Katrina and the Waves

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that there are no second acts in American life. He may have been right, but luckily for Katrina & the Waves, they either never read Fitzgerald, or the Anglo half of their Anglo-American line-up made them immune from this pattern. With a charismatic lead singer fronting a band pulled together by guitarist Kimberley Rew (late of The Soft Boys), who could write songs like nobody's business, they seemed tailor-made for success. And they did briefly cut a swathe across pop music in Europe, America, and around the world, achieving some serious success of their own with a pair of catchy, hook-laden songs, ‘Going Down to Liverpool’ (which was first a hit as a cover by the Bangles) and ‘Walking on Sunshine.’ Their initial mass popularity (especially in America) was relatively brief, but their history and their range of good songs also extended a lot longer than most listeners are aware.

In 1981, in the wake of The Soft Boys' breakup, Rew landed in The Waves, an Anglo-American quartet featuring Katrina Leskanich (guitar, vocals), Vince de la Cruz (bass), and Rew's longtime friend Alex Cooper (drums). They tried it with Rew as lead singer but that wasn't a role that the guitarist/composer enjoyed – instead, he moved Leskanich to the lead singer spot. The group became Katrina & the Waves to give it a special identity, at a time when there weren't a lot of bands with female lead singers. They spent two years working under the radar of the major labels, which had scarcely noticed The Soft Boys, never mind this quartet with the weird guitar-driven pop songs. They found a home with Attic Records, an independent label that had issued The Soft Boys' recordings in Canada, which allowed the band to avoid oblivion in favour of mere obscurity.

They started to make headway after two years of work, building an underground reputation, and the fact that their records had to be imported to England or the United States only added to their mystique. The record that turned their fortunes around, however, wasn't one of their own – rather, it was The Bangles' cover of ‘Going Down to Liverpool’, which became a hit on radio in England and America. Suddenly, the group was in demand from record labels on either side of the Atlantic, and they ended up signed to Capitol Records. Their self-titled Capitol debut LP, released in 1985, consisted of re-recorded (some accounts say simply remixed and redubbed) versions of the best songs from the group's two Attic albums, with a fuller, more elaborate sound. It peaked at number 28 in England and number 25 in America (the highest chart placement up to that time by any ex-member of The Soft Boys), and yielded the Top Ten U.S./U.K. hit ‘Walking on Sunshine’, one of the more memorable pop/rock songs of the decade.

A modest follow-up single, ‘Do You Want Crying’, made the lower regions of the Top 40, and they seemed to have a big future in front of them, when the group suddenly broke stride at the same time they quickened the pace – they rushed a second album, Waves out that same year that was good enough but no improvement upon its predecessor. Additionally, their work lost its edge between the two LPs, and Rew had ceded some of his songwriting responsibility to the other members, who weren't nearly as skilled in composition. It sold less than half of what the earlier record had, generating a modest hit with the single ‘Sun Street’, at number 22.

By 1989, their prospects seemed spent over the next three years as Capitol lost interest in the group, but they kept plugging and were rewarded with the Top 20 hit ‘That's the Way’ and issued a third album, Break of Hearts, on the SBK label. They remained a marketable commodity in England and on the European continent, releasing three LPs in Germany during the 1990s, on Virgin and Polydor. Rew and Leskanich narrowly avoided going off to solo careers. In 1995, One Way Records in America released a best-of collection.

In 1997 Katrina and the Waves, represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest and was the ultimate winner with ‘Love Shine a Light’ by Rew. It was the group's biggest success since ‘Walking on Sunshine’ 12 years earlier.

Despite their return to the public eye after Eurovision, Katrina and the Waves were not able to follow up ‘Love Shine a Light’ with another hit, and Katrina Leskanich left the band in 1998 after several disagreements within the band.

Katrina Leskanich appeared in the Countdown Spectacular 2 concert in 2007.

Links:
http://www.katrinaandthewaves.com/
http://www.katrinasweb.com/