Intro
Voices (Live debut)
Fireworks
Green Fingers
Paradise Place
Cascade
Melt!*
Pulled To Bits
Night Shift
Sin In My Heart*
Thumb
Slowdive
Painted Bird
Arabian Knights
Overground
Spellbound
Voodoo Dolly
Cocoon
Switch
Israel

No excuses.  Me again on the Banshees.  And why not? '82's drawing in, the year's best act are wrapping up their best ever year and - hell! - its the only real fun left in town.

Some brief reminiscences on the run.  Triumph - the only word for it.  Tuesday, before a bolshie, bigoted audience, Marc and the Mambas - alias Almond and Hogan plus tapes - turned the traditionally missable support slot topsy turvy into a wigged-out, vicious cabaret.

Some idiot shouts something predictably offensive.  "Why don't you go play with your own insignificant little willie!" retorts Marc, revelling in reaction.  "Insignificant and little - just like your brain!"

He's right you know.  The idea of the Mambas - even the actuality sometimes, despite teething troubles over nerve and commitment - is to expose the hallowed pop platform as a pathetic sham through adventurous informality.  It's getting there.  Another way of keeping the performing arts alive.

Wednesday.  The last date of the tour they said would never happen and the Banshees adopt the opposite approach.  Haughty, magnificent, aloof; the total show, one of the very few genuine thrills left in a dying arena.  I'm astonished.

Budgie's a blur of blond muscle stretching even his awesome percussive capacity.  Severin's sturdy yet supple, like propulsive play-dough, refusing to admit any restrictions.  Smith's settled in well and beyond; the guitar parts are now his personal splintering excursions.

And Siouxsie's more Siouxsie than ever tonight, the face that launched a thousand clones fully ten steps ahead of all imitators, the voice that teased a thousand rumours testing the vibrato of "Fireworks" in spite of all caution.

The Banshees are the best we've got.  To attempt to say why - three moments: the string trio delicately threading the poignant drip that feeds Siouxsie and Severin into "Overground" - she shrills, he shivers and suddenly, like a cloudburst Budgie's down on his kit and Smith's unleashing a hellish authority.  I'm sweating.

"Night Shift" is creeping and crawling through improvisational tangles towards an undecided conclusion when a staggering squall wrenches the structure to shreds and a shard of lightning slashes the night sky backdrop.  Electric.

An apocalyptic, celebratory encore, "Israel" - the desert sky glows red, Siouxsie's spread across the speakers like a venomous sacrifice and the audience is up.

Indefinable magic.  Treasured memories.

LIVE IN LONDON

LIVE IN LONDON

LIVE IN LONDON 7" SINGLE*

OVERGROUND

Fireworks
Green Fingers
Paradise Place
Cascade
Melt!
Pulled To Bits
Night Shift
Sin In My Heart
Thumb
Slowdive
Painted Bird
Arabian Knights
Happy House
Overground
Voodoo Dolly
Israel
Spellbound

Israel
Fireworks
Green Fingers
Paradise Place
Cascade
Melt
Pulled To Bits
Night Shift
Sin In My Heart
Christine
Slowdive
Painted Bird
Arabian Knights
Spellbound
Voodoo Dolly

Courtesy of Martin

Well, what a strange old thing this Siouxsie business is; another year on and another night of 'ritual'.  Wasn't put in the best of moods by the support duo who gave a new meaning to the word 'infinity'.  The vocalist was interesting though, warbling away with a 'fishbone legacy' and sounding like a young Joe Cocker - and bits were nice in an 'epic' sorta way.

Now we have a problem with Sioux.  With McGeoch in hospital suffering from strain and exhaustion, Robert Smith was back depping on axe duties and good though he is, it could never match up to the original combination.

The band were valiant to even attempt a show tonight - but the cracks gapped desperately wide open.  So let's turn for a minute to the audience, because the main feature of the gig was its atmosphere.  It was poisonous and claustrophobic.

The renegades form a dozen youth cultures paraded their colours - so skin stared at shockabilly stared at hippy - an the dance went round again, seething.  The hardcore fanatics leapt in the spots and greeted familiar intros with a burst of applause but after each number the response was anything but enthusiastic.

As the band played, a good many people lay on the floor in apparent comas.  People sat on the staircase reading programmes even as the music reached its peaks!  Rarely at a rock gig have I witnessed such extremes of audience passivity and aggression walking hand in hand.

And from the centre of the hardcore, a loud voice screamed "bloody appalling" at the conclusion of various songs - and no one tried to shut him up.  Unfair.  Embarrassing.

