Your new album is quite different from "Boomerang" and "Anima Animus": it sounds much more like your first albums.

Siouxsie: It comes from our collaboration with Leonard Eto, former member of Kodo, a Japanese percussionists' band that we've been admiring for a long time. This album is the result of a combination between the fact we wanted to come back to what we did on "Wild Things" and "Feast", and the fact we wanted to have another percussionist with us, we wanted him to play other instruments like the huge daiko (a big Japanese drum used by Kodo).

Budgie: Nothing was planned. It's only when we found out what had come out of these sessions in Japan that we started to build the album, leaving it all the while, as open as possible, with enough room for percussions and a vocal to express itself.

How did you start working with Leonard Eto?

Budgie: We wanted to work with Kodo for ages. It happened during the "Seven Year Itch Tour" of The Banshees, because our producer knew Leonard Eto and we met him in Japan. Leonard was the main composer and the musical director of Kodo, and he collaborated with different musicians since he left the band in 1994. That was interesting because he never really worked with a drummer who had my kind of background, and we had little time because it was our last concert in Tokyo. We were both in a studio with two sets of drums and it was more a musical meeting than anything else because he hardly speaks any English...

Why are The Creatures coming back to the sound of their first albums? 

Siouxsie: When an artist has been working for a long time, there's always a moment when he goes very far from where he started, simply because he can and that it's very exciting to explore new things... But all the artists also feel the need to come back to where they started, to find again the limitations they had then. It makes you focus on what's important, to clear out the excess, because to come back on the fundamentals is what is most important. This time we left a lot of silence in the music, I know it bothers musicians, but I don't hear the silences: I hear the sonority of instruments that can breathe.

What are the themes developed in "Hai!"?

Siouxsie: I approached this album like a LP with an A-side and a B-side. So we could have an extraverted side and an introverted and calmer one. Tourniquet represents this difference between an extraverted and very physical side and something at the opposite. On the other hand, Godzilla is rather funny. It's a bit about the way people see me: "Who are you? Are you glamour, scary, vicious or tender?" Well, I'm a bit of everything! Godzilla also reflects the innocence, the optimism and the modernism of Japan. And a track like Further Nearer shows the reserved, philosophic, poetic and almost religious aspects of the Japanese traditions. "Imagoro" means "About this Time" and that was a way to use Japanese language. There's some anger in this song, but there's also a kind of resignation...

Is there a difference between the lyrics you wrote for the Banshees and those of the Creatures?

Siouxsie: No, there isn't. They're written by the same person, and even if there are different ambiences, there never been any differences. Maybe Godzilla could never have been a Banshees' song while Peek-a-Boo is a typical Creatures' track...

Budgie: Godzilla could have been a Banshees' track but I'm not sure everyone in the band would have liked it...

Siouxsie: Oh, I wonder who you're talking about (laughs)!

Budgie: I always felt there were songs Steven Severin was happy about and others he considered like nonsense. For instance, he didn't like some B-sides like El Dia de Los Muertos, Conga Conga or Supernatural Thing.  That may sounds very selfish but, we got rid of him and now we're free to do what we like and it's not checked by someone who doesn't feel good about himself. We certainly happier than Steven...

You never really approached social or political issues in your lyrics...

Siouxsie: No, because I don't really like lyrics that talk of politics. I find it very outdated, besides the point. Politics is only one mean among many others to talk of a subject, it's a very Manichean thing through which nothing much is told. I prefer to talk about emotions, people's psychology and the way we communicate. If we could understand the human psychology, I think the world would be a better place. This world is a terrifying place and people are barbarians and beasts. The physical, mental or sexual violence and cruelty of Men are subjects that are never openly talked about, and I'm very much interested in treating them. But I don't say what's good or what's bad with a "noble" or "deep" attitude. Nothing is all black or all white, there are a lot of things underneath. Some people think we talk about some themes when it's not the case, and they don't want to see some visceral reactions in it, because it's not "politically correct"... In the same time, the fact of being a woman and doing what I did twenty years ago was a kind of political commitment. To be on stage with the look I had and the songs I sang was political then... I didn't need to talk about feminism, I was feminism!

Last year you made Siouxsie and The Banshees live again... Was it a way to come back on your musical roots?

Siouxsie: Yes, and it was also a way to say goodbye, because the way it ended was rather sad, a bit like a firework that doesn't work. We really enjoyed giving these concerts. It was like if somebody told us: "You're going to die in six months"! We had to come back to The Banshees one last time before it ended, and then we felt much better...

What do you think now of this tour?

Siouxsie: It was pleasant, but towards the end I realised that it couldn't last anymore. Indeed, before the tour, I considered re-forming The Banshees for good if everything went well and if we felt good together again. We were open and honest, but some people weren't as open and as honest as we were, so I knew it was useless.

So there won't be any new concerts or albums of The Banshees soon?

Siouxsie: No, not for the moment... but we always played some of The Banshees' song with The Creatures, and there are no reasons why that should stop as long as I feel like it. There are some songs that The Banshees never performed live that we did with The Creatures. If one day, we start playing strings, we could play a track like Obsession.

Budgie: For the next concerts, we would like Siouxsie to be free to sing the songs she wants to... We don't want to make the difference between The Banshees and The Creatures. Even if we explore very different things on the albums, concerts are something else...

Siouxsie: From now on, we'll constantly think about the way the concerts will take place and in the kind of venues we're going to play in. We would like Leonard to come with us on stage with his daiko. And as he agreed, it'll happen in our next shows...

Have you ever think about putting some of the musical experimentations of The Creatures in The Banshees?

Siouxsie: No. The Creatures was born by accident, and we quickly realised there was a difference with The Banshees. The Creatures' music was simpler and more instinctive.

Budgie: The first album of The Creatures was made because we wanted a break. The second album was done because The Banshees was on the verge of splitting. "Boomerang" was released because the "Peep Show" tour almost kill the band. That's what Severin says in the book ("Siouxsie And The Banshees ­ The Authorized Biography" -): he was surprised the tour wasn't an endless one. It could have, because the concerts were great. But Steven forget to mention that it's his refusal to change which prevented the tour to go on. The reason why we did "Boomerang" was that Siouxsie and Steven couldn't be together in a studio.

Siouxsie: I could have killed him! I wanted to beat him when I saw him...

How did you manage then during the reformation tour of The Banshees?

Siouxsie: At the beginning, the ambience was quite optimist, everything went well, we talked and said that we've been stupid... It could have worked. By the time we were on tour, halfway during seven shows, he's back to his old tricks! And I say: "OK. Enough! No change...".

Budgie: What was different this time, was that we didn't need to talk to know how we were going to work: all we had to do was some concerts. If there were to be a new album, another tour and a following, then we would have had to do something we never done before: talk about what was wrong before he tries to go.

Siouxsie: We thought we talked about it before. Anyway I thought so. But obviously, I was wrong...

Budgie: I think that the more you talk about it, the worse it gets...

Siouxsie: We realised it while we all thought it was going to be great. And musically, it was! But we also realised we couldn't go back in the past and work again in a way I didn't like...

You've had your own independent label, Sioux Records, for a few years now. Have you ever been contacted by a major who wanted to sign you up?

Siouxsie: No, and we're happy not to be part of the mainstream. If we still were with a major, we would have disappeared, we would be lost in the production line, slaves of their plannings... Like all these late planes which try to take off at the same time: they always try to catch up on their plannings: "Ok, there's an opening here, release a record now! Come on!".

Budgie: Record companies think that the best time to release an album isn't at Christmas, nor at such date, but at some other date... So everybody releases an album at that time! And the magazines published at that time are overwhelmed. Everything seems to happen at the same time, nobody has the choice anymore. The public's choice is the one imposed to them.

Siouxsie: There are more channels, but less and less different programs...

Besides The Creatures, have you ever think to invest yourselves in another project, or to collaborate with other musicians?

Siouxsie: Actually, another album was already underway when we accepted to do the "Seven Year Itch Tour". It proves how spontaneous The Banshees' reformation was: in January, we were doing The Creatures' new album, and in February, we were with The Banshees! So we seized the opportunity of being in Japan with Leonard to do "Hai!". But the other record is almost done now. Maybe it'll be The Creatures' new album, or maybe we'll call that otherwise. We'll see.

Christophe Lorentz 10/03

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Siouxsie Sioux

Creature comforts

What music are you currently grooving to?

The Shangri-Las' Myrmidons Of Melodrama. It's fantastic - and what a great title! One song on it, Past, Present, And Future, is based on a Bach sonata. It's so out there. I'm also listening to Let's Go, a compilation of Joe Meek's girls. There's a great track on it called Dumb Head that sounds like The Shaggs.

What, if push comes to shove, is your all-time favourite album?

That's so tough! It's gonna have to be T.Rex's Electric Warrior. I always come back to it and I've been playing it a lot again this year. It's like a greatest hits, really.

What was the first record you ever bought? And where did you buy it?

I grew up on my sister and brother's records, so the first one I actually bought was The Jackson 5's ABC. I got it in one of those electrical shops that sold records in Chislehurst High Street.

Which musician, other than yourself, have you ever wanted to be?

I've always envied drummers, because they seem to be able to exorcise their demons. So I'd have to say Budgie. But then someone like Jimi Hendrix was such a unique player...

What do you sing in the shower?

Something from a musical, such as Sound Of Music or I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair.

What is your favourite Saturday night record?

Fun Time from Iggy's The Idiot. Or any number of things.

And your Sunday morning record?

I've only ever had one Sunday morning record, the one by The Velvet Underground. It's perfect. But I don't have Sundays now. All my days blur!

12/03

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"I guess we were just trying our luck at the 100 Club," Siouxsie recalls. "There was never any intention of doing it again and there was certainly no thought of making a living out of it. That would have been absurd."

Now, 27 years on, the Banshees have announced their split. Again. The last one was in 1995, but then came the reunion tour, The Seven Year Itch, in 2002. "It suddenly seemed a good idea to perform songs that we hadn't played for 20 years," explains Siouxsie. "And for a while it was fun. Me and (the guitarist Steve) Severin actually seemed to be getting on again. I say seemed. Obviously now I can't stand the sight of the poisonous old toad."

Decades of publicity shots and album sleeves have depicted a sad-eyed Siouxsie, an outlandish cross between Cleopatra and Tallulah Bankhead. It may be a result of her precipitous cheekbones and sparkling eyes that, at 46, she looks a lot younger than her years. Stripped of the cadaverous make-up and with her trademark black hair pulled back into a high ponytail, she looks fresh-faced and girlish. There is certainly no sign of the regal haughtiness displayed during live performances. She cackles endlessly throughout our interview and delights in recounting tales of glories - and ignominies - past.

In the Seventies, Siouxsie arrived with a glamour and femininity that had previously been absent in punk. Her aesthetic was compellingly unique, her air of rebellion ingrained rather than contrived. "I like situations where people don't know how to react," she says. "Back then I liked the fact that people were looking at me and wondering 'Is she serious or is she being funny?' To me dressing up was a natural form of expression but it was also a useful armour. I think I also saw my image as a way of covering up my lack of actual beauty. I didn't want people to see the real me."

Siouxsie insists that there is no chance of another Banshees tour since she and her husband, the former Banshees' drummer Budgie, are focusing their energies on The Creatures. The band was conceived in 1981 as a side project, with Banshees albums remaining the top priority. Now, however, the pair see The Creatures as their primary creative outlet and are about to release a fifth album, Hai!, a work which contains collaborations with the Japanese Kodo drummer Leonard Eto.

Siouxsie remembers having seen the Kodo drummers perform in the early Eighties at London's South Bank. Twenty years later, at the end of the Banshees' Seven Year Itch tour, she and Budgie found themselves in the Kodo's native Tokyo. They made contact with Eto through a mutual friend and persuaded him to join them in the studio for a day.

