JOIN
HANDS ALBUM
Includes scans of LPs, cassettes, CDs, promos, imports, limited editions and adverts. Also includes track listings, catalogue numbers, release dates, chart positions, credits, liner notes and reviews. |
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LINER NOTES | ||
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In
a piece written by Pete Silverton for 'Sounds' at the end of 1978,
Siouxsie And The Banshees were memorably dubbed "The Most Elitist
Band In The World". It was true: no other contemporary group
sounded so uncompromising or struck such a devilishly handsome
pose. Neither had anyone else soundtracked the post-punk future
with such assurance. Gifted, clued-up antagonists. The
Banshees were both loyal to punk's iconoclasm and gleefully
disrespectful of every rock 'n' roll cliché. They had every
reason to distance themselves from Sham 69 and The Jam.
The acclaim heaped upon 'The Scream', the band's November 1978 debut album, confirmed The banshees as guiding lights of a new movement that no one could adequately define (New Musick? Cold Wave?). While Cabaret Voltaire, The Pop Group, Throbbing Gristle and The Slits lurked menacingly in the margins, and latecomers like The Cure and Joy Division were just starting out, Siouxsie And The Banshees - weaned on mainstream mavericks such as Bolan, Bowie and Roxy Music - were already the most successful. With a hit single (that summer's 'Hong Kong Garden'), a five-star album and sell-out concert tours, The Banshees' decision to hold out for a major label deal had paid off. These one-time Punk Rock Festival makeweights, with barely a note of musical knowledge between them, had spent two years working up a set as distinctive and as innovative as anything heard in years. But with success came a new modus operandi. "'Join Hands' was such a shock to the system." admits Steven Severin, the band's bassist and with Sioux, a Banshee from the beginning. "We'd been working to our own pace right up until June 1978 when we got signed. Now, just after Christmas 1978, we were asked to write a second album while at the same time having to fit in promotional visits to the continent. We were all having to work twice as hard as before." One of the most striking aspects of the early Siouxsie And The Banshees had been their united front - an impregnable façade in interviews, photoshoots and on stage. "Siouxsie was our star, our girl wonder," drummer Kenny Morris said. "We all knew that. But we were such a tight unit, and it was fantastic when it was like that. (Guitarist) John McKay and I both felt like we'd met our kindred spirits. We thought, aren't we lucky?" "All the instruments integrate together as a total thing," Morris had declared with pride to NME's Paul Morley back in December 1978, "but at the same time they're all as individually strong as they can possibly be." On a war-footing never since Sioux and Severin made the switch from shock-inducing Sex Pistols' acolytes to fronting their own band, strength through unity had been crucial both to The Banshees' aesthetic and their success. But making 'Join Hands', the most fraught and cataclysmic album in the band's 20-year career, would change all that. "The first cracks began to appear around the time of (March 1979's) 'The Staircase (Mystery)'," Severin says. "Everything was completely hunky dory until then. We were on a mission." One problem was the choice of American producer, Mike Stavrou, who had engineered some of Banshee idol Marc Bolan's final sessions. "Stavrou was a little shit," reckoned Kenny Morris. "(Manager) Nils Stevenson made Steve and Sioux get along with him, but John and I certainly didn't. he was just a joker." Another issue was the sleeve artwork, which Morris and McKay felt had been rushed through without their approval. "When you up the pace, decisions have to be made quickly," Severin explains. "In hindsight, we were making decisions without consulting John and Kenny in anything like the depth that we'd done before. Yes, Nils presented Mike Stavrou as a fait accompli. Yes, no decisions ever started from John and Kenny. And yes, they felt more left out of things." By early February 1979, when The Banshees played a handful of continental dates, new songs such as 'Premature Burial', 'Playground Twist' and 'Placebo Effect' slotted easily into 'The Scream' set. Another, 'Icon', was added at the 7 April show at London's Rainbow Theatre. But when the band started work on their new album in May, they clearly hadn't anything like the range of material that had been at their disposal for their debut. "The writing of 'Join Hands' was very difficult," admitted Sioux. "There was an edgy atmosphere, a lot of conflict going on." And, adds Severin, "McKay couldn't churn out the riffs like he'd been doing before. He was probably working at the same pace, but it