Siouxsie swooped out of the spots, her voice sounding perilously weak at times and too often, she sang half a tone flat.  The reason was simple; the flanging on both guitar and bass was so extreme, there were no root notes for her to pitch off.

Poor Sioux.  Poor Severin and Smith with their axes sounding like out of control police sirens!  Budgie had a monitor problem(?) as well.  So a fair number of beats were out-of-sync afterthoughts, but at least he made his mistakes spectacularly!

Even 'Happy House' degenerated in a most peculiar way, turning inside out timewise and ending up feeling very sorry for itself by the time the last few bars rang out.

Getting technical again, the PA was a botched rig, the speakers throwing the sound away in different directions like handfuls of confetti.  The set had more 'Juju' than 'Dreamhouse', obviously for Smith's benefit, and it verged from plodding to showing the old brilliance stabbing back through this murk.

Siouxsie has a new fragility in her voice these days - at times, hints of Marianne Faithful could be glimpsed - and that's most attractive.  The new album shows what can be done, but something laid down and died tonight so I left, with feedback still howling around the auditorium even after nine numbers.

A brave show but some nights even sheer magic isn't quite enough.

Valac Van Der Veene

Fireworks
Melt!
Night Shift
Sin In My Heart
Thumb
Arabian Knights
Paradise Place
Happy House
Israel
Spellbound....(Not complete or in correct order)

There was something thuddingly sudden about the end of it all.  Barely was that last note of 'Spellbound' disappearing than the group were doing likewise, and the house lights were on and we were all filing silently for the exit doors.

No agitation or clamour.  No raucous chanting in defiance of the night.  Everything might have seemed uncomfortably cold had we just seen anyone but Siouxsie And The Banshees.

As it was, though, I suspect the general mood was one of fulfillment, not disappointment or emptiness.  When you've absorbed the special and peculiar magic of the Banshee show then no lingering demonstrations of affection seem necessary or even particularly fitting.

There are other acts whose medicine is not  to be taken internally - so you laugh and thrash around and generally wear your enjoyment on the outside - but this group invites a response that's no less warm and satisfying for being so personal.

Not that Siouxsie is everyone's chalice of hemlock, of course.  If the darkness at the heart of the music's fascination fails to connect with your pleasure centres then it's odds-on you'll not see more than a calculated pose and monotonous gloom.  But to me, the singer's stage role clicks into the material's mystery like a key inside a lock... turn it once, and savour the delicious suspense of a forbidden  door.

Darkness.  It's either what puts you off the songs or draws you in.  It can be a messy, frustrating chore, this job of conveying sounds with words, and darkness will just have to do.  The best thing about the Banshees' darkness is it's the most effective backdrop for the flashes of light and colour - the same reason we wait for nightfall before setting off fireworks.

And 'Fireworks' starts the set.

Adding daggers to the sound is a three-girl string section (Carolyne Lavelle, Ann Stephenson, Virginia Hewes), hidden high on a platform at the back and shrouded by swirling mists.

The guitar is played by Robert Smith of The Cure, deputising for the absent John McGeoch (still recovering from illness).  It's the second stand-in stint he's done for the band and Smith's familiarity and empathy with the Banshees is well-established, to the extent that he can merge in more or less perfectly.  But it's only natural that his contributions must be more subdued, less swaggering, than the bold shafts and patterns we'd expect to hear if McGeoch was there.

Very definitely present, however, is that throbbing generator of a rhythm section:  bassist Severin and drummer Budgie.  The one stands impassive, the other is a mad blur with approximately eight arms and three legs.

The noise that's born of the pair's collaboration is at once dense and fluid, heavy yet flowing - string enough to support the demands of Sioux's melodramatic delivery; sufficiently subtle, so it avoids crude bombast.

'Melt', from the new LP (their fourth, and maybe even their best - a real departure from rock tradition there) slows the momentum, but allows the vocalist a display of grace and control.  'Night Shift' jerks us back to the jagged path, a song of shuddering revulsion with awesome reserves of menace.  And it's good the set still finds room for The Creatures - that's Budgie and Siouxsie's joint adventure (Severin and Smith's tea-break) - with the inclusion of 'Thumb', all sombre and processional.

Siouxsie's herself, despite all the voice-loss fuss of earlier this year, doesn't betray any signs of strain, except perhaps for a little waywardness in the singing of 'Arabian Knights'.  In all, her hold on the proceedings is imperious as ever - aloof and spectacular.  In fact the few numbers on which she straps on a guitar seem uneasy - not because of her playing, but for the way it inhibits her movement, deadening the visual impact of the line-up, leaving a sort of vacuum.

