HYAENA - MAGAZINE COVERS | ||
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HYAENA - INTERVIEWS/ARTICLES | ||
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No.1 1984 | ||
RECORD MIRROR 24/03/84 | ||
SMASH HITS 24/05/84 | ||
ZIGZAG 06/84 | ||
SOUNDS 02/06/84 | ||
RECORD MIRROR 17/11/84 | ||
No.1 16/06/84 | ||
NME 15/12/84 | ||
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Nº1 | |||
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A
YEAR IN THE DREAMHOUSE
In 1983, Siouxsie And The Banshees entered their seventh year as a group. They had their biggest hit to date with ‘Dear Prudence’, and they filled the Albert Hall for two nights in succession. The resulting live double LP ‘Nocturne’ wraps up those seven years. Yet 1983 was not only the year in which the Banshees consolidated their considerable reputation. It was also the year of the seven-year itch. While Robert Smith slotted into the group’s guitar seat, he and the others busied themselves playing musical chairs. Smith re-launched the Cure and worked as The Glove with original banshee Steve Severin. Siouxsie and drummer Budgie experimented as the Creatures. Hardly a month went by when one combination or another wasn’t in the charts. No.1 decided to chronicle the year Of The Banshees, taking Severin’s diary as our starting point. Severin and Budgie then chucked in their comments. Prepare to be exhausted. ROBERT SMITH "We virtually pulled Robert out of retirement. Last year he just used to come round to Steve’s house and moan about being the frontman in a serious group and all the tours. This year our schedules had to be improvised around him once The Cure started having hits. It can be maddening when all the threads get tangled..." ‘DEAR PRUDENCE’ "A lot of the recent work has been influenced by the songs we grew up on, records like ‘Itchycoo Park’ or the ‘White Album’ that my elder brother owned. "We tend to pick up English things rather than West Coast psychedelia. When punk happened, it was more Yes or Genesis that everybody wanted out of the way. Jon Anderson is a hippy and Captain Beefheart isn’t. It’s as simple as that." ‘NOCTURNE’ "One by one, all the songs on ‘Nocturne’ will get dropped from the live set. It’s hard to recapture the excitement of the old songs, especially for Robert who wasn’t involved in their writing. We wanted to record them before they’re dropped in the bin..." ROYAL ALBERT HALL "Playing the Albert Hall, we got a few people who’d never go to the Hammersmith Palais. We were probably more nervous the first time we played with Budgie or with Robert. Audiences aren’t very good in England at the moment, even at the RAH." BANSHEES NOW "It’s looser in that we’re not always together now that we have different projects and don’t tour all the time. It’s more fun with Robert in the group, more of a friendship and less of a career. "All the different projects we’ve done this year have probably got rid of a lot of ideas and influences that might have clogged up the Banshees’ album..." 1983 POP "Kajagoogoo, Paul Young, Duran Duran - they don’t have much personality as pop stars. I don’t feel curious about them. "The only person who’s got the excitement of a Marc Bolan is Boy George. I can see why Culture Club interest people, even if they don’t interest me. "I like reading the charts of ten years ago. I can’t believe that people will look back on this years charts in ten years and be excited. It’s been dull. Something’s got to happen next year just because this one’s been so dull..." AGE "Because the Clash aren’t around and The Jam have stopped, critics use us as a point in time. But we were never a focus for what punk was going to do like those groups. "Suddenly people call us old warhorses. What’s the difference between six and seven year’s existence? Why are we ’old warhorses’ and not Simple Minds?" JAMMING "I can’t imagine us playing with people outside The Banshees. That’s just for old mates, the kind who end up having supergroups made up of their own names. Sioux and Steve have grown up with one style - Steve wouldn’t know how to jam with anybody. We don’t want to be like Shaky and Bonnie Tyler, that’s desperate. JAN ‘Melt/Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant’ survives Christmas at No. 80. ‘Kiss In The Dreamhouse’ at 95. Siouxsie and Budgie airborne New Year’s Eve, arrive Hawaii on New Year’s Day. As The Creatures, the pair record the ‘Feast’ album at Sea West Studios, Oahu, backing vocals courtesy of The Lamalani Hula Academy Hawaiian Chanters. Back in London, Severin and Smith begin working as The Glove. Banshees regroup in London, rehearse, fly to Far East. FEB Dates in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Wellington, Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto. Severin takes two week’s holiday in Japan. Siouxsie and Budgie no holiday in ‘83. Smith manages two weeks in Crawley by leaving phone off hook and pretending he’s in Scotland. The Glove back in the studio. MAR The Creatures promoting ‘Miss The Girl’ whose video is soon the victim of TV ‘censorship’; shown once on TVAM before seven in the morning. Creatures adopt a peccary in London Zoo, possibly the ugliest and most unwanted beast in the place; name