COMPILATION - ONCE UPON A TIME

 
 
  UK CD Track Listing  
 
   
  Once Upon A Time CD Cardboard Slipcase Front Cover - Click Here For Full Scan  
Cat:  0602498387795
Click on cover for full scan
Hong Kong Garden
Mirage
The Staircase (Mystery)
Playground Twist
Love In A Void
Happy House
Christine
Israel
Spellbound
Arabian Knights
 
 
   
  Notes: Re-issued at mid-price in a cardboard slipcase.  No inner sleeve or booklet.

 

 
  First Released On CD: 05/06  
  UK Chart: N/A  
  US Chart: N/A  
  Sleeve Design: Rob O'Connor  
  Producer: Various  
       

 

COMPILATION - ONCE UPON A TIME

 
 
  UK CD Track Listing  
 
   
  Once Upon A Time CD Front Cover - Click Here For Full Scan  
Cat:  831 542-2
Click on cover for full scan
Hong Kong Garden
Mirage
The Staircase (Mystery)
Playground Twist
Love In A Void
Happy House
Christine
Israel
Spellbound
Arabian Knights
 
 
   
  First Released On CD: 30/05/89  
  UK Chart: N/A  
  US Chart: N/A  
  Sleeve Design: Rob O'Connor  
  Producer: Various  
       

 

ONCE UPON A TIME CD - 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

 
 
More press...
 
     

 

COMPILATION - ONCE UPON A TIME

 
 
  UK LP Track Listing  
 
   
  Once Upon A Time LP Front Cover - Click Here For Full Scan  
Cat:  POLSC 1056
Click on cover for full scan
Hong Kong Garden
Mirage
The Staircase (Mystery)
Playground Twist
Love In A Void
Happy House
Christine
Israel
Spellbound
Arabian Knights
 
 
   
  Notes:  

 

Available with limited edition print  
  UK Cassette Track Listing  
 
   
  Once Upon A Time Cassette Front Cover - Click Here For Full Scan  
Cat:  POLDC 5156
Click on cover for full scan
Hong Kong Garden
Mirage
The Staircase (Mystery)
Playground Twist
Love In A Void
Happy House
Christine
Israel
Spellbound
Arabian Knights
 
 
   
  Released: 04/12/81  
  UK Chart: No. 21  
  US Chart: Didn't Chart  
  Sleeve Design: Rob O'Connor  
  Producer: Various  
       

 

ONCE UPON A TIME - IMPORTS/PROMOS

 
 
  Japanese Import LP Track Listing  
 
 
  Once Upon A Time LP Japanese Import - Click Here For Bigger Scan
Hong Kong Garden
Mirage
The Staircase (Mystery)
Playground Twist
Love In A Void
Happy House
Christine
Israel
Spellbound
Arabian Knights
 
       

 

ONCE UPON A TIME - LINER NOTES

 
 
  I was scratched, fiercely and justly by HONG KONG GARDEN and was never the same again.  Siouxsie and the Banshees, on the nightmare edge of our sheltered world, were concerned with nothing less than breaking the rules of logic, space and time.  Accepting, exploiting and confusing pop music's universal vanity, futility and profound quality, they set about eliciting from life's facts and fantasies a sense of the things that matter.

The sensuality of Siouxsie and the Banshees encourages us to feel more deeply by, amongst other things, making us think on our pulses.  Siouxsie made up her own spectacular normality, the Banshees took a distantly individual way out from punks and smoking ruins, skimmed past the quaking rocks of a fragmenting pop culture, slyly violated listeners inherited sense of fun and form and devised their own mighty sense of glamour and passion.  A breakdown didn't interfere with their accumulation of form or upset the succession of balances.  A change in calm mid-stream aggravated and altered the emotional pattern, reinforced their electric descriptions of the unnatural.

I admit unashamedly to being pierced by Siouxsie and the Banshees imaginative conviction.  They alone are the beginning of some brand new restoration period.  

