James Reyne OAM (born James Michael Nugent Reyne on 19 May 1957 in Lagos, Nigeria) is an Australian rock musician and singer/songwriter both in solo work and, until 1986, with the band Australian Crawl.

Biography

Early years
Reyne was born in Lagos, Nigeria to an Australian mother and English diplomat father. The family moved to Victoria, Australia in the early 1960s. Reyne lived in Mount Eliza, Victoria, was educated at The Peninsula School and studied drama at the Victorian College of Arts. He formed a band called Spiff Rouch containing fellow locals Bill McDonough, Guy McDonough, Brad Robinson, Paul Williams, Robert Walker, Mark Hudson and Simon Binks. and solo work. By early 1978, Spiff Rouch had split with Reyne to form Clutch Cargo with Binks, Robinson, Williams and his younger brother David Reyne.


Australian Crawl

In late 1978, Clutch Cargo was renamed Australian Crawl and started to gain popularity on the pub circuit. David Reyne left to continue an acting course and was replaced by Bill McDonough. Australian Crawl made a memorable debut on the Countdown TV show. Reyne performed with both arms in plaster casts, a result of injuries sustained after being hit by a car. The band went on to sell more than one million albums in Australia in the 1980s. Their most popular songs are "Reckless", "Beautiful People", "Errol", "The Boys Light Up", "Things Don't Seem", "Oh No Not You Again" and "Downhearted". They were voted Countdown 1981 Most Popular Group, and Reyne was 1980 and 1981 Most Popular Male Performer. After the band split up in 1986, Reyne went on to a successful solo career.


Solo career
1985–1999
Whilst still with Australian Crawl, Reyne formed a duet with Lin Buckfield of Electric Pandas to release a 1985 single "R.O.C.K." / "Under My Thumb".

In 1987, Reyne released his self titled debut solo album. After subsequently releasing the hit single "Fall of Rome", which reached No. 5 on the Australian charts, the album was re-packaged with "Motor's Too Fast" (#6 Aria Charts) replacing the song "Coin in A Plate" which had appeared on the original version. Ultimately the debut album would spawn 6 hit singles, including "Hammerhead" (#8 Aria Charts), "Heaven on a Stick", "Rip It Up" and "Always The Way".

His debut was followed in May 1989 by his next solo release Hard Reyne, which featured the hits "House of Cards" (#17 Aria Charts) and "One More River" (#22 Aria Charts). The album was produced By Simon Hussey. The project was launched with a live televised performance on Australia's MTV program on the Nine Network and an Australian tour in late 1989. A further two singles—"Trouble in Paradise" (Oct 1989) and "Harvest Moon" (Jan 1990)—completed the album.

In 1991, Electric Digger Dandy was released. Mindful of the American market (where the album was released under the title of Any Day Above Ground), Electric Digger Dandy included a revamped version of the Australian Crawl hit "Reckless" as well as a cover of John Hiatt's "Stood Up", a duet with American singer-songwriter Tony Joe White. Single releases from the album included "Slave" (#10 Aria Charts), "Any Day Above Ground" and "Some People". It remains Reyne's biggest commercial release, reaching No. 3 on the Australian music sales charts.

In 1992, he recorded a duet with country singer James Blundell (a cover of The Dingoes['] song, Way Out West). It hit No. 2 on the Australian charts – still James's biggest solo single. Later that year he joined former Sherbet frontman Daryl Braithwaite, Jef Scott and Simon Hussey to create the album Company of Strangers—an album that spawned four Top 100 singles. All three of these releases went platinum multiple times and contained several top-10 hits. These included "Motor City (I Get Lost)", "Sweet Love", "Daddy's Gonna Make You A Star" and "Baby, You're a Rich Man".

October 1994 saw the release of James's critically acclaimed fourth album on the RooArt label—The Whiff of Bedlam—recorded in Los Angeles with Stewart Levine. The first single release was "Red Light Avenue" and followed by "Day in the Sun" (Dec 1994)and "It's Only Natural" (April 1995). James performed "Day in the Sun" on the Australian Music Awards held in Queensland in November 1994. James also toured the album across Australia in the summer of 1994.