just wasn't quick enough." McKay, who in interview often expressed his distaste at writing anything "normal", was nevertheless an important figure in sharing the early Banshees' sound. The unremittingly austere 'Premature Burial', one of his last notable contributions and perhaps the centrepiece of the new album, seemed to mirror his philosophy. "We feel alienation all the time," he told 'Record Mirror', "which is why we're in this band. Alienated from society, from the rest of humanity." And, more problematically, increasingly alienated from the band's two founder members. "The more John and Kenny huddled together in their own little clique, the more they used to annoy me," claimed Sioux. "They were like two old ladies complaining to each other about everything. I started calling them Connie and Jenny." "John and Kenny withdrew and became very uncommunicative," confirms Severin. "We'd have all these great plans and be thinking about the band 24 hours a day, whereas those two would skulk off back to Wembley together to smoke dope." Despite the increasingly strained personal backdrop, the quartet entered Air Studios in Central London early in May 1979, emerging with a finished album some four weeks later. Although both Tony Visconti and John Cale had been mooted for the producer's role, Stavrou was back, much to Morris and McKay's chagrin. "John Cale would have been great, but he was busy working with Squeeze," Severin explains, "so Nils found a young engineer who would listen to the band's ideas. Stavrou was very laid back." Whereas Steve Lillywhite had opened up the band's sound for 'The Scream', The Banshees opted for a dense, almost oppressive production for the follow-up, prompting 'Sounds'' Jon Savage to later observe that, "The songs are delivered with the stifling intensity of inner violence in a locked room." Both haughty and magisterial, just like the band's public image; Mike Stavrou's engineering was perfectly appropriate. Unconsciously, a militaristic subtext emerged as the group lay down their material. The mantra-like 'Poppy Day', which included lyric snatches from First World War poet John McRae's 'In Flanders' Fields', had been conceived after Severin had observed the televised two-minute's silence on Remembrance Sunday 1978. "We wanted to write song that would fittingly fill that gap," he said. The staccato 'Regal Zone' that followed it, with McKay's sax evoking early Roxy Music, was inspired by the war in Iran. Oppression, clashes with authority and altered states of various kinds found its way into the rest of the material. Though the despairing 'Icon' "was inspired by (Whirling) Dervishes getting themselves into such a state that they could put needles through their heads", according to Severin at the time, the song's hymnal quality also has resonance with the toppling of statues and symbols of the old authoritarian regimes. 'Mother', featuring a counter-tracked Siouxsie singing against a musical box that eventually runs out of puff, domesticises the politics of powerplay. "It's very close to home," she admitted in 1979. "I've deeply loved my mother, I've gone out and got pissed with her, called her by her first name. But at times she's been this disapproving figure and I've hated her..." The musical box effect, which provides a respite from the bleak and unrelenting riffs that dominate the record, is appropriately sinister and sweet. Even 'Premature Burial', ostensibly inspired by an old Edgar Allan Poe short story, has something soldierly about it. A classic example of the early Banshees style, with Sioux's end-of-tether vocal and its punishing, apocalyptic sound, the song utilises a formal choir backing fit for a retreating Red Army in its magnificent defeat. Although no single appeared on 'The Scream', The Banshees didn't have much choice this time round, hence the appearance of 'Playground Twist' in June 1979, four months before the album itself. Rejoicing in a sound that threatened to swallow the listener up, the song made it on to 'Top Of The Pops' that summer, on the same episode as PiL's similarly abrasive 'Death Disco'. In terms of profile, it marked the high point of post-punk radicalism. "I don't know how we got away with it," Severin says today. "If Ingmar Bergman produced records," reckoned NME's Roy Carr, "they would sound like this," an allusion to the song's ominous bell-ringing and uncompromising glare. The band's decision to close 'Join Hands' with a 13-minute version of 'The Lord's Prayer', the 'song' with which The Banshees had debuted on the 100 Club stage on 20th September 1976, was really to exorcise the need to play the song live at all. "That was around the time we decided we weren't going to play it again," says Sioux. "We thought, well we haven't got any versions, so let's do one at the end of every session and then pick the best. It