"I think we were both pretty nervous when it came to meeting Leonard," confides Siouxsie. "The Kodo Drummers are like an army of Bruce Lees when they get down to their loincloths and play. It's very powerful and potent, kind of like a martial art but also like a religion. It's very spiritual, and dramatically different to anything we're used to in our culture."

The resulting session forms the backbone of an album of dense atmospherics, frenetic rhythms and, of course, Siouxsie's visceral wailing. It is as darkly imaginative, raw and energetic as anything they made in the Banshees. "I suppose there are comparisons to be made," she concedes. "The difference with The Creatures is that it's always been about drums and voice. It's not all about squally guitars and big macho sounds. It's a lot more subtle in that way."

When she was a teenager, Siouxsie liked nothing better than to get the neighbours' curtains twitching. One afternoon in Chislehurst, where she grew up, she took a walk around the neighbourhood dressed up in a Fifties- style flared dress, stilettos - and with her friend, Berlin, on the end of a dog lead. Stopping at a local wine bar, she sashayed up to the waitress and said "I'll have a vodka and orange and a bowl of water for my dog." Needless to say, they were both thrown out.

Her mother, who brought up Siouxsie and her two siblings virtually single-handedly, admired her daughter's wardrobe. Back then Siouxsie's heroes were David Bowie, Marc Bolan and Bette Davis. With little money to spend on clothes, she starting hiring outfits from a local costume shop for the weekends. For a while she toyed with the idea of being a model; it was only later, after meeting the Sex Pistols, that it occurred to her to start a band.

As the Banshees grew in sales and influence, Siouxsie was dismayed to see fans copying her style. "I thought: 'Stupid idiots. Haven't they got any of it?' I wanted people to be themselves, not copy me." She still vehemently refuses to accept her status as the prime inspiration for a generation of vampire-loving, crushed velvet-wearing, pathologically depressed goths.

"I don't want to be some figurehead for some dreary movement," she bellows, appalled. "I find it offensive that they've taken a look of mine from a certain time and turned it into a uniform. When I was 18, if everyone was wearing one thing, I would want to wear something completely different. I remember feeling like that when punk went tabloid and people started wearing bloody safety pins. They turned it into a cartoon. We had never dressed like that, for us it was never about being part of some army. It was about striving to be original."

Siouxsie lives a comparatively quiet life nowadays. Fed up with fans staring through the windows of their basement flat in west London, she and Budgie moved to France 11 years ago. Now they live in a converted farmhouse in a small village between Toulouse and Bordeaux where they have a garden, cats and mountains of books. A few years ago they set up their own label, Sioux records, and have just finished building a studio in their house.

"There's no stopping us now," Siouxsie says, excitedly. "For the first time, we're in complete control rather than bowing to the whims of a record company. We can do what we like, when we like. People keep asking me when I'm going to retire, like I'm some old mare ready to be put out to pasture. They've asked me that since was 30, and the answer is still the same. Never!"

'Hai!' is out on Monday on Sioux. Siouxsie and the Banshees' 'Seven Year Itch' tour DVD is out now

Fiona Sturges 24/10/03

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"Actually," he continues, "it's a bit of a juxtaposition from the hotel where we were staying where there was an old temple right next door, which was still serene and revered in modern life."

"We were lucky enough to be able to travel a bit too. We took a train sixty kilometres south to a beautiful natura park area. But really the whole experience was quite a culture shock. Being in Japan's like being slapped around the face like wet sushi. Your guard gradually goes down as there's nothing familiar to you."

Right. What about the album's title "Hai!" Translated in Anglo-Japanese it means, basically "yes!" Was this chosen as an affirmation of a new chapter for The Creatures?

"Yes, exactly, because it's an affirmation you hear everywhere. Yes! Yes! We wanted it to be something positive and a real exclamation mark. Something totally accessible."

"Besides, we felt it was something so right after the final chapter in the Banshees story. We really needed to do that final tour ("The Seven Year Itch" world tour in 2002) because it just kinds fizzled out in 1995 and was left hanging. Back then it didn't seem final and we needed to do those songs we had justice. That the drum sessions came right out of that and it led to this new album has definitely brought a new lease of life."

Of course you're based in France permanently these days. Do you find it weird being sucked into doing interviews and TV and competing with people who weren't even born when you'd started making great records? Or do you feel removed from it all?

"Well, only in that we opted out of London. That was mostly because being on tour it was one city after another and then straight back to London. We needed some space."

"The thing is, though," he continues, "with a Broadband internet connection it's immaterial anyway now. So we're always totally in touch. I mean the industry now has its' priorities wrong. It's in decline, but it still has these sad, pathetic, little stratagems with chart positions and playing the game and so on and as an independent as we are, you tend to get forced out. But we've no illusions about that."

"As to young bands coming along I've absolutely no problem with that," he continues.

" When we first started out we knew we were making great records and we thought older bands trying to get in our way were all sad old crapheads. That's the way we felt. And I totally love getting into young bands myself. I'll plug one: a young band from Texas called Explosions In The Sky. I can't stop playing them. They're fantastic. I've been listening to the new Radiohead and Blur albums and they're interesting, but Explosions In The Sky are just great."

How happy are you with The Creatures previous work. Do you have a favourite album?

"Well, I suppose it's a cliche to say the new one, but I am unbelievably proud of "Hai!", says Budgie emphatically.

For me, just that we made it is enough. In that sense, it didn't even have to be released, because it's such a massive thing for us as a partnership and for me myself."

"But there again," he says after a pause, "All the previous albums are really special to me. Thinking back, it was a real risk when we eloped off to Hawaii to make "Feast", the first one, back 1983, because it was just us and Mike Hedges, a three-way thing. It was really exciting, but incredibly nerve-wracking. But I still listen to that one at times and it still makes me feel proud. Not bad after all this time."

I love the quote from your press release where you say: "The Creatures are primal...it's our guts, our deepest instincts coming through." Would you agree that most people would rather shy away from such feelings rather than celebrate them, though?

"Well, I think you've got to be secure in yourself to not interfere with such deep instincts too much," considers Budgie.

"I mean, music production is really all about taming and polishing and I think often energy gets lost as a result. With The Banshees it was kinda like a filter system where everyone had an input. With these new songs, though, there's very little tampering between the moment and the end result. Drums are so primal, not an annotated thing in their purest form, and in the studio we were radio receivers and what we played came from life experience, not from having everything toned down."

Finally, Budgie, let's put you on the spot as a drummer. Your own style is so versatile, but who's really influenced you?

"Oh God!" he groans and laughs all at the same time.

"Well, obviously I'd always have to say the Kodo drummers. They seem to have been around forever in my universe, though in reality I think it's only since about 1979!"

"But I guess I'd also have to choose Can's drummer Jaki Leibezeit. I love the fact he was so single-minded. Someone once said to him: "Forget all the jazz stuff, just be boring" and he stuck to it so brilliantly. That's a genius quote (laughs uproariously)."

"Oh...I can't just say Ringo, can I?"

Course you can!

"Well, yeah, he's really under-rated. Take some of the stuff he did on "Abbey Road"..."Something" for instance. That's great. He saw drums as another instrument. Oh, and a contemporary influence must be Dave Grohl. His work on that last Queens Of The Stone Age album was outstanding. It's a great fun rock album and a real drummer's album. D'you know what I mean?"

I certainly do, Budgie. And I'm entirely sure he'd return the compliment, too. Many thanks for the continuing fantastic music!

Tim Peacock 11/03

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A. It's simplifying matters for everyone out there. (Shortening our title to Siouxsie) happened quite lot throughout The Banshees career anyway. We kept trying to say "No, Siouxsie and The Banshees is the full name". We kind of realised after all this time going out as The Creatures (her splinter group with former Banshees drummer Budgie, and her husband since 1982), apart from the die-hard fans, a lot of people were unaware of who The Creatures are. Really, it's stupid, we're cutting out a huge audience who would be interested. There's going to be a new album coming out. And that's going to be under my name only.

Q. So what can we expect from your Dream Show?

A. (We will be) doing a selection of songs from The Creatures past, The Banshees past, and my future. Throughout The Banshees career we've done a lot of brass and string arrangements with a lot of material and the same with The Creatures. So it would really be great without any restraints to have all those colours performed live. I'm looking forward to that.

Q. What's this about branching out with new musicians?

A. We've geared it to incorporate Leonard (Eto, ex-Kodo Taiko-drum master). We've got a keyboard player as well. We saw a tape of The Doors playing live. I was just really impressed there was no bass and the keyboards covered all the bass end. It was a really great sound and it was really open as well. And I kind of thought 'I could see us doing that because that would work really well in the set up with The Creatures, as we do a lot of keyboards and the kind of obscure Banshees tracks that I want to do are B-side, so we'd never use bass guitar.

Q. Will there be any special treats for fans?

A. (I will be) doing something that is a personal favourite that we've never done live before. I always like to bring an element of me doing something for the first time. Whether it's an obscure B-side or a cover version we've never done. Or a song we've not played for 20 years or something. Or finding a new way of doing something.

Q. Obviously, as Siouxsie Sioux your image is an important part of your persona - will you be taking steps to funk up the Dream Show orchestra?

A. It depends who these people are. We might have to get some bags made for them if they look horrendous (laughs). I don't know.

Q. So, what can we expect from the forthcoming new album ?

A. It's kind of a full circle, reappraising the different areas where we've used brass strings, and The Creatures' most minimalist as well. So it's really kind of simplifying everything and putting it under the heading of Siouxsie. (The album will be released) either before the end of this year or the beginning of next. Prior to doing The Seven year Itch (their recent tour of Japan), we'd been working on this material, and it's nearly finished. We've got some overdubs left to do, a few bits of recording and a bit of assessing. But we've listened to it, and we're very confident with it.

Q. Will you be using other musicians on the album?

A. Yes, we will be. That's the next stage to come, we've got the songs and a lot of our performances could stand up as they are, but we want to actually bring in other musicians. It just feels right for this music that's been written. And even in one track I can hear a gospel element.

Q. So what's the way ahead for Siouxsie Sioux?

A. I think this is the way forward - looking at the whole spectrum and bringing all those elements together. And that's going to be the challenge and the fun. With The Banshees we were limited to what we'd just done, there wasn't enough going back - that was a lot to do with politics in the band, people had personal dislikes or areas.

Q. And can we expect to see more of you performing live?

A. Live is the last kind of bastion where a performer or artists can really express their difference. You can get all kinds of trickery in a performance on a recording. I think artists that have got all the industry propping them up, fall flat on their faces live. I think there's going to be a demand and a need to go and see something that's not what everybody else is doing, that's got that character, that's got that instant intimacy.

Q. So you're not aiming for the charts then?

A. Artists like me feel pushed out in the recording industry because it's all about hype and the big labels really getting behind an artist financially. The hype of the video, the promotion materials and the marketing - it's bombardment hell. All these pumpkins lying around need that propping up with all that finance are going to stay pumpkins, they are never going to get their Cinderella moment. But using your imagination (live on stage) is something that you can't teach people to do. You don't need a lot of money to use your imagination.

10/09/04

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This is not being promoted as either a Banshees or Creatures appearance, however, but simply "an evening with Siouxsie". The Banshees, after all, officially disbanded after their 1995 album The Rapture, although they reconvened for a tour in 2002. According to Budgie, calling from a Southern California tour stop, the absence of the pioneering English post-punk group's founding bassist precludes the use of the Banshees moniker. "Steven Severin would have to be with us," he says. "Steven's got different priorities. He's got film things, lots of stuff he's doing back in London at the moment."