Paul Morley, November 1981

 
     

 

ONCE UPON A TIME - PRESS

 
 
  Melody Maker 1981  
 
 
  Once Upon A Time Advert - Click Here For Bigger ScanA swift Christmas recommendation: lest we forget there was love before the Human League.  Polydor have issued this package of Banshees' 45.  They're all brilliant,  of course, unmistakably Sioux; ponderous, poignant, once petrifying, now pretty (and) peculiar.  Look I shouldn't have to tell you this, if you haven't got all these already you're really not worth knowing.  But "Once Upon A Time" provides a neat opportunity for reassessment; compilations always play havoc with personal perspectives, muck about with memories and cause a lot of arguments.  This one will.  Like were the murderous "Mirage" and "Love In A Void", the original McKay/Morris Banshees, better or a patch on the creepy "Christine", "Israel", "Spellbound" Budgie/McGeoch bunch? Is the gradual shift from irresponsible aggression to artistic impression, from shock to seduction, from fury to focus, an exciting revolution or a softening into self parody.  No answers from me, I love 'em all.  Apart from their debut, "The Scream", and this years "Juju", "Once Upon A Time" is the Banshees' best album, stripped by commercial necessity, of their occasionally shallow semi Gothic horror shenanigans.  These singles are coiled and concise, sure of their targets.  They search and destroy, whether by insinuation like "Playground Twist", overt violence like "Mirage" or clever cunning like "Arabian Knights", how that sodomy/bestiality line sneaked past the BBC censors was this year's great pop victory over hypocritical media morality.  "Once Upon A Time" is testament that stylish, imaginative, subversive protest is still alert, alluring and alive.  It's a salute to the Banshees' breathtakingly uncompromising accessibility.  And the real buzz is....the best is yet to come....  
 
More press...
 
     

 

ONCE UPON A TIME - CREDITS

     
  Hong Kong Garden Lyrics  
 
 
 

Harmful elements in the air
Symbols Crashing everywhere
Reap the fields of rice and reeds
While the population feeds

Junk floats on polluted water
And old custom to sell your daughter
Would you like number 23
Leave your yens on the counter please

Hong Kong garden

Tourists swarm to see your face
Confucius has a puzzling grace
Disorientated you enter in
Unleashing scent of wild jasmine

Slanted eyes meet a new sunrise
A race of bodies small in size
Chicken Chow Mein and Chop Suey
Hong Kong garden takeaway

Hong Kong garden

 
     
  Hong Kong Garden Credits  
     
 

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

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SIOUXSIE: "I’ll never forget, there was a Chinese restaurant in Chislehurst called 'The Hong Kong Garden'. Me and my friend were really upset that we used to go there and like, occasionally when the skinheads would turn up it would really turn really ugly. These gits were just go in on mass and just terrorise these Chinese people who were working there. We’d try and say ‘Leave them alone’, you know. It was a kind of tribute." Source:  Punk Top Ten Interview 08/06/01.
SIOUXSIE: "I remember wishing that I could be like Emma Peel from The Avengers and kick all the skinheads' heads in, because they used to mercilessly torment these people for being foreigners. It made me feel so helpless, hopeless and ill." Source:  Uncut  01/05.
SEVERIN: "That was freaky. A very strange period. We'd finished it a month before it came out, and we'd pushed it away - and it was just a very strange feeling having people rush up and say how great it was." Source:  NME 23/12/78.
 
     

 


     
  Mirage Lyrics  
 
 
 

I'm just a vision on your TV screen
Just something conjured from a dream
Seen thro' your x-ray eyes
A see thro'  scene
The image is no images
It's not what it seems

My limbs are like palm trees
Swaying in the breeze
My body's an oasis
To drink from as you please
I'm not seeing what I'm meant to believe in
Your non-excuse for human being

It's not plain to see
That I'm playing with me
A photo fit of loose ends framed in 3-D
Seen thro' your x-ray eyes
A see thro' scene
The images no image is
It's not what it seems

 
     
  Mirage Lyrics  
     
 

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

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  MORRIS: "It's more the idea of blindness and screens rather than taking it down to TV. It's about walls, screens, inhibitions, inabilities, expressing oneself in public." Source:  Melody Maker  21/10/78.
SIOUXSIE: " 'Mirage' is about 'the image is no images, it's not what it seems' It's about people seeing us and taking what we do superficially." Source:  Sounds 03/12/77.
 
     

 


     
  The Staircase (Mystery) Lyrics  
 
 
 

Staircase lying face up
Stair cat sat on the mat
Looking down

Slide down the banister
Take the escalator
Slide down the banister
Or try the elevator

I was standing on the landing
Now I'm standing in the hall
Looking up

Wont someone assist me
Solve this mystery
Somebody assist me
Arrange the symmetry

Muffled footsteps on the carpet
Spiral steps start spinning
Around me

Which floor which ceiling
You're off balance
Which floor which ceiling
It's all upside down

Staircase lying face up
Stare cat sat on the mat
Looking down

 
     
  The Staircase (Mystery) Credits  
     
 