was almost anathema to record it at all. But listening to it now it sounds great and very much captures the moment." Things might have been different had they gone along with Nils Stevenson's idea, which had been to record an overblown, prog-rock version of the piece. "He wanted to bring in an orchestra and a choir and really go for it," says Severin, who now wishes the band had taken up the idea. By the time the band took off for the 'Join Hands' tour at the end of August 1979, just days before the album's release, the rift between Kenny Morris and John McKay and Sioux, Severin and Nils Stevenson had reached a climax, and the two camps were barely speaking to each other. Matters reached a head on 7 September when, angered at an incident in a record shop in Aberdeen, Morris and McKay walked out on the band, never to return. "If they'd had their way, 'Join Hands' wouldn't have come out for another six or nine months," said Severin. "They weren't happy with the mixing, or with the amount of material we had to choose from, and they felt they were being increasingly sidelined. And history shows that we were right. They haven't done anything of note since, not because they're not talented but because they wouldn't get organised. It was always gonna crack because you can't be idealistic, you can't behave like art students, and work in a band that wants to be a mainstream band." Not that 'Join Hands' was ever in danger of being regarded as a mainstream record. "Siouxsie and I did an interview after the album came out with Phil Sutcliffe from 'Sounds', and he got us talking about Poe and came up with the idea that it was evidence of a new gothic mood." It was, but in terms of timing, it was a good two years too early. Despite the album's difficult birth and potentially catastrophic postscript, Siouxsie too rates the record highly. "Musically, 'Join Hands' was an uncompromising album and it still sounds modern today. We were lonely and isolated and that comes across in the music. It's an extreme record, but a very brave one and that's why I've still got a soft spot for it." Mark Paytress 2006. |
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Uncut 07/06 | ||
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PUNK?
GOTH? GLAM? PSYCHEDELIA? THREE CLASSIC BANSHEES ALBUMS
REMASTERED
Whether being chatted up by Bill Grundy, or playing alongside Sid Vicious in an early Banshees incarnation at the 100 Club, Siouxsie Sioux is considered central to punk's legend. However the Banshees, formed with glam devotee and fellow disaffected suburbanite Steve Severin, stood counter to the punk ethic. Whereas much punk evoked the bleak, bus-shelter misery of '70s Britain as a stark corrective to prog rock's fantasy universe, the Banshees' confrontation tactics involved scaring up a proto-Goth, anti-romantic world of voodoo, horror and the occult. Scorning the inclusivity of punk ("Everyone can't do it," Severin famously said), the Banshees found immediate popularity. By the time of Join Hands, their second LP in '79, they were no longer the only practitioners of their signature, swirling, sheet-metal guitar sound, as evinced on "Playground Twist". Although "Icon", with its scorched-earth guitar backdrop, captured their very fiery essence, and "The Lord's Prayer" is an exhilarating ordeal, tracks like "Regal Zone" suggest a band scratching at a metal door, uncertain where to go next. The tensions that held the Banshees together dully pulled them apart and, following Join Hands, guitarist John McKay and drummer Kenny Morris acrimoniously quit the band. Kaleidoscope, which bitterly acknowledges the split on "Happy House", is a halfway affair musically, even if new additions Budgie (who adds rhythmic flair to tracks like "Lunar Camel") and ex-Magazine guitarist John McGeoch fit in seamlessly. Most intriguing on this reissue is the addition of demos for, among others, "Christine" and "Paradise Place", real chalk and pins stuff which shows the new line-up struggling to turn a setback into neo-psychedelic opportunity. 1981's Juju, in contrast, was The Banshees' most fully realised album. Alongside the whipcracking dervish of "Spellbound" and the kinetic glitter of "Into The Light", "Halloween" makes a mockery of the clunky Goth scene the Banshees accidentally inspired. And "Voodoo Dolly", which distils the bloodsucking fear the Banshees hoped to inspire, is indicative of a band who, against all odds, were in complete control. Join Hands 4/5 Q&A STEVE SEVERIN UNCUT: Were you 'anti-punk' in some ways? STEVE SEVERIN: Anti the second wave of punk, maybe. People like The Clash, who set up that whole tower block aesthetic. That's not what we were about, nor the Pistols or Wire. I always hated that. How did you approach remaking the band after McKay and Morris split? With a mixture of terror and adrenaline! We were still novices musically. We had to start anew, though that was a blessing - that line-up probably only had one more album in it. You were hailed as the first Goths. How did that feel? We never liked being called punks or Goths. We made videos dressed in white just to distance ourselves from that. Are you friends with McKay and Morris today? Yes, it's all hunky dory. Siouxsie and Budgie met John McKay and his wife-to-be on the eve of their wedding and got them hugely hungover. She said ruining their marriage was revenge for him ruining the band! David Stubbs |
