Tina Weymouth biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Martina ("Tina") Michele Weymouth was born on November 22, 1950, in Coronado, California, an affluent town in San Diego County. Her mother, Laure Weymouth, had been born in France, and her father, Ralph Weymouth, was a career U.S. Naval officer who eventually rose to the rank of Rear Admiral. Growing up in a military family in a devoutly Catholic household, Weymouth moved all around the globe as a child. When she was 2, the family moved to Hawaii and then to France, Belgium, Switzerland, Los Angeles and Iceland before finally settling in Washington, D.C. Such frequent moves prevented her from forming any lasting friendships, and as a result Weymouth grew into a painfully shy adolescent. "I was very, very shy," she recalled. "That was because we moved all the time. I had my own inner world." However, as an adult Weymouth has come to see her whirlwind travels as kid as a valuable and confidence-building life experience. "It makes a big difference in what you know you can do in life if experience has taught you you can live anywhere," she said.

As a teenager, Weymouth discovered an outlet for her vibrant inner life in music. At the age of 12, she joined Mrs. Tufts' English Handbell Ringing Group, a prestigious if somewhat obscure Washington, D.C. youth music troupe that traveled all across the mid-Atlantic United States. "We played in churches and schools in places like Pennsylvania, New England, and the World's Fair in New York," Weymouth recalled. "Our repertoire was old English folk songs and medieval melodies, and we all wore Elizabethan costumes." In addition to the hand bells, Weymouth also developed a passion for rock 'n' roll during her teenage years, teaching herself to play to guitar. "I'm a self-taught musician," she says. "I was listening to the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul & Mary—a lot of folk, in fact. I learned a folk finger-picking style from one of those Pete Seeger books with little diagrams with numbers for the fingers." And although her natural musical talent was evident from the speed and ease with which she learned, Weymouth admits that she was too unfocused and too isolated to really develop as a musician during her high school years. "I taught myself to play guitar when I was 14, but I didn't stick with it," she said. "No discipline. It was one of those things you'd do alone in your room to get away from your family when you're an adolescent and feel different from everybody else."

After graduating from high school in 1968, Weymouth landed a summer job at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Washington, D.C. and then headed off to Barnard College in New York intending to major in French literature and art history.