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.


 

REMASTERED CD

 
 
  UK CD Track Listing  
 
 
  Join Hands Remastered CD - Click Here For Full Scan 
Cat: 
983 691-2
Click on cover for full scan

 

The Original Album

Poppy Day
Regal Zone
Placebo Effect
Icon
Premature Burial
Playground Twist
Mother/Oh Mein Papa
The Lords Prayer

Bonus Tracks

Love In A Void (7" Double AA Side Single)
Infantry (Unreleased Track)
 
 
   
  Notes:   All songs remastered
Liner notes courtesy of Mark Paytress

 

 
  Released: 29/05/06  
  UK Chart: No.   
  US Chart: No.  
  Sleeve Design: Rob O'Connor  
  Re-issue Design: Julien Potter at Bold, London  
  Producer: Mike Stavarou  
  Digitally Remastered By: Gary Moore  
  Tapes Sourced By: Zoe Roberts/Steven Severin  
       

 

LINER NOTES

 
 
  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.

 
     

 

IMPORTS/PROMOS

 
 
  Japanese Import CD Track Listing  
 
 
  Join Hands Remastered Japanese Import CD - Click Here For Full Scan 
Cat: 
UICY-93057
Click on cover for full scan

 

The Original Album

Poppy Day
Regal Zone
Placebo Effect
Icon
Premature Burial
Playground Twist
Mother/Oh Mein Papa
The Lords Prayer

Bonus Tracks

Love In A Void (7" Double AA Side Single)
Infantry (Unreleased Track)
 
 
   
  Notes:   All songs remastered
Liner notes courtesy of Simon Goddard
Cardboard sleeve is a  miniature replica of the original vinyl LP artwork including inner sleeve and lyrics
In addition includes pull out poster with lyrics in Japanese

 

 
  Released: 28/06/06  
  UK Chart: No.   
  US Chart: No.  
  Sleeve Design: Rob O'Connor  
  Re-issue Design: Julien Potter at Bold, London  
  Producer: Mike Stavarou  
  Digitally Remastered By: Gary Moore  
  Tapes Sourced By: Zoe Roberts/Steven Severin  
       

 

PRESS

 
 
  Uncut 07/06  
 
 
  First Four Remasters Advert - Click Here For Bigger ScanPUNK?  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
Kaleidoscope 3/5
Juju 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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CD

 
 
  UK CD Track Listing  
 
 
  Join Hands CD Front Cover - Click Here For Full Scan 
Cat:  839 004-2
Click on cover for full scan
Poppy Day
Regal Zone
Placebo Effect
Icon
Premature Burial
Playground Twist
Mother/Oh Mein Papa
The Lords Prayer
 
 
   
  First Released On CD: 28/03/89  
  UK Chart: N/A  
  US Chart: N/A  
  Sleeve Design: Rob O'Connor  
  Producer: Mike Stavarou  
       

 

PRESS

 
 
  Q 1989  
 
 
  CDs Release Advert - Click Here For Bigger ScanChilling

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
Join Hands 3/5
Kaleidoscope 3/5
Juju 4/5
Once Upon A Time 4/5
A Kiss In The Dreamhouse 4/5
Nocturne 3/5

Mark Copper

 
 
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LP/CASSETTE

 
 
  UK LP Track Listing  
 
 
  Join Hands LP Front Cover - Click Here For Full Scan 
Cat:  POLD 5024 (2442 164)
Click on cover for full scan
 
 
   
  Notes:   LP available in gatefold sleeve

 

 
  UK Cassette Track Listing  
 
   
  Join Hands Cassette Front Cover - Click Here For Full Scan  
Cat:  POLD 5024
Click on cover for full scan
 
 
   
  Released: 07/09/79  
  UK Chart: No. 13  
  US Chart: Not Released  
  Sleeve Design: Rob O'Connor  
  Producer: Mike Stavarou  
       

 

IMPORTS/PROMOS

 
 
  Japanese Import LP Track Listing  
 
 
  Join Hands LP Japanese Import Front Cover
Poppy Day
Regal Zone
Placebo Effect
Icon
Premature Burial
Playground Twist
Mother/Oh Mein Papa
The Lords Prayer
 
