2005

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Courtesy of Costas 2006

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Jason MacNeil  06/04/06

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rock sound's guide to the bands that we just couldn't live without...

From their Sex Pistols-inspired inception to pioneering the darker side of alternative, Goth just wouldn't be the same without...

SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES

THE FACTS

WHEN FORMED: 1976

WHERE: Bromley, London.

ORIGINAL LINE-UP:  Siouxsie Sioux (vocals), Steve Severin (bass), Marco Perroni (guitar), Sid Vicious (drums) - for the 100 Club's Punk Festival, before Siouxsie and Severin were joined by guitarist John McKay and drummer Kenny Morris.

LINE-UP CHANGES: McKay and Morris left the band in 79 - the year ex-Big In Japan drummer Budgie joined.  The revolving guitarist door has seen the likes of John McGeoch (80-82), John Carruthers (84-87) and ex-Specimen man Jon Klein (88 onwards).  Keyboardist Martin McCarrick arrived in 88.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Debut single 'Hong Kong Garden' hitting the Top 10 in 78 and chart success with 'Peek-A-Boo' and 'Kiss Them For Me'.  Playing Lollapalooza in 91 and the band's re-union in 02 for the Seven Year Itch tour.

LOW POINTS: The band's demise in 96.

INTERESTING FACTS:  Siouxsie Sioux was the reason for the legendary outburst on the Bill Grundy Show after the presenter made lewd comments at her while the Bromley Contingent accompanied the Sex Pistols on air.  The Cure's Robert Smith was a Banshees in 79 and 82.  Sioux recently hosted the late John Peel's programme while he was on holiday.

DEFINING MOMENTS:  Being the first band of their ilk, they paved the way for many acts on the darker side of new wave and alternative and were the first act to be termed Goth.

BANDS INFLUENCED: Jane's Addiction, theSTART, Horrorpops and many Banshee clones (just check out Mick Mercer's Gothic Book Of Rock for the lowdown).  "I'd like to think it was more the way we did something that was inspirational," says Severin, adding followers Massive Attack and Tricky, amongst others, have covered the band.

GENRE:  Progressive punk to the experimental side of Goth.

HOW/WHERE WE CAN SEE THEIR RELEVANCE TODAY: In Sioux the band offered a strong, ballsy frontwoman, a credible feminist icon who not only encouraged women not to burn their bras, but was an advocate of killer heels (once confiscated by the police as an "offensive weapon").  A real inspiration to legions of females in rock for years to come.

WHERE TO START:  The more psychedelic explorations of 'Juju' or 'Once Upon A Time' for the early single.

CURRENT RELEASE:  'Downside Up' (four-disc B-side collection.  Wonderland/Polydor/Universal.  Out now)

THE STORY

It's 76 and the face of Britain's youth culture is about to change forever.  Punk has arrived and suddenly you don't have to be a virtuoso to be in a band - you can just do it!  "That was the joy of it; it was all new," recalls bassist Steve Severin.  "There was nobody telling you what to be or what hairstyle to have, there were no style gurus or stylists - you just did it, there was no compromising."  With members gathered from the ranks of Sex Pistols' supporters the Bromley Contingent, The Banshees were one of the first bands to embrace these ideals.  Their first performance at Malcolm McLaren's two-day Punk Festival at London's 100 Club was certainly non-conformist.  Siouxsie, Severin and Billy Idol volunteered to fill one of the vacant slots on the bill.  "The three of us had this vague idea to start a band," explains the bassist.  "The day got closer.  At that point Billy was playing with Tony James in what would become Generation X so backed out.  Sid happened to be in the vicinity and said he would play drums - he'd never played but he was up for it.  Everyone was saying it was all about doing it for yourself, that you didn't have to play, we thought we'd take it to its logical extreme with people who'd never played anything."  To their surprise they weren't bottled-off and their "rendition" of The Lord's Prayer was a success earning them a manager (Nils, McLaren's assistant) and a "proper" drummer.  A short while later the band attracted the attention of early advocate John Peel who gave them a Peel Session.  "Peel became our champion, he loved it and we did our second session before we signed to Polydor, which included 'Hong Kong Garden' - that was the deal-clincher, really."  Although picked up by Polydor, getting signed hadn't been easy - despite playing to 2000 capacity audiences, so their roadie took matters into his own hands.  "one morning pretty much every record company woke up to find, 'Sign The Banshees - do it now!' written on their door," laughs Severin.  "It was a pretty good ad campaign.  Every little bit of hype helps."  It was their willingness to embrace new ideas that enabled them to enjoy a fruitful career - even if the media didn't know which genre to post them into.  "We had much wider tastes and interests," maintains the bassist.  "They pretty much had to invent Goth to give us a name.  For a time it was called post-punk - to this day I don't even know what new wave is!  They could never really pin us down."  Much less so at the start of the 80s when Siouxsie and Budgie began their percussion-based offshoot The Creatures and the other half of The Banshees (at the time, Robert Smith and Severin) recorded their unsettling pop-effort 'Blue Sunshine' under the banner of The Glove.  The band were also hitting the charts on a regular basis and were constantly on the road playing anywhere from Lewisham to Llandudno, Bury to Bracknell.  "I think taht's what made us so good; the fact that we played so much.  It was also why we had such a long career - we made a really solid and large fan base by going to all these little places and blowing their minds."  Sine the band officially split in 96, Budgie and Siouxsie turned their efforts towards The Creatures while Severin has been writing film scores.  "It's something I want to be doing more.  I'm also producing and doing other solo stuff."  But with the release of the B-sides compilation, the bassist finds he's "always drawn back to the Banshees.  You can't avoid it really - not that I'm complaining."

Ronnie Kerswell 01/05

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Horror soundtracks

TREMBLE WITH FEAR AT THE SCREEN'S SOUNDS OF TERROR.  BY STEVEN SEVERIN OF THE BANSHEES

Soundtrack CDs are notoriously tricky to navigate: what sits beautifully on the big screen doesn't often translate to the iPod.  These 10 are exceptions.  They cover the essential groundbreaking scores for films that, for the most part, were just as innovative and ahead of their time.

Horror film music is a much-maligned art form.  Success breeds homogeny and caricature.  Visit (if you must) the relentless and moronic Friday The 13th series and you just know there will be soaring tension strings, urgent, overbearing horns and a sing-song music box just before the next routine decapitation.  But dig deeper and you find some of the most poignant, disarming and downright terrifying music of any genre.

Magical conjunctions occur with bold strokes.  Who knew the bombast of Italian prog-rockers Goblin would marry so perfectly with Dario Argento's psychedelic celluloid viscera?  Why drag a sitar all the way up the Carpathian mountainside?  Well, that's what Werner Herzog and Popul Vuh did, with astonishing results.  How, in the case of The Wickerman, can traditional folk songs be, by turns, profane, ghastly, humorous, deliriously erotic and disturbing?

