by choice, takes up a lot of my time.
- [on how she became involved with Marc Cerrone's "Supernature" and with other artists on his label] Not all that many people know I was involved with that record because, at the time, I wasn't being credited as being the lyricist although I was, which business I am not going to go into. But we have to live and learn. I had done maybe two albums with Cerrone and various other artists on his label. It all started with a vague phone call while I was in the studio with a soul band. Somebody needed somebody to work with this foreign guy who couldn't speak much English, but he was into disco, and, because we were doing soul/funk, they just sort of shouted in our direction. And I, grabbing every opportunity whether I could handle it or not, said I could do that, and because I had put my hand up I ended up being on a plane to Paris and had to figure out how to do this new thing. It was just one of those opportunities that I probably shouldn't have been given, but I took it anyway. Supernature was good. I had done some regular, boring, predictable, usual type disco before then. Cerrone was smart enough to think the world had had enough heavy breathing and could take something different. He let me do whatever I wanted to do so I did a science fiction story. It was just at the time when people were beginning to get a little bit more creative with synthesized sound. So synthesizers were becoming less of just a sound effect but becoming more integral in the track itself. It's quite an inventive record.
- [on growing up in Detroit] There's always one Wednesday Adams in every high school. And that was me. I was the odd-one-out, I didn't have a lot of friends. You learn to keep your mouth shut if you don't want to get beat up. It's OK because you have something to look forward to, sometimes the more popular people don't get any more popular, so you know - things can only get better.
- [on her commercial success with her first hit "Lucky Number"] It was nice to be popular but I didn't realize that it can be shallow, and that people like you for the moment. But I didn't have enough experience of it to know that it wasn't going to last forever.
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