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MY
BIZARRE LIFE - SIOUXSIE SIOUX
SHE HIT FAME AMID THE FILTH AND THE FURY OF THE BILL GRUNDY SHOW.
THEN SHE FORMED THE BANSHEES, AND SUSAN FROM THE SUBURBS BECAME SEXY,
SHOCKING SIOUXSIE SIOUX, ‘LORD’S PRAYER’ MAULER AND POST-PUNK ICON
Back in 1976, a small crowd or early punks and bewildered locals watched
Siouxsie and a group of her mates make their 20-minute live debut.
That was the beginning of the Banshees, a band that lasted 20 years and
withstood numerous line-up changes.
With Siouxsie using her voice to channel her aggression, frustration and
disenchantment, the Banshees earned critical adulation for their
gender-fucking mix of the deliriously dark and the downright mental.
Now, having metamorphosed from a Banshee to one of the Creatures (with
her partner and former Banshees drummer Budgie), Siouxsie Sioux is more
than just a survivor: over the past quarter of a century, she’s become
a living legend.
Did you start fighting against complacency from an early age?
I think when I was really young - before adolescence - I was painfully
aware of being very different. My Dad wasn’t a respectable
drunk, and my sister was quite a rebel. She got into clothes and
being outrageous when she was in her adolescence. When I was that
young I was so embarrassed, and desperately wanted to be normal and like
everybody else. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, I
looked to my mum for guidance and inspiration. The situation for
me was like being in a one-parent family. She kept the family
together at a time when having our family situation was considered
scandalous. But I think there came a point where I just thought,
"Fuck it. I’m never going to change, and the situation’s
never going to change." After that, I kind of took pride in
what we were, and revelled in not being like everyone else. That
was my first sense of being an extrovert, I suppose.
So how did you become involved at the dawn of punk?
I suppose it was the situation, and obviously my interest in music.
I got to the age where I started to realise my own independence and
wanted to celebrate it more. At that point I think you always
latch onto music. For some people it’s a critical point.
It was a turning point for me: Bowie, T Rex and Roxy Music... I was a
big fan and I’d go to the concerts. I met Severin (Banshees
founder member and bassist) at a Roxy Music concert. He and a
friend called Simon used to go and see a band called the Sex Pistols.
I didn’t know it was connected, but, I was actually going to a shop
called Let It Rock on the King’s Road, though I wasn’t able to
afford anything. I remember the first thing I bought. I got
Vivienne (Westwood) to customise some fishnet tights with gold and black
tassels on them. Once I realised that the Sex Pistols had
something to do with the shop, of course, I was well into it.
After that I accompanied Severin and Simon wherever they played.
Your small crowd grew, didn’t it?
It did. Back then, it was very remote and cut off, like any little
group of people. I’m sure a lot of these groups came from the
suburbs, which are amazing breeding grounds for the discontented.
They exaggerate it. If there’s anything in a minority that’s
gonna rebel, they really prepare them to be tough and go the whole hog.
So this little group of friends grew, I guess by going to the Pistols’
concerts. I think the first time I saw them was at Ravensbourne
college, and apart from a few curious people from the college trying to
stay as far away from the stage as possible, there was just us.
That happened more and more. We’d see them at clubs in London,
and there would always be this shocked audience that was there just
because that was their local club!
How did you become so attached to the Sex Pistols?
The Pistols were the first band I’d ever seen in its infancy, and the
first that wasn’t releasing records, or didn’t have an image that
was sown up. It was very exciting to be there as it all started to
happen. Of course, when it started to happen, that was when the
media interest happened and so I suppose the excitement and the
incredulity of it all just sort of snowballed into the Bill Grundy Show
thing.
At which point you became every bit as famous as the Sex Pistols.
It was your picture on the cover of the daily Mirror.
That’s right. And it was our pictured from the Screen on the
Green gig that were being used. Suddenly the cameras were turning
round and looking at the audience. It must have pissed the Pistols
off a bit. I suppose it’s quite a unique thing that happened,
and none of us were thinking about it - we were just having a great time
with the food and the green room. The old cliché of having no
money was true. Most of us were on the dole. I don’t know
anyone who worked. I think a lot of us had worked and had been
sacked.
The way you dressed then - were you out to intimidate people?
Not to intimidate people, just to have fun. But once I saw that
people kind of kept their distance, well, that was a very desirable
reaction. It was only really after Bill Grundy that people started
to become aggressive. Before, people were more intimidated than
anything and left you alone. I felt very insulated by it.
But it was weird - you know, people putting their feet through their TVs
because they were so disgusted. When you look back on it you
think, "What on Earth was the fuss all about?"
What compelled you to go the whole hog and form Siouxsie and the
Banshees?
When I first met Severin I’d said that I wanted to be in a band.
But I had always had it in the back of my mind. One night we were
down Louise’s, a club I’d introduced Malcolm MacLaren, Vivienne, the
Pistols and all of that group to...
The lesbian gaff?
Yeah. One night Malcolm was talking loudly about this festival he
was getting ready to put on at the 100Club. He was being very
vocal and cursing the fact that a band had pulled out, and without
thinking I said, "I’ll do it." And he said,
"Great - so what’s the name of the band?" I just said,
"I’ll let you know tomorrow." And that was it.
Severin was there, and Sid (Vicious), and Billy (then Broad, later
Idol), and they said they’d do it as well.
