Lush

biog

Lush formed in 1987, initially named The Baby Machines, with a line-up of Meriel Barham (vocals), Emma Anderson(guitar), Miki Berenyi (guitar), Steve Rippon (bass), and Chris Acland (drums). Anderson and Berenyi had been friends since the early 1980s, and published the Alphabet Soup fanzine together. In 1986 Anderson joined The Rover Girls as bassist and Berenyi joined The Bugs as guitarist; neither band lasted long, and in 1987 they joined Barham and Acland in The Baby Machines. Rippon joined shortly thereafter, and the band members decided on a change of name to Lush, making their live debut at the Camden Falcon on March 6, 1988. Barham was fired, with the rest of the band deciding she lacked commitment (she later joined Pale Saints). Anderson and Berenyi then took on lead vocal duties.

Emma Anderson said of the band's beginnings: "We were kind of punk rock in one way. We did think 'Well, if they can do it, why the fuck can't we?' Basically, our idea was to have extremely loud guitars with much weaker vocals. And, really, the vocals were weaker due to nervousness - we'd always be going 'Turn them down! Turn them down!'" Miki Berenyi said, "We started by writing crappy riot grrl anthems... which was probably charming in a juvenile way. But there was a very rapid shift from the minute we started to write for records. The music, the lyrics became much more thoughtful and expressive, more important, really. I remember that change beginning when Emma wrote "Thoughtforms," it certainly made me think I needed to get my act together."

(Adapted from the band's Wikipedia article under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.)