       

 

PRESS

 
 
  Record Mirror 1979  
 
 
 

Join Hands Advert - Click Here For Bigger ScanFor most people the conditioned response to a Banshees' album is, initially, one of complete revulsion.  "Join Hands" is a Banshees' album. "The Scream", a masterpiece that, for six months, I failed to recognise as such, was a harrowing listening experience.  The Banshees have since become undisputed rulers of rock psychopathy, making ingeniously commercial, lyrically intense singles of real worth.  As on "The Scream" each individual here utilises unorthodox skills to the full, making "Join Hands" if anything an even uneasier listen.  The Banshees trade on people's fascination with all things sinister and thus they secure a deadly attraction.  One simply has to take another listen.  "Join Hands" opens with a solemn peal of church bells, a strident militaristic backbeat and Severin's truly disturbing scratchings.  "Poppy Day" establishes the bands perfect employ of atmospherics and sets the tone of all the tracks here.  The track makes no judgments, it merely sets a scenario of death, a theme which is overpoweringly abundant on "Join Hands".  "Regal Zone" perhaps traces the Banshees paranoia, or otherwise on rejection and alienation whilst "Placebo Effect" the most melodic track on the album harkens back to material like the most hummable passages of the first album.  As with all Banshees' songs all lyrical options are left completely open and nowhere more is this shown than on "Placebo Effect".  I am well versed on the medical usage of the word "placebo", viz, a neutral substance used as a control when testing a drug.  I took the song's placebo to be an analogy of "religion".  The word used in ecclesiastical terms, however, means vespers for the dead.  You pays your money....  "Icon" could also pertain to religion or merely to any "image" and has echoes of iconoclasm running throughout.  "Icons feed the fires/Icons falling from the spires", perhaps points to a band desire to destroy the creeping mental malaise of religion.  "Premature Burial", again totally open, though apparently based on catalepsy and Roger Corman's film of the same title.  Side two opens with the single "Playground Twist" insidiously nasty it takes the extremes of child like naivety and death into the schoolyard and flows into the positively evil "Mother".  The track features a musical box, echoes menacing guitar grumblings and Siouxsie providing vocals that would befit any of Hitchcock's best matricides.  One can almost see the band sitting on the porch in the obligatory rocking chair toying with their switchblades.  Morbid stuff.  As is the album's epic a near 15 minute version of "The Lords Prayer" that encompasses exerts from "Knocking On Heaven's Door", "Twist & Shout", "Cocaine In My Brain", "The Lonely Goatherd", "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" and one of those French songs you learn in school.  All is delivered in monotone interspersed with chickens clucking, screams and yodelings.  Perhaps a summation of some important clichés the song could almost trace a certain period of time and could almost be autobiographical.  Again religion, or indeed any large system of mass control is lambasted.  Fifteen minutes of complete and utter disorientation.  Two days of "Join Hands" with no lyric sheet is an intriguing and unnerving experience and is no time at all.  Given time this will become enjoyable, probably not what the band intend for their open ended waxings but for now it's a dangerous and volatile work which should be heard.  Stars?  Who Knows?

 
 


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CREDITS

     
  Pulled To Bits  
 
 
 

Tongues are clacking
Words of one vision
One tiny incision
And teeth are cracking
On thin air, on thin air

Pulled to bits 
In silence
Left  rotting on the ground
Slowly pulled to bits 
In silence
Without a sound, without a sound

Buildings bleached with chatter chatter clatter
Fill their senses with cement
Watch the people shatter
One by one, one by one

Pulled to bits 
In silence
Left  rotting on the ground
Slowly pulled to bits 
In silence
Without a sound, without a sound

Young lungs snapping, coming up for air
The mindless ones yapping
Slashing through the thoroughfare
One by one, one by one
Oh one by one
Without a fucking care

Pulled to bits in silence
Left  rotting on the ground
Slowly pulled to bits 
In silence
Without a sound, without a fucking sound

Pulled to bits
Yackety Yackety yack yack yack
Pulled to bits
Shatter shatter shatter clatter
Pulled to bits
Yap yap yap yapping
Pulled to bits
Without a sound

 
     
  Pulled To Bits Credits  
     
 

Severin - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
McKay - Guitar & Saxophone
Morris - Drums

 
     
  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.  
     
