Kimberley Rew

As a guitarist and songwriter, Kimberley Rew shaped new wave and alternative rock throughout the 1970s and 1980s, both in the mainstream and beneath it. His tenure in the pioneering neo-psychedelic and punk band the Soft Boys paired his bright, Byrd-influenced guitar figures with those of Robyn Hitchcock, forging a template that later guided R.E.M. and helped define the jangly guitar-pop sound of 1980s alternative rock. Once the Soft Boys dissolved, Rew assembled Katrina & the Waves, placing his crisp guitar lines and melodic hooks at the center of the group’s sound. The band scored a worldwide success with the single “Walking on Sunshine” and also penned “Going Down to Liverpool,” which the Bangles later recorded as one of their first hits. Entering the new century, Rew resumed work with Hitchcock on multiple solo projects, joined a brief Soft Boys reunion, and maintained a steady output of his own recordings, both solo and alongside vocalist and bassist Lee Cave-Berry.

Born December 3, 1951, in Bristol in South West England, Rew entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1971 and remained in the city after completing an archeology degree. An avid guitarist, he joined drummer Alex Cooper in 1975 to launch a band called the Waves, yet left that outfit in 1978 to become a member of the Soft Boys alongside Robyn Hitchcock. Although the group earned only limited notice at the time, its fusion of pop melodies, punk drive, and psychedelic architecture proved lastingly influential; the two albums it released, A Can of Bees in 1979 and Underwater Moonlight in 1980, would eventually be recognized as landmarks. Commercial indifference persisted, however, and after Underwater Moonlight the Soft Boys disbanded. While Hitchcock launched a solo career, on which Rew appeared for the 1981 debut Black Snake Diamond Role, Rew reactivated the Waves, retaining Cooper on drums and adding bassist Vince de la Cruz and singer-rhythm guitarist Katrina Leskanich.

The revived lineup first performed at U.K. RAF bases and on a Canadian club circuit, and Rew included several of its performances on his 1981 solo album The Bible of Bop, which also incorporated sessions with members of the dB’s and leftover Soft Boys material. In 1983 the Waves issued their own eight-song EP, Shock Horror!, followed later that year by a full-length self-titled album. Both soon appeared in Canada on Attic Records, with the album retitled Walking on Sunshine for that market and containing early versions of “Going Down to Liverpool” and “Walking on Sunshine.” Strong sales in Canada prompted a second Attic release, Katrina & the Waves, Vol. 2, in 1984. Capitol Records then signed the band, which delivered a self-titled 1985 album featuring polished re-recordings; the updated “Walking on Sunshine” became a major hit, sustaining the group’s touring and recording profile for another decade. Although popularity waned during the 1990s, the song “Love Shine a Light” won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1997, the same year the band released Walk on Water. That proved to be its final album; Katrina & the Waves disbanded late in 1997.

Since 1988 Rew had occasionally performed with the Cambridge ensemble the Lonely, and following the Waves’ split he contributed to its albums Rarer Gifts in 1997 and Underground in 1998 as well as a live album issued in 2000. He also returned to the studio with Robyn Hitchcock for Jewels for Sophia in 1999 and A Star for Bram in 2000. Those sessions led to a full Soft Boys reunion that began with 2001 tour dates marking an expanded reissue of Underwater Moonlight and produced the 2002 album Nextdoorland; the reunion concluded in 2003, after which Rew resumed solo work. He had already released the understated yet melodic Tunnel Into Summer in 2000, and between 2002 and 2019 he issued eleven further solo albums of incisive, guitar-driven songs on his own CGB imprint. In 2007 Canadian vocalist Celine Dion included his composition “That’s Just the Woman in Me” on the album Taking Chances. During the 2000s Rew also began recording and touring with Lee Cave-Berry, who supplied bass and shared vocal duties; together they issued the early-rock covers collections Lend Me Your Comb in 2005 and Return of the Comb in 2008, followed by the 2015 tribute A Tribute to the Troggs, which was reissued in 2018.