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Artist
Ivan Julian
12+ albums
sxsw 2011
about
It would be easy to say that Ivan Julian was inspired the day he saw Jimi Hendrix play but his story is not that simple. Although this day did change him it had nothing to do with Hendrix’s style of playing that influenced him, but what he represented and exuded in his performance- a freedom of expression. Ivan went home and burnt his Chuck Taylor shoes in his backyard- a symbolic gesture that conformity would not be a part of his life anymore. Being the child of a Navy officer, he spent his formative years living in such exotic places as Haiti and Cuba. He enjoyed spending time alone and was an avid reader of such interesting material as Edgar Allan Poe, Ovid and he enjoyed putting his own thoughts in writing. When he was 13, he was a singer in a Led Zeppelin cover band, which led him to pick up the guitar at 14. Prior to this, he also studied the bassoon and sax. He spent his high school years as a part-time student in a college program studying music theory. And then at the age of 17, the wanderlust spirit took over and Julian found himself in London as a member of The Foundations with notable hits as “Build Me Up Buttercup” and “Baby Now That I Found You” touring Great Britain, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. In 1977 Julian returned to the U.S. to New York, where he was a founding member of the seminal Punk/ New Wave group Richard Hell and the Voidoids. Soon after the band recorded an EP that was heralded by the Village Voice as one of the best records of the year. Early t