The masters don't always get it right: Alfred Hitchcock's brief to Bernard Herrmann was, "Leave the shower scene silent"!  Thankfully (for popular culture and my own former band's sake), Herrmann ignored the big guy and secured immortality.  Use the term "Psycho strings" and everybody understands.

Obvious omissions?  As great as it is in the context of The Exorcist, did you really expect me to suggest you buy Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells in isolation?  Honourable mentions go to Wendy Carlos for the 'lost' score to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Ennio Morricone's The Thing, Krzysztof Komeda's Rosemary's Baby and Dr Phibes' incredible clockwork band.

This month you voted for your Top 10 Horror Film Soundtracks

10.  Suspiria - Goblin

You say:  "A scary and hallucinatory record." 

In a sense this was the first of many collaborations between Claudio Simonetti's prog-rockers Goblin and Giallo master Dario Argento.  Having proven themselves as last-minute substitutes for the soundtrack of Profondo Rosso (1975), Goblin practically invented sound design with this 1977 score.  Whispers and sighs ominously filter into Argento's candy-splattered fairytale, blurring our already tenuous grasp on reality.  Infernal percussion makes a pact with heavenly celestes to breed a bizarre audio hybrid.  Goblin would never better this, growing more infuriatingly pompous with each new outing, but this score is a masterwork.

9.  The Ninth Gate - Wojciech Kilar

You say:  "This is beyond horror.  This is art!"

Generally overlooked on its release in 1999, this deeply layered movie and its sumptuous score repay repeated visits.  Director Roman Polanski has always chosen his collaborators expertly: I could have picked Krzysztof Komeda for Rosemary's Baby or Philippe Sarde for The Tenant, but this score just edged it.  Born in Lwów, Poland (now part of the Ukraine), Kilar studied under Nadia Boulanger in Paris and forms an unholy avantgarde trinity with Krzysztof Penderecki and Henryk Górecki.  This CD features the awesome City Of Prague Philharmonic and the wondrous voice of soprano Sumi Jo.

8.  The Music Of Candyman - Philip Glass

You say:  "Minimalist horror?  It has to be Glass!"

Glass is most closely associated with his vast scores for Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi so, on the face of it, he was a surprising choice of composer by director Bernard Rose.  Like Argento and Goblin, however, this is an example of incongruity working.  Candyman transports us from the docility of, say, Halloween to the grimy battlefield of the Chicargo projects.  But it's still a fairytale no matter how harshly you style it, and that's why Glass's sparkling, balletic score is so effective.  This CD combines the music from the original 1992 film and its sequel.

7.  The Omen Trilogy - Jerry Goldsmith

You say:  "Delivers a shiver every time I hear it."

A more formal choice here, as old master Jerry Goldsmith tackles that odd late-'70s fad, the child possessed.  You know you're in for an apocalyptic ride as soon as the bells herald the hellish litany of the Ave Satani chorus.  That opening track alone would have been enough to secure a place in this Top 10, but the genius of Goldsmith is in the way he delicately scores the tender family moments, to lull us before the next horrific tableau.  The whole trilogy is a majestic masterclass in soundtracking, and Goldsmith deservedly won an Oscar in 1977 for the first film's music.

6.  The Devil Rides Out - James Bernard

You say:  "Bet you've never heard of this.  Astonishing!"

This is a compilation of themes from some of James Bernard's more effective Hammer scores.  Just like the films he worked on, Bernard was never more than a millimetre from high camp, but his overwrought and hysterical style was vital in Hammer's reinvention of the entire genre.  The opening track Vampire Rhapsody, showcases this to preposterous effect.  But Bernard's classic scores for The Devil Rides Out (1968), The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and the iconic Dracula (1958), featuring rampant horns and military snare-figures, are priceless.

5.  Eraserhead - David Lynch

You say:  "It really scares me.  Is that enough?"

It's not really horror and it's not really a score, but it is insanely frightening.  Sound designer Alan Splet and director David Lynch himself conjure a claustrophobic, steaming industrial world of sexual anxiety that rattles and hums inside and outside poor protagonist Henry Spencer's head.  Imagine a martian let loose to experiment in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and you are still nowhere near the sheer, eerie otherness of this 1977 audio nightmare.  The 'baby' screams incessantly and the lady in the radiator sings, "in heaven, everything will be fine," and I, for the duration of the movie, want to believe her.

4.  Halloween - John Carpenter

You say:  "Carpenter is the master, no contest."

While Norman Bates had one mind too many, Michael 'The Shape' Myers didn't have one at all!  This movie created the 'slasher' sub-genre and director John Carpenter's own simple, motif-driven, pre-digital synth work was a key ingredient to his vision.  Foreboding and repetitive, this is the granddaddy of modern electronic horror scores.  The placement of cues in this film is a brilliant example of how not signposting the coup de grâce gives greater shock value.  Halloween is also responsible for ushering in that modern staple: the post-coital baby-sitter death.  Carpenter clearly had a tortured adolescence.

3.  Nosteratu - Popul Vuh

You say:  "But I think it's beautiful!"

The art-house bores poured their snobbish scorn on Werner Herzog's remake of F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic silent on its release in 1979.  I disagree.  This is a tour de force of neue kino, an elegiac mediation on loneliness, emptiness and futility.  Once again, Herzog turned to Florian Fricke's mystical band, Popul Vuh, to create a quasi-religious sound-world infused with oneiric spirituality (the band had already soundtracked his 1972 film Aguirre, Wrath Of God).  At this point, Fricke had forsaken his electronic origins to go acoustic, but he retained a synthetic formality to the song structures here.  These are glacial reflections of dread and resignation.  A masterpiece.

2.  The Wicker Man - Paul Giovanni and Magnet

You say:  "My wife leaves the house every time this album goes on!"

Urban myth has it that the master tapes to this score were buried along with the original 1973 cut in a cement grave under the M3.  Thankfully, the entire soundtrack was recovered and released in 2002.  Written by theatre director Paul Giovanni and performed by neo-folk outfit Magnet, it was recorded on location, sometimes by cast members.  Perverting traditional Scottish and Irish tunes, Giovanni conjures a believable ancient pagan soundscape.  Not even the distraction of Britt Ekland's body-double's bum can mask the beautiful melody of Willow's Song.

Psycho - Bernard Herrmann

You say:  "The master!  Now shut up and listen!"

Whether it was by necessity or design, composer Bernard Herrmann's decision to employ just the string section of the orchestra (no brass, no percussion) in Hitchcock's seminal 1960 horror was a stroke of genius.  From the opening credits onwards, the music drives the action here, pursuing Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) into the night and into the lair of Norman/Mother.  The infamous shower scene, with more than 55 cuts in 55 seconds to a shrieking violin soundtrack, is one superb cue from a superlative score.  Here, at last, recorded individually, as opposed to shoehorned into a 'suite', are all of Herrmann's 40 original cues for the movie, just as he intended.  Perfection.