James and his band continued overseas to Europe, UK and South America. Recorded live in South America, the double-album "Live in Rio" was released in May 1996. A single edit of "Oh No, Not You Again (live)" was released to coincide with the album. In September 1996, James took to the Enmore Theatre stage in a David Atkins production of the musical Little Shop of Horrors.

James returned to the studio in 1997 to worked with producer Ashley Caddell. Now signed to Village Roadshow Music, the first release was the pop-infused "Brand New Emperor's Clothes" in October 1997.
James continued to write and record new material throughout 1998/1999. Two more single releases "Not Waving, Drowning" and "Wonderful Day" (1998) followed and, in 1999, the critically acclaimed Design For Living, which featured "Reno", "Little Criminals" and "Stranger Than Fiction." In 1999, he was a guest performer on John Farnham's "I Can't Believe He's 50 Tour". His duet with Farnham, "Don't You Know It's Magic", is included in John Farnham's album Live at the Regent Theatre.


2004–2007
After a few years' break between studio albums, Reyne signed with Liberation Music in Australia. In 2004 he released Speedboats for Breakfast, which included the singles "Bug" and "The Rainbow's Dead End". Of "Bug" James said: "I wanted to create a song out of playing the same four chords going round and round, building and growing all the time, with things coming in and dropping out. The listener knows there's transition but there's no real point where the change is obvious". This was followed in 2005 by the album ...And The Horse You Rode In On, which contained acoustic reworkings of some of his best-known solo and Australian Crawl compositions.

In late 2004, Australian dance producers Smash 'n' Grab remixed Australian Crawl's "Reckless", and Reyne scored a minor dance hit with the song "She Don't Like That".

Reyne hosted Dig, a music show on ABC2 (2006–2007), and made an appearance on The AFL Footy Show in Melbourne in 2006. In May 2007, he released a new studio album, Every Man a King, which features the singles "Light in the Tunnel" and "Little Man You've Had a Busy Day". Reyne said of the album; "If there's any theme to this album it's people being easily impressed. This silliness that they aspire to, the lives they read about in magazines. Their obsession with trash culture, the bizarre values we seem to live by. It's all just endlessly and perversely fascinating to me."

A second acoustic album, Ghost Ships, was released in early October 2007.


2010–present
In April 2010 Reyne released, TCB (Taking Care of Business)), a collection of Elvis Presley covers, including "Viva Las Vegas", "Return To Sender" and "Burning Love". The album debuted at number 32 on the ARIA Albums chart. He also appeared on "Hey Hey It's Saturday" and Channel 9's NRL The Footy Show (rugby league) in the week of 19 April 2010.

In November 2011, he released a single, "English Girls", followed by his most autobiographical song, "Capsize", in January 2012. Both songs feature on Reyne's album Thirteen (March 2012). The album Two more singles were released; "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?" and "Good Clean Fun".

James joined the team at MusicMAX in 2013 as a presenter.

In the Australia Day honours of 2014 Reyne was recognised with a Medal of the Order of Australia in the General Division "for service to the performing arts as a singer/songwriter, and through support for a range of charitable organisations".

Universal Records released a two-CD set, The Anthology, on 1 August 2014. The double album featured all of Reyne's earlier hits on Disc 1 and a collection of his more recent material and radio singles on the Disc 2. In late 2014 James launched a "James Reyne Plays Australian Crawl" series of shows across Australia. Performing only songs from the Australian Crawl catalogue, James stated it was the closest thing to a reunion as fans were ever to get.


Acting career
Reyne appeared in the TV drama Return to Eden. He also played Tina Turner's manager in the 1993 bio-movie about Tina's life What's Love Got to Do with It. In 2005 Reyne appeared as a guest actor in the telemovie The Postcard Bandit, which used music by Australian Crawl in its soundtrack.


Personal life
Reyne is the older brother of drummer and TV presenter David Reyne. Their younger sister Elisabeth is married to Simon Hussey. They co-produced Daryl Braithwaite's 1991 album Higher Than Hope. Hussey produced and engineered Reyne's early albums and both were band mates in Company of Strangers, with Braithwaite, for the 1992 album of the same name and related singles.

James Reyne is the father of Neighbours actor Jaime-Robbie Reyne. He lives on the Mornington Peninsula with his partner, Tina, and a daughter.