Moreover, the drummer cites other reasons for deciding against the use of any particular band name this time around: "When we went out again as the Banshees, everybody expected a kind of retro set. And with that Seven Year Itch tour, we went from the first album to the last album. It wasn't a greatest hits, but it was pretty much right across the Banshees catalogue. If we go out as Creatures, then people think we don't play Banshees songs, and different people turn up, and you seem like you're putting limitations on yourself. By going out and saying this is an evening with Siouxsie, we can draw from any part of the map."

Budgie reveals that he and his wife, who live in France, have already started working on a new album, which, again, will be credited to neither the Creatures nor the Banshees, but simply to Siouxsie. The drummer says it's too early to sum up precisely what direction the new disc will take, but he insists it won't sound exactly like anything that has come before it. This, of course, is in keeping with Sioux's 26-year-long discography, which has seen her move fluidly through spirited punk, atmospheric goth, dance-pop, and experimental modes with grace.

"The Banshees were never about repeating themselves," Budgie says. "When an album like [1988's] Peepshow came out, it certainly took people by surprise when 'Peek-A-Boo' was the lead track. It was like, 'What could we do to defy what was expected of us?' So all I can say, really, is that it could go anywhere. But let's say the emphasis will be more on Siouxsie as a singer. Her voice has changed again, and she's searching new depths of expression, I think, and I'd certainly like to hear that."

And so, it's safe to say, would her fans--both those old enough to remember when "Happy House" came out and the young hipsters who have come to realize that black clothes and brooding weren't invented by Interpol or the Rapture.

John Lucas 23/09/04

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They trace The Banshees’ family tree with limbs extending into The Sex Pistols, The Cure, even avant-garde Velvet Underground founder John Cale, before finally pulping the group mid-’90s. They list a birth date that would make Sioux 46 years old today, although I’ve seen various dates that could make her as young as a newly-minted 45. Most dates agree on Gemini—“flexible, flirty, inventive”—but VH1 goes so far as to reveal a birth name of Susan Dallion. People, there are rules here! But according to Sioux, they’re the only music channel that still plays music. Right she is, it’s just the only music they play is Celine and Sheryl. But who cares? A Brit misstep in the wiles of the corporate American music machine. Where’s Nia Peebles when you need her? And it’s not exactly as if the channel is building Sioux a coliseum in Las Vegas. Although, the thought of it! Step aside, naughty bits Cirque du Soleil. And at least she spelled VH1 on the poster in a way sure to deliver aneurisms to the suits at MTV Networks.

Still, there’s that poster: “An Evening With Siouxsie.” Seeing it reinforced outside B.B. King’s, it’s been pared down to simply “SIOUXSIE” in red block letters splashed across the marquee. Well, okay, sign me up, but what about Budgie, loyal Banshee, Creature, and husband? Surely, some of these Goth kids piling out of taxis are here for Budgie. A gaggle of Asian girls are the latest to taxi up to the venue—they de-cab, clown car-style—gotten-up in a patent leather policewoman fantasia. Think Gogo Yubari meets Sgt. Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson. There are at least five of them in one cab. Perhaps the cabbie thought he was being taken in by the law. Their lone male escort wears pants of one leg black, the other royal purple. His bleached hair is braided up into a high ponytail that’s a clear hail to drumming wonder Budgie. Surely, he’s as perplexed with the marquee as I am, scanning it for a sign, any sign, of his double-processed superhero. But again, let’s cut Siouxsie a break. The gig is officially billed, at least online, as "An Evening With Siouxsie: The Creatures & The Banshees" and promises to reach 25 years back with a repertoire that encompasses both bands for at least two hours of material and fun.

I bump into Benny Tarantini, director of Columbia Records PR, on his way into the venue. Columbia is not, incidentally, Siouxsie’s home. She’s got her own label now called, simply, Sioux Records. It’s Benny’s third night at B.B. King’s as well. He rattles off a quick rundown of the previous two evenings. “It’s a core set of songs,” he explains, “But then she switches it up with two or three old Banshee numbers.” Sunday’s one-night-only treat was “Christine.” Monday’s was a gem buried on one of the Batman soundtracks called “Face to Face.” Tonight’s turns out to be her ode to that Goth staple, Mt. Vesuvius, entitled “Cities in Dust.” I admire the cheek of anyone willing to perform a song thusly titled in post-9/11 New York, but why not, we’ve already survived the Republicans. Benny tells me later that I lucked out as the last night was definitely the best. Tonight he’s emphatic about wardrobe. “It’s so much better than those pinstriped business suits and that mullet from that last tour. Oh my God, you have to get your hands on the DVD. You won’t believe it. At least there are feathers this time.” And with that, he makes his way inside.

We follow him in, and once past the mandatory bag check, we realize that, in addition to every faggot in New York being inside, it’s about 10,000 degrees in the venue. “The approaching unease, 92 degrees” indeed. Yet anyone who’s trying anything interesting on Manhattan’s beleaguered nightlife front has turned up. It’s too hot to starfuck; we’re just trying to get a drink.

Before I can add that she’d be equally adept in a ball gown fronting a 20-piece orchestra as she would headlining an old-school European fetish ball, the lights go down. There she is, in a flowing red silk kimono, eyes blacked out and hair swept up into a forest of feathers. She’s jangling like those Japanese puppets Basil Twist designed for Paula Vogel’s last play, and reminds me of the Geisha neighbor focus-grouped off Pee Wee’s Playhouse for frightening some of the children and giving the rest boners. She launches into “Around the World,” the second track from The Creatures’ latest album Hai! Siouxsie’s been wondering if the world is flat or round at least since “Desert Kisses” on 1980’s Kaleidoscope, but tonight her world begins and ends on the Asian continent.

There’s a flurry of costume change. Somehow Sioux goes from Imperial robes to Dietrich lapels and long white satin sleeves without leaving the stage, and she’s suddenly into Hai!’s first single, “Godzilla,” with its anthemic lines, “I never wanted a stupid doll, I used to swing a tomahawk, then I saw him and I was won: Godzilla-King Kong.” The crowd promptly loses its shit when she gets guttural on the “Godzilla-King Kong” lyric and they’re thanked at the end of this Creatures-heavy set with a curt “Domo arigato.” Before the show, Siouxsie recalled the initial meeting of Budgie and Eto which provided the spark for Hai!’s travelogue through Tokyo’s Roppongi district and the ancient Shinto shrines and tranquil shores of Lake Ashi, all dappled by the gentle snowfall from Ikuru, Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film. “I was enthralled as I watched the coming together of these two kindred spirits,” Siouxsie explains, “Words and melodies came to me immediately, but mindful of breaking the spell, I had to store my inspiration until we got back to France.” Budgie agrees. “The spirit of Japan has touched our souls and a new chapter in the story of The Creatures has begun.”

“She’s a fucking bitch,” a surly man next to me screams out as we return to the final chapter of the concert, which could be called Siouxsie Performs High Air Conditioning Drama. “She doesn’t care about her fans,” he cries out to no one in particular, “It’s all about her.” I wonder whom he supposes a night billed “An Evening with Siouxsie” should be about, but instead turn and offer, “Look, she’s English. They don’t have air conditioning.” In a way that feels abrupt, after only performing a few Banshee standards—“I Heard A Rumor” springs to mind as a standout— Sioux dons a pair of finger cymbals and announces “Kiss Them For Me” as their last song. She blames “the fucker in charge of the air conditioning” in a way that might have gotten him strung up in a town less sensitive to terrorist acts. And I know this is getting repetitive, but who can blame her? In as fine a voice as she was—she quit smoking for us, for Christ’s sake—we could sweat it out a bit.

At any rate, the onstage bitch act worked wonders and the air conditioning went off with a noticeable thud. Still not trusting it was down for good, Siouxsie returned, draped in what I thought was a shawl until my date pointed out that it was a standard issue green room towel. She even wet her finger and tested the air like a Boy Scout before tearing into the most incredible encore set I’ve ever seen the band perform. Siouxsie accompanied most of the hits with her little dance jog and arm extensions that should require an on-stage air traffic controller. There were kicks as high as her shoulder showing off fierce rhinestoned heels. She began to sweat as a dirty roadhouse organ accompanied her throaty wails. After her “last song” scare, my notes become littered with lines like “Last song: Happy House” and “Last song: 2nd Floor” and even “Really last song: Spellbound.” I can scarcely believe she’s grinding on this way, yet when she touches down somewhere in Latin America and calls out “Adios and buenos noches,” we want more. Never one to disappoint, Sioux follows-up with a makeup tip via e-mail the next day. “Always cleanse,” she writes, “and moisturize after!” I will, Siouxsie, I promise. Just as soon as I can get this black eyeliner off my face.

Tony Phillips 09/04

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JOHN WAS MY GUITAR HERO.. I MISS HIM SO MUCH
SIOUXSIE SIOUX ON HER TRAGIC SCOTS BANSHEE


PUNK icon Siouxsie Sioux has revealed the secret sadness behind the biggest concert of her 29-year rock career.

She releases a new DVD on August 15 called Dreamshow, filmed at her first solo gig at the Royal Festival Hall, London, in October.

The ex-lead singer of the Banshees was joined on stage by her husband Budgie, one-time drummer with the now legendary punk band.

But another important group member was missing - Scots guitarist John McGeogh.

When Siouxsie, 48, was putting the concert together she planned to invite the talented Greenock-born musician to make a guest appearance.

But McGeogh died in his sleep on March 4, 2004, after a long illness, aged just 48. He is survived by partner Sophie and their daughter Emily. Siouxsie told me: 'When I was in the planning stages for the Festival Hall I thought of inviting John to play.

'The news of his death was very upsetting. I still have a great deal of affection for John. I really miss him. John was my favourite guitarist of all time.'

In 1977, McGeogh became a founder member of hit punk band Magazine.

Three years later, he joined The Banshees and his unique guitar style defined their sound.

The Scot also performed on hit records with Midge Ure in Visage, John Lydon in Public Image Limited and Richard Jobson in The Armoury Show.

In 1996, he was named by rock magazine Mojo as one of the 100 best guitarists. Siouxsie said: 'John was easily, without a shadow of a doubt, the most creative guitarist the Banshees ever had.

'The work he did with the band was the best. He was an amazingly natural musician. John brought real inventiveness to our songs. He was able to interpret the undisciplined ideas I had and wasn't fazed by them at all. It's really sad he's not around.'

Siouxsie's Dreamshow DVD features new versions of classic hits Happy House, Christine, Spellbound and Dear Prudence. The singer is backed by an orchestra and Japanese drummers.

She said: 'To reinterpret songs which didn't have orchestral arrangements in the first place made it so exciting and was an ambition fulfilled.'

It comes nearly three decades after Siouxsie - who was born plain Susan Dallion in London on May 27, 1957 - participated in two of the most pivotal moments in punk rock history.

She was a member of the Bromley Contingent - a group of fans who followed The Sex Pistols from gig to gig. Her mates included Billy Idol and Banshees' bass player Steve Severin.

On September 20, 1976, Siouxsie made her debut as a performer at a punk festival at the 100 Club in London.

The Banshees performed an improvised 20-minute version of The Lord's Prayer. Siouxsie recalled: 'I'd never sung in front of an audience in my life.

'It was thrilling and very frightening at the same time. As it was happening I forgot what I was doing and just got pulled along with the momentum of it all.

'In those 20 minutes, performing became totally addictive. I didn't have any songs of my own, so chose The Lord's Prayer as something to springboard from. I had three microphones. That's how sweetly naive I was. I wanted to be louder than anyone else.'

The Banshees were invited to record a John Peel session for the BBC and a buzz in the music press led to the group being offered a record deal by Polydor. Siouxsie's first single Hong Kong Garden hit No.3 in 1978. It launched her on an incredible 29-year career.