Avoid THESE!

While some might say that the commercial success of Wes Craven's ironic Scream series reinvigorated the dormant US appetite for horror, it is also responsible for a hideous trend in 'nu' music soundtracks.  Countless cash-ins and remakes (Valentine, House Of Wax, The Haunting) utilise the MTV-inspired template of cobbling together all manner of inappropriate, third-rate nu-metal/neo-goff tracks in the vain hope of seducing a teen audience.  It's not cool: these CDs are Happy Meal toys.  Queen Of The Damned goes one step beyond by actually casting a Eurovision Vampire band.  Shudder, indeed.

Steven Severin 09/06

THE GUEST LIST

1.  Cossacks Are - Scott Walker
2.  How It Ends - Devotchka
3.  Candlelighted - Serena
4.  Exodus - Edward Artemiev
5.  Labor Chant - Deleyaman

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The Faversham, a pub close to Leeds University, is a brightly decorated bar, popular with lawyers and office workers. But a couple of decades ago it was the very heart of goth. The Fav, as it was known, was where goth's dark lords, the Sisters of Mercy, would hold court, and where black-clad students who had enrolled at the university or Leeds Polytechnic to be close to their heroes would go in the hope of some goth stardust rubbing off on them. "Heads would turn the minute we walked in," remembers Gary Marx, the guitarist who founded the Sisters with singer Andrew Eldritch. "People wouldn't literally throw themselves at our feet, but it was close."

Goth has returned to cast a long and dark shadow over rock music this summer and autumn. In August, the NME put the Horrors on the cover - a London band influenced by the Cramps who look like five grinning death's-heads. Other new acts such as Betty Curse and Dead Disco have put out CDs, and two compilations have claimed to bring together goth's forefathers. Goth has even reached the mainstream. Victoria Beckham and Colleen McLoughlin have recently dabbled in "goth chic" - faces made up to look pale, black lacy clothes and deathly nail varnish - though it's hard to imagine the Beckham and Rooney households rocking to Betty Curse, let alone the forgotten bands of the first wave of goth. It's a dramatic revival: barely a year ago, London's goth hangout, the Devonshire Arms, was saved from closure after a nationwide appeal to goths to boost its business.

And the Horrors? "Pure NME Camden wankery. As goth as a daffodil in a yellow kitchen."

Oh dear. So what is goth anyway? And how did a dead cult become, well, undead?

Steven Severin of Siouxsie and the Banshees - who always maintained they weren't a "goth band", but were nevertheless a pivotal influence on the black-clad bands of the 80s - insists it's important to distinguish between "goth" and "gothic". "Gothic", Severin says, describes the bleak, dark music being made by Joy Division and also the Banshees around 1978-79. Severin admits his band pored over gothic literature - Edgar Allen Poe and Baudelaire. But "goth", he says, has connotations of "people in purple lipstick running off to Whitby". According to Severin, the prototype goth band may have been the Velvet Underground - "intense, feedback-driven songs and macabre subject matter" - although Bauhaus's 1979 single Bela Lugosi's Dead is now generally credited with starting the genre.

Initially, it wasn't called goth. In February 1983, NME lumped together several mostly forgotten bands (Southern Death Cult, Sex Gang Children, Brigandage, Specimen, Blood and Roses) and tagged them "positive punk". Meanwhile, Marx fondly remembers tabloid hysteria about "suicide pact kids killing themselves listening to Sisters of Mercy", an eerie precursor of a story the Daily Mail ran only last month warning of the "threat to our children" posed by goth and emo (although they're two different cultures).

Most of goth's enduring musical cliches were laid down by the Sisters, who lived together in Village Place, a stone's throw from the Faversham. Marx (formerly Mark Pearman, before a name switch fooled the DHSS, as was) had come to Leeds from Hull, attracted by gigs by the likes of the Fall and Gang of Four. His co-conspirator was a languages student who decided that the name Eldritch (meaning "wizard") carried more mystique than his own Andrew Taylor. Eldritch has often claimed the Sisters/ goth phenomenon was his immaculate conception, but Marx admits at least some of it was fluke.

Yes, Eldritch had the band's logo (a dissected head surrounded by a pentacle, which he had adapted from Gray's Anatomy) before they had even played a note. But according to Marx, the characteristic doomy goth sound only emerged when the Sisters added Craig Adams, a child piano prodigy. Adams was "running from his past", says Marx. "He turned up with a fuzzbox on his bass and wanted something brutal, relentless." A £60 drum machine (nicknamed Doktor Avalanche) replaced Eldritch's early bashes on drums. When the "wizard" concealed his less-than-Sinatraesque vocals with reverb, goth's defining sound was complete. The Sisters namechecked MC5 and Motorhead in interviews and caused a "considerable reaction" within a music press who had been frothing over Haircut 100.

Eldritch became thought of as a poet of doom, fond of dark pronouncements. But Marx admits that there were no black candlesticks at Village Place. In fact, even the goth look was partly happenstance: wearing nothing but black meant the band could put all their washing in one load. In fact, in early photos the Sisters looked "nondescript, like students", but that changed when Marx realised his check shirts looked silly next to the leather jackets worn by Eldritch and Adams in homage to the Ramones. Once Marx also adopted black, a uniform was born.

The enduring image of the Sisters live is of four black stetsons poking out of dry ice: a cross between Once Upon a Time in the West and horror flick The Fog. That, too, was an accident. Guitarist Wayne Hussey, who joined in 1983, recalls that the band had been touring America in a minibus and one night he got so drunk that he fell asleep on Gary Marx's shoulder. Marx then "threw up in his sleep all over my head. The venue wouldn't let me in 'cos I had sick in my hair. So I went across the road and bought a hat - and that's where the look came from."

Around the country, others realised black could have benefits above and beyond its ability to conceal stains. Alien Sex Fiend's Mrs Fiend (she is literally Mrs Fiend, having been married to the band's Nik Fiend for 28 years) remembers a disastrous photoshoot when a green light wiped out all her make-up.

"I looked like a fucking corpse, but not in a good way," she remembers. After that it was "black, the blackest you could find". Home-dyed clothes and hair horrors proved equally striking: "People said, 'Excuse me, dear. Have you been electrocuted?'"

Early goth was largely a provincial movement: the Sisters in Leeds, Bauhaus in Northampton, the Cure in Crawley. The London scene congealed around the Batcave club, associated with bands such as Alien Sex Fiend and Specimen; there, boys and ghouls rubbed shoulders with the likes of Siouxsie Sioux and Nick Cave. Mrs Fiend remembers "fetish gear, Victorian clothing, girls with their tits out. One night the DJ played the Sex Pistols and for the first time, everyone sat down. It was obvious that no one was interested in continuing what had gone before."

