Juliet Lawson
Juliet Lawson
A storyteller and an artistic soul
Juliet grew up in London and fully intended to become a theatre designer. She went to Wimbledon college of art but realised that she was big on concept but less able at making the set stand up. Always a passionate music fan, she was secretly writing songs in her bedroom and joined her cousin’s band, modelled as then on Jefferson Airplane, but Juliet was secretly wanting to be Joni Mitchell. She has just transferred some of those early songs onto digital and they give a few punk bands a run for their money.
Recording their first demo, Juliet approached island Records and for a time it looked as if this would produce several albums. But n the true nature of this business, it didn’t work out and she switched to EMI and produced BOO in 1973. It received rapturous reviews but sold less rapturously. A follow up album failed to get finished and Juliet did a disappearing act into domesticity and children.
Not entirely though. She composed with Peter Hope the songs for channel 4’s first children’s show Chips Comic. This was followed by her writing a play, with songs, called Flowers From Detroit, about a subject she knew well, the constricts and conflicts of the working mother. It played for three weeks in a London Fringe Theatre. And in 1992 they began what turned into a two year project recording what juliet refers to as ‘The Pink Album”, or THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY.
This release reignited her getting back out on the live circuit and after 15 years she began to do gigs in and around London. Having, in what she calls her first incarnation, hated live performance juliet began to enjoy this communication with audiences more and more and this is what she loves above all.
In 1998 and again in 2000 she wrote and performed THROW IT ON THE WATER, a one woman show based around the narrative of her by now extensive catalogue of material. In 2003 she recorded this show on the album WHERE I’M COMING FROM.
The gigs started to build and in 2009 she recorded the first new material for many years. This is now available as two EP’s: SONGS FROM A SUITCASE and SONGS FROM ANOTHER SUITCASE., the latter being a live recording with her three piece headed by guitarist Christian Marsac.
Juliet has always been uneasy with categorization. She doesn’t sit easily in any genre; as far as she is concerned, she just writes songs, tells the stories behind the songs and the audience can make up their own mind.
Which brings us to now. Juliet continues to write and over the last few years to revive her love for drawing and painting. Juliet exhibits her paintings in private collections in London. She is convinced that music and the visual arts emanates from the same place and if in some small way these two can brighten our lives just a little then she feels that a gift she wants to continue to offer.
In 2015 she released her latest album,LOVE AND THE OLDER WOMAN. One of the tracks, ALL THESE DAYS, is also the title of the documentary film she is currently making based around the rediscovery and transferring of the late 1960’s films she shot on her father’s camera. This will tells the story of her from her teens until the moment when she recorded her first album in 1972.