     

 


     
  Poppy Day Lyrics  
 
 
 

In Flanders fields
The poppies grow
Between the crosses
Row on row
That mark our place
We are the dead

 
     
  Poppy Day Credits  
     
 

Words adapted from John McCrae's 'In Flanders Fields'
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Morris - Drums & Percussion
McKay - Guitar

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SEVERIN: "Last November 11 I was watching the TV when they had the two minutes silence in memory of the war dead and I thought wouldn’t it be nice if there were music for it." A leaping notion that, silence set to music. Source:  Sounds 29/09/79.  
     

 


     
  Regal Zone Lyrics  
 
 
 

Coronets rest on a death's head mask
No-one is safe while the curfew lasts
But crusted orbs glitter, scepters gleam
While helmets of blood fill the screen

They look away
And then they say
"For the good of the land"
For the love of the man"

Standing alone
Sitting alone
On the throne
Of the regal zone
 
Old limbs hang in the torture room
While old kings hang in the portrait room
Their noble eyes gaze on the uneasy dance
Of the squirming body on the marble plate

They look away
and then they say
"For the good of the land"
for the love of the man"

Standing alone
Sitting alone
On the throne
Of the regal zone

 
     
  Regal Zone Credits  
     
 

Severin - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Morris - Drums & Percussion
McKay - Guitar & Saxophone

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SEVERIN: "It is absurd to say that your emotions when watching say a TV news item in Iran (the starting point of ‘Regal Zone’) are unreal just because you aren’t out on the streets of Teheran yourself". Source:  Sounds  29/09/79.
SIOUXSIE: " 'Regal Zone' is personally political for me." Source:  Sounds  05/04/80.
SIOUXSIE: "There was conflict in Iran and bombings in London and it all seemed to fit. It wasn't any pro-militarymessage; we just wanted to capture the spirit of what things were like at the time. Severin had written 'Regal Zone; which summed all that up." Source:  The Authorised Biography 2002.
 
     

 


     
  Placebo Effect Lyrics  
 
 
 

You dip your hands into my flesh
And say you won't reveal a scar
I must have faith in this procedure
It's a miracle, It's a wonder

A thousand hidden needles
In a thousand covered nerves
Stick pins in my receptacles
Look to your Voodoo doll, your mojo

Staying alive at five
For you to cure my ailments
Another soul is saved
With your bogus medications

Which colour shall we have today?
Depends on how I feel you say
Consult your research on the media
See blue will calm my hysteria

Staying alive at five
For you to cure my ailments
Another soul is saved
With your bogus medications

Staying alive at five
With your empty containers
Another corpse ornaments your waiting room
A placebo effect reversed

Will you ever regret, the placebo effect
Can you ever forget, the placebo effect

 
     
  Placebo Effect Credits  
     
 

Sioux - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Morris - Drums & Percussion
McKay - Guitar

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  "Placebo Effect" came from hearing a programme on Capitol Radio, when one of the station's resident Kildares was discussing the kind and colour of medicaments that different nations most favour. Apparently the UK goes for pills while the French like suppositories and the Italians injections. Source:  Melody Maker 17/02/79.  
     

 


     
  Icon Lyrics  
 
 
 

My eyes went up to Heaven
You didn't say
 I'd be blind without them
Icons, feed the fires
Icons, falling from the spires

Thine eyes rain down from Heaven
You always said
 I'd be blind without them
Icons, feed the fires
Icons, falling from the spires

Those words hang like vicious spittle
Dribbling from that tongue
Close your eyes to your lies
Force feed more pious meat
Those nebulous codes and disciplines
Stick in that new born throat
Instill a lie, an artificial eye
To view a perfect land

Icons, feed the fires
Icons, falling from the spires

Can I? stick skewers in my skin
and whirl a dervish spin
Can I? set myself on fire
to prove some kind of desire

Icons, feed the fires
Icons, falling from the spires

The guilt is golden
The guilt is golden
Those ageless lies
The shuttered eyes
It's the night piece
It's the Icon

