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| "We're making feisty, guitar-based pop," says Jamie, 19,
the vocalist. "We like to have a good time and not be tied down, the music and lyrics
reflect that. Hepburn are all about fun-living." "We love guitar bands like the Smashing Pumpkins, the Foo Fighters and Silverchair but also bands fronted by strong women like Shirley Manson, Courtney Love and Skin," says Sarah, 18, the bassist. "We're all gutsy girls too, and the boys have had it their way for too long." "Usually when four girls turn up, people think they're gonna get cutesy vocals and a nice little dance routine, but then we get the instruments out and they're shocked! And then we start playing..." says Lisa, 17,the guitarist. "Not only will young aliens like our music, so will old ones!" says Beverley, 18, the drummer. (Don't worry, Hepburn were asked to describe Hepburn to folk from outer space!) "It's FANTASTIC!" they yell. That's their favourite word, after Hepburn of course: Ninety per cent Audrey, ten per cent Katherine. Jamie was obsessed as a kid: "I was really into music and acting, and I used to look up to Audrey Hepburn because she was a strong, classy woman who was sometimes away with the fairies. A bit like me". Singing in bands from the age of 11 (some of them with mum Dinky and dad Barry), Jamie hails from Bognor Regis and is the one with the "get up and go" when everyone else has got the night bus home. A Libran who can make decisions, she spent her teens treading the boards with everyone from crusty luvvie Dora Bryan to Alf from Home and Away and has been known to congratulate fellow shoppers on their choice of bananas after she's pirouetted through Tesco's. But as gutsy and gobby as she is, she reckons, "I'm a pussy cat at heart." Jamie met Lisa two years ago at a party near Newmarket and in true rock'n'roll style, they formed a band on the spot. Lisa's played the guitar since she was 13, though her first performance didn't come until a little later when she played a Nirvana song to her school and went bright red! The biggest tomboy in the band, she's the "quiet 'n' sensible one who isn't naughty all the time..." She could however beat Celine Dion in an arm-wrestle. Making music together became more of a doddle when Beverley joined the equation (she had a drum kit). Bevvo was Jamie's bessie mate from musical school in London and equally as loud and just as nutty. Still harbouring a Geordie twang, Bevvo hates the cinema ("I can't sit still for that long"), but loves "tough fellas", Keith Moon and her footie team Sunderland - their crest is painted on her garage door - which goes down really well in Newcastle. But Hepburn still needed someone to keep it groovy, and they finally found her at the end of last year wearing pink metallic flares in a "Carwash" band. A music student who'd played bass since she was 11 ("I saw those four strings and thought that's what I want!"), Sarah's heavily into classic cars, wants to be reincarnated as a chinchilla and is now the band's resident flirt: "I can't help it if the bass is a boy magnet!" she laughs... Jamie and Lisa wrote half the lyrics to their debut album - warnings to bad boys everywhere that though they've been forgotten already, they'll never be forgiven. "We're learning more and more about writing and recording, and want to do much more in the future," says Jamie. They've already performed highlights to Hepburn-hungry schools across Britain: "It was fantastic to see the kids enjoying themselves, and getting out of some lessons !" All gals'n' guitaaahs, all maaf 'n' traasers, all rawcus pop 'n' pritty rock. Hepburn are the kind of girls who'll chat to you on the tube and make you miss your stop. Pop ingenues who can rock out but still know their way around a Mac counter.Four feisty femme fatales who sing about their exes like they were bugs on a windshield. Girls of the future. Now. You've just been Hepburnt ! Taken from Hepburn Official Website |