So, a day later, I’d come up with the name Siouxsie and the Banshees
with Severin. I’d thought up the name Siouxsie, and we’d seen
Cry Of The Banshee on telly that night. Then we thought,
"Great, but what can we do now?" The Clash let us borrow
their rehearsal studio in Camden. They let Sid borrow a guitar
too, and I borrowed the drumkit. Then Billy said he couldn’t be
in the Banshees because it conflicted with his own band. I’m
sure Tony James had said, "No, no, no, you can’t get involved
with people who don’t play." So I think the prospect of his
career being ruined and in tatters made him pull out. It was like,
"Oh bloody hell." I think everybody knew Marco (Pirroni,
who later gained stardom in Adam and the Ants), but didn’t know he
could play. But he could, so he became the only musician in that
line-up.
We did have on rehearsal at the Clash’s studio, but that was literally
to figure out what way the leads plug in. I remember Sid saying,
"oh, let’s ruin something like the Beatles’ ’She Loves You’
- I hate that bloody song - or the Bay City Rollers or something."
I said, "Well I don’t know any of them with all their words, but
I’ve got an idea: I’ll kind of throw in bits of all that stuff and
I’ll do ’The Lord’s Prayer’ too.
Why ’The Lord’s Prayer’?
It was something that was very sharp in my memory. You always felt
like a real rebel if you didn’t join in the prayers, and I always
resented having to say prayers at school in the big assembly. I
used to swap words around to see if anyone heard me. So I just
figured, "I know the words, so I’ll try and make it as subversive
as possible." ’The Lord’s Prayer’ became this
hotchpotch of songs that I either hated or loved, altering them and
taking them out of context.
What was it like playing the 100 Club?
We were all dead nervous before. But once I was on stage, it felt
surprisingly natural. It was over really quickly. We did as
much as we could, having fun on that theme. The audience didn’t
know what to make of it. I was reading William Burroughs at the
time, and there was something in one of his books about certain
frequencies making your bowels drop out and your eyes bleed, breaking
glass with your voice, all that sort of thing. We wanted to make a
real racket.
You’ve just demystified a bit of punk folklore by saying that you’d
wanted to be in a band before the 100 Club gig - it was supposed to be a
one-off! So was it your mind that it could actually lead
somewhere?
I wanted to be in a band, but I had no idea of what the reality of that
was. After that one show, we all figured, "Right, we’ve
done that now... Next!"
The best thing about it was that after we did it, the mould was broken.
It was an escape route from where you were from and what you were
expected to do with your life. Up to that point, I was probably
still thinking: "What am I going to do?"
You were all a bit like that by the sound of it. None of you had
careers.
There was no ambition to have a career. We didn’t want to do
what everyone else was expected to do. And being from the suburbs
and kicking against that, we were prepared to react to whatever was
happening. People adapted, and it was a great opportunity to
change your life. I don’t believe that things happen for no
reason. There were enough other disaffected minorities out there
that once the opportunity came along, the combination of all those
people, kicking against society expected then to be, allowed people to
take control and empower themselves.
How did it feel to go so quickly from such small beginnings to icon
status?
It certainly wasn’t anything I took that seriously. To me it was
just a continuation of where we’d come from. Nothing seemed that
extraordinary until the first single, ’Hong Kong Garden’, was
recorded and we all started to hear it on the radio. I mean, that
was quite a momentous occasion for me. It was unreal.
Surreal. I felt like a gatecrasher. Like I was involved in
something that I had no business to be involved in. But somehow by
whatever fluke, there I was in a video on Top of the Pops, not a
spectator any more. It didn’t dawn on me quite that bluntly.
But God, I was ecstatically happy.
Whereas most people in bands are careerists, Siouxsie and the Banshees
operated on the same gut level as artists who claim to have no real
control over what they create.
It just had to come out. There was no reason. It was almost
as if pure instinct took over. It was something a lot more primal
than what everyone else was doing then. They all wanted to be part
of what they’d read about, and all I knew was that I loved playing the
music live. I felt so lucky to be doing what I wanted to be doing
and having an outlet for it - and getting paid for it! Even now, I
still feel completely out of what’s going on in the music industry.
So what does the future hold?
A huge question mark I hope. That’s the way I like it.
SO SIOUX ME!
BIRTH: Siouxsie was born at Guy’s Hospital, London, then moved
from Sydenham to be raised in Bromley: "When we moved in they
thought, ‘There goes the neighbourhood’."
CONFRONTATION: Siouxsie once decided to wind up a Bromley wine bar
by fixing a leash to friend Bertie (Berlin), leading him inside on all
fours, ordering a vodka and tonic for herself, and a bowl of water for
him: "Jaws were hanging open, but nobody said anything... it
went dead quiet."
REJECTION: Siouxsie was personally chastised following the Bill
Grundy/Pistols debacle: "I actually got sacked from my
pub/club job after that Daily Mirror front cover... So I was
legitimately on the dole."
DEFINING PUNK MOMENT: "Its got to be the Bill Grundy Show, on
so many different levels. I remember Malcolm McLaren saying,
"Do you want to be the background to them doing the
interview?" To everybody it seemed like no big deal, except
we were gonna get free drinks in the green room. As it turned out,
somebody - Bill Grundy and the TV people - were being so antagonistic
towards the Pistols, trying to belittle them and make them look stupid,
and it completely backfired on Grundy. He got the sack after the
show went out, and the Pistols kind of got set up in a way, to do
whatever they were going to do, with this springboard that got everybody
aware of what and who they were."
Billy
Chainsaw 02/01
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