Avant-pop icon Lene Lovich hasn’t mounted a major U.S. tour since 1989, but that will change this September when she opens for the B-52s and Devo on their 11-date run of amphitheaters. Those concerts will be interspersed with several of her own headlining club gigs, and Lovich’s triumphant return to the States will kick off in … Des Moines? At Lefty’s?
“This tour is a surprise for me,” she said on a phone call from England, “because it has been difficult to tour America more recently. It was very easy in the ʽ80s, but now it’s quite strict with work permits, so I just thought, ‘It’s never going to happen.’”
That situation has worsened during Trump’s second term, which has seen many international touring artists arbitrarily turned away at the border or their visas canceled. But when Lovich was invited to play with the B-52s and Devo — two acts she’s had longtime associations with — everything fell into place.
“It just so happens that somebody who is in my band, Jude Rawlins, is living in America,” Lovich explained. “In fact, he’s living in Iowa. So, he said, ‘Oh, yeah, it won’t be a problem to find musicians. We can do this.’ So, I said, ‘OK!’”
The guitarist, filmmaker and writer got his start in the British band Subterraneans during the ’90s, and has served as Lovich’s bandleader since 2012. Rawlins originally moved to Marshalltown a few years ago to shoot a film he was making, and eventually relocated his entire production company to Iowa after realizing that it had all the resources he needed and was very affordable.
After he and his wife bought a house in West Des Moines, Rawlins built a home studio and began making connections in the regional music community. That made it easy enough for him to assemble a crack band of red-blooded Iowans that includes drummer Celestino Ramirez, Beth Spaniel on bass and keyboardist Diana Weishaar. (Natalie Simon will be subbing for Weishaar on a few dates.)
“The chance to play with Lene Lovich came up because of Jude,” said Weishaar, who also plays with the Host Country and the Life Project. “He contacted me out of the blue to do this tour.” Rawlins added, “As soon as I heard Diana play and sing, I knew that she was the one because she’s a bit of an all-rounder. She also works at Trilix Studio, and she showed me around the studio, which also has a marketing company.”
Rawlins hired Trilix to do PR for the tour, and its studio will be hosting an interview with Lovich and live performance for the music podcast In The Round.
“It was a gamble that paid off,” Rawlins said, “because they’ve done really excellent work. One of the things that I found about Iowa is that it is relatively untapped. There’s serious talent here, and resources too, but they don’t get the opportunities that you get in the obvious places.”
Given the visa difficulties that have kept Lovich’s band from touring the U.S. in recent years, the title of her debut album is prescient. Stateless, released in 1978, was inspired by the fact the U.S.-born singer was living a liminal existence residing in England without a valid passport. That album immediately established her as the patron saint of new-wave weirdos — an image that was bolstered by wild costumes, plaited hair and a frenetic stage presence.
Lovich’s debut for Stiff Records was a spare cover of Tommy James and the Shondells’ “I Think We’re Alone Now,” which was followed by the lead single from Stateless, “Lucky Number.” This infectious, off-kilter number became a worldwide top 10 hit, though not in the United States.
Lovich’s music was just a bit too much for Top 40 American radio, with its herky-jerky rhythms and octave-hopping vocals that hiccupped, growled and howled their way to mock-operatic heights. Her far-out cover of “Be Stiff” by labelmates Devo is another highlight from the first record, though it also was just too odd to be a mainstream hit.
Lili-Marlene Premilovich’s iconoclastic aesthetic matched her unusual origin story. She was born in Detroit to a Serbian-American father and an English mother in 1949, then moved with her mom and three siblings to Hull, England when she was 13. As a teenager, Lovich met Les Chappell, her longtime musical and life partner, and together they relocated to London in 1968 to attend the Central School of Art and Design.
“The stretching of my voice started back then,” Lovich explained, “because I used to live about a 20-minute walk from art school. So, on my way there, I would see how high I could go. Then coming back home, I would see how low I could go. I did that every day for a long time, and that helped to stretch my voice. I didn’t really have any training, like official training. I was just excited about sound and realized that certain frequencies triggered certain emotions in me.”
During the decade between art school and her debut album, Lovich said yes to every interesting opportunity that came her way — and there were many. She played saxophone for Bob Flag’s Balloon and Banana Band, worked as a go-go dancer for the BBC’s Radio One Roadshow, recorded screams for horror films, joined a cabaret trio named the Sensations, and toured with a West Indian soul band. She and Les Chappell also joined a U.K. funk group called the Diversions that recorded a few singles and an album for a major label.
While they were not a commercial success, her association with that band led Lovich to pen the lyrics to Cerrone’s 1977 disco classic “Supernature.” That collaboration began when she was laying down saxophone parts during a Diversions recording session. Someone who worked for Cerrone rang the studio and asked if someone there could write the lyrics to a track he was working on. Because Lovich didn’t really know much about disco, she figured she’d do something that was interesting to her.
“I decided to write this science fiction story about my sensitivity to the abuse of animals and nature,” she said. “I felt like there would be a time when nature fights back if we kept overstepping our mark and making this planet intolerable. Later on, I had an opportunity to get more involved with animal rights through a collaboration with Nina Hagen. That’s how we ended up recording the song ‘Don’t Kill the Animals’ in 1986.”
When Lovich toured the U.S. in 1989 in support of her fourth full-length album March, several of her shows benefited People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, including a PETA concert in New York City hosted by the B-52s. Then, in the early 1990s, she and Chappell took a long break from the music biz hamster wheel and wound up having kids.
“It wasn’t really a conscious decision,” Lovich said. “It seemed like we were at a party and it was time to leave. Les and I really felt so wounded by the commercial music world, and it was hard to want to fight to be in that space. We also never really decided to have a family, but I think that’s what happens when you stand still. Even though we didn’t have very much money, it was some of my most happy times, especially when the children were small.”
Lene Lovich has returned when we need her brand of musical freakery the most. This feeling is certainly shared by keyboardist Diana Weishaar, who has been digging into her songs in preparation for the tour.
“I’ve noticed that her voice lives in my head. Like, I feel like I go to sleep hearing Lene Lovich,” she said. “She’s just so dynamic, and her vocal performance really grips you.”
“There’s been this overwhelming need for perfection in music in the past decade,” Weishaar continued, “whether it’s Autotune or whatever, but I think there’s a way to have perfect art that’s not perfect. I think that is what is most appealing about Lene’s music — other than the ’80s vibes, which I’m obsessed with. I think people are missing that kind of real, visceral, unique music that taps into primal emotions, and that’s Lene’s music in a nutshell.”
Upcoming event:
Lene Lovich, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 7 p.m. Lefty’s, Des Moines
This article was originally published in Little Village’s September 2025 issue.
