Danielle Dax is mostly remembered for her outstanding fancy dresses and a couple of highly remarkable strange pop tunes that always showed a little bit too inaccessible for being a real chart success. But there's a lot more to Danielle, the elusive heroine.

Even as a child, Southend-on-Sea-born Danielle Dax showed a peculiar interest in creativity. Adolescent Danielle indulged in painting and acting and proved to be gifted in her endeavour. She was not very much interested in making music at this time, though her fascination for set design and artwork drew her in this direction.

This brought her in contact with a certain Karl Blake, an open-minded student who had founded a band called The Lemon Kittens. Karl was quite impressed by Danielle's ideas and asked her to do the cover artwork for the forthcoming Lemon Kittens record. Out of this rather loose cooperation a close friendship arose, and within short Danielle found herself as a member of the band.

The Lemon Kittens released two records, "We Buy A Hammer For Daddy" and "The Big Dentist", both of which showed a very experimental attitude towards music production. Their performances indeed proved to be more outstanding than their music, as they often appeared in their birthday suits on stage. However, in 1982 the Lemon Kittens were laid to rest, and Karl started a new band project called The Shockheaded Peters.

Danielle, on the other hand, decided to go for a solo career and released her first album "Pop Eyes" in 1983. "Pop Eyes" was true DIY, as Danielle not only composed all of the songs and played all the instruments herself, but also did the production work on her 4-track machine and released the record on her own label "Awesome".

Needless to say that she also designed the sleeve artwork, but as most people found it a trifle shocking (it showed a distorted face made up of pictures from gore-laden medical publications), the final artwork was done by photographer Holly Warburton. Again the beginning of a long lasting relationship, as most of Danielle's later records sported coverdesigns by Holly. It has to be said that Holly's surreal artwork has always been the perfect enhancement to Danielle's appearance and music and become closely connected to her oeuvre.
 
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