Goth spread rapidly - fans visited the Batcave or Leeds Phonographique and then set up their own clubs - and a sense of community developed. Goths formed bands with each other, slept with each other, copied each other and recorded with each other: Severin collaborated with the Cure's Robert Smith as the Glove. The Sisters' Merciful Release label helped soundalike bands such as the March Violets and Salvation, which Marx suggests was a hangover from the self-help culture established by Leeds bands the Mekons and Gang of Four. The "suburban Siouxsie" clone became a peculiar feature of 80s Britain, and whenever the Banshees toured in Latin American or Mediterranean countries, Severin notes, they noticed Siouxsie had become "a role model for dark-haired women".

Goth could be silly, but many bonded through genuine alienation. Regan admits she was "introspective and depressed" and sought solace in darker music. "Mentally ill?" she considers. "Some of us."

Another glue binding the scene together was drug use. Goth is virtually the only youth movement not identifiable with a single substance, but Regan admits that it was "very wild. It started with snakebite and a laugh and ended in psychosis for some. Luckily, I was a sissy."

"All my friends took drugs," admits Hussey. "I used to put speed in my coffee." Initially, drugs enabled the guitarist to mask a natural shyness, but eventually his character transformed. He began the 80s quietly reading Rimbaud and ended them fronting the Mission, whose wine-spilling, cartoon image was almost Carry On Goth. "We made buffoons of ourselves in public," he says, "but it was endearing for a lot of people."

It didn't last. Hussey vividly remembers standing on a railway station platform and seeing two girls in Stone Roses T-shirts. "I knew something else was coming."

In the 90s, goths all but disappeared as dance music became the dominant youth cult. The movement went underground and fractured into cyber goth, Christian goth, industrial goth, medieval goth and the latest sub-genre, zombie goth. Around the world, however, goth hit the mainstream. Goth crossbred with electronica and heavy metal in the form of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. While the music of Nine Inch Nails owed more to the industrial-influenced music of Throbbing Gristle and Ministry, their subect matter (murder and trauma) and style (head-to-toe black leather) were unmistakably goth. Marilyn Manson, meanwhile, fused Alien Sex Fiend's electro-goth with Alice Cooper's theatrics and went to the arena circuit. In Germany, the industrial-techno-metal sextet Rammstein took much from gothic horror, and Hussey says his mother often tells him how much the cult Finnish band HIM sound like the Mission.

And now it's hip again here.

Goth will exist in one form or another as long as young people are alienated and fascinated by death. Mrs Fiend expresses anxiety that goth could turn into an off-the-peg fashion style. However, Severin is darkly optimistic.

"They read French novelists. They've gone into it with a complete passion and I don't blame them," he says of the new goths. "I've always thought there's room in pop for different languages, one of them being an exploration of the blacker side of human nature. There's nothing to be afraid of in the dark."

Five goth classics

Bauhaus: Bela Lugosi's Dead

The 1979 single that invented the genre overnight. In an atmosphere of unease, Peter Murphy eulogises Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula with a cry of "Undead! Undead! Undead!"

Available on Crackle - Best of Bauhaus (4AD)

The Sisters Of Mercy: Amphetamine Logic

This stark, driving track defines the Sisters' oeuvre and sums up Andrew Eldritch's cod-vampiric lifestyle: "Nothing but the knife to live for."

Available on First and Last and Always (Merciful Release)

The Cure - A Strange Day

The Cure were always more of an alternative pop band than 100% goth, but A Strange Day's melancholy sees them fitting into the genre.

Available on Pornography (Fiction)

Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Walking on Your Hands

The Leeds-based Lorries, originally a typical if moody indie band, adopted goth cliches such as flanged guitars for this thrilling 80s nightclub staple.

Available on The Gothic Box (Rhino)

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Night Shift

One of the darkest cuts from the album Juju: a harrowing groove that explores street prostitution.

Available on JuJu (Polydor)

The Gothic Box 3CD/DVD set of early goth is out now on Rhino. Blue Sunshine by the Glove has been reissued by Universal

What many audiences do not notice in a film are the people working behind the scenes. An audience can see what is unfolding on screen and acknowledge the visuals, but can sometimes forget that the music is a critical factor in setting a mood or creating atmosphere. Enter composer Steven Severin who has made contributions to such recognizable films as Batman Returns, Monster House, London Voodoo, and Jeepers Creepers. Oh and if his film benefaction isn’t enough, then his 20 year legacy with Siouxsie and the Banshees is sure to impress. They are one of the most influential UK bands and have been said to inspire such acts as The Cure to Garbage to Jane’s Addiction.

HorrorYearbook: How did you get your start in the music industry and when did your passion first develop?

Steven Severin: It started with The Beatles at the age of 5. I guess they were the first really global phenomenon. You could not avoid them in the mid Sixties. I formed a group at school built around tape machines, making “sounds” with found objects and a violin I found in a junk shop. Not nearly as radical as it sounds ~ it was just a bunch of 14 year olds making weird tapes. Next thing I know Billy Idol is approaching Malcolm McLaren saying that me, him & Siouxsie have a band ready to play the 100 club punk festival in September 1976. It was a complete lie as I couldn’t play and Siouxsie had never sung in public but we got the gig!

Billy dropped out under pressure from his ‘real band’ Chelsea/Generation X but by then Siouxsie & I were determined to seize the opportunity so…with the help of Malcolm’s assistant, Nils Stevenson we enlisted Sid Vicious on drums and Marco (Adam & the Ants) on guitar. We did our 20 minutes of fame thing with a cacophonous rendition of the Lord’s Prayer. Who knew we would turn the Banshees into a 20 year career.

HYB: You helped form Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1976 with Siouxsie Sioux. How did you meet her?

SS: We met at a Roxy Music concert at the tail end of 1975. We had a mutual friend.

HYB: After so many years together, why did the band break up?

SS: There’s no one single reason. We probably should have stopped in 1988 but we soldiered on for 8 more years (!) only producing 2 more albums. There are some good moments on those 2 albums but the world wouldn’t have missed them and maybe the band could have reformed for real had the damage that was done in trying to persevere not been so deep.

HYB: Do you still keep in contact with Siouxsie to this day?

SS: After the split in 96 we stopped talking but started to patch things up at the end of 2001. Early 2002 saw a nice offer to reform so we foolishly toured again amidst talk of a “comeback” studio album. 6 shows into the “Seven Year Itch” tour and we all knew it was doomed….again. Siouxsie & I have not spoken since the biography signing in August 2003. That book hammered in the final nail. We speak and conduct business through Siouxsie’s manager. It works fine.

