Julee Cruise, vocalist of `Twin Peaks' fame, dies at 65

Julee Cruise, a singer who brought a memorably ethereal voice to the projects of director David Lynch — most famously “Falling,” whose instrumental version was the theme for Lynch's cult-favorite television show, “Twin Peaks” — died Thursday in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. She was 65.

Her husband, Edward Grinnan, said the cause was suicide. He said she had struggled with depression as well as lupus.

Cruise was building a career off-Broadway in the early 1980s when serendipity struck: She met composer Angelo Badalamenti when they worked on a show together.

“I was in this countryand-western musical in the East Village,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1990. “I was a chorus girl with a big skirt and a big wig, singing way too loud. Angelo was doing the music for the show, and we became friends.”

A few years later, Badalamenti was engaged by Lynch, who was still early in his career, as a vocal coach for Isabella Rossellini in the 1986 Lynch movie “Blue Velvet” and ended up writing the score for that film as well. Lynch and Badalamenti had written a song for the film that needed a vocalist.

“Angelo asked me to find someone to sing a song for the soundtrack called `Mysteries of Love,' but he didn't like any of the singers I recommended,” she told the Chronicle. “He wanted dreamy and romantic. I said, `Let me do it.'”

Cruise had always thought of herself as “a belter,” as she often put it (she had once played Janis Joplin in a musical revue called “Beehive”), but the voice she came up with for “Mysteries of Love” was something else entirely, enigmatic and wispy. It suited that and other Lynch-Badalamenti compositions perfectly. One writer called her style “angel-on-Quaaludes vocals.”

The three were soon collaborating on Cruise's first album, “Floating Into the Night,” which featured songs by the two men, including “Mysteries of Love” and “Falling.” They also collaborated on a stage production called “Industrial Symphony No. 1,” performed at the New Music America festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November 1989, with Cruise performing amid an elaborate set that included an old car.

Julee Ann Cruise was born Dec. 1, 1956, in Creston, Iowa, to Wilma and Dr. John Cruise. Her father was a dentist, and her mother was his office manager.

Cruise was something of a musical prodigy on the French horn, Grinnan said, and received a music degree in the instrument from Drake University in Iowa. Grinnan said she applied the delicacy and phrasing of classical French horn to the voice she came up with for the Lynch projects.

But once she graduated, she thought that acting and singing would be more appealing than playing in an orchestra. She went to Minneapolis, a good city for theater, and spent several years performing with the Children's Theater Company there before moving to New York in about 1983.

After “Twin Peaks” hit, Cruise made another album with Lynch and Badalamenti, “The Voice of Love” (1993).

In addition to Grinnan, whom she married in 1988, she is survived by a sister, Kate Coen.