Juliana Hatfield

Juliana Hatfield had a short career as a pop star and an ongoing one as a cult-hero singer/songwriter. Born in Maine, she was raised in the Boston area where her mother Julie was fashion columnist for the Boston Globe. Attracted to music from a young age, Juliana studied piano at the Berklee College of Music; she graduated in 1990 and had her diploma presented to her by Dizzy Gillespie. While at Berklee she took up bass and formed her first band with guitarist John Strohm and drummer Freda Love (then known as Freda Boner); the three attended an Allen Ginsberg reading and asked him to provide a name for their band. Ginsberg saw their fresh faces and came up with Blake Babies, a William Blake reference. With a gentle sound built on chiming guitars and male/female harmonies, the Blake Babies were embraced in Boston and signed nationally to the indie label Mammoth. Their sound gradually toughened up; on their last tour they were regularly covering songs from Neil Young's just-released Ragged Glory. Their 1991 EP Rosy Jack World included Hatfield's acoustic song "Nirvana," specifically about her love for that band, nearly a year before Nevermind. Hatfield's indie success continued with her solo debut, 1992's Hey Babe, the same year she joined the Lemonheads on their breakthrough album, It's a Shame About Ray, one of the last times she played bass instead of guitar. Her next band, the Juliana Hatfield Three (with bassist Dean Fisher and drummer Todd Phillips) would be her best-known, though it initially lasted for only one album, 1993's Become What You Are. The hit of her career, the album caught the Gen X zeitgeist with the crush-themed "Spin the Bottle" (later used in the movie "Reality Bites") and the bittersweet "My Sister" (not about an actual sister, but a sister-like relationship she had with a friend of her brother's). Like her ex-Lemonheads bandmate Evan Dando, Hatfield was now becoming an alternative glamor figure, especially after she appeared as a homeless angel on the Gen X TV show of choice, "My So-Called Life" (ABC 1994-95). She made the cover of Spin in 1994 and was also profiled in Interview magazine. During the latter interview she famously claimed she was a virgin-true at the time, she later maintained-only to have that quote follow her around for years afterward. (She managed to keep her personal life under wraps thereafter). Her dislike of the spotlight came to a head on her 1995 tour, which she cut short after a bout with depression. Her label Atlantic rejected her next album (God's Foot) and dropped her soon afterward. This however was just the start of a long prolific period. Along with numerous solo albums, she published an autobiography (2008's When I Grow Up: A Memoir), renewed her old collaborations-touring and recording with Dando, the Three and the Blake Babies-and launched new ones, including the Minor Alps (with Matthew Caws of Nada Surf in 2013) and the I Don't Cares (with Paul Westerberg in 2016). Her 2017 album Pussycat was a punkish response to the Trump era, specifically its implications for women. After a formal reunion in 2015, she again reconvened the Three to tour behind it.