INTERVIEW: Wendy James on the return of Transvision Vamp: “Maybe you reach middle age & mellow out, but that's never been the case for me…The passion to make music has always been there.”
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published: 19 August 2025
The 1980s was one of the most pivotal decades in pop music history. Computers became widespread in the creation of music for the very first time, and in particular the unmistakeable sound of the synthesiser shaped the soundscape of the decade, a sound that has continued to form the foundation of pop music and in recent years that raw, unfiltered synthpop of the 1980s has again come into prominence.
It also saw the rise of female musicians as empowered, independent artists who fundamentally reshaped both society and the music industry - from Madonna to Janet Jackson to Whitney Houston. And from 1987 until the early 1990s, one of the most magnetic, charismatic and successful woman in pop was the lead singer of a band called Transvision Vamp, Wendy James.
For four glorious years, James dominated the pop music scene, a face that was everywhere, fronting a band that garnered massive commercial success as well as critical acclaim.
Formed in 1986 by James, Nick Christian Sayer, Dave Parsons, Tex Axile and Pol Burton, they signed to MCA in December that year, however their first two singles charted poorly. In 1988 however, they released their third single ‘I Want Your Love’ and their trajectory changed forever. A punk-pop gem, it was a massive worldwide hit, peaking in the top 10 in Australia, the UK, New Zealand and across Europe.
A string of hits followed which mixed new wave, rock and pop - ‘Revoiution Baby’, ‘The Only One’, ‘(I Just Wanna) B With U’ and their highest charting hit to date, 1989’s ‘Baby I Don’t Care’, which peaked at number 3 in both the UK and Australia.
Their two albums, 1988’s Pop Art and the following year’s Velveteen were also huge hits, with Velveteen hitting number 1 in the UK and number 2 in Australia. In 1991, their third album Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble found success in Australia, but it was never released in the UK and the band split up in 1992.
James subsequently launched a solo career with a sound that moved between pop, rock, alternative, vintage 1950s rock & roll and country, releasing her fifth solo album The Shape of History last year.
James has now announced she has reformed Transvision Vamp, and will be touring Australia and New Zealand in February 2026. The band’s first shows in Australia for almost 30 years, James and her band will be performing 11 shows in Australia, with more dates added and venues upgraded after the initial run of shows quickly sold out.
”I am so excited to be coming back to Australia to play the songs which started my whole musical journey!’” James says. “I remember vividly so many moments across Australia, moments of enormous success, enormous love and enormous fun. I’m bringing with me a set full of music that will thrill and musicians who will amaze!”
One of the true icons of 1980s pop music, the return of James and Transvision Vamp is a momentous event and is sure to be one of the musical highlights of the new year. We recently sat down with James to find out more about the tour, her legacy and her continuing musical journey.
Hi Wendy, it’s so lovely to see you and I really appreciate your time. I want to get straight into the beginnings of Transvision Vamp and when you guys really took off, because you were just out of high school. Did you feel like you were doing something radical at the time, which is really how you came across, or was it more a case of just diving in with that fearless energy of youth?
I think it was just the way 17 year olds generally behave if they've got an object or a mission in their mind, whatever the passion is. But certainly for music to succeed when you're 16 or 17, there are no other things in your life, and you think that you are completely, and you are, unbeatable. You make your own flyers, you record your own demos, you do every hustle you can 24 hours a day to get your gigs. Your whole life is focused on the energy of making your band a success. And that's why bands inevitably break through, when they are young and energetic and vivacious, and most often are at their most exciting. Then you get money, you get older, you maybe find a partner in life and just like anything, that can change. In my case, I've never relinquished that energy. Although I've made money, I've also lost money, so I've not really been able to sit back and bask in entourages or five star hotels or whatever.
The passion to make music has always been there, and that's why I've ended up doing 10 albums now, as opposed to [the rest of] Transvision Vamp. Dave [Parsons] went on to do other music, but not the rest of the band particularly. I've powered through, first doing the collaboration with Elvis Costello (1993 debut solo album Now Ain’t The Time For Your Tears), and then the two Racine albums, which were solo albums, I wrote and produced everything, even though I called [the project] Racine. And from then onwards, I produce and write all of my albums, and I've actually had the same band around me now for about three albums.