HYB: At a certain point, you broke away from your record label and started an indie label yourself. Why did you do this and do you regret the decision?

SS: The Banshees were dropped by Polydor in early ‘95, so it wasn’t a choice. However, It was my choice not to go back into the beast and I don’t regret it for a minute.

HYB: You were introduced to Arban Ornelas who later became your wife in 2002. Did the attraction start as a musical collaboration or as a relationship first?

SS: Totally musical. I heard Arban before I saw her. A mutual friend sent me a link to some mp3s and I wanted to bring her over to London to produce some tracks for my label.

HYB: What happened during the Banshees reunion tour, The Seven Year Itch, that made you not want to collaborate with them any longer?

SS: I really believed that things would have changed during the intervening years but I failed to take into account that my life & attitude had evolved and Siouxsie & Budgie’s hadn’t. What I mean by that is that post ‘96 they hadn’t stopped and taken account of anything. They had just continued with album & tour ad infinitum as The Creatures. I had dealt with the trauma of losing “my family” by going solo and carving out a new direction, re-aligning my attitude and embracing the new world of the “web”.

They simply expected me to slot right into The Creatures touring machine but use the name “The Banshees” to get bigger venues. I refused to tow the party line and found myself frozen out again. It’s their loss and their issues that I really wish they had the courage and honesty to face.

HYB: You were the composer on Visions of Ecstasy (1989), a short film that was banned in the UK on the grounds of blasphemy. What was the film about and how was it blasphemous?

SS: It was intended as an exploration of the real life “visions” of St. Teresa of Avila. It’s well documented that these visions are erotic in nature so the project was on thin ice from the outset. The video board didn’t really trust the integrity of the director, Nigel Wingrove and because he didn’t have a big studio behind him, he was made an example of. It was during the time of the Satanic Verses furore so everything was very sensitive. You couldn’t dare offend anyone.

HYB: In 1992, you composed the song “Face to Face” for the Batman Returns film by Tim Burton. What was your inspiration for this song?

SS: After the success of the first Batman film, Tim Burton was given much more control over everything including the music. Originally there was not going to be ANY songs in the film, just Danny Elfman’s score. In post they decided they needed a song for the masquerade ball scene. Warner Bros. wanted R.E.M., Tim & Danny wanted us which didn’t go down too well from the outset as we were on Warners’ arch-rival, Geffen records. Siouxsie suggested the rhythm from The Aristocats “We are Siamese” and Martin McCarrick & myself knocked out a demo at my home studio. The band pulled it into shape then we sent it to Danny. He just added some of his “themes” on top but nothing that affected the basic song we presented. We’d had to swallow Danny taking 50% of the publishing regardless so we made sure that it was representative of the Banshees despite that compromise. Tim loved it, Warners couldn’t have cared less and to all intents and purposes “buried” it. It was a hit in the UK because it was released on Polydor. The whole thing left a very sour taste but a great song. Typical Banshee luck really.

HYB: You also composed the song “Peek-a-boo”, which was acquired for Jeepers Creepers (2001). Do you think the song was well utilized in a movie about a creature that likes “peepers”?

SS: I wish they had used our version. They got somebody to re-record it. That way they didn’t even have to tell us about it, which they didn’t!

HYB: Oops, I hope I didn’t spill the beans. Your song “Make up to break up” can be heard in the UK film 24 Hour Party People (2002). Do think your work is best suited for UK audiences or that it works equally well in US productions?

SS: It ’s never occurred to me. We’ve had music used in “Grosse Point Blanke”, “The Craft” and Verhoeven’s Showgirls ~ all pretty mainstream movies.

HYB: The Purifiers (2003) was more action-oriented than your previous ventures. What type of music was needed for this film?

SS: I’d known the director, Richard Jobson since the early Eighties. We shared an apartment for a few years. He called me the day after I’d finished LONDON VOODOO and said he wanted to use a couple of my solo tracks:- “Enter into these bonds” from Visions & “Prelude : Europa” from Maldoror. I went to see him and we spotted the film together with the notion that Arban & I would score the entire movie. We delivered a lot of music but not much got used in the end even though I felt we had hit the right tone according to Richard’s brief. The movie was given a more upbeat edit and subsequently a lot of our cues just didn’t work. In hindsight, we probably came on board a bit late in the day.

HYB: The London Voodoo (2004) soundtrack may be what you are better know for in the film industry. How did you create the moody and dark tracks that fit the film so well?

SS: Now that was the total opposite to the Purifiers. I wrote 3 cues just going from scenes in the script months before shooting began and in one instance Robert shot using my cue as a guide. It was my first feature so it was a big learning curve both artistically and technically but it really came naturally to me. I’ve always been really into movies nearly as much as music so I think a lot it comes from my subconscious ~ I think I know instinctively what to avoid and that’s always the best start.

HYB: Your song “Halloween” was chosen for the animated film Monster House (2006). Did you find the end result of the animated film to be as satisfying as a live action film?

SS: I bought the DVD for my son but to be honest I haven’t watched it. “Halloween” runs over the end credits.

HYB: Nature Morte (2006) is considered a dark, erotic thriller. How did you compose the soundtrack?

SS: I’d done LONDON VOODOO on my own whilst Arban was pregnant so when I got NATURE MORTE it was agreed we would work on it together. Sometimes we’d each pick cues and work separately but more often than not one of us would start a cue then the other would add (or subtract!) until we were both happy to sign off. It’s an odd way of working and it involves a lot of trust ….and shouting and sulking…but that’s just the way I am.

HYB: You have had a good run in the film industry particularly with horror. Do you prefer to record songs for your own label and maintain your own level of creativity or do you enjoy the challenge of creating soundtracks for others?

SS: I love doing the soundtracks, bringing a scene “alive” for the director. It’s such a thrill when you get them excited in a way they hadn’t foreseen. I only really get involved with people who give me a lot of freedom. I’m not really someone who can or wants to write to order.

HYB: Work has begun on the remastering of the entire Banshees back catalogue. When will this be completed and should we be looking forward to any special releases or box sets?

SS: It’s all on hold at the moment as we try to secure a domestic release in the States. The first 4 albums are out but we don’t want any more coming out until that situation is resolved. The catalogue deserves proper promotion in America and the import prices deter a lot of people I guess. We have the next 4 ready to go. I imagine the next thing that will be made available will be all the promo videos and as many TV appearances as we can afford compiled onto DVD. The live concert from 1983 with Robert Smith (The Cure) on guitar, NOCTURNE came out recently and it’s doing really well and that always makes the suits want more.

HYB: You have a solo tour in the works now. Can you give any information on the performance you are preparing?