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UK CD | Track Listing | ||
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Cat: 839 004-2 Click on cover for full scan |
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First Released On CD: | 28/03/89 | ||
UK Chart: | N/A | ||
US Chart: | N/A | ||
Sleeve Design: | Rob O'Connor | ||
Producer: | Mike Stavarou | ||
PRESS | ||
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Q 1989 | ||
Chilling
From ice maiden to carnival queen - Siouxsie And The Banshees on CD. At the dawn of punk, Siouxsie Sioux was chiefly renowned for her dismissal of Bill Grundy as "a dirty old man" and for a dress sense designed to provoke an outbreak of British sexual hypocrisy. The Banshees may have made their debut at the 100 Club Punk Festival in 1976 but their extended assault on The Lord's Prayer was as much a dare as a stab at launching a career. Siouxsie's original invention was herself and that unflinching stare remains one of the great icons of punk's disdain. These beginnings render it all the more surprising that, 11 albums on, the Banshees have long transcended the first flush of punk to create an unmatched legacy of dramatic and very British pop. Polydor's release of the first seven Banshees titles on CD means that all their output is now available on compact disc bar the two "holiday projects", The Creatures and The Glove. If Siouxsie's reputation remains that of the haughty Queen of Gothic Punk, these CDs suggest that, within the parameters of their brooding and fantastical world view, there is a good deal more to Siouxsie and her long-term partner Steve Severin than that enduring image suggests. Although Siouxsie and Severin's punk credentials are impeccable, the Banshees were the last of the original punk clan to release a record. By the time Hong Kong Garden entered the Top Ten in August 1978, the Banshees had already seen their fair share of touring and rapidly progressed beyond the confrontational three-chord thrash that had rendered punk a musical cliché. Spearheaded by John McKay's sheet-metal guitar, their debut LP The Scream virtually invented the Gothic rock genre overnight and stands alongside Magazine's Real Life as a turning point in punk's movement away from rabble-rousing and into the internal landscape of the psyche. While songs like Carcass are dated by their goose-stepping beat and stone-faced delivery, the gut-wrenching Overground and the dizzy Jigsaw Feeling demonstrate that already the Banshees were far more concerned with psychodramas of disgust than confronting society head on. The Scream was a new take on suburban angst as Siouxsie's howling vocals intimated that the boredom and alienation of suburban life amounted to nothing less than a horror show. On later albums, the Banshees would uncover a rich exoticism in suburban fears; on The Scream, Steve Lillywhite's thundering production ensures that they sound trapped. Restored on CD to all its forbidding austerity, The Scream is both a declaration of intent and something of an artistic full stop. The following year's Join Hands indicates that while only PiL could match the Banshees' chilling wail of noise, they'd left themselves little room to manoeuvre. McKay's guitar still seesaws disturbingly and Severin's ear for compelling bass riffs is apparent on Placebo Effect, but while Siouxsie turns domestic claustrophobia into Gothic nightmare on Premature Burial and Mother, her vocals are oddly unwieldy. While Hong Kong Garden had displayed an ability to combine a playful sense of unease with driving pop melody, on Join Hands there are only riffs. The departure of McKay and drummer Kenny Morris a mere four days after its release suggests that the Banshees' two halves had indeed reached an impasse. The next album Kaleidoscope featured the now long-serving Budgie on drums and guitar work from John McGeoch and Steve Jones. The Banshees' embattled state obliged Sioux and Severin to rediscover their pop flair and the album's tow singles, Happy House and Christine, display a renewed ability to surround Siouxsie's icy mixture of fatalism and sarcasm in the kind of melodies that even a punk's parents might hum. The inventiveness of a piece like Red Light, driven along by the clicks of a camera shutter, proved