It comes as no surprise, therefore, to learn that Siouxsie had an isolated childhood. Before the Banshees, these suburbs’ great gift to the world was David Bowie, whose influence on British pop has been incalculable. The two founding members of the Banshees, Steve Severin and Siouxsie, were both raised in the southeast London suburbs of Bromley and Chiselhurst, a comfortable area whose isolation can breed strange ideas and fantasies. The Pet Shop Boys, Bryan Ferry, even the Sex Pistols…the list is endless. Part of the resolution of this paradox lies in the quality that Sioux has always maintained, both in her work and in her attitude to worldwide recognition: a degree of distance, of otherness.ĭespite the rhetoric, British pop is not dominated so much by the working class as by the products of suburbia. It is a paradox that the punk group that enshrined the possibilities of the moment should now be one of its longest survivors and capable of the surprises contained on the new LP. We were told off for being lazy.” Yet here we are, 18 singles later, talking about the Banshees’ ninth album, Tinderbox. Siouxsie doesn’t think about it much now: “It was fun while it lasted and then it was very much a case of being hounded into making it serious. After one last minimal drum beat from Sid, the four walked offstage into punk myth: Anyone Can Do It. In September 1976, Siouxsie Sioux (née Susan Dallion), Steve Severin, Sid Vicious, and Marco Pirroni (later Adam Ant‘s co-writer) stepped out of the Sex Pistols‘ audience and played an impromptu set-”Knocking on Heaven’s Door” mixed with “The Lord’s Prayer”-for 20 minutes. Siouxsie splits a strawberry tart and muses, “I much prefer to be incongruous to a situation.”Ī certain incongruity and aloofness has marked the Banshees’ course-slightly too willful to be called a career-during the last 10 years. This is not to imply that she fades away into the tea-taking gentility as we move to our seat, heads turn at that face, that hair, that jewelry, and such details as her skull-topped cane. Instantly recognizable, Siouxie is just as poised, but much more amiable and-dare one say it?-professional than before. This time we meet, just Siouxsie and I, in the more comfortable surroundings of Fortnum and Mason’s Fountain tea room. All five parties concerned still had a lot to prove, so we sat in a park by the Thames, muttering bleak manifestos at one another: It was very 1978. Punk had just fizzled and postpunk’s ground rules were being laid down. I first interviewed Siouxsie Sioux eight years ago, just after the Banshees signed their first record deal. This article originally appeared in the June 1986 issue of SPIN.
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