SS: Well, it’s going to be just myself in the dark with my laptop and some film elements. I don’t just want random visuals so I’m collecting specific footage from various sources to build into some kind of narrative and THEN I’ll score it like a real movie. So it will be all new material. That’s what going to take time so that’s why I had to postpone the dates in May. Hopefully, I’ll have everything in place from the Autumn. But if it’s not ready ~ it won’t happen until next year. I have no desire to rush.

HYB: Besides the tour, do you have any new projects lined up in the future?

SS: We’ve just scored a short film for one of the guys who got his start at Aardman, Michael Wright. It’s a bitter-sweet black comedy in space! We’re on a promise from about 6 or 7 different directors (the legendary Jess Franco is one) waiting to see who gets to the funding post first.

Arban is working on her solo album whilst waiting for Robert Pratten to finish his new movie “Mindflesh”. She’ll score that on her own whilst I get my act together. There is also the possibility that we’ll provide some music for a couple of art gallery shows in Berlin this September featuring the work of Spanish fantasy artist Luis (Heavy Metal) Royo and Clive Barker. Yes, THAT Clive Barker. Fingers X’d on that one. Could be an exciting year!

That was an incredibly long history of the band and his film work. And with the titles you read, you know he has talent to get hired. He plans to embark on his solo tour soon, so be on the look out for him. And I have to admit the idea of hearing his music set to the work of Clive Barker or even Jess Franco sounds very exciting.

* For more info, please visit: www.stevenseverin.com and don’t forget to add www.myspace.com/stevenseverinmusic as a friend! Fans of London Voodo should go to www.myspace.com/london_voodoo Promoters & Agents should contact: live@stevenseverin.com

Molly Celaschi 14/02/07

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TEN years previously, not everyone attended orgies. Or took drugs. Or had 24-hour technicolour dreams. Or wore afghan coats. Or, for goodness sake, had long hair. You could make a pretty good case for 1967's Summer of Love being a Californian phenomenon or a Carnaby Street blink-and-it's-over, but not much of anything in wild and windswept Caledonia.

Fast-forward ten years to 1977 and the Summer of Punk. Did we buy the next big pop-cultural revolution from London, by way of America? I did. I tuned in to John Peel to hear the first frighteningly exciting airings of The Sex Pistols, The Clash and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Then I queued up to see the bands not yet barred entry by my municipal drawbridgemen - The Buzzcocks, The Jam and The Stranglers all played Edinburgh's Clouds.

Every week brought more new groups, so every Thursday I devoured the music press. When the New Musical Express advertised for 'hip young gunslingers', I was already dreaming of parties, groupies, sunglasses indoors and, most crucially, free records. But in a shock development, Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill got the jobs, so I was back in Hot Licks in Cockburn Street every Saturday trying to choose between 7in singles by The Adverts, Subway Sect and X-Ray Spex in snot-green, puke-yellow and turd-brown vinyl.

I thrilled to the moral panic. When the Pistols swore on television, the Daily Express rolled out the "Filthy Lucre" headlines and an irate lorry-driver put a boot through his TV screen. Then another week brought more bands, more outrage and more excellent reasons to be glad to be a teenager in 1977. Oh yes, I loved punk.

So what did this particular punk wear? Rugby shirts and jeans, mostly. I tried to customise the latter, not by ripping them or tying the legs together or inserting 17 extra zips - I asked my mother to sew tartan patches on the knees. "But they're brand-new," she said.

"I know," I said, "but punk is a vital new youth movement and it's sweeping the land."

Bless her, she revved up her Singer. Unfortunately, the tartan she selected was almost silk-like, and the patches tore when I bent down.

"What make were your jeans?" asks Paul Mackie, another who was there at the time.

"Falmers," I say.

"No, no, no. Too blue. Too west-coast singer-songwriter. Too Eagles. We had Wranglers, which were darker and not as wide at the bottom, so you could take them in and pretend they were straight-legged until drainpipes finally arrived in Edinburgh."

Just as well Scotland's contribution to punk wasn't left to the likes of me. I wanted to form a band, and in my head I did - The Chosen Few. What a hideous, heavy-metal name. Mackie called his group The Scars. So what was he rebelling against? "Well, I can't pretend it was 'No Future' - it wasn't," he says. "I came from Currie [the nice, middle-class suburb]. My liberal parents encouraged me in everything I did. I played violin in the Edinburgh Secondary Schools' Orchestra, and in 1977 I was down for university. But punk just seemed liked such great fun. And it was.

"I remember it being quite a competitive scene: everyone in Edinburgh claimed they were into it first. I liked prog-rock before punk, and admit that I had a bit of a Year Zero when I got rid of some naff albums. Punks were supposed to be anti-rock and to view the sight of Emerson, Lake & Palmer lumbering down the motorway in trucks with their names on the roofs as the epitome of bombast. But to me that spoke of musicianship and big audiences. And I couldn't quite get rid of my Yes records."

Only a select few - ha ha, The Chosen Few - could claim impeccable credentials, to have been there at the genesis of punk (not to be confused with proggers Genesis). One of them was Steven Severin, bass player in the Banshees, who was by Siouxsie's side as part of the Bromley Contingent, the Pistols' rent-a-mob, but these days he lives quietly in Edinburgh.

Severin came north to escape London's overcrowding, pollution and, you suspect, the punk nostalgia industry as it thundered towards this year's 30th anniversary. At first he didn't want to talk about 1977. I told him I was interested in dissenting views as well. "Then it'll cost you two Bloody Marys," he said.

Severin took a vow of silence on punk because not only had it all been said, the story was being hastily rewritten. "You should know that most of the rock press were totally against it. I was appalled to see that the NME's Charles Shaar Murray was the consultant on [the recent BBC2 series] Seven Ages of Rock. He loathed punk."

Punk emerged as the UK economy collapsed. The Queen's silver jubilee was supposed to unite the nation; the Pistols' 'God Save the Queen' suggested HM had a few disloyal subjects. Johnny Rotten and co were Public Enemies Numbers One to Four (Sid Vicious briefly made it Five). Severin's mob sported swastikas. The Clash were political punks, The Buzzcocks were pop punks and The Jam were mod punks. And The Police were going nowhere until they bought a bottle of peroxide.

In their book Modern British History, Mark Garnett and Richard Weight argue that punk came to symbolise the death of Britain's post-war consensus. "We were a peculiar generation," adds Severin. "We came after the baby-boomers and we had to leave school with no prospects whatsoever. The generation gap between teenagers and the establishment was greater for us, and we had no voice. There wasn't a million style magazines telling us what to do. So we made it up."

Learn two and a half chords and form a band. If even that was beyond you, start a fanzine. Punk's DIY ethic would go on to influence all popular culture and make the impossible seem achievable, but first it revolutionised pop. "Punk demystified the music business," says Brian Hogg, author of The History of Scottish Rock and Pop. "Before, every band from the provinces thought that in order to get a record deal they had to traipse down to London and impress a bunch of boring old suits."

