Twinkle | |
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.png) Twinkle in 1964 | |
| Background information | |
| Also known as | Twinkle Ripley |
| Born | Lynn Annette Ripley (1948-07-15)15 July 1948 Surbiton, Surrey, England |
| Died | 21 May 2015(2015-05-21) (aged 66) Isle of Wight, England |
| Genres | Pop |
| Occupation | Singer-songwriter |
| Instrument | Vocals |
| Years active | 1963–1980s |
| Labels | Decca |
Lynn Annette Ripley[1] (15 July 1948 – 21 May 2015), better known by the stage nameTwinkle, was an English singer-songwriter. She had chart success in the 1960s with her songs "Terry" and "Golden Lights".
Born inSurbiton, Surrey, into a well-to-do family, Ripley was known to her family as Twinkle. She attendedQueen's Gate School withCamilla Shand, later Queen Consort of the United Kingdom, and was the aunt of actressFay Ripley.[2]
Twinkle owed her rapid entry into the recording studio at the age of 16 to her then-boyfriend Dec Cluskey, of the popular vocal groupThe Bachelors, who was introduced to her by her sister, music journalist Dawn James, and who passed on to his manager a demo that Twinkle's father played to him.[3] Her songTerry was ateenage tragedy song about the death of a boyfriend in a motorcycle crash.Big Jim Sullivan,Jimmy Page andBobby Graham were among thesession musicians who played on the recording,[3] which conjured up a dark mood with its doleful backing vocals, spooky organ, 12-string guitar and slow, emphatic rhythm arranged byPhil Coulter. The theme was of a common type for the era: it bore some similarities to theShangri-Las' slightly earlier "Leader of the Pack" (1964), but the record caused a furore, accusations of bad taste leading to a ban from theBBC.[3]
The follow-up,Golden Lights, was also written by Twinkle, with a B-side again by producerTommy Scott.[4] By then Cluskey was her ex-boyfriend: Twinkle datedPeter Noone in 1965.[1] The lyric expresses disillusionment with the pop business: her EP track "A Lonely Singing Doll", the English-language version ofFrance Gall's 1965 winningEurovision Song Contest song for Luxembourg, "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", originally written bySerge Gainsbourg, returned to a theme similar to "Golden Lights". "Johnny" continued to explore dangerous territory, this time that of a childhood friend who becomes a criminal, but it seems the pressure to produce "another Terry" led her producers to pass over her own material, for "Tommy", a song written forReparata and the Delrons and"The End of the World" a tune composed forSkeeter Davis. Twinkle made few live appearances but performedTerry at the annualNew Musical Express hit concerts.[5] Afterrecording six singles forDecca Records she "retired" at the age of eighteen in 1966.[3]
In 1969 she recorded a self-written single, theTamla Motown-styled "Micky", backed by "Darby and Joan", both produced byMike d'Abo for the Instant label.[1] The single vanished, unpublicised. In the ensuing years, unsigned and working in music for advertising, she recorded a suite of songs inspired by her relationship with "Micky", the actor/model Michael Hannah, who was killed in an air-crash in 1974. These remained unreleased until they were included on CD compilations. Her later recordings appeared under the nameTwinkle Ripley. She recorded a 1975 single, "Smoochie" with her father, Sidney Ripley as "Bill & Coo".[6]
In the 1980s "Golden Lights" wascovered byThe Smiths and appeared on theircompilation albumsThe World Won't Listen andLouder Than Bombs while in 1983Cindy & The Saffrons covered "Terry".[7] "Terry" was also covered byMandy Smith in 1987, but her highly publicised version was pulled from release after negative feedback.[8] It was later issued on a special edition of her album,Mandy.[9]
Photographic publicity portraits of Twinkle taken in the mid-1960s are exhibited in theNational Portrait Gallery.[10]
In 1972, she married actor-model Graham Rogers,[11] who starred inMilk Tray chocolate adverts. They had two children, Michael and Amber.[12]
On 21 May 2015, Twinkle died at 66 on theIsle of Wight, after a five-year battle with cancer.[13]
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