Icons, feed the fires
Icons, falling from the spires

 
     
  Icon Credits  
     
 

Severin - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Morris - Drums & Percussion
McKay - Guitar

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SEVERIN: "There’s a song we have called ‘Icon’ that was inspired by Dervishes getting themselves into such a state that they could put needles through their heads. Our interest in that state is a theme that runs through our work." Source:  Sounds 07/03/81. 
SIOUXSIE: "There’s amazing religions in the East where they go into states of, umm…. Dervishes and they put skewers through their skin, I don’t know what that’s called, they go into mad dervishes, chanting and mantras and that. I’m just fascinated in the power of the mind over the body I suppose, and what’s outside, not just the mind, what other elements are involved in it, you can endure an incredible amount of pain without faltering, again, when the adrenalin and drive is pushed." Source:  Rox Box Interview 10/05/86.
 
     

 


     
  Premature Burial Lyrics  
 
 
 

This catacomb compels me
Corroding and inert
It weighs and tries to pull me
Must I resist or re-assert?
The unchanged and the unchangeable
Doing the zombierama
Singing Oh come and be like me
We're all sisters and brothers

Ejected to this state of being
Don't bury me with this
I'm in a state of catalepsy
Can I really exist?
Clawing from the inside
Drowning in your chant
Thoughts come flooding through me
Despairing unity

The unchanged and the unchangeable
Doing the zombierama
Singing Oh come and be like me
We're all sisters and brothers

Red and white carnations
Can't intoxicate my brain
This blissful suffocation
It is driving me to pain
Oh what a bloody shame

The unchanged and the unchangeable
Doing the zombierama
Singing Oh come and be like me
We're all sisters and brothers
I'm not your sister
Or your brother
Don't bury me with this

Join hands, join hands

We're all sisters and brothers
Sisters and brothers
I can't relate to you
You're no relation of mine

 
     
  Premature Burial Credits  
     
 

Sioux - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Morris - Drums & Percussion
McKay - Guitar

 
     
  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.  
     

 


     
  Playground Twist Lyrics  
 
 
 

Hanging, hanging, hanging
Hanging from your daisy chains
Swinging in the trees
Running from your enemies
And falling on your knees
On your knees, on your knees
Get down on your knees

Throw the dice
You three blind mice
Did you ever see
Such a thing in your life
You swallow the trail
But still arrive
Inside your entrails

Hanging, hanging, hanging
Hanging out at party games
Dancing in the shadows
Up and down on the sea-saw
Balancing the scales
You're drunk, you're drunk
Get your balancing the scales

Someone to blame
Someone to shame
Someone that you can claim
Go back to pass the parcel
And follow the leader

Hanging, hanging, hanging
Hanging from your climbing frames
Swinging in the gallows
Laughing with your buddies
But you can drown when you're shallow
You can drown when you're shallow
You can drown, drown, drown
Drown, drown, drown, drown, drown

 
     
  Playground Twist Credits  
     
 

Sioux - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Morris - Drums & Percussion
McKay - Guitar & Saxophone

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  Talks about adults who act like children and children who think they're adults. It might be interpreted as a swipe against the music press. As the title suggests, there's a kind of nursery-rhyme section. Source:  Melody Maker 17/02/79.
SIOUXSIE: "It's about the cruelty of children and that whole aspect of being thrown out into the playground in the winter in howling gales and left to fend for your-selves. It's not the sort of thing you're supposed to write pop songs about." Source:  The Authorised Biography 2002.
SIOUXSIE: "I suppose ‘Playground Twist', is quite happy at the end, because the baddies are swinging in the gallows." Source:  Sounds 20/06/81.
 