Still, The Chosen Few only played gigs for adoring, gobbing hordes in my daydreams. "You came from a more rarefied existence than me," says Richard Jobson. "We were just a bunch of wee shites who certainly identified with punks being frustrated, somewhat doomed youth, but who also reckoned the whole thing was a bit of a riot."

By "we" Jobson means Dunfermline's Skids, whom he claims were Scotland's first punk band. Indeed, Jobson is certain he was a punk before 1977. "We already looked different. I was dressed head to toe in black apart from a badger streak in my hair. Before that I'd been hanging around with a bunch of football hooligans whose jumpers had rings on their sleeves to signify battles with rival gangs."

Jobson was a yob and a Yop. "Through the Youth Opportunities Scheme, I got a job in a printing works. Every Thursday I'd skive off and get the music papers to read about the punks." Like many, he felt let down by the bands inspired by the Summer of Love. "I went to see Barclay James Harvest in Edinburgh with my mates. Horrible. There was us, from a place where folk were drowning in alcohol abuse and domestic violence and looking in on themselves like they had done for the previous 200 years. Up on the stage, these idiots in loon pants were singing fantasy pish about astral planes. I threw up on my shoes."

Three decades on, these punks are wearing well, especially Jobson who has never drunk on account of his epilepsy and retains his model-boy's strong chin, and Severin, greying and goatee'd but, like the majority of punks, looking altogether healthier than in the amphetamine-fuelled 1970s.

And three decades on, punk's legacy is written up like this (Garnett and Weight again): "For an all too brief moment it challenged the entertainment industry, and even political leaders, to examine their complacent assumption that Britain's young people were passive consumers whose fads, fashions and cults could be commercially exploited."

Those who weren't part-time punks like me are all 40-somethings with kids who have cults of their own. Their views on the movement that spawned them are all different. Jobson still speaks like a punk who rages at bandwagon-jumpers such as Sting ("He plays the lute now!") and scenesters of today like Sadie Frost and Pixie Geldof for wearing Pistols T-shirts. "I feel like gobbing on them and saying, 'Do you like punk now?'" Maybe the fact that he reformed The Skids last night for T in the Park has something to do with that, but Jobson could argue that he has stayed true to the DIY spirit of the age all through his career as a film-maker.

Mackie now works in IT and has gone back to playing classical music. "I never did get rid of my Yes albums," he says.

Severin, meanwhile, who composes movie scores, only ever thinks about 1977 on the rare occasions when he answers questions about it. "I was a protagonist, so I'm the wrong person to ask about its influence," he says.

Among the anniversary's many punk biogs, the biggest has been Clinton Heylin's Babylon's Burning, and the key quote belongs to Severin. Cringing at the sight of so many suburban kids pogo-ing in bin-liners, he turns to Siouxsie and says, "It's over. Too many people are into it now."

A movement for the masses? "We were incredibly elitist," the one-time Banshee declares now. "I make no apologies for that." r

Fast and furious

ALTHOUGH 1977 was the year punk exploded everywhere, The Damned had released Britain's first punk single, 'New Rose', in October of the previous year. 'Anarchy in the UK', by The Sex Pistols (pictured), followed a month later. The Bill Grundy incident - when the chat-show host goaded the Pistols into swearing live on TV - closed 1976 with the kind of headlines that punk rarely resisted over the next 12 months.

In January the Pistols rampaged through Heathrow, prompting EMI to cancel its contract. In March, after a fight involving Bob Harris, one of the Old Grey Whistle Test engineers needed 14 stitches. Result: A&M cancels its contract. CBS refuses to touch the band. Ironically, the only record company that will is the hippy label Virgin.

There are debut albums by The Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Stranglers and Bob Geldof's Boomtown Rats. The Nipple Erectors form, and very quickly disappear. The Clash launch their manifesto, and Joe Strummer snarls, "No Elvis/Beatles or The Rolling Stones/In 1977."

But by the year's end Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill publish their book The Boy Looked at Johnny and declare punk dead.

Aidan Smith 08/07/07

When writing about Siouxsie and the Banshees, what more can possibly be said?  How about "It is dead, it has gone to meet it's maker, it is an ex band!"?

This is the Python-esque epitaph from former Banshees bassist Steven Severin, who's boldly moved on from the group's death throes in 1995 and 2002 to an independent career as a solo artist and modern composer citing Steve Reich and Glen Branca as inspiration.  His latest projects are the soundtrack for Nature Morte (Still Life for the Anglophones) a debut from director Paul Burrows, described as a "sexy, serial-killer noir set in France, Thailand and London" and developing a solo performance act that will incorporate his solo work with a  film projection element.  (Plans for a small European tour solo were unfortunately postponed between the time this interview took place and its' publication.)

Still living in the UK with his wife Arban, who frequently serves as songwriting partner, Severin has left rock'n'roll behind without regret, embracing modern technology and new media whole-heartedly as a new field for experimentation.  His interests are manifested both in the eerie, atmospheric instrumental pieces he creates and the time he's dedicated to creating a substantial Web presence for both his own work and the Banshees'.  While in demand as a composer by independent filmmakers and avant-garde dance companies, Severin remains personable (at least in the virtual sense) and reasonably accessible via online means.  He seems creatively focused, unpretentious regarding his musical achievements, and (judging from a recent Guardian UK piece on the resurgence of "goth"), expresses a dignified tolerance towards contemporary bands who may have followed in the Banshees' footsteps - the quintessential anti-pop star of the 21st Century.

This may seem like a radical direction for someone who was a bona fide alternative rock star of the late 20th Century.  Well, maybe not:  "The influences I brought to bear on the Banshees were almost entirely outside of 'rock'," writes Severin, who was contacted for interview via email (and initially MySpace!).  "I've never really enjoyed that much 'rock'," he admits, "Or rather 'rock' that wasn't heavily influenced by other disciplines... say Beefheart, the Velvets, Bowie etc."  Severin credits his first musical instrument as being " a reel to reel tape recorder that I got when I was 14.  I'd get together with a couple of school friends and we'd mess around making all manner of horrible noises over Led Zeppelin albums.  It was just fun really, making weird little loops," he recalls.  By his own account he only picked up a bass guitar the night before the Banshees' first-ever gig for Malcolm McLaren's 1976 "International Punk Rock Festival" at London's 100 Club, and describes the transition towards electronic compositions as "very natural," having gotten into synths during the 1979 lineup of the Banshees, and bought his first computer, a Commodore 64, in 1983 "...well before there was any decent sequencing software."