The last quarter of the performance runs through some of the other 45s, like 'Happy House' and 'Israel', which have proved the Banshees' transcendence of those old categories 'singles band' and 'albums band'.  They're neither, because they're obviously both.  And, as compelling as they can be in a studio, they can make something unique from live work also.

Paul Du Noyer

Obsession (Live debut)

Overground (Live debut with string section)

Fireworks
Green Fingers
Cascade
Paradise Place
Red Over White
Melt!
Night Shift
Sin In My Heart
But Not Them
Painted Bird
Arabian Knights
Spellbound
Slowdive
Voodoo Dolly
Israel

As if jinxed by their own audacious self-possession, the Banshees have only to mention live performance for some bolt from the blue to singe their well-laid plans.  With Siouxsie's throat scare so recently consigned to the realms of exaggeration and their antipathy towards touring duly relaxed, John McGeoch's nervous exhaustion suddenly threatened to jeopardise the deserved culmination of this, the most intensely transient period in the bands history.

But, for the second time in three frantic years, enter the Cure's Robert Smith on substitute guitar and, raising a curt two fingers to grinning fate, the Banshees shouldered the challenge and set out, determined to fulfill their commitments.

Opening in Brum before a young and curious crowd, they fired off the edge of their nerves, fed from the offal of first night jitters and boldly crafted Smith's underestimated embroidery into the gap left by McGeoch's missing articulacy.

True, it is hard not to wince at the overcompensation of Budgies opening salvo, hard not to writhe with anxiety as the Banshees sought to tap the tension and work through the temptation to play straight and safe into the richer rewards of radical redefinition.

Prepared, indeed determined, to take risks, a Banshee show never attempts a faithful translation from vinyl into flesh - they respect themselves too much for that!  Rather, from string trio's giddy introduction to "Fireworks" to the locomotive menace of "Sin In My Heart", the songs are striped and stretched, unafraid to jettison the more delicate dimensions of the records for an urgent, animal insistence.

Light, film, costume, gesture and sound all gel into a unique experience.  Certainly, tonight I saw, heard and felt what I never have before and never will again; the ritual, compelling sinews to stretch and lips to synch along with a danger and dignity that never casts the band in the role of performing puppets, not degrades the audience into Pavlovian disciples.  One or two in front of me twitched to pogo, voices were raised requesting "Love In A Void".  No one got what they wanted, but no one can have left disappointed.

Whether thrilled by the exquisite marriage of slides and imagery during the encore "Israel", chilled by the creeping insistence of "Night Shift" or, like me, exhilarated as the tearing clutches of "Voodoo Dolly" relaxed into a beguiling caress and then suddenly snapped into a spitting curse, the crowd stood literally spellbound as the Banshees learned a new proficiency, realised the fact and began probing further.

Tonight they touched brilliance briefly - more than most bands ever do.  Beware and rejoice, there's far more to come and a long way to go.

Steve Sutherland

Israel
She's A Carnival
Fireworks
Green Fingers
Night Shift
Sin In My Heart
But Not Them
Painted Bird
Cascade
Arabian Knights
Spellbound
Voodoo Dolly

Intro
She's A Carnival
Halloween
Fireworks
Green Fingers
Coal Mind
Happy House
Pulled To Bits
Nightshift
Sin In My Heart
So Unreal
Painted Bird
Melt!
Arabian Knights
Spellbound
Voodoo Dolly
Slowdive
Monitor

'Following the footsteps of a rag doll dance we are entranced.  Spellbound'

As legions of bristling spikes and glistening chains, outlandish pyramid cones and scanty leather  minis are unloaded onto the stone cold slab that is Plymouth railway station, I begin to wonder why Siouxsie & The Banshees continue to inspire such blind fanaticism from a tribe they've long since outgrown.

From Doncaster to Dumbfries, they've traveled in their thousands, drawn inwards on a pilgrimage to a most unholy cause.  But then I realise the futility of attempting to conceptualise that instinctive hold, the natural magnetism that Siouxsie oozes.  Following the mystic veil that cloaks The Banshees' calamitous wail, we are entranced.  Spellbound.  So let me tell you what happened at the Elephant Fayre instead.

As we wander through the intricate maze of guidelines and tent pegs, the festival looks like a far more civilised affair than it's Somerset counterpart (Glastonbury).  The biggest noises come from the barn dances and helter skelters of other rustic gigs (like drug tents!...).  The punks and the hippies are getting on great... but will it last?

At the focal point of the festival, a massive tent on the peak of a gentle hill.  John Cooper Clarke digs another nail into the coffin of rock poetry as attention takes a drastic upward bent.  A chapter of Hell's Angels have arrived and, they intend to make their presence known in their own inimitable fashion.  The security seems haphazard to say the least, as one 'controller' said, 'The only thing we've done right all day is let the band in.'