Last month, Siouxsie was given a Icon Award by Mojo magazine, beating fellow nominees David Bowie, John Lydon, The Ramones and Marc Bolan.

'The award was very flattering but I wasn't quite sure how to take it,' admitted Siouxsie.

'I think once I start to get accepted I must be doing something wrong. I was in great company.'

She's become a role model for female stars such as Shirley Manson, of Garbage, and Christina Aguilera.

Siouxsie said: 'I also like the fact that more females are getting involved in music. I love Shirley Manson. I think she's incredibly intelligent, creative and fantastic looking.'

SIOUXSIE SIOUX ON HER TRAGIC SCOTS BANSHEE

IT came as no surprise when John McGeogh was named one of rock's greatest guitarists in a poll.

The Greenock-born musician influenced leading guitarists such as The Edge of U2 and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers.

In 1977, McGeogh founded punk band Magazine with singer Howard Devoto. In 1980, he joined Siouxsie and the Banshees and his spiky guitar style proved perfect for the band.

'I was surprised to get the call,' recalled McGeogh at the time. 'We routined Happy House and they really liked my guitar line. That was the clincher.'

But McGeogh fell foul of the rock lifestyle and his love of fine wines led him to quit the band. He said: 'I was definitely out of control. I had a bit of burn out.'

McGeogh later played with The Armoury Show, Public Image Limited and Visage.

When music magazine Mojo named him one of their 100 greatest guitarists of all time he was dubbed 'the new wave Jimmy Page'.

Anarchy on the TV

ON December 1, 1976 it was Siouxsie who sparked off a now infamous TV incident which caused outrage across the UK. Supergroup Queen dropped out of a planned television appearance on the London TV news programme Today, hosted by Bill Grundy. When the show's producers asked EMI Records if they had a replacement act the label suggested a new punk band, The Sex Pistols

Siouxsie lined up alongside singer Johnny Rotten, guitarist Steve Jones, bass player Glen Matlock and drummer Paul Cook in the Today studio. The show was broadcast live and when Grundy - who made it plain he detested the group - asked Siouxsie for a date on air all hell broke loose. The singer recalled: 'Bill Grundy thought he would take the p*** out of the group... and it seriously backfired. 'If you look back, Johnny Rotten was being a little bit coy. There was a point where he muttered the word s *** under his breath and Grundy said: 'What did you say?' 'When I said to him: 'I've always wanted to meet you' he actually took me seriously

Grundy replied: 'We'll meet afterwards, shall we?' Steve Jones took the p *** out of him and called him 'a dirty old f **** r.' He sounded like Albert Steptoe.' Siouxsie added: 'When Steve said that I thought 'bloody well right. Tell Grundy he won't see me later. He is a dirty old f **** r'. 'The response to our appearance was totally insane. 'At the time it didn't seem any big deal... for us it was just free booze and sandwiches.' Within seconds, the switchboard at Thames Television went into meltdown as angry viewers called to complain. Headlines screaming 'The Filth And The Fury' were splashed across newspapers. Overnight, the Pistols became one of the biggest bands in UK rock history. 'The Pistols' manager Malcolm McLaren was nervously flapping around saying, 'Oh, f ****** hell, what have we done? We've been stitched up',' said Siouxsie, laughing. 'We went back to the Green Room and every phone was ringing off the hook with angry complaints. 'We began manning the phones saying, 'F*** off, you stupid old gits'. It was hilarious.

Billy Sloan 18/07/05

Courtesy of Brian

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On the day before we meet, Siouxsie Sioux won the icon award at Mojo magazine's annual honours ceremony. It's a fitting tribute to a woman whose look has been as influential as her music. While Siouxsie and the Banshees have made great albums and kept an audience since forming in 1976, their lead singer's real legacy can be seen in every town in Britain, where at least one young woman will be appropriating the Siouxsie look of black clothes, black hair and heavy make-up, most probably accompanied by a regional, youthful version of former Banshee Robert Smith. Neither the sunny climes of her current home (the south of France) nor three decades of mascara application have withered Sioux's gothic glamour, and last year she achieved that mark of status as a grande dame: a concert at the Festival Hall complete with a full orchestra.

Sioux has never been shy to acknowledge the debt she owes to the music she loves - the Velvet Undergound and the Stooges have often been cited as inspirations not just for Siouxsie and the Banshees but for punk as a whole - yet the goal has always been to take those influences and make something new. "I've never been one for people who wear their influences on their sleeves," she says. "You get bands that like the 1960s, so they make a homage to it. But an inspiration should only ever help you to find your own voice. For me it can be anything from the theme tune to Thunderbirds to the Doors to film scores, but the exciting thing is to make a new thing from those raw ingredients."

Influences can work in strange ways, though. When garage-punk legends the Stooges started out, their main goal was to be a commercially viable rock band in the mould of the Doors and the Stones. "The Doors and the Stooges were my two big influences, chiefly because both Jim Morrison and Iggy Pop have such strong vocal and lyrical styles," says Sioux. "This might be hearsay, but I heard that Iggy auditioned for the Doors after Jim Morrison died. The reality is that Iggy is Iggy: he might try and copy someone, but so what? His character was always going to come through."

The Stooges were not well known in the early 1970s, when Sioux was a teenager, but David Bowie had already become something of an evangelist for both them and the Velvet Underground. "Bowie opened the doors for a kind of music that made things seem possible," she says. "We were all excited to hear music that made us say: 'I want to do this.' That just felt liberating. At the same time I loved Sly and the Family Stone and the Temptations, because I had discovered that the only places that stayed open after 11 were gay clubs and that was the music you would hear in them."

Wasn't the punk scene famously puritanical about what was culturally acceptable? "It was initially very diverse, very anti-uniform. Once it went tabloid, it became narrow and that sealed the coffin on the whole thing." Sioux doesn't put too much value on image. "Clothes and supposedly happening scenes are of their time and transient, but timelessness gives something real value," she says. "I can still listen to an album like The Idiot by Iggy Pop, and Riders on the Storm by the Doors gets me every time - I remember seeing it on Top of the Pops as a kid, with a film of a lone rider on a rocky hillside - and I'll always love Street Hassle by Lou Reed."

There's an obvious link between the Stooges and Siouxsie and the Banshees; less obvious is the influence that Philip Glass has had. "I think it's the simplicity of his music, and the way it deviates around a central theme. He never plays to impress, but to create a mood." So, almost 30 years on from making her performing debut by reciting The Lord's Prayer accompanied by Sid Vicious on drums at London's 100 Club, does Siouxsie still get a kick out of music? "I love it, and I get extremely anxious when I'm not making music. It's like being a smoker and running out of cigarettes. It's awful."

Need to know

First record bought: ABC by the Jackson Five
Favourite film: Kill Bill
Record to grab in an emergency: Akhnaten by Philip Glass
Inspiration: Louise Brooks
Recent discovery: Telstar by the Tornados

Will Hodgkinson 22/07/05

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PETER ROBINSON VERSUS SIOUXSIE SIOUX

Or the 'Grandmother Of Punk' if you want to piss her off


Hello Siouxsie.  You've got a DVD coming out, shall we get the plugging chat out of the way?

Yes, let's do that

So it's got a couple of gigs on it, one from the Royal Festival Hall and another one at the 100 Club.  Two very different gigs!, two very poignant moments!

Well yes, although I did lose it a bit in the first one, though.  

I slagged off the venue and stormed off hahahahaha!

Basically I couldn't have cold drafts on the stage.  I just said 'This is a fucking dump, the audience is great.' an I stormed off, haha!  I was very ill with sinusitis, bronchitis, asthma, and all from doing something healthy: giving up smoking.  I was definitely being punished for trying to be healthy.

Did you give up smoking in the end?

Listen, all these antibiotics and steroids and these fucking allergy pills, they were making me really ill!  I was taking all those drugs and they were making it worse.  So I thought I'd take up smoking again.  And I didn't need to take the drugs anymore!  I saw so many doctors and only one of them confided in me that, apparently, there is a very small minority of people whom it doesn't suit to give up smoking.  They wont make it public because then people wouldn't even try to give up.

Now, after winning an Icon award of some sort recently, you were described as an 'elder stateswoman of punk'...

Arrggghhh!  Well at least it's not the Godmother or the Grandmother or something.  Actually the thing with that award is that, physically, it looks like s scary Klingon weapon, or a cat.  It's got ears.  You have to look at it from behind though

Are we done now, with all the punk retrospectives?

Oh, tell me about it - I get the requests all the time.  'It's the 29th year since this', 'It's the 31st year since that'.  I say yes every now and again purely to shock my press officer, but there's a lot of retrospectives.

Is there anything left that's worth looking back at?

We'', I guess people look back - especially now - because it still stands out as not being part of the industry.  The amount things have regressed now, to a  point where people are so bloody aware of what's happening in terms of 'shifting bloody units', makes what happened all that time ago seem so important.  People are so aware of being liked by everyone and not offending anyone and not sticking out.  You can see why that Dido is popular because there is nothing offensive about her, although I find her totally offensive in her blandness.

We touched on cats back there somewhere, tell me more about cats.

Well, we have two now, but at one time we had four

I didn't trust cats for a long time, and now I do

That's a sign of maturity, you see.  Appreciating all the talents of a cat.

What do you consider to be cats' chief talents?

We'', to be independent is a good talent.  The fact that you feel incredibly privileged if they deign to come and see you - you certainly can't make them like you.  Indeed the more you go for them the more they run away.  And they're very watcheable, aren't they?  I can watch them endlessly.  Their actual shape is a visual feast.

Dogs, meanwhile, are a bit of a mess.

Dogs have a very needy, clingy, need-to-please thing, don't they?  Cats are just 'take me or leave me, I don't care'.  You don't want a dog - or a person, for that matter, slobbering all over you all the time, do you?

And what's the protocol for naming cats?

I've always wanted to call a cat Roger.  I never have.  All the names I've got are quite cute - of the two I've got, one is called Dandy and his brother was called Beano.  Beano ran away one day.  Or something happened to him.  And Spooky was one that died earlier this year.  She was rescued from Toulouse and was scared of her own shadow to begin with.  And Spider looked like a giant bat.

How do you know he wasn't a giant bat that looked like a cat?

Well, he's now turned into a very Egyptian-looking sleek black cat - he grew into his legs and ears.

What are you doing tonight?

I'm going to the theatre, to see that Joe Meek production.  Do you know much about him?  I thought he was just a studio boffin but he turns out he was this maverick Svengali, very much like a Phil Spector type character.  Do you remember 'Telstar'?  That was a Meek record.

Wasn't that Margaret Thatcher's favourite record?

Was it?  Well I never.  That's actually a good record to like.

And finally, are you in it for the money or just having a good time?

I'm having a good time and lucky enough to get paid for it.

Peter Robinson 27/07/05

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SIOUXSIE SIOUX

The icy glam punk queen has never stopped bewitching with her proto goth styles and sounds.  SIOUXSIE SIOUX, we love you.

Few of those involved in London's mid-seventies punk phenomenon could have predicted that Siouxsie Sioux, one of the most prominent 'faces' on the burgeoning scene, would enjoy both commercial and critical success as a singer, songwriter and performer - not to mention a bona fide style icon - throughout many of the subsequent 30 years.  After all, the principles of punk in it's earliest, angriest moments were to disposer of the pomp and ceremony of establish (i.e. dull) rock stars.  Not to mention challenge the stale old music industry, by using the combined elements of youthful rebellion, shock tactics, subversive fashion, and raw energy over skilled musicianship.  Career longevity was never part of the equation... was it?

Nonetheless, as testament to her unique talents, Miss Sioux is still with us, still recording and performing new material, still rocking a fantastic look.  She continues to be adored not only by those old enough to remember the icy glamour of Siouxsie & The Banshees' debut Top Of The Pops appearance, singing Hong Kong Garden back in 1978, but by scores of younger fans, too, for whom punk is now a fascinating cultural studies topic.