     

 


     
  Mother/Oh Mein Papa Lyrics  
 
 
 

The word you learn to love    The disapproval that you hate
that's Mother    From Mother
They teach you to respect    Makes you always want to please
Mother    Mother
The one who keeps you warm    The one who keeps you warm
And shelters you from harm    And shelters you from harm
Watch out she'll stunt your mind    She'll open up your mind
'Till you emulate her kind    To make you good and make you kind
Is that Mother?    Mother
Downstairs I don't know    Downstairs I don't know
If it's the springs in her bed    Why I feel safe in my bed
Or her joints I hear    When I know I'm alone
Creaking overhead    She must be watching overhead
Mother    Mother
She'll twist the words you speak    She'll kiss and say goodbye
If she thinks you're near escape    If you want to go away
Mother    Mother
So she clutches at her brood    So she gathers up her brood
And sits across its face    And smiles into their face
She sucks up all its energy    She beams down vital energy
And smothers their last breath    She gave us our first breath
Oh Mother    Mother
The thing you grow to hate    The love you won't forget

Oh mein papa
To me is so beautiful
Always the same

 
     
  Mother/Oh Mein Papa Credits  
     
 

Sioux/Burkhart/Turner/Parsons - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice & Piano
Severin - Bass
Morris - Drums & Percussion
McKay - Guitar

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SIOUXSIE: "It’s very close to home. It’s personal but I’m not hung up about it. 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 I think. Source:  Sounds 29/09/79.
SIOUXSIE: "It’s not just me though. I haven’t met anyone who hasn’t got a confused relationship with their mother. What role they’re supposed to play, whether they should guide you without commanding you or.. it’s such a dilemma. Also a mother is the thing I’m most confused about becoming." Source:  Sounds  29/09/79.
 
     

 


     
  The Lord's Prayer Lyrics  
 
 
 

Ready? (I'm ready!) O! I'm gonna get you in the end! Getcha! Getcha! Getcha! Our father which art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done as on Earth as it is in Heaven. O in heaven. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever amen. Fury, chastity, burden, sacrifice, claim me guilty. Milk white skin. Running red, red on white, judge, icon, icon, I am gonna getcha. Revenge, revenge, never talk clever to me. Red running revenge. Revenge getcha getcha getcha revenge... Never talk clever to me. Shalalalala O no no.  A knock knock knocking knock knock knocking on heaven's door. let me in! O let me in! La La La Woo oo oo! Who's that knocking on my door? He floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee; floats like a butterfly but he stings like a bee. Yodelay shedelay. Ding a ling a ling. Ding a ling a ling a fucking ding on the door, on heaven's door. Bawk bawk bawk - Bawk bawk bawk BAWK! Bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk BAWK!! My little chickadee, carry on. Carry on. Our father which art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as on Earth as it is in heaven. In heaven. Ahhh! Ah! Ah! I'm gonna getcha in the end! Getcha, I'm gonna getcha. To me talk clever I'll getcha. When you're clever I'll getcha in the end. I'll get you in the end. O! O! Shake it, shake it, baby, shake it, shake it, baby, now. Twist and shout! Ow! A bottle, a cork, a bottle, and a cork  that's the way you spell New York. Yodelay hee he! Yedelay hee hee! Yodelay yodelay yodelay hee hee! Yodelay yodelay yodelay hee-hee! Tomorrow belongs to me. It belongs to me it belongs to me. Don't take it away from me. La de la de la de lalalala... [LATIN...] Sick it hard. Holy cow. Holy cow. Well shake it, shake it baby shake it, shake it, baby, now. O, you twist little girl, you know you twist so fine, c'mon and twist a little closer and let me know that you're mine. O let me know that you're mine. Mine, mine, mine, mine. Our father which art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Ah thy a king a done a come a thy a will a be a done on Earth as it is in heaven. Heaven. Running red, running red, red on white. Running red. Red over white. Run, run, run, run, run a, run a, run a, run a, run, run, run, run a, run a, run a, run and hide. Run and hide. You'll never frighten me. Run and hide. You can hide all you like. Run and hide. Leave me alone. So run and hide. But I'll get your hide. Run and hide. I'll have your hide. O-Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Will I get to heaven? This is all wonderful but will I get to heaven? Will all God's children get to heaven? If you're good if you're good no you'll never get to heaven not even if you're good there's never ever been a heaven. There's never ever been a heaven. On Earth as it is in heaven. On Earth as it is in heaven. That's what it says. No heaven on Earth.  Earth as it is in heaven. On Earth as it is in heaven. On Earth as it is in heaven. On Earth as it is in heaven. Run and hide. No escape. Run and hide. You do gooders will never get to heaven. You do gooders will never get to heaven. Still safe in your still safe in your house of God but you'll never, you'll never, never, ever get to heaven. You'll never climb the ladder to heaven. So just shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it baby and twist and shout. Our father which art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. This prayer goes on and on

