Rockapaedia Obituaries
Twinkle
Twinkle died aged sixty-six on 2
1st May 2015 of cancer on the Isle of Wight, U.K.
She is survived by her husband Graham and their son, Michael and their daughter, Amber.
Twinkle was born Lynn Annette Ripley on 15th July 1948 in
Surbiton, Surrey, UK.
into a posh family.
Twinkle owed her early entrance to recording studios at the age of sixteen to her boyfriend, Dec Cluskey, of the hit pop group The Bachelors, who was introduced to her by her sister, a music journalist, and who passed on to his manager a demo that Twinkle's father played to him. Her song "Terry" was a teenage tragedy song about the death of a boyfriend in a motorcycle crash which conjured up a dark mood with its doleful backing vocals, spooky organ, 12-string guitar and slow, emphatic rhythm. The record caused a furore, accusations of bad taste leading to a ban from the BBC.
The follow-up, "Golden Lights", was also written by Twinkle. The lyrics express disillusionment with the pop business: her EP track "A Lonely Singing Doll", the English-language version of France Gall's 1965 winning Eurovision Song Contest song for Luxembourg, "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", originally written by Serge Gainsbourg, returned to a theme similar to "Golden Lights". Twinkle made few live appearances but performed "Terry" at the annual New Musical Express hit concerts.
In 1969 she recorded a self-written single, the Tamla Motown-styled "Micky", produced by Mike d'Abo for the Immediate label which 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 C
D compilations. Her later recordings appeared under the name Twinkle Ripley. She recorded a 1975 single, "Smoochie" with her father, Sidney Ripley.
In 1972, Twinkle married actor-model Graham Rogers, who starred in the Milk Tray chocolate adverts.
Photographic publicity portraits of Twinkle taken in the mid-1960s are exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London, U.K.
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