Furthermore, Siouxsie has influenced countless female performers over the years, not only musically but also thanks to her resistance of the deeply entrenched sexism in the biz.  Hence, the likes of Madonna and the Spice Girls all owe a debt to her trail-blazing Take-Me-as-I-am-or-Fuck-Off attitude.  This debt was noticeably acknowledge when Scissor Sisters' Ana Mantronic collected the Best International Album prize from Siouxsie at the 2005 Brit Awards ceremony.  Mantronic enthused about Miss Sioux:  "If she weren't in existence I wouldn't be standing here today."  Later on she admitted, "I did cry after I met Siouxsie Sioux because she's my hero."

The story begins in humdrum Chislehurst, Kent, where Susan Janet Ballion (her real name) was born in 1957.  By the early 1970s she felt stifled and frustrated by these suburban surroundings, and like any wise teenager began to seek out excitement and escapism in music and style.  Captivated by the innovative art-rock sounds and looks of bands and performer such as Roxy Music and David Bowie, plus films like Cabaret and TV starlets like Catwoman from the 1960s Batman series, she began to wildly experiment with her own image.  While others were in thrall to the obligatory flared trousers and platform shoes, Siouxsie was going somewhere else all together.  Net curtains duly twitched when she paraded past in ensembles fashioned from any combination of men's suit jackets, fishnet stockings, spiky, multi-coloured hair, teetering stilettos, a swastika armband and garish make-up.  When she dressed up a like-minded male friend in rubber and walked him on a lead to a local wine bar - proceeding to order a bowl of water for her 'dog' - the angry punters practically choked on their Chablis.

Various other youngsters from surrounding outer-London boroughs were by now beating similar paths to Siouxsie.  Obsessed with style and music, bored to death with the prospects of dead-end jobs, they inevitably gravitated to each other.  This gaggle of newly nicknamed misfits - including Billy Idol, Steve Severin, Berlin and Debbie Wilson - became known as The Bromley Contingent, named after said drab district.

A deliciously decadent crossover between the worlds of gay and straight and sleaze and vice also began to occur, akin to what had happened a decade previously at Andy Warhol's Factory scene in New York.  The gang would hang out at underground Soho gay-clubs such as Louise's, and various of their friends were either rent boys, trannies or, in the case of Linda Ashby, a Park Lane-based prostitute specialising in S&M.  The Bromley Contingent were also the first bona fide fans of the Sex Pistols.

Siouxsie was by now beginning to garner attention and notoriety in her own right.  In 1976, she attended a highly controversial exhibition titled Prostitution (used tampons were included in the show) at London's Institute of Contemporary Art.  She and her grinning friends' faces appeared on the cover of the Daily Mail the following morning.  The headline insisted, "These People are the Wreckers of Civilization,"  a rather extreme reaction to say the least.  The same year saw the now-legendary Sex Pistols interview on BBC's Nationwide.  It prompted scathing newspaper headlines galore, scores of furious complaints to the BBC and, paradoxically, overnight mainstream success for the band.  Of course, Siouxsie was on the set with the band as this happened, and could clearly be seen loving all the cod-outrage.

The Punk Festival of 1976 took place at the 100 Club in Central London, and was arranged to showcase the Sex Pistols, along with other bands who had sprung up in their wake.  Siouxsie plus friends Marco Pirroni, Steve Severin and Sid Vicious - who had not at this stage become a member of the Sex Pistols - decided to hastily form a band and play at the event.  WI was into the idea of being in a band despite having absolutely no experience or ability or songs,"  recalls Siouxsie, in Mark Paytress' biography Siouxsie & The Banshees.  "I wanted to take the ethos to its extreme."  The inspired chaos of their 20-minute rendition of The Lord's Prayer, interspersed with Knockin' On Heaven's Door, astonished yet delighted the crowd with its sheer spontaneity and strangeness.  The seeds were sown...

From these impromptu origins came a real band (albeit comprising of a different line-up) who instigated a graffiti campaign across the capital, urging record companies to "Sign The Banshees!"  By 1978, Polydor Records obliged and debut single Hong Kong Garden cantered up the charts to number seven, becoming the first of many hit singles, including Happy House, Christine and Playground Twist, and albums such as The Scream and A Kiss In The Dreamhouse, throughout the following two decades.

As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s and band members quit and were replaced, Siouxsie's image transformed from hard-edged punk princess to a no-less iconic, wildly back-combed, white-faced proto Goth, a  look which was imitated by young women around the world.  Siouxsie and Budgie, the Banshees' drummer and her long-term partner, formed an offshoot duo named The Creatures in the early 1980s, which enjoyed hits including Mad Eyed Screamer and Right Now, and continued to record and release music until recently.

Not one to rest on her laurels, Siouxsie has branched out over the years, and despite The Banshees splitting in the mid-90s, has worked with Morrissey (on the 1994 song Interlude), The Cure and Basement Jaxx, providing vocals to the electro-clashy track Cish Cash on their 2003 Kish Kash album.  Late last year, hr live Dreamshow event at the Royal Festival Hall - for which tickets sold out ultra-fast - came complete with a full orchestra and proved, yet again, her talent for commanding and captivating an audience.  Indeed, Mojo magazine recently presented Siouxsie (now recording her first solo album) with their Mojo Icon Award, in preference to other contenders including David Bowie, Kate Bush and Marc Bolan.  Editor Phil Alexander confirmed what many have long since known:  "She has possibly attained iconic status through her image, but it's her music, and the humanity in it, that people connect with."  Long live Queen Siouxsie!

James Anderson 08/05

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SONGS FROM THE DEEP

The singer Siouxsie Sioux reveals the contents of her iPod

Early morning

When I wake up it's Son This Is She by John Leyton, who did Johnny Remember Me.  It's produced by Joe Meek and it's so, so uplifting - like Ave Maria.

Mid-morning over tea and biscuits

I need something light and airy, so Sunday Morning by the Velvet Underground from their first album.  You don't think of light when you think of the Velvets, but this is.

Chopping onions for lunch

I listen to the album Mingus, Mingus, Minus, Mingus, Mingus, which is of course by Charles Mingus.  Its' a great album by one of the best jazz innovators that just rolls along and gets me into a preparing food mood.

Over dinner

While I have a few friends around to eat it might be Philips Glass' Einstein On The Beach or something else by him.  I believe he is good for the digestion.  I don't want to listen to anything that I might sing along to as it might detract from my chewing.

After dinner

It's fun time, so I go for my favourite Sinatra album.  The track has to be Witchcraft, which makes me lively.  It's New York bars, Manhattans, it's bright midnight lights and it's brilliant.

Relaxing in front of the fire

I have any early 1940s Dinah Shore album on which she sings Someone To Watch Over Me, which is beautiful.  It has this sound of an old orchestra and it takes me back to the films of the 1940s, which I watched on TV in the 1960s.

Just being

I open the windows and look out over the countryside and listen to an album by Gavin Bryars called Sinking Of The Titanic, in which the composer imagines hat it would be like if the Titanic orchestra continued to play as the ship went down.  The B-side is called Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which is an amazing orchestrated recording that builds and builds into an incredibly beautiful noise that just envelopes you as he adds new instrumentation.

Dancing and prancing

Marc Bolan's Jeepster is one of those records that just gets me up and going.  You can't really argue with Bolan;  I mean  just listen to 20th Century Boy, Get It On - they just work, they just move, they just swing.

Driving

I love Smokestack Lightning by Howlin' Wolf.  It's so physical.  You can not help but think of motion, of chain gangs, of trains.

Guilty Pleasure

It has to be A Horse With No Name by America.  Even when it came out it was an odd one for me because I was into David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust and this is the opposite.  Every time I hear it I say: "Ooh, I really like this record" and people are so shocked.  It's such a mysterious song with great backing vocals and for some reason I imagine the band walking on the bottom of the ocean singing the chorus.  It's one of those songs that takes me right back to my school days.

Chris Sullivan 06/08/05

Courtesy of XsidsiouX

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William Shaw 09/05

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MM:  Let's talk about musical inspirations first.  Who are you into at the moment?

Siouxsie Sioux:  As a band I think probably Radiohead.  I just find them complete and they don't seem to play that awards game.  Oh and I like Peaches.  I love Peaches!

MM:  What about people who seem to be directly influenced by you, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs?

Actually, everyone was saying 'have you heard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs they sound like the Banshees' and I hadn't.  So I listened to their music and I thought they didn't really sound like The Banshees.  And then I saw a DVD of them live and they came across really well and yeah, there is something there but I wouldn't say they are derivative.  Maybe inspired by a lot of other things.  I like them.  And Missy Elliott, she's nice and mad.  She's really in control of some many different things.  Very wacky and you don't know what she's gonna do.

MM:  We hear you're doing a solo album?

Yes!

MM:  Are you collaborating with different people?

Well, that's on the cards.  We've always had orchestras in the studio, but they've always added to what's already there.  So I actually want to take ideas that are just starting, and see what an orchestra or someone else can make with it.  To take it somewhere else.

MM:  So there's going to be an orchestra involved?

Hopefully, yeah

MM:  Have you got a producer?

No but there are a few people in mind.  But I'm not gonna talk about it 'cause I know if there's something good I've got an idea for, just mentioning it puts a jinx on it!  But I've already got some of the material recorded.  It's very primal.

MM:  I remember reading an interview with you in The Guardian newspaper about ten years ago.  At the time you weren't comfortable with the idea of being an icon.  Now that people are striving to be icons with their first album, how do you feel about the concept now?

Anyone who is trying to get into the history books might as well forget it.  I've always thought that the people who have nothing but still have a sense of style are far more inventive than people who just buy a label or a designer and hang it on themselves.  It's DIY.

PJ:  Do you think that idea's coming back again?

It's a hope but in the music industry now there's so many stylists, dressers and PRs, you know.  And they say 'talk about this, be ambitious, be aggressive.'  The musicians become like little models almost, blank pages for someone else's ideas.  People who say what they should be looking like.  Have an attitude, you know, you've either got it or you haven't.

MM:  You icon status isn't just about visual style, however.  It's about everything that goes with it - music, attitude, the complete parcel.

People think that style and visuals are really important, and they are, but if you haven't got anything to back it up with, it's like 'so what?'  If people aren't concentrating on the music or you're not bringing that attitude to the music then it's all pretty pointless.

MM:  So does the whole 'icon' thing still embarrass you?

Well it does because there's been so many twats being given icon status.  It's almost like if something becomes really popular, you're like 'what?  Joe Bloggs likes that as well?  I must be doing something wrong here!'  So I kinda mistrust something if it becomes accepted by the masses.

PJ:  Do you still believe in the idea of the underground?  How have you managed to maintain your underground sensibility?

It's the big question.  What's interesting is how the underground is accepted by the masses and how that conflicts with it.

PJ:  Your stage performances are so captivating, stylish and flamboyant.  Do you choreograph them?

There has to be a lot of spontaneity.  I happen to be quite physical when I'm on stage and I get sucked into the music.  It feels all wrong when I'm too aware, like "I'm on the stage and I'm singing".  It works when I'm not really that aware of where I am.  But I always have a strong idea of how I want to present myself anyway.  For the recent 'Dreamshow' performances Pam (Hogg) helped me to make the costume and give it a Japanese-y feel.  I did all these drawings for her and sent them and said 'look there's not much time.  It's got to be washable 'cause I sweat a lot.  I've got to be able to stick it in the sink, rinse it and dry it up!'  I like the idea of things being interchangeable, things that come off, collars and sleeves, and it's got to be comfortable but still, you know.  I can move freely in it.  It has to be comfortable but stunning as well.  I'm all legs and arms and I'd love to have something which extended, so that I could whip the other musicians with it!  Tentacles wrapped around someone's neck!