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

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SIOUXSIE: "There's something about a staircase. It's so unpredictable and exciting at the same time. That feeling of displacement, vertigo when you're at the top looking down or at the bottom looking up." Source:  Melody Maker 17/02/79.
SIOUXSIE: "That's more a song about curiosity and fear, it's not a great political statement or anything." Source:  Sounds 07/04/79.
SIOUXSIE: "The song's just taking a very day-to-day thing, and the nature of that thing is very... mysterious." Source:  NME 31/03/79.
SIOUXSIE: "Yeah it's very much a memory of them. Especially in my house, people were always falling down the stairs in it." Source:  Sounds 07/04/79. 
SEVERIN: "Sioux had written the lyrics and she knew what it was about but they had a different interpretation and they wanted a different sleeve. So me, Nils and Sioux wanted to go one way and they wanted the other... and that was the democracy of it." Source:  Sounds 15/09/79.
 
     

 


     
  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
 
     

 


     
  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  
     
 

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

 
     

 


     
  Happy House Lyrics  
 
 
 

This is the happy house
We're happy here
In the happy house
Oh it's such fun

We've come to play
In the happy house
And waste a day
In the happy house
It never rains

We've come to scream
In the happy house
We're in a dream
In the happy house
We're all quite sane
 
This is the happy house
We're happy here

There's room for you
If you say "I do"
But don't say no
Or you'll have to go

We've done no wrong
With our blinkers on
It's safe and calm
If you sing along

This is the happy house
We're happy here
In the happy house
To forget ourselves
And pretend all's well
There is no hell

 
     
  Happy House Credits  
     
 

Sioux - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass & Vocals
Budgie - Drums, Harmonica & Vocals
McGeoch - Guitar

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SIOUXSIE: 'Happy House' started off as a title, as a name for our fan club, the Happy House you see, and it became a song. It was the first thing we wanted to record and we had the bass, drums and vocals worked out for it so we used it in auditions as a test. So no-one did anything off pat, it was used as a guide to try out new guitarists and they had to work out their own sound." Source:  Sounds 05/04/80.
SIOUXSIE: I got an idea for a song. It's really just a happy song. The kind you make as you go along when you're happy, for no real reason. Y'know, when you're sitting in the bath or when you're walking home late at night." Source:  Smash Hits 01/05/80.
BUDGIE: "I think Happy House was where I really kind of, you know, started to say something about where I felt like, somewhere between Keith Moon, Ginger Baker and me." Source:  Punk Top Ten Interview 08/06/0.
 
     

 


     
  Christine Lyrics  
 
 
 

She tries not to shatter, kaleidoscope style
Personality changes, behind her red smile
Every new problem brings a stranger inside
Hopelessly forcing one more new disguise

Christine
The Strawberry Girl
Christine
Banana Split Lady
Christine
The Strawberry Girl
Christine
Banana Split Lady

Singing sweet savages, lost in her world
This big eyed girl sees their faces unfurl
Now she's in purple, now she's the turtle
Disintegrating

Christine
The Strawberry Girl
Christine
Banana Split Lady
Christine
The Strawberry Girl
Christine
Banana Split Lady

 
     
  Christine Credits  
     
 

Severin - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Budgie - Drums
McGeoch - 6 & 12 String Guitar & Fairfisa

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SIOUXSIE: "It’s about Christine Seisnal (adopts country accent): She’s got twenty two personalities! She don’t know who to play with!" Source:  Zigzag 05/80.
STEVE: "All twenty two personalities had different names, which was a really good source for the lyrics - the Strawberry Girl, Banana-split Lady . . .they were either names by her or the family. There’s a book called The Three Faces Of Eve about her, which is more like a biography she wrote with a friend of hers from her childhood, a cousin. She turned out to go to college and become some sort of knob on psychiatry." Source:  Zigzag 05/80.
SIOUXSIE: "Part of that oppression comes over in our number ‘Christine’. She became a textbook case ‘cause of the traumas she’d been through as a child. She witnessed many violent acts." Source:  Sounds 28/02/80.
 