I released my 10th album (The Shape Of History) at the end of last year, and it was received well. Normally I would go on a UK tour to promote, but I was just thinking ten albums is quite a monumental number, it's an anniversary number. So I emailed a couple of venues around Australia that I could see were probably the right venue for me, I met the promoter Destroy All Lines, and then suddenly I made the decision to regain Transvision Vamp and come back to Australia playing all those songs as Transvision Vamp. Dave's back in the band now and the set list is phenomenal. It actually started with covid, rediscovering Transvision Vamp, because there was enough time at home to actually listen to the past and surprisingly, many of those songs have aged so fantastically. ‘Baby, I Don't Care’, ‘I Want Your Love’, ‘Tell That Girl To Shut Up’, ‘Revolution Baby’ and a lot of the third album, like ‘(I Just Wanna) B With U’, ‘If Looks Could Kill’. There's so many there that it's just been a natural progression to just evolve back into Transvision Vamp,
Maybe you reach middle age and mellow out, which is fine and good and sounds lovely sometimes, but that's never been the case for me. I've developed a really strong network of fans around the world and I couldn't do this if it were not for the fans being so enthralled by the next release, or their passion for Transvision Vamp’s original three albums. The whole thing has just motivated itself, so now it's my duty to return to Australia and provide the best show of the year!
You said that you had time to sit with these songs in covid and the way I and many others have always seen you is as this powerful, diamond studded fist of a woman. You were always at the front with these charged lyricism that gave context on culture, often with a tongue in cheek wink, like in ‘Psychosonic Cindy’ and ‘Tell That Girl To Shut Up’. How does it feel looking at the songs as a grown woman, and thinking how do we deliver this song, particularly with these themes, to the audience today?
With that same teenage attitude! Because although my years have ticked by - thank goodness - my attitude hasn't changed. In fact I would say I'm more acute now, because when you do get a little bit older, you really realise that some things are worth bothering about, and a lot of things just aren't. You actually become more acute in your attitude and more impervious and more untouchable. Because you own yourself by a certain point, don't you? You come out of being a teenage with the bravado which powers you through for the next 10 years or whatever, and then at some point, it evolves into owning yourself. And that's where the real power is. So tell that girl to shut up - I'm ready for that fight any day!
Your presence, particularly in the late 80s, very much like Debbie Harry, Madonna, Janet Jackson, the line was blurred between sexuality and power, thanks to the media because of the way they chose to talk about you, which is absolutely bollocks. Even today, an attractive woman is judges based on her looks and persona. How do you feel now about how female self expression in music is treated and if it has changed since your time in Transvision Vamp in regards to the battle of how you are perceived as an artist?
To get an accurate answer, you'd have to get me and a girl who is at the top today and ask how they're being seen by the music business or the critics or the audience. But I basically think it's the same fight because there is commonality between anything Janis Joplin went through to Debbie Harry, to Madonna, to me, and then on to Lady Gaga or Gwen Stefani. There's one difference, not so much with Gaga or Madonna, but the rest of us, we've been in bands with guys. So we travel with a gang, and that kind of gang mentality projects itself through the strength that we are armed with. You're not standing up there necessarily revealing your fragile vulnerability, although of course that exists. You are out there going toe to toe with the boys, and I was always very competitive. It's never occurred to me in my life, in my field, that I wasn't equal. I had absolute equal rights in the world with any man or any strata of society. I'm born and endowed with equal rights. It never even occurred to me that that could be a question or in doubt.
On top of that, in music, I can take on anyone, and sometimes I'll win, and sometimes you might think I've lost, but I'm good and ready to compete on any stage at any time! And I think the other girls that I mentioned, they would feel exactly the same We don't necessarily make the same kind of music, but there would definitely be similar traits of personality running through all of us, and that's across the ages, right? If you ask a girl in a band who is 18 years old now, I'm sure her attitude is basically the same, which is to go out there and compete and be the best, and she's not thinking about gender or stereotypes at all, as she should not, and none of us should have to.