Banshees folklore bears out a cinematic connection.  When the band got around to taking themselves seriously in 1977, Sioux and Severin are said to have played the soundtracks for Psycho and The Omen as reference points for new members, rather than albums by other bands.  And it's there that the one central concept of whatever is defined as "gothic" or "goth" music becomes visible:  a reliance on concepts, textures and mood rather than strictly musical notes.  Notes Severin on influences:  "My inspirations were taken from the other arts:  surrealism, dada, poetry, erotica, cinema, pop culture in all it's mischievous forms."

The Banshees, as readers of this particular publication shouldn't need reminding (and if you do - find out), were iconic, sui generis and massively influential, a pioneering juggernaut of a band that emerged from the 1976-77 heyday of UK punk to lay the groundwork for gothic rock and then veer towards the alternative dance-pop mainstream, innovating and evolving all the while.  Though Siouxsie was the face of the band - the voice, the sometimes-controversial style, the star charisma, Severin was at least her equal collaborator from the start, widely credited as being the musical and aesthetic driving force for much of the Banshees' music.  For a starters' kit there are plenty of resources on the Web, including the Banshees MySpace page at myspace.com/siouxsieandthebanshees, the official site at siouxsieandthebanshees.co.uk and extensive fan sites like Banshees and Other Creatures (www.thebansheesandothercreatures.co.uk) which include history and numerous old interview quotes from band members regarding songs.

When the band officially split in 1996 (2002's spectacular last-gasp Banshees tour notwithstanding), Severin busied himself with his own website and web-distributed independent label RE: Records (which ten years ago was pretty visionary stuff) and had already taken opportunities to branch out musically with side project The Glove as well as the sound track for the short film Visions of Ecstasy, a 1989 film interpretation of the writings of Saint Teresa of Avila which remains banned by the British Board of Film Classification on grounds of blasphemy.  The soundtrack would form the basis of Severin's first solo album, Visions, a 45-minute album of instrumentals.  But please don't refer to it as "ambient."  When asked about the difference between the narrative, lyric orientated process of songwriting with a band like the Banshees and as a solo composer, Severin offers, "My instrumental work still has that same narrative, I hope.  I'm still telling you a story by means of dynamics and textures.  Having had the discipline of 'songwriting' I know how important it is to engage the listener.

I'm not interested in 'wallpaper'.  That's why you will never hear me refer tow hat I do now as either 'ambient' or 'new age'.  Both of those labels make me cringe."

The Banshees had even veered into movie music, co-writing the song "Face to Face" with Danny Elfman for Tom Burton's 1992 Batman Returns.  Recalls Severin, "Tim was great (but) Warner brothers treated us like shit and you can quote me on that.  'Face to Face was just below the Batman Returns coffee mug on the promotional food chain."  With one banned film and at least one Hollywood promotional fiasco under his belt, it's almost ironic that Severin opted to work on film music at all.  Though it's easy to see how self-producing music and working with independent filmmakers would be liberating after dealing with the interference and financial bottom-line mentality of Hollywood studios and major labels.  True (in his fashion) to roots in the DIY ethic of early punk rock, Severin has maneuvered himself to a point where his art is no longer in conflict with commerce.

For those who have some catching up to do, there are now, of course the Banshees remasters.  Severin, perhaps more so than former band mates Siouxsie and Budgie, has had a hand in these as well.  Announced in 2005 by the Universal group and released through last year (chronologically we are up to Juju), non-UK readers can get a taste of the Byzantine complexities of the music industry by contemplating who exactly has the release rights to these discs in the rest of the world (a blog from Severin on the Banshees official MySpace page cites Rhino as negotiating rights to carry the remasters in the US).  Though Severin plays down any official capacity as Banshees archivist, he comments "I've kind of ended up in that role because I'm prepared to get my hands dirty shifting through old tapes coupled with the fact that I'm the only one in the UK."

Regarding the remasters, they've actually been a long time coming.  "We wanted to do it years ago," Severin confirms.  "Initially, I wanted to preserve the material so we needed to 'bake' the old tapes and transfer them to digital safety copies.  Most of the albums were released on CD when the technology was in its infancy in the mid to late Eighties.  Consequently, there is a lack of bass, a lack of crispness and those original discs aren't loud enough."

Then why did it wait until the band was finally defunct?  "(We) had to wait until Universal decided there was commercial gain in revitalizing old catalogue," he observes wryly.  "As sales in general declined they decided they had to market their 'classics' again.  It's as cynical as that."

And on the topic of reissues, it would be remiss not to mention The Glove, Severin's collaboration with Cure front man (and occasional Banshees lead guitarist) Robert Smith and quasi-mysterious vocalist Ginette Landray.  The Glove's album Blue Sunshine was reissued (in the US by Rhino) in late summer 2006.  Combining elements of the Cure and the Banshees' signature sounds (circa '83) with experimental tendencies and some excursions into instrumental interludes, Blue Sunshine is in many ways indicative of the direction Severin's later career would take.  Though it remains close enough to its' creators styles at the time to click with the fan base - to the uninitiated it's perhaps comparable to a Banshees album without the interference of the Cult of Siouxsie shifting attention from the music.  Landray, for better or worse, is no Siouxsie, though she croons along to the majority of the tracks in a similar but less melodramatic range.  Early in 2006, Smith was quoted in NME as stating that he would like to work with Severin again, though he was concerned "we might kill each other."

"I think we both feel it would be worth putting ourselves in jeopardy again at some point soon."  Severin responds.  "Having spent some time together on the Blue Sunshine remaster we both know we could still do some great stuff together.  Maybe this year, maybe next but as Robert said 'It's only a matter of time'."  Facing toward the future, his predictions are equally optimistic concerning possibilities that technology affords contemporary musicians and composers as well as independent bands avoiding major-label servitude for Web-orientated indies.

"I hardly ever touch a keyboard anymore," Severin writes of synthesizers.  "It's all done inside the box.  In fact I write in the notes and manipulate inside the sequencing programme."

Regarding the future of the musical underground:  "I think what we are seeing now is a re-emergence of a viable 'underground' again and the Internet is responsible.  It's always the avant-garde who explore and develop 'new' technologies whether it be the surrealist cinema of Bunuel, the electronics of Stockhausen, the rock and roll drones of the Velvets.  There was an attempt to completely extinguish challenging, subversive voices, but the advent of the tools of the net has re-0energized those artists who the corporations had attempted to marginalize into extinction.

"It is this short sightedness that has brought the majors down.  Meanwhile we regrouped, reevaluated and found new ways to speak to our audience.  The 'outsiders' are now networking like never before in places like MySpace.  Never before has the top layer of entertainment been so vapid.  The industry is having to create celebrity out of nothing to sustain itself.  Be afraid, great things will happen."

He is not, however, as optimistic about the possibility of any new output from the Banshees:  "Not even a huge paycheck that could secure my family's future would tempt me.  That's how strongly I value my sanity."

Phillip Henken Summer 07