MM:  What about your old clothes?  Like the outfit you wore in the Happy House video?

I've still got them!  I haven't thrown them away.  Maybe they'll go up for auction for something like Greenpeace.  That's why I need a big house, somewhere to store all my old stuff!  My leather outfit with the thigh boots (from '80-81) actually went to Madam Tussaurd's.  They made a dummy of me.  I had to go and get fitted.  They had to measure my eyes, and they had these pincers like, and you think you're gonna get your eye pulled out!  And actually you see the eyeballs that they're gonna give you.  I think early on they had me in my leather.  I'll have to ask them 'Have you got my outfit?  Can I have it back?'  Whatever happened to that dummy?

Mark Moore & Princess Julia 08/05

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Siouxsie Sioux - gorgeous, stylish and unique, we caught up with her to find out more about her new DVD of Dreamshow at the Royal Festival Hall.

MARK MOORE:  Ten years ago in The Guardian you weren't conceited enough to confess that you were an icon; you weren't comfortable with the fact because you related it to dead revolutionaries.  Now you get people in this post - modern age on their first album trying and striving to be an icon.

SIOUXSIE SIOUX:  Anyone who is trying to get into the history books might as well forget it.  I don't know, it's like when people say 'Oh, what you were wearing then', and you're like, 'Well, it's what you got at the time.  It's DIY.  It's not planned, it's kinda customised.  It's to suit you and your limitations, usually budgetary, and so that's creative in itself, making nothing look like something fantastic and I always thought that the people with nothing that have a style were far more inventive than people who just buy a label or a designer and hang it on themselves.  I always think that someone who thinks of ways to try and look like 'they're fabulous' and think they need the 'expense account'... and they haven't, then you know it's been cobbled together with this and that and bric-a-brac.

PRINCESS JULIA:  Your stage performances are captivating, stylish and flamboyant.  I was going to ask you how you arrived at that.  Do you choreograph?  How do you do it?

SS:  It's a lot to do with spontaneity.  I happen to be quite physical when I'm on stage.  I get sucked into the music.  It feels all wrong when I'm too aware like, 'I'm on the stage and I'm singing', and it works when I'm not really that aware of where I am.  I always have a strong idea of how I want to present myself.  In Dreamshow with the Japanese feel, Pam (Hogg) helped me to make the costumes. I did all these drawings for her and sent them and said, "Look, there's not much time, it's got to be washable",  because I sweat a lot I've got to be able to stick it in a sink, rinse it and dry it up.  I like the idea of things being inter-changeable; things that come off, collars and sleeves, and it's got to be comfortable.  But still you know, I can move freely in it.  There's nothing worse than having something you realise as soon as you've got it on it's something restrictive.  You know, if I'm just gonna stand there like a Dodo it'll be fine, but for what I do I can't be restricted so (what I wear on stage) has to be comfortable but stunning as well.  I'm all legs and arms, I'd love to have something which was extended so I could whip the other musicians.  Tentacles wrapped around someone's neck.

PJ:  Your voice is amazing!

SS:  Well, it's all self-taught!  Me imitating the Daleks at an early age!

PJ:  What would you say were your favourite moments in Dreamshow?

SS:  Oh, I loved doing 'Obsession' 'cause we'd never done that live as the Banshees before or since.  I guess that was one of my favourite moments because there was a spooky thing that happened.  The studio that we were originally working in broke down, which was Playground, so we had to go to Abbey Road.  It's a big studio and we had done all the strings and over-dubbings and things for 'Obsession' and suddenly the tapes all started speeding up and slowing down.  'It's the ghost of John Lennon!'  And on the record you can hear "neowghhh" and we just kept with it 'cause it was a freaky moment that just happened.  So it was great and it was quite naked as well.  It's quite edgy and it was the first performance ever live, so I enjoyed that!  I really loved doing stuff like 'Take Mine' from 'Anima Animus' and embellishing some of The Creatures stuff.  With 'Prettiest Thing' the brass coming in it felt really good and it was great how the orchestra worked, they were really responsive.  I know orchestras, they have their pieces of paper.  This orchestra were amazing, attentive, they went with it.  I warned them; I said "Look, you may have your bars counted there but that's not what's gonna happen on the night... and I might change my mind about something but just listen, go with it and you'll be fine".

MM:  How long did it take to rehearse the orchestra?

SS:  That's the amazing thing.  We had two rehearsals, just two rehearsals with them!

PJ:  You're a proper pro!

SS:  You gotta risk it for a biscuit!

Mark Moore & Princess Julia 17/08/05

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19/08/05

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A black and white photograph of Siouxsie Sioux taken at a Sex Pistols concert in August 1976 still retains its ability to shock. She is dressed in nothing more than an asymmetrical ensemble of fetishistic latex underwear, finished off with a cupless bra that leaves her breasts bare. Her expression is aloof, inscrutable.

That same night, Siouxsie and her friend Steve Severin approached Malcolm McLaren, then manager of the Sex Pistols, with the idea of forming their own group. Siouxsie And The Banshees, named after the Vincent Price film Cry Of The Banshees, went on to become one of the most celebrated products of the punk era. It's now almost 30 years since the band's first performance, where Siouxsie intoned The Lord's Prayer over a wall of feedback at London's 100 Club - a set described at the time by one journalist as "unbearable". She now spends most of her time in south-eastern France, where she lives with former Banshees drummer Budgie (the pair have their own band, the Creatures), but we meet at a London hotel. Siouxsie is wearing an elegant white trouser suit, and her black hair - more of an Elvis-style raven blue, in fact - is slicked back to reveal features that seem virtually unchanged since she appeared as a post-punk geisha on the cover of The Face magazine in 1983.

It wasn't until 1978 - well after the initial shock waves of punk - that the Banshees released their first record. Something about their attitude, their refusal to conform to the increasingly commodified idea of punk, had kept the major record companies at a distance, but when their first album, The Scream, finally came out, its originality, edge and sheer energy provoked instant, near fanatical acclaim. It was one of those records that immediately summoned up a world view - dark, tense, eerily erotic.

"Looking back on those days, nothing can really capture quite how out on a limb the primary people were," says Siouxsie. "How brave it was, I suppose - without it really seeming brave at the time; more a kind of recklessness. But the term 'punk' was so lazy and easy and inaccurate. The Pistols were different because they had Rotten - without him, who knows? And the Clash went at it in a way that was far more traditional - a kind of Keith Richards thing. I wasn't trying to be masculine and getting down with the boys, so the main difference between us and the rest was that it wasn't a solely male perspective. I think a certain amount of anger has been a fuel of mine, if you want - but also some sort of sadness, and plain mischief, of course."

Siouxsie, originally Susie Ballion, grew up in suburban Chislehurst with her parents, brother and sister. Her mother worked as a bilingual secretary; her father was a lab technician. "I think that just because of the kind of family we were, there was definitely a sense of not feeling a part of the community, or of being neighbourly. I was very aware of us being very different. My father had a drink problem, which also sensitised that feeling.

"Where we lived was very residential, and our house seemed different. It wasn't red brick, to begin with - it was white stucco with a flat roof, and with trees. Everyone else had gardens with patios and neatly cut lawns, and we had these massive copper beech trees at the front, and a huge privet hedge. You couldn't look in to our house. All the others were almost inviting you to look in - life in all its normality was being paraded. Which probably wasn't the case behind closed doors, but that was the perception."

The suburbs, she says, "inspired intense hatred. I think the lure of London was always there. I remember my sister taking me to Biba on Kensington High Street; I bought a coat and used to gravitate towards going there on my own later. But the suburbs were also a yardstick for measuring how much we didn't fit in."

Together with Severin and another early Banshees member, Billy Idol, Siouxsie was part of the "Bromley Contingent", a small collection of friends and acquaintances from south London. They met at the earliest concerts by the Sex Pistols and then, discovering they were all from the same place, began to go out en masse - English descendants of Andy Warhol's heroically dysfunctional superstars. Their defining moment, perhaps, was Bertie Marshall's infamous "Berlin's Baby Bondage party" in 1976, held at his parents' house. The Sex Pistols came, and legend has it that the Styrofoam tiles on the ceiling were for ever scarred by Siouxsie's whip.

In many ways, Siouxsie And The Banshees became the contingent's ultimate statement about outsiderdom. Siouxsie and Severin went on to record many tracks that centred on disturbed childhoods, paranoia and personality disorders - singles such as Happy House, Playground Twist and Christine. "I would definitely say that our early material, for at least the first two albums, was suburbia - where I grew up, and the circumstances."

Her own childhood and teenage experiences of music were liberating. "Certainly music was the one big thing that made everything seem OK. It was a cause of happiness within the family, and laughter, and fun. My first love affair with a record was with John Leyton's Johnny Remember Me. It had these amazing, ghostly backing vocals, a great melody, and it was about a dead girlfriend, basically. I was three or four when it came out, in 1961, and I used to have to get somebody to put it on the record player for me.

"As I got older, I loved a lot of the Tamla Motown and a lot of R&B. Then there was the usual Beatles and Stones. I really got into The White Album. Pop music for me was definitely escapist, but never studious. I was never attracted to being a very proficient singer or player. I suppose I was interested in creating a vision; in the same way I was very drawn to tension within cinema. Hitchcock was my other early obsession - Psycho, and its score. So there was the sense of trying to create an atmosphere: how a sound resonates and makes an effect. That has always been very important for me."

Listening to a bootlegged early demo tape from 1977, you are immediately struck by its jagged, jarring energy. Severin says a powerful early influence was seeing the German group Can play their first UK show at Brunel University in 1973.

"They came on and just played nonstop for two hours, each piece merging straight into the next. It had the most mesmerising effect on the audience. That's what I wanted to achieve with the Banshees." Two career-defining singles - Staircase Mystery and Playground Twist - led the group to their second album, Join Hands. And it was at this point, in 1979, just as Siouxsie And The Banshees were being recognised as one of the most original groups to emerge from punk, that guitarist John McKay and drummer Kenny Morris left - choosing to depart just hours before a concert in Aberdeen. Siouxsie told the disappointed crowd: "If you've got one per cent of the aggression we feel towards them, if you ever see them, you have my blessings to beat the shit out of them."

A quarter of a century later, Severin describes their departure as "a tragic waste" but an event that, in his words, was "the single key event" in the group's history. "It forced us to re-evaluate ourselves," he says. "We had to grow up in public very, very fast, and I had to come to terms with what had always been my crippling shyness." In the event, this sudden change gave the band new energy, repositioning them in the slick, fashion-conscious 1980s as purveyors of richly atmospheric, gorgeously dramatic music - the memorably intense singles Dazzle, Swimming Horses and Peek A Boo, as well as their intoxicating cover of the Beatles' Dear Prudence.

"I've come to realise that the Banshees would have happened regardless of the 'punk' explosion," says Severin. "While most of the protagonists of punk looked to American garage bands - Flaming Groovies, MC5, the Stooges, the Dolls - or to the New York scene of Patti Smith, Television, Heartbreakers and the Ramones as a benchmark, we, perversely, saw ourselves as taking on the baton of glamorous art rock - Bowie and Roxy Music - while incorporating a love for Can, Kraftwerk and Neu."

Entering their second decade, Siouxsie And The Banshees occupied an unusual position, somewhere between "cult band" and "iconic". With inimitable style, they finally disbanded in 1996, on the day the Sex Pistols announced their first reunion tour. Siouxsie and Budgie moved to France, pursuing their work together as the Creatures. Both Siouxsie and Severin loathed the way they were sometimes linked to goth music. Like their musical heroes the Velvet Underground and Roxy Music, Siouxsie And The Banshees had created a back catalogue and a mythology that was as much a burden as an achievement.