No, not at all. You lived it and experienced it, this notion of knowing that you're kick ass at what you're doing, at what you're making, at what you're writing and putting out, but whenever you're being marketed or interviewed, it always comes down to, ‘isn't Wendy James really hot?’
Right, which is a total double double standard, because if anyone's objectified in music, it's Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones. Think of the Andy Warhol cover for Sticky Fingers. If I may be lewd,Warhol made that cock look enormous in those fucking trousers, and the rest of the time they've got their tops off! For the most part, and it shouldn't be the case, when I grew up the majority of music journalists were male, and young males, which means a certain amount of sexism and testosterone, right? They were reviewing me through the lens of their own lives. But it's not at all what the reality was, because the men I associate with are equal opportunists. If you're fucking good, they want to work with you. If you're not, they don't. Gender has nothing to do with any of it, and while I can't necessarily lift a bass rig by myself, the jobs that I am assigned, which is to perform and write, I can do that. And it's not in question.
You said before that you've never lost the teenage girl inside you when it comes to performing and making music and a lot of your songs, are just so spirited and reactionary, in the best possible way. Is that still where you find your biggest surges of creativity, when you've just got something to bite down on or push back against?
Yes, on every album there'll be a healthy portion of that type of song, because it just flows out of me. The kind of chords that I like to hear and the kind of sound that I like them to be presented in, and the attitude of the lyrics. But on my solo albums, people have noticed sometimes they have a little reggae lilt to them, other times they're like Scandinavian death metal! Or girl group pop from the 60s, whether it's the French yé-yé girls, or it's Martha Reeves & the Vandellas. So I do skip all over the place as well as that core of new wave garage punk, it's always there because that's my original true love. That was my original siren.
is that still the music you chase with the music that you're listening to. Do you still chase that same kind of siren, or is it quite eclectic?
I would say I will always go back to The Stooges, the Velvet Underground, and then kind of CBGB, 1975 to 1980 downtown New York, New Wave music. Even though I grew up surrounded by English, London, punk, my actual inclination is far more toward the New Wave, downtown New York. And that's really what propelled me to move there. I will always be in love with New York. I'm in South France now, but I lived in New York for 17 years, so more than anything it just felt like home and so invigorating. It is like that bloody Frank Sinatra song, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, because you just feel empowered by New York City. London can do that too and I've had some of my greatest times in Sydney. Of course, any major city has got that, but New York has something different, because it is a melting pot, it really really is.
It's got that bite, which is one of the things you carry through
Yeah, which is great for rock and roll.
100%. Of course, you are coming back to Australia, and you said that it was enormous fun and there's a lot of love for you here. What do you think it is about your energy and your songs and what you have, which to me is so very quintessentially English, hit so well with an Australian audience?
I think there's a brash kind of honesty to the way I present my music. It's up in your face. I don't know the psychology of Australia and its people, but I do think that in your faceness is what appealed. Of course, the songs are there, the melodies there, the beats were there, and it captured a moment. But I also think it was very much that attitude that somehow undid a tap in the Australian youth of that time, and it just exploded. I think it was the attitude. Australia, and Australian youth back then, and today hopefully more youth as well as some people that were there at the time, really responded to being invigorated a frying pan being smashed around their heads - in a good way! We all just got a fucking wake up call. We all got a shock. And I think Australia could not only could it handle it, but it relished it.
And I really cannot wait. It's going to be nuts when that plane starts descending into the airport and I step back onto Australian soil. It's game on. It's going to be crazy, for me as well as the audience. I already can't wait with six months to go.
TRANSVISION VAMP AUSTRALIAN 2026 TOUR Tickets on sale now
11 February - The Triffid Brisbane, QLD
12 February - The Triffid Brisbane, QLD SOLD OUT
14 February - The Station Sunshine Coast, QLD
15 February - King Street Bandroom Newcastle, NSW
17 February - Enmore Theatre Sydney, NSW
18 February - Northcote Theatre Melbourne, VIC SOLD OUT
19 February - The Gov Adelaide, SA
21 February - Metropolis Fremantle, WA
24 February - Northcote Theatre Melbourne, VIC