it Gregory Peccary. APR ‘Miss The Girl’ released April 20. Smith resuscitates Cure and records ‘The Walk’, second in trilogy of ‘fantasy’ singles. ‘Feast’ released May 20, reviews positive. MAY Creatures record ‘Right Now’, a Mel Tormé song, as follow-up to ‘Miss The Girl’. The Glove project complete Banshees begin sixth studio album, as yet untitled. JUN Smith now as "permanent a member as anyone can be". Recording continues intermittently, interrupted by success of The Cure, slowed by Banshees’ desire to emulate ’Dreamhouse’. JUL ‘Right Now’ released July 1, accompanied by video featuring Sioux and Budgie in gold paint. ‘The Walk’ out same day. Both become top 20 hits. Banshees play festivals in Sweden and Denmark. Begin recording ’Dear Prudence’ in Sweden in 10 days between festivals. Budgie prefers ’Glass Onion’, also from Beatles’ ’White Album’. Recordings interrupted by Smith’s trip to London for TOTP with ’The Walk’. Later in month, Banshees record four old songs with Chandos Players, string section containing members of LSO (still not yet released). July 30, a put-together Cure play Elephant Fayre in Cornwall as The Banshees had done the previous year. Cure undertake two-week tour of States. AUG Return via Paris where Robert and partner Lol Tolhurst record ’The Lovecats’; Banshees tease Smith that song is a rip-off of their ’Cocoon’ song. Glove’s debut single ’Like An Animal’ released August 12 and eventually reaches Top 50. SEP Glove album ‘Blue Sunshine’ released September 9. ‘Dear Prudence’ released September 23. Banshees play festivals in Holland, Switzerland, Italy plus three club dates in Tel-Aviv, Israel. Smith hires car and drives banshees to Dead Sea/Jerusalem, closest Budgie comes to a holiday. Royal Albert Hall dates September 30 and October 1. OCT Following Monday Banshees begin mixing tapes for ‘Nocturne’. ‘Dear Prudence’ reaches N0.2, Banshees’ highest chart position and worthy of a silver disc. ‘Lovecats’ released October 20, accompanied by video with spectacular footage of cats, real and stuffed. Banshees put together half-hour film for Channel 4, held together by a Mad Hatter’s tea Party with all four as Alice, wigs and all. Film included four three-minute films, one by each group member, which Severin likens to "ghost stories". NOV Second Glove single, ‘Punish Me With Kisses’, out November 18. ‘Nocturne’ and an hour long video of RAH released November 25, entering charts at 29. Banshees reconvene in studio to continue work-in-progress, working on 11 tracks with everything from sitars to ‘non-instruments’. Smith completes guitar parts for Banshees album, begins recording new Cure album: "He rings us everyday," claims Severin, "he misses us already." DEC ‘’Japanese Whispers’, eight-track Cure album released containing all singles and B-sides from November 1982 to November 1983. 1984 To complete the album (!), to have a No. 1 single, to make a film soundtrack or even a film, to play in South America, TO HAVE A HOLIDAY... Mark
Cooper 16/06/84 |
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SIOUXSIE’S
SOMBRERO BOLERO BANSHEES’ SIBERIAN NIGHTS AND BYGONE DAYS IN BILBAO, industrial heart of Spain’s Basque region, there’s a basketball stadium waiting for Siouxsie And The Banshees. The lights are up over the cavernous hall, the stage is set. Outside, the crowds are gathering, and the riot police that line the square look uneasy, flipping visors backwards and forwards over twitching faces, slapping wooden truncheons into gloved hands. Last week a band turned up an hour late and the crowd rampaged. The police flex stiff muscles and grit their teeth, ready for any repeat. Meanwhile, Budgie is being raced back to the hotel and the soundcheck has been cancelled so the show can start on time. The Banshees’ Franco/Iberian tour is scraping into motion. The special effects machine broke down last night. "Hi-tech, who needs it?" asks Budgie, "back to skiffle I say, give me me wash board I’ll be alright." It’s at this point that I have my first meeting with the face of Sioux. This time it’s in multiple, spread three high over 20 feet of wall - the familiar spray of hair, the hint of a smile at the corners of the mouth. "Hmmm, red and black," comments Budgie, as Sioux’s face flicks past the car window, "that’s better - in Madrid it was pink with two noses." Eh? "The printing had gone out of synch, she was left with two noses." One way, I suppose, to make the face of Sioux shock once more. PERHAPS THE Arabs had a point after all with that quaint little belief that every time a photographer snaps, he captures a piece of the subjects soul on film, until eventually only the pictures remain. Or perhaps it’s just that every picture capable of not just telling but creating a story hides a nascent cliché. Just look at the casualties: like John Lydon holed up in LA with a musical career that he’s turned into a bad joke, and an acting career that was one from the start, unable to recapture that moment when the world fist looked in his direction. Taking on the world is one thing, doing battle with your own myth is an altogether tougher prospect. And our current contenders, Siouxsie And The Banshees - they looked defeated to me, but they say they’re