that the Banshees were considerably more than a one-trick pony. 1981's Juju finds McGeoch firmly ensconced on guitar, Sioux and Severin devoting themselves to an exhaustive exploration of the power of idols and the Banshees reborn as a magisterial hard rock band. On moody songs like Arabian Knights, Siouxsie unveils a new sensuality while the Banshees display the brooding authority of the Stones circa Paint It Black. Juju confirmed the Banshees' staying power even if their frequent assaults on the singles chart has never own them a mass following like that of The Cure. Most early Banshee albums have their indigestible moments and the argument that they are the best singles band gains some credence from the Once Upon A Time collection where early singles like The Staircase gain contrast from later stabs like the eerie Israel. A sequel is now surely due. A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (1982) found the Banshees further investigating the kind of offbeat textures that Brian Jones brought to the Stones in the mid-'60s. Songs like She's A Carnival and Cascade make gorgeous use of strings while Siouxsie's voice acquires a hidden warmth for studies in erotic extremity like Melt! and Obsession. Dreamhouse probably remains the Banshees' finest hour. In 1983, the Banshees marked time with the live Nocturne, a well-recorded resumé of the band's capacity for Sturm und Drang lightened by the occasional exchange with the audience ("What time tunnel did you crawl out of?" Siouxsie asks one particularly nostalgic punk fan). McGeoch had flown the nest immediately after the Dreamhouse and Nocturne misses his magisterial authority despite Robert Smith's capable but understandably muted understudying. Smith soon departed in turn and the Banshees spent the mid '80s trying to capture their old fire. The Banshee's origins and Siouxsie's forbidding stare have made it hard for them to escape their punk associations while their use of horror imagery has occasionally blinded fans to the questions of power and threatened innocence their unsettling narratives explore. These CDs lend their work a fresh clarity and trace a remarkable evolution which serves as a reminder that, for its bravest exponents, punk was always more a question of daring than a set of conventions. The Scream 4/5 Mark Copper |
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IMPORTS/PROMOS | |||
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Japanese Import LP | Track Listing | ||
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CREDITS | ||
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Pulled To Bits | ||
Tongues
are clacking Pulled to
bits Buildings
bleached with chatter chatter clatter Pulled to
bits Young
lungs snapping, coming up for air Pulled to
bits in silence Pulled to
bits |
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Pulled To Bits Credits | ||
Severin -
Lyrics |
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Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment | ||
Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment: The acts of copy cat violence that followed the release and subsequent withdrawal of Stanley Kubricks A Clockwork Orange. | ||
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Premature Burial Lyrics | ||
This
catacomb compels me |
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Premature Burial Credits | ||
Sioux
- Lyrics |
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Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment | ||
Well Steve claimed Edgar Allan Poe (on whose short story the song is based) was a sort of Gothic comedian and Siouxsie said the single line ‘Oh what a bloody shame’ was there to make the doominess of it all feel silly... and yet they came back to discussing the song in terms of the weighty theme of social claustrophobia (the ‘burial’ image equals limiting factors like race or youth fashion cults). Source: Sounds 29/09/79. | ||
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Mittageisen Lyrics | ||
Reunion
beginnt Metall ist
stark, Metall
will scheinen Mit
mechanischem Rucken Metall ist
stark, Metall
will scheinen Es
beherrscht unser Leben Metall ist
stark, Metall
will scheinen |
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Mittageisen Credits | ||
:Sioux (Translated by Dave Woods & Renate)
- Lyrics |
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Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment | ||
Dedicated
to anti Nazi artist John
Heartfield. Source:
Smash Hits 12/07/79.
'Mittageisen' translates as midday iron, but might be mistaken for the similar sounding 'Mittagessen' which means midday meal. |
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Infantry | ||
Instrumental |
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Infantry Credits | ||
McKay - Guitar | ||