"The music press tried very hard to make us unfashionable in the 90s, certainly in England," says Siouxsie. "For me, timelessness is what counts; sometimes you can only really tell after a long time how timeless something will be. With the Banshees, we had a way of just allowing our music to happen. There was a lot of space; it wasn't cluttered, and was hardly embellished. It evoked isolation, but in quite a euphoric way. At a signing the other day, someone asked me how it felt to be the queen of goth. I said, 'That's rather like being known as the Prince Regent of Fools.' I hate all that. There is a fun, flippant side to me, of course. But I would much rather be known as the Ice Queen."

Siouxsie And The Banshees' first album, The Scream, will be re-released by Polydor on October 3, followed by the rest of the back catalogue.

Michael Bracewell 19/08/05

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Uncut: Are you stranger now than when you were young?

Siouxsie: I don't feel strange at all now. Having said that, I feel as much of an outsider as ever. I never felt strange as a child. I thought it was normal to pretend to be dead. I used to do that quite a lot. Too many Bette Davis movies! I'd throw a box down the stairs and pretend I'd thrown myself down. It was partly out of a need to be noticed, partly a need to make things interesting for myself. As a child, I always had a taste for the macabre. The first record I ever bought was 'Johnny Remember Me' by John Leyton, a song about someone's dead girlfriend. After that I graduated to 'Leader of the Pack' by the Shangri-Las and 'Terry' by Twinkle. I always had a thing for sexy death songs.

Uncut: How glad are you that you gave yourself a name like Siouxsie rather than something like Poly Styrene?

Siouxsie: I definitely got off lightly there. I particularly like the way the spelling of Siouxsie has endured. It still catches people out, especially where I now live in France.

Uncut: Despite their image, it always seemed the Banshees had a sense of humour.

Siouxsie: To me, punk was always more of a comedy than a revolution. The Banshees might have seemed like they were deadly serious but most of the time, we were pissing ourselves with laughter. It does amuse me when something like the Bill Grundy incident is written about like it was a landmark event. We were all just having a laugh.

Uncut: Around the time, did it vex you to be put in the same category of music as no-hopers like Sham 69?

Siouxsie: That's one of the things that annoyed me - the way everything was tagged with the same label. As though there was no difference between Jimmy Pursey and someone like me. There was a pack mentality to it and I've always despised that sort of thing.

Uncut: Would you prefer to be famous or infamous?

Siouxsie: Neither, if I have a choice. I remember becoming infamous after the Grundy episode. That was a weird thing to deal with. It didn't quite fuck me up.  But it was irritating. People would shout at me on the street: "You're fucking rubbish." Before Bill Grundy it was a fear of the unknown  for a lot of the public.  After Grundy we were recognisable as the enemy. 

Uncut: How many Banshees albums are as good as T.Rex's Electric Warrior?

Siouxsie: Electric Warrior is one of my all-time favourites... I'd say there's four Banshees albums that are on a par: The Scream, Juju, Peep Show and Through The Looking Glass. But I don't play my own records for fun.

Uncut: Is it true you think Bob Dylan's hideously overrated?

Siouxsie: Put it this way, I don't hate him, but I wouldn't invite him to a party. I wouldn't imagine he'd be much fun. As for his music...I never bought Dylan albums. When we recorded 'This Wheel's on Fire', I thought Julie Driscoll or Brian Auger had written it. I was horrified to find it was a Dylan song. I nearly refused to do it for that reason. Why should I give Bob Dylan a credit on one of our records? Sod 'im!

Uncut: Didn't you once appear on a kids' TV show surrounded by otters?

Siouxsie: That actually happened. I'm not sure why, but around the time of the Tinderbox album (1986) I suddenly decided I should be on kids' television. So, at 7am, it was me and these otters. I don't remember much else about it.  Though I do vaguely recall eating chocolate bumble bees. I'd been up all night so the experience was more than a little strange. Never again.

Uncut: Your husband Budgie has a theory that Robert Smith is to blame for goth, although you got the blame. Would you go along with that?

Siouxsie: I might. Robert is at least partly responsible. Silly boy. But he wasn't the only one.  The whole goth thing appalls me. It was, and still is, a terrible pantomime. The idea that I'm the queen of goth...please! One of the most distressing things I've ever experienced is seeing girls coming to our shows dressed as me. Hopefully, they've grown out of that now.

Uncut: Ever murdered anyone?

Siouxsie: I haven't but there've been times when I've felt like I might. Touring with a band is an ideal occupation for a serial killer. You could do away with the kinds of people who'd never be missed. Like rock journalists.

Uncut: You recently continued your war of words with Steve Severin by calling him a poisonous old toad. How are relations now with your ex-bassist?

Siouxsie: Cold. Or at best, cool. I have no animosity towards him and I hope our petty quarrels can be buried. It's all very silly. We should both get over it.

Uncut: Are old ladies still afraid to sit next to you on buses?

Siouxsie: It still happens in France. It's only recently that the locals have stopped looking at me out of the sides of their eyes. They see me as all right now.

Uncut: John Lydon on I'm a Celebrity: a good or bad thing?

Siouxsie: It wasn't nearly as sad as seeing the Pistols reform for the money. You wouldn't catch me on a show like that. Can you honestly imagine me and Les Dennis sharing a tent?

Uncut: Are you looking forward to growing old and mad?

Siouxsie: I am old and mad. But I'm comfortable in my own skin now. And I refuse to take things easy. If people expect me to start toning things down, they can fuck off. I'm as single-minded as I ever was and still feel the need to take risks. I've got a solo album out next year. Whatever anyone says, I'm still out on the edge of the cliff, musically speaking.

NEED TO KNOW

1. Born Susan Ballion on May 27, 1957. Her father was a snake doctor
2. Made her live debut at London's 100 Club in 1976, singing a 20-minute version of "The Lord's Prayer".  Sid Vicious accompanied her on drums
3. The Banshees' debut single, '78's "Hong King Garden", was written about her local Chinese Takeaway in Chislehurst
4. Formed off-shoot band The Creatures in 1981 with Banshees drummer (and future husband) Budgie
5. Came second to Margaret Thatcher in a Sunday Express poll of "The Women Who Shook The World"

12/05

Article courtesy of Anima Animus and Paul

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FILMS:  Onibaba, this black-and-white Japanese film by Kaneto Shindo.  I saw it on BBC 2 when I was about nine.  There was this great repeated scene: every night, this girl would run through fields of long, swooshing cane in the rain to her lover, but this demon would appear and it would scare her away.  This kept happening until one night she ran past it.  When she finally went home to her family and opened the door, the demon was crouching in the corner.  It turned out the demon was her mother, who'd worn a Samurai mask to scare her away from this boy, but the mask had got stuck to her face.  It made such a strong impression.  I still remember the sound of the cane now, and the looks on their faces.  Japanese film amazes me, which is probably why I loved Kill Bill too.  It wasn't that gory, it was more like a ballet.  I loved the idea, the story, the humour - it's sick but not gratuitous - I loved the women fighters.  I was on fire after it.  It was like having an injection of speed or something.

BOOKS:  Anything by J.G.Ballard, but Crash is his best.  It was the first properly erotic book I read, but it was also pathetic, really summing up this very American obsession with cars, with speed, with size - these empty symbols of power.  Ballard's hit this nerve about what modern living can do to you, how you become obsessed with getting into this cocoon-like state.  He questions it, but he also acknowledges how seductive it is, and how appealing these symbols are.  The film was good too, really sexy.  It was different to proper porn films which are dull as bloody dishwater.  At least this made you think.

10/04

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"It was an honour.  Siouxsie and I have been huge fans since seeing Kodo 20 years ago," says Budgie, who returned to their home studio in Southern France with a few hours of sweaty beats under his arm, the seed that would become Hai!.  This album is a return to basics.  No cute electronics, but an economy of notes give space to the voice and the songs.  "Musicians tend to yammer on these days.  It's like shut the fuck up!  We tried not to over think or overplay it," describes Sioux.  "Totally naked glamour!"  From the opening command of 'Say Yes!', Budgie commits hari-kiri on his poor drum kit.  The single 'Godzilla!' is a paean to most Westerner's first exposure to kooky Japanese culture, and who Sioux has loved since catching an all-night movie marathon on TV.  "I love the extremes of Japan.  One side is traditional, almost religious, and the other is the kitsch, naÏve side, which is what 'Godzilla!' represents."  The centerpiece of the album is the slinky 'Tourniquet', a serpentine be bop worthy of Miles Davis, all sexy piano chords, finger snaps, and Siouxsie growling over Eto's insane Taiko drum solo like a possessed Peggy Lee.

Critics always wrote off the Banshees as mere goth, but the band really defied any category in their 25-year career.  The music was raw and angry one minute, and sweet and giddy the next.  That schizophrenic nature meant they only flirted with the mainstream on occasion ('Dear Prudence', 'Peek A Boo'), but they inspired slavish devotion in their legions of obsessive fans.  With nostalgia so rampant these days, Sioux could easily cash in on that trend.  "In 100 years, they'll be digging me up to talk about fucking punk rock!"  She and the Banshee boys resumed themselves in 2002 with the Banshees' Seven Year Itch tour and their official biography.  Told from many conflicting viewpoints, it has more sex, drugs and catfights than the average episode of Jerry Springer.

"After doing the book and the tour, I realised I have nothing in common with (founding Banshee and bassist) Steven Severin anymore," admits Sioux, "which is a shame, but there you go!"  It was good in that they properly laid the Banshees corpse to rest with a bang and not a whimper.  While they want to preserve their back catalogue and release the stupendous Banshees B-sides, Sioux and Budgie are focusing on the future.  She guest shrieks on the new Basement Jaxx album, which subversively places her danceable ode to greed, 'Cish Cash', alongside a track featuring JC Chasez from 'NSYNC!  They have another album, which was near completion before the Itch tour, and they are thinking of novel ways to tour Hai!, with Eto and an armada of drums.  Sioux has a few ideas.  "I would love to do the tour in a very different way.  Something like the Cotton Club in the '30s, with a smoky, speakeasy vibe to it."  If anyone can pull that off, it would be Siouxsie in her own inimitable style.

Gregory Garry 2003

Article courtesy of Nesta

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GOTH-ROCK rebel Siouxsie Sioux was one of the most influential and outspoken punk stars of the 1970s and 80s.

And in our webchat she proves time hasn't tamed her by laying into the charts, music industry bosses and the acts they create.

The star - best known for her time with Siouxsie And The Banshees - also revealed the famous guitarist she and hubby Budgie once shared a snog with.

The pair, who exclusively answered your questions, formed side-project The Creatures in 1981 and when the Banshees split in 2002, switched their attentions to the band full time.

So read on to find out more about their new album Hai!, what they miss most about England, now they live in France, and whether Siouxsie would pose for Page 3.

Siouxsie: I'm up for going anywhere I haven't been before. I'd love to go somewhere where I can see the Northern Lights. I'd love to be dragged by some huskies in a sledge towards the lights. I've got a mental picture of myself doing that clutching a bottle of vodka.

Also, I remember seeing a programme about this special hotel called The Ice Hotel and it's made out of ice. You go in there and there's frozen vodka everywhere - which sounds brilliant - and you have to go to bed in these big coats.

I just really fancy the idea of going there and breaking the ice house with my voice.

Budgie: I want to go to somewhere where there's no vodka and there's lots of curries, so I want to go to India, to Bombay or something.

Siouxsie, there are many references in the lyrics on Hai! to your past as a Banshee. Was the 7 Year Itch tour in 2002 the only reunion there will be with co-founder Steven Severin. Is it  the really real end of the Banshees?
Gemma

Siouxsie: If any references are there, on my part, they are subliminal and I'm not really aware of them although it could be interpreted that way.