rallying for another assault. Good luck. Until last year the Banshees seemed the most capable of setting the images dancing to the tune they called. With ’Hyaena’, it finally seemed as if the ghosts of Banshees past were closing in. All those pictures, all the young Siouxs that crept off the printed page and into the corners of provincial discos from whence they’d be called by the first chords of ’Spellbound’. From the Ice Queen to Findus mass-production, it added up to one thing for the Banshees - you couldn’t tell the spectre from the spectacle. ’Belladonna’ - wasn’t that by Bauhaus, or was it the Sex Gang Children, The Sisters Of Mercy perhaps? The Banshees? Aw c’mon. I see the face of Sioux close up, and it’s a face I’ve seen everywhere. She hurries into the waiting car with a flash of lace from beneath a black coat ... "Following the footsteps of a rag doll dance, we are entranced..." ARE WE? yet still? Now that the footsteps of the dance are neatly laid out in black vinyl, perhaps it is time to look back. Just what was it about the Banshees anyway? LIMBERING UP ROXY MUSIC, T. REX (Can and Captain Beefheart). Weren’t you a go-go dancer with The Sex Pistols, Siouxsie? "God no! A friend and I once got drunk at the Screen On The Green and danced on our seats, but go-go dancer? Never!" STEP ONE: "be limblessly in love." Singles: Hong Kong Garden (+++++) The Staircase (Mystery) (+++) LP: The Scream (+++++) WAY BACK when, Siouxsie And The Banshees were wearing black and turning the lights up bright white. That image might have lost the unique focus it had then, but the music of ‘The Scream’ and ‘Hong Kong Garden’ still prickles like electric acupuncture. It’s surprising how close to the bone it still penetrates. After Patti Smith’s ‘Horses’, ‘The Scream’ is the best debut LP of all time. Was it 1978 or ten years on? From the underwater claustrophobia of its cover, through the fractured monochrome scenarios to the morbid fascination of ‘Switch’s’ final flickers, its poetry in sound and splinters. From Bauhaus to the Sex Gang Children, all the dark dunces that were to paddle in its wake never understood the economy of its terror. Where a Bauhaus song is a compost heap of nastiness, ‘Hong Kong Garden’ is a gaudy rush of elation, through which the ugly reality of junk deals and nascent fascism are partially glimpsed - ‘Metal Postcard’ and ‘Switch’ hint at a horror but never pin it down, let alone heap it on the entire contents of the dictionary of darkness. Oh, and fascism of course - because the Banshees strolled through a moral twilight, there were always those ready to brand them. Julie Birchill, reviewing ’The Scream’, concentrated on the (admittedly) rather stupid line in ‘Love In A Void’, "too many Jews for my liking", despite the fact that this did not appear on the LP. What did appear on ’Metal Postcard’ was a dedication to John Heartfield, Munich born founder of the Berlin Dadaists, whose grim and violent blood-and-iron collages (similar in their imagery to the Banshees’ own) were so acceptable to the Nazi party that he had to flee the country. In exile in Britain he was threatened with extradition, which shows that even then we were pretty bad at Spot The Fascist. ‘Carcass’ from ’The Scream’ is immensely funny, but then I’m the man Neil Spence describes it as "sick". ("You’re sick" - Ed.) THE SHOW in Bilbao is uninspired, mainly because the Basque hardnuts in the audience were, pre-show, slugging the kamikaze local brandy. By halfway through the set the bottles are empty and look out, here they come... When an encore is refused, a deadly shower comes the way of an unfortunate roadie. He ducks - his skull survives and the snare drum behind him sustains a large hole... in the casing! I chat with two fans who’ve followed the Banshees across America and to Spain. Everyone seems to accept their presence by now, Siouxsie’s dubbed them "the bebbies", they ride in the crew bus. "Oh, I’ve just been coming to see the Banshees for ages," says one, "not since the beginning, mind, but then I was only eight when they did their first gigs." Meanwhile the bottles rain on, and the crew are hiding behind the amplifiers. Severin pads over, his first words to me are: "How about that for dinosaur rock, then? Pretty calm and placid, eh?" At which I am understandably bemused. Later he continues. "At your age, How come you remember Led Zeppelin anyway?" Suddenly it clicks that Mr Severin has mistaken me for Mat Snow ("Who he?" - Ed.), a man much weightier, less pretty and more disposed to satin bomber jackets and mid - 70s rock than myself. He apologises, and continues on the subject of Mat’s review of ’Nocturne’, which enthused about said LP as being almost as good as Led Zeppelin. "I wasn’t insulted, just thought it rather amusing that anyone would admit to seeing Led Zeppelin at Earls Court in 1975." Not a comparison you have a particular fear of, Steve? "Not at all. Don’t care." STEP TWO: "bye, bye blackheads." Single: Playground Twist (++++) LP: Join Hands (+++) AFTER THE glorious swirl of ‘Playground Twist’, ‘Join Hands’ was a strangely patchy and disappointing LP. Severin still rates it highly, but in retrospect it stands as the least essential of the Banshees’