Early years Reyne was born in
Lagos,
Nigeria. His father, Rodney Michael Reyne, was an English-born former Royal Marine who served as
aide-de-camp to the
governor of the
state of
Victoria, Sir
Dallas Brooks, and subsequently worked for
British Petroleum. His paternal grandfather, Cecil Nugent Reyne, was an English
rear admiral. His mother, Judith Graham, née Leask, was a teacher. By early 1978, Spiff Rouch had split and Reyne formed Clutch Cargo services with Binks, Robinson, Williams and his younger brother David Reyne. 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. to release a 1985 single, "R.O.C.K." / "Under My Thumb". In 1987, Reyne released his
self titled debut solo album and started the "Rip it Up" tour. The first two singles released from the album, "
Fall of Rome" and "
Hammerhead", were top-10 hits in Australia, followed by the less-successful "
Rip It Up" and "Heaven On a Stick". The album was re-packaged in 1988 to include a further top 10 single, "Motor's Too Fast" (peaking at #6 on the
ARIA chart Reyne returned to the studio in 1997 to work with producer Ashley Caddell. Now signed to
Village Roadshow Music, the first release was "Brand New Emperor's Clothes" in October 1997. Reyne continued to write and record new material throughout 1998–1999. In 1999, the
Design For Living album was released. 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 March 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 February 2005, Australian dance producers Smash 'n' Grab remixed Australian Crawl's "Reckless", which peaked at #42 in Australia. 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 Disc 2. In late 2014, Reyne launched a "James Reyne Plays Australian Crawl" series of shows across Australia. Performing only songs from the Australian Crawl catalogue, Reyne stated it was the closest thing to a reunion as fans were ever to get. In July 2019, Reyne released an original song titled "Fearless" for the Australian film
Palm Beach soundtrack. In April 2020, Reyne announced the release of his twelfth studio album,
Toon Town Lullaby, alongside the album's lead single of the same name. ==Acting career==