And I wouldn't go out and perform as Siouxsie And The Banshees without Severin. Not because of any loyalty reason really, but because it wouldn't feel right.

But I will, when and if I want to, perform any material from The Banshees when and if I choose.

Siouxsie: I would still love to do some songs from The Banshees, for example we never played Obsession live.

I also have some ideas for the future of doing The Creatures shows with an orchestra and doing some of the orchestrated Banshees numbers that we have never performed live before.

Budgie: As for the minimalist sound I think we have already learned that, with this being the first album we've produced and engineered ourselves, keeping it simple can mean less work in the mix.

We've learnt really quickly what gets us excited and what's good for what we want to do so I think we can certainly take that forward.

Siouxsie: And I think working as spontaneously and quickly as possible you can keep the spark there.

By going back to the other material we did before Hai! we're hearing it a lot clearer. Before we were just like in to detail and not seeing the big picture so now we can go back to the other material and be much more positive and much more simple.

Who were your main influences for the album?
Mike T

Siouxsie: I think we listened to ourselves a lot, re-appraising and re-appreciating the first EP.

Budgie: I was listening to the way they were recorded in a room with all the mics open and editing from our jam sessions.

Siouxsie: I think a lot of interesting things come out in your dreams and sometimes you don't fully understand them and it's just the imagery or the suggestion from them that can lead you down a very interesting path.

Who's the most famous person you have kissed?
Kevin

Budgie: I think mine is probably Dave Navarro, the Jane's Addiction guitarist, in a snogging competition.

Siouxsie: I'll say Dave Navaro as well.

Your last single Godzilla only reached number 53 in the UK charts - what's going on?
Petah

Siouxsie: There is definitely a fix going on.

We've just had Guy Fawkes night and we're thinking The Gunpowder Plot part 2 to blow up the offices of these people who compile the charts.

I was outraged at first and thought "I want to go round there and beat the s**t out of them". I was spitting nails for a couple of days but I'm over it now.

Budgie: It's not like we became desperate to be in the charts. When we first started making singles we were competing against Abba and were shifting 500,000 copies and getting in the low 40s but now there's not that many singles to chart.

How important is it for young people nowadays to learn to appreciate different styles of music and not to be drawn in by the image consciousness of the music industry with things like Pop Idol and Fame Academy?
Alex MacLean, Glasgow

Siouxsie: Well it's all run by bloody accountants. They put a price on everything but don't know the worth of anything.

Budgie: I always think it is like when we were growing up and had shows like Opportunity Knocks and you thought the winner was never going to be taken seriously and hopefully they would vanish before the end of the year.

But nowadays these reality show people are being embraced as performing artists and musicians. It takes more than putting all these elements together and expecting this miracle to happen.

Siouxsie: Today's music industry is reflective of armchair viewers and it's all about TV personalities and not people's favourite bands.

What albums are you listening to at the moment and if you could choose pick somebody to team up with on a future record who would it be?
Dave, Boreham Wood

Budgie: I like the Queens Of The Stone Age's last album, with Dave Grohl drumming.

And there's a new CD coming out from a band called Explosions In The Sky from Austin in Texas called The Earth Is Not A Cold Dark Space.

Siouxsie: As for collaborating we fulfilled our dream in working with Leonard Eto. But maybe Peaches, some of what I have heard of her is really exciting.

Budgie: We tried to get Miss Kitten to play with us in LA but our schedules kept clashing.

Siouxsie: We really do want to tour this album and Leonard is very willing to be a part of it. We want to bring the big drums and do the whole thing live.

People are saying "you're not touring at the moment" and it's unusual for us that we're not.

But we've decided that we're really going to concentrate on putting something quite special together for touring next year.

It will bring in quite a lot of unusual people to do with stage set design so it's going to take a lot of planning, seeing how we can get around it and maybe getting it sponsored or something.

Siouxsie - would you do Page 3?
Mr Monitor

Siouxsie: Of course I would do Page 3 - but with my clothes on. I'll do it, the way I want to do it.

Anyway, I don't know what all the fuss is about. I used to walk down the streets like that years ago.

What's next for the Creatures?
Jason Brandli

Siouxsie: I think a second single because after the cheating that was done with Godzilla we deserve another bite of the cherry.

Hopefully we'll do some lovely B-sides in the New Year and if Basement Jaxx decide to do a video I'll do that - as long as they find someone who'll make me absolutely gorgeous.

Do you miss living in England?
Mag, Brent Cross

Siouxsie: Yes and no. I like missing it. When I was living here it was really depressing but now I think I've learned to appreciate it more. But I wouldn't come back here.

Budgie: I miss cities in general. I feel at home in a lot of places.

Siouxsie: If someone said have a home in any capital you want I'd have one in London, one in Barcelona and one in Paris.

Budgie: And maybe a loft in New York.

Siouxsie: Oh yes, we don't want much.

Siouxsie: Digestives - we have to get something we both like. And French biscuits are horrible.

Dave Masters 2003

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Hái!, fourth album from The Creatures, was recorded in Tokyo during improv sessions between Budgie and former Kodo taiko drummer Leonard Eto. As the album is released, themilkfactory chat with Budgie about the journey that has taken The Creatures from London to Hawaii, Spain, France and Japan, the pressures and constraints of setting up a record label and producing, and the necessity to continue to work.

“It’s always been more spontaneous than with the Banshees” says Budgie about The Creatures. Speaking from his home in the South West of France, where he has lived for some time with Siouxsie, drummer Budgie explains the drive behind the band. “I think we still have the same enthusiasm when we record as there was at the beginning with the Banshees. In the early days, we were all exited about what we were doing, but with time, some people loose that or the motivation is different. Siouxsie and I still have the same need to create music”.

The Creatures were never meant to become a project in its own right for Siouxsie And The Banshees vocalist Siouxsie Sioux and drummer Budgie. It all started with a track recorded during the sessions for the Juju album with the Banshees in the early eighties. “We just had a couple of tracks that were quite different from what we’d been working on with the band, and there was no plans to include them on the album we were recording at the time, so Siouxsie and I decided to release them as a single. There were no plans for it to become something regular or anything. It wasn’t planned.” Released in 1981, the Wild Things EP, taking its title from writer and illustrator Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, which contained lead track Mad Eye Screamer, introduced the Creatures sound, built around Budgie’s tribal drumming and Siouxsie’s unmistakable voice, with Mike Hedges on production duties. They returned two years later with the Right Now single and the Feast album, recorded in Hawaii. “We were looking for somewhere to record, and Hawaii seemed like the right place, so we flew there and we recorded the album in two weeks.” The album further explored the percussive nature of the pair’s musical inspiration, adding some indigenous sonic elements to emphasise the tribal nature of the pair’s music. “It makes me realise how far we’ve come from when I listen to Feast now. How Siouxsie’s voice and singing have evolved, and how my drumming has changed as well.”

Following the release of Feast, Siouxsie and Budgie returned to their main project with the Banshees, and it would take Budgie and Siouxsie over six years to revive The Creatures. “We did four albums with the Banshees, and I think that after the Peepshow tour, we all needed a break. It’d been a really intense five or six years. Siouxsie and I went away, drove around Spain for some time trying to find somewhere to record, and eventually put Boomerang together”. The album, released in 1990, following the Fury Eyes and Standing There singles, showed The Creatures experimenting with a more subtle sound. The drums were still integrant part of the Creatures sound, but this time round, the songs featured a more varied use of instruments, with marimbas being given more importance, and brass and accordions providing a calmer, more settled ambience, perhaps best encapsulated by the beautiful cover shots by Anton Corbjin. Produced once again by Mike Hedges, Boomerang was taking, as Feast before it, full advantage of the recording environment.

After the Banshees officially called it a day in 1996, The Creatures became Budgie’s and Siouxsie’s main project. “For the first time, we could devote all our time to The Creatures. We had to continue to make music, and it was natural to come back to The Creatures.” This album proved determinant in the future of the project, as Polydor had dropped the band. “We still had the support of Geffen in the US, but we had to find another label to release our material elsewhere. We recorded Anima Animus and went to find a label, but it proved a lot more difficult and time consuming than we expected. It is like everything else, things take time.” Then, Budgie met Doug Hart. “He came to me and said that he wanted to start a record label. I went to our management company, but it was not what they wanted us to do. Anyway, we decided to go with Doug, and we started Sioux Records, but once again, things took quite some time to come together. We had the album ready, and it was quite hard not to be able to release it straight away.” Hart was also influential in what the third Creatures album would sound like, and even more pivotal in the Hybrids remix project. “Doug was releasing all these really cool stuff, like Black Dog or Icarus that I’d never heard of, and that really influenced the way we worked on the album. He lent this album from Juno Reactor, and I remember driving around at night with this massive sound blasting out of the speakers. I didn’t want the night to end”. Anima Animus denoted quite a change of direction for The Creatures. For the first time, the voice/drums equation was replaced by a far more technologically advanced sound, full of post-industrial tinges. After the tribal inspiration behind Feast and the Hispanic colorations of Boomerang, Anima Animus reflected the modernity of England, the US and France where the album was conceived. Although Budgie’s drumming was still integrant part of the compositions, especially on tracks such are Turn Me On, Take Mine or Prettiest Thing, the multiple layers of electronic sounds gave the pair’s music a far more contemporary twist. “It was not the kind of things that our fans would necessarily listen to. It was like we were bringing something new to them. Recently, Siouxsie co-wrote a track with Basement Jaxx, on which she does vocals as well, and now some of our fans are buying the Basement Jaxx album”. At the same time, Budgie got quite involved in the development of the band’s website, and it was a chance for The Creatures to give something back to their audience. “We have this art fanzine called Gifthorse which is something very different, and we also put a few website albums out, like live stuff. It gives us a chance to get closer to our audience as well, which is great. We can exchange a lot more this way”.

Fast-forward to 2002 and the end of the Seven Year Itch world Banshees tour. “It was like putting the last nail in the coffin with the Banshees in some ways. When we finished the 7YI tour, in 2002, the whole band left Japan, leaving Siouxsie and I alone over there, and the next day, we went in the studio with a lot of people we didn’t know. It felt like it was all new, and we recorded the bulk of the new album in about an hour and a half. It was all very spontaneous, very organic.” Marking a return to the original sound of The Creatures, Hái! also marks the beginning of a new area for the band. Although they were already responsible for most of the production on Anima Animus, it is the first time that they were fully in control of their work. “We don’t consciously split the work between the two of us, but this time Siouxsie wrote all the lyrics and I dealt with the production and everything that goes with it. She stopped me from going overboard with the production, like trying things. When you’ve got all these machines and computers, it is easy to go too far. She really kept me focused, which was great. Plus this time, we didn’t have to worry about the album coming out. All the structure was in place, so it was a far more comfortable situation to be in”. The album was recorded with ex-Kodo taiko drummer Leonard Eto. The basis for the nine tracks on offer were recorded during drum improvisations recorded in Tokyo, with Siouxsie effectively writing lyrics and melodies when the pair returned to their home in France. As if fascinated by the synergy between Eto and Budgie, Siouxsie seems to almost take a back sit at times on this album, often resorting to incantations to give definition to the compositions, especially on some of the more eruptive tracks. When the mood is more reflective, on the second half of the album, her voice becomes the main focal point, with songs such as Imagoró or Tourniquet showing The Creatures at their most subdued and introvert.

Twenty years after they first appeared as The Creatures, Siouxsie and Budgie still manage to retain the essence of their original sound, while allowing for new elements to come and colour their compositions. Intrinsically linked to the recording environment, the music of The Creatures offers an oblique vision of the world.

Ian 29/10/03

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