Siouxsie and the Banshees
coalesced out of the dense cloud of unbathed
mutants and weirdos surrounding the
Sex Pistols. Their first incarnation occurred on September 20,
1976. It featured not-yet-
Pistol Sid Vicious "playing"
drums, future
Adam and the Ants guitarist Marco Pirroni, and future Siouxsie and the Banshees
bassist Steve Severin. The "band" made
random noise for twenty minutes while
Siouxsie herself declaimed
the Lord's Prayer, bits of
nursery rhymes, and whatever else popped into her head.
I'm not sorry I missed it.
Not long after, they got a real drummer,
Kenny Morris, and went through a series of
guitarists until they settled on
John McKay.
McKay also played
saxophone infrequently, though not infrequently enough.
In that form, they released
The Scream in
1978 and
Join Hands in
1979. Both were grim, painful
punk records. They had a neat gimmick, though, which most of the early
British punks never thought of: They could
play their instruments. They were tight and
they weren't fucking around1. They didn't change anybody's life, but it was
good stuff.
Join Hands breaks down on side 2, where they ran out of material and filled in with the miserable "
Lord's Prayer" thing ("
Fodderstompf", anyone?)
Then,
Morris and
McKay decamped in the middle of a tour.
Sioux and
Severin replaced
Morris with a guy who calls himself
Budgie and had been in
The Slits. The
guitarist chair was temporarily filled by
Curist
Robert Smith and by other random passersby including
Magazine guitarist John McGeoch and ex-
Pistol Steve Jones.
This is where it gets cool. Most of the
British punks couldn't grow out of it. They ended up going basically nowhere, rebellion mutating into
schtick2. Siouxsie and the Banshees escaped that syndrome. With the above-
enumerated flock of
guitarists, they made
Kaleidoscope in
1980, a weird and colorful record. It had
synthesizers on it and didn't much resemble their previous work.
Maybe because
Magazine was going nowhere interesting, or maybe because
Howard DeVoto was even goddamn weirder than
Siouxsie herself,
John McGeoch joined the Banshees full-time, and they recorded
Juju in
1981. My friends, this is a very cool
record, full of
groovy guitar noise and tremendous energy. It's a little bit gloomy, and
Sioux's
lyrics always read like
bad high-school poetry on paper, but you're not supposed to read them: You're supposed to
listen to the record. Go listen to it now.
I'm not kidding. I'll wait right here until you get back.
I've got a full bag of tobacco and an empty ashtray. I'll be fine.
Next,
McGeoch called in sick and
Robert Smith rejoined. In
1984 they released
Hyaena, which is a little overdone in spots but very good. They must have kept
Smith on
a short leash. They were getting groovy and polychromatic again; they even covered "
Dear Prudence". If I recall correctly (it's not worth walking over to my records to find out), this was the same year
Echo and the Bunnymen did
Ocean Rain, and the two were equated in the music press. Listen to them both to see how well and how badly the same ideas can be executed by two different bands: The
Bunnymen rekkid is a pooch, and I'm being kind.
Robert Smith bailed and was replaced by somebody called
John Valentine Carruthers who had been in something called
Clock DVA. For my money, they were forgettable from there on in, with the exception of the
Creatures side-project, which has its own
writeup. Apparently the Banshees broke up in
1996.
1 This was true of the
Sex Pistols as well. Forget
Sid;
Glen Matlock played on the
album.
Jones and
Cook were solid.
Cook in particular had a real nice touch. There's a version of "
Did You No Wrong" floating around where you can really hear him, and he's just
there, very confident right foot, down the middle, right
in the pocket.
2 Joy Division got away with it, too.
Dates and lineup specifics are from
http://www.mital-u.ch/Siouxsie/history.html; all opinions and
aesthetic judgements are my own, and should be taken as final and definitive Truth.