     

 


     
  Israel Lyrics  
 
 
 

Little orphans in the snow
With nowhere to call a home
Start their singing, singing
Waiting through the summertime
To thaw your hearts in wintertime
That's why their singing, singing

Waiting for a sign
To turn blood into wine
The sweet taste in your mouth
Turn bitter in it's glass

Israel, in Israel
Israel, in Israel

Shattered fragments of the past
Meet in veins on the stained glass
Like the lifeline in your palm
Red and green reflects the scene
Of a long forgotten dream
There were princes and there were kings

Now hidden in disguise
Cheap wrappings of lies
Keep your heart alive
With a song from inside

Even though we're all alone
We are never on our own
When we're singing, singing

There's a man who's looking in
And he smiles a toothless grin
Because he's singing, singing
See some people shine with glee
But their song is jealousy
Their hate is clanging, maddening

In Israel, will they sing Happy Noel
Israel, in Israel
Israel, in Israel
In Israel, will they sing Happy Noel

 
     
  Israel Credits  
     
 

Sioux - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
McGeoch - Guitar
Budgie - Drums

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SIOUXSIE: "No it's not about religion as such, it’s more general. A disillusioned person, or whole race who’ve ceased to understand or believe in what they held to be the truth. It tries to put across, you shouldn’t cover what you feel inside by teaching or attitudes imposed on you. It emphasises the strength of the individual." Source:  Sounds 28/02/81.
SEVERIN: "We wanted to do a Christmas single, and to get it out on time we had to write it on the road, which was quite unusual for us. We wrote it in a hotel room in Amsterdam (11-12 October 1980), and it came together very quickly at the sound checks." Source:  The Authorised Biography 2002.
SIOUXSIE: " 'Israel' says that religion is good if it brings disillusioned people together, but without the dogma that usually goes with religion. Source:  Trax 17/02/81.
SIOUXSIE: "I don't have faith in organised religion. I believe that everyone is different and you've got to work out how to impress yourself, and you know that better." Source:  Record Mirror 15/05/86.
 
     

 


     
  Spellbound Lyrics  
 
 
 

From the cradle bars
Comes a beckoning voice
It sends you spinning
you have no choice

You hear laughter
Cracking through the walls
It sends you spinning
You have no choice

Following the footsteps
Of a rag doll dance
We are entranced
Spellbound

And don't forget
When your elders forget
To say their prayers
Take them by the legs
And throw them down the stairs

When you think
Your toys have gone berserk
It's an illusion
You cannot shirk

You hear laughter
Cracking through the walls
It sends you spinning
You have no choice

Following the footsteps
Of a rag doll dance
We are entranced
Spellbound

 
     
  Spellbound Credits  
     
 

Severin - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Budgie - Drums & Percussion
McGeoch - Guitar

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SIOUXSIE: "The magic that we want is not textbook magic.  We use words like voodoo and spellbound but they're not to be taken literally. The best magic is when something good happens and you don't plan it, it's not in your control.  To an extent it's in your control, but to be totally in control of everything then would be boring, life would be boring.  If nothing went 'something magic's happened', but it's not like that, it's just a feeling." Source:  Elektron Interview 20/12/82  
     

 


     
  Arabian Knights Lyrics  
 
 
 

The jewel, the prize
Looking into your eyes
Cool pools drown your mind
What else will you find

I hear a rumour
It was just a rumour
I heard a rumour
What have you done to her

Myriad lights
They said I'd be impressed
Arabian Knights
At your primitive best

A tourist oasis
Reflects in seedy sunshades
A monstrous oil tanker
It's wound bleeding in seas

I heard a rumour
What have you done to her
I heard a rumour
What have you done to her

Veiled behind screens
Kept as your baby machine
Whilst you conquer more orifices
Of boys, goats and things

Ripped out sheep's eyes
No forks or knives

Myriad lights
They said I'd be impressed
Arabian Knights
At your primitive best

 
     
  Arabian Knights Credits  
     
 

Sioux - Lyrics
Sioux - Voice
Severin - Bass
Budgie - Drums & Percussion
McGeoch - Guitar

 
     
  Inspiration/Influence/Band Comment  
     
  SIOUXSIE: " 'Arabian Knights' was inspired by the fact that I was listening to a lot of The Doors at the time. I wanted those kind of melodies running through it." Source:  The Authorised Biography 2002
SIOUXSIE: "It’s nothing to do with a ‘feminist’ thing, it’s like a humane thing. Like how the Muslim women cope, I don’t know. The way women are treated in some religions, if it was a race being treated like that and not a sex, there would be uproar about it. I still haven’t overcome being a girl yet, as far as other people see me, and that’s very important. I think it’s happened a bit, but not enough." Source:  NME 15/08/81
SIOUXSIE: "To think, some of our records might end up with an 'X' certificate. Like all the fuss over our 'Arabian Knights' single with the line about 'orifices'. It was only a new way of describing something...something natural, physical. It wasn't smutty or rude. Just imagery...but they don't like that." Source:  Smash Hits 06/86
SIOUXSIE: With 'Arabian Knights' it was quite a thrill to get the word 'orifices' on the radio." Source:  Record Mirror 11/11/89