Indie darling of the early and mid nineties, Juliana Hatfield
started out playing bass and singing backup vocal for
The Lemonheads, at more or less the same time as co-fronting
Blake Babies with John Strohm on lead guitar and Freda Love / Freda Boner on drums. Later when the Blake Babies split up, she went solo with
Hey Babe in 1992. This was followed by her forming The Juliana Hatfield Three with
Todd Philips (who played drums on Hey Babe) on drums and Dean Fisher on bass.
They released one album in this configuration, Become What You Are in 1993, with Scott Litt on production duty, the result being
a more mature album with inde-pop sensibilities and tons of feedback, and also a hit single,
Spin the Bottle which featured on the soundtrack of Reality Bites.
Todd Philips split, and Juliana recorded Only Everything with a mostly new lineup of backing musicians,
including occasionally Dean Fisher on bass, released in 1995.
After another sabattical, Juliana released another album, Bed in 1998, which features a lot of more sedate
material, which turned out to be a precursor to her 2000 releases: Beatiful Creature which has a lot of
quiet and reflective songs, and not a lot of feedback. BC was released at the same time as a more
wholesome rock album, Total System Failure which is attributed to the collaborative group Juliana's Pony
(a marvellous name for a band if ever there was one) featuring once again Todd Philips, and also Mikey Welsh
from Weezer.
Last thing to be heard from Juliana so far is the brief 2001 reformation of the Blake Babies, and their subsequent release God Bless the Blake Babies.
Juliana's family are independently wealthy, coming from some rich factory-owning family in
Massachussetts or something like that.
Juliana also appeared in one episode of My So-Called Life, where she played the
part of a homeless girl who hung around the school a bit, played guitar and sang, and
was ostensibly an angel. Go figure. She's also been known to publically claim she's a virgin, but that was more for a publicity gag which people semi-believed, since it happens to not be true. She's been associated romantically with Evan Dando and Mikey Welsh.
Yes, this is an unstructured brain dump. Thanks for noticing. You asked for the facts, you got 'em; don't ask me for dates. Unless you're cute, single and living in the Edinburgh area.
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