 
     
  The Lord's Prayer Credits  
     
 

Sioux - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Morris - Drums & Percussion
McKay - Guitar

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  Parts of 'The Lord's Prayer' were inspired by The Benefactor, a short horror story by Walter Winward.
STEVE: "I still think it was really important for us to put ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ on there, because so many people were like pretending it didn’t exist, pretending we were this singles band, exclamation marks. There were all these other sides to us and I’m really glad it got on there." Source:  Zigzag 05/80.
SIOUXSIE: " 'The Lord's Prayer' has never had lyrics or a tune to it. Live it's either been the best thing in the set or the worst: it either happened or it didn't." Source:  Sounds 05/04/80.
SIOUXSIE: " 'The Lord's Prayer' was an aggressive thing about religion and tradition." Source:  Trax 17/02/81.
SEVERIN: "It’s a noisy joke. We’re making this horrendous noise and Sioux’s singing ‘Clare De Lune’. I have to laugh." Source:  Sounds 29/09/79.
SIOUXSIE: "That’s a gleeful mockery of religion or any other fanaticism - for the Beatles or whatever. We’re just spanners in the works of uniform progression." Source:  Sounds 29/09/79.
 
     

 


     
  Mittageisen Lyrics  
 
 
 

Reunion beginnt
Mit einem Glas Quecksilber
Fernsehen flimmert
Für noch eine Nachricht
Flinten beleuchten die Augen
Der sitzenden Familie

Metall ist stark, Metall will scheinen
Verrostet nicht wenn geschmiert und rein
Metall ist stark, Metall will scheinen
Metall regiert in meinem Meister-Plan

Mit mechanischem Rucken
Pflücken die Taschen Uhrhne
Zum Mittagessen Freitag
Im ckprall sagt "Verzeihung
Zurück muß ich kehren
Meine liebe Maschinerie"

Metall ist stark, Metall will scheinen
Verrostet nicht wenn geschmiert und rein
Metall ist stark, Metall will scheinen
Metall regiert in meinem Meister-Plan

Es beherrscht unser Leben
Es bringt kein heil
Ich schreibe ein paaZeilen
Das Wetter hier ist fein
Doch dröhnt es Tag und Nacht
Durch Lautsprecher

Metall ist stark, Metall will scheinen
Verrostet nicht wenn geschmiert und rein
Metall ist stark, Metall will scheinen
Metall regiert in meinem Meister-Plan

 
     
  Mittageisen Credits  
     
 

:Sioux (Translated by Dave Woods & Renate) - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice & Melodica
Severin - Bass
McKay - Guitar
Morris - Drums

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  Dedicated to anti Nazi artist John HeartfieldSource:  Smash Hits 12/07/79.

'Mittageisen' translates as midday iron, but might be mistaken for the similar sounding 'Mittagessen' which means midday meal. 

 
     

 


     
  Love In A Void Lyrics  
 
 
 

Too many fools blocking my motion
Clouding my eyes, must be the potion
Spots in my eyes, must be the lotion
Spots in my eyes, must be the lotion

Love in a void
It's so numb
Avoiding love
Its so dumb
Love in a void

Too many bigots for my liking
Too many critics, too few writing
Rabid dogs that aren't biting
Rabid dogs that aren't biting

Love in a void
It's so numb
Avoiding love
Its so dumb
Love in a void

Jaded reputation on which you're staking
Lots of money for the making
For all the stars they're just faking
For all the stars they're just faking

Love in a void
It's so numb
Avoiding love
Its so dumb
Love in a void

 
     
  Love In A Void Credits  
     
 

Severin - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Morris - Drums & Percussion
McKay - Guitar

 
     

 


     
  Infantry  
 
 
 

Instrumental

 
     
  Infantry Credits  
     
  McKay - Guitar