And speaking of which: 'From the cradle bars comes a beckoning voice/It sends you spinning/You have no choice.'

After considerable pre-show discussion as to whether the band would be introduced as Bonnie Tyler And The Banshees, Siouxsie opens what will probably be their only UK appearance this year, in majestic form.  Strutting and hopping, raucous and lacerating and flowing like liquid glass, the Banshee queen sneers and scowls at suspicions that she would be restrained.  The essence of The Banshees on that metallic beauty far too much for it to be harnessed and controlled.  And Sioux knows the charms of her irresistible hiss as she dances recklessly around the stage, clutching the precious microphone so close to her mouth.  Dressed all in white she cuts a perverse persona.

In the confines of the Fayre, all that sensationalised 'medical advise' is thrown into the Cornish wind as, at one point, she even stoops/stops to cackle hoarsely through a grin: 'I'm sorry I can't speak to you.  I've lost my voice you know.'

But the voice is simply a part of The Banshee spirit.  Severin, McGeoch and Budgie perform their role with an equally ruthless efficiency.  Severin cuts a cool, arrogant figurehead in his smart grey suit and perfectly arranged blond hair - and give him a lambretta and he'd look right at home in Quadrophenia.  The bass guitarist picks out those enticing Banshee intros with an air of graceful detachment.  McGeoch's pony tail swings in time as he blurts out the frenzied guitar.  Budgie, you all know Budgie.  Thump, Thump, Thump.

The Banshees' set has changed considerably since last time I saw them - their infatuations with all things occult moving to the fore with ever-increasing steps.  The magic of 'Ju Ju' blends in with the new songs and some old hits.  But I ought to mention the trouble.

The Banshees start up another subtle intro, the band begin that familiar low, mesmerising dance.  The band speed up and the neo-pogo lunatics take control.  There's nothing to do but dive out of the way as the bodies start flying.  A bouncer gets attacked and uses his topless attacker as an ashtray.  The 'controllers' remove a whole section of the audience through a side opening only to end up in a mass scrap outside.  You've seen it all before but it isn't easy to accept.

Back inside, 'Happy House' takes on a new, more insidious meaning.  WE'RE ALL INSANE.  What exactly are we doing here?  Listening to 'Voodoo Dolly', 'Arabian Knights' and 'Spellbound' and more fireworks.  Some people fainted, others decided it was time to leave.  I was one of them.  Who needs encores?

Amrik Rai

ELEPHANT FAYRE

Intro
Israel
Fireworks
Green Fingers
Coal Mind
Happy House
Night Shift
Pulled To Bits
Sin In My Heart
But Not Them
Painted Bird
Arabian Knights*
Cascade*
Spellbound*
Voodoo Dolly

*Televised 19/07/82

Intro
Israel
Fireworks
Halloween
Paradise Place
Green Fingers
Tenant
Coal Mind
Night Shift
Cascade
But Not Them
Sin In My Heart
Painted Bird
Arabian Knights
Spellbound
Voodoo Dolly
Happy House
Monitor

Israel
Fireworks
Halloween
Green Fingers
Pulled To Bits
Paradise Place
Night Shift
Cascade
But Not Them
Happy House
Painted Bird
Arabian Knights
Spellbound

Intro
Israel
Fireworks
Halloween
Green Fingers
Pulled To Bits
Paradise Place
Night Shift
Cascade
But Not Them
Happy House
Painted Bird
Arabian Knights
Spellbound
Voodoo Dolly
Switch

Overground
Fireworks
Halloween
Green Fingers
Red Over White
Happy House
Night Shift
Cascade
But Not Them
Sin In My Heart
Painted Bird
Voodoo Dolly
Helter Skelter

Intro
Overground
Fireworks
Halloween
Green Fingers
Happy House
Coal Mind
Night Shift
Cascade
So Unreal
Sin In My Heart

Israel
Halloween
Paradise Place
Green Fingers
Tenant
Coalmind
Night Shift
Cascade
But Not Them
Happy House
Painted Bird
Arabian Knights

Israel
Halloween
Paradise Place
Green Fingers
Tenant
Coal Mind
Night Shift
Cascade
But Not Them
Sin In My Heart
Painted Bird
Arabian Knights
Spellbound
Voodoo Dolly
Hong Kong Garden

Intro
Israel*
Halloween
Fireworks
Tenant
Painted Bird*
Paradise Place
Night Shift
Sin In My Heart*
But Not Them
Voodoo Dolly*
Head Cut*
Arabian Knights*
Switch*
Spellbound*
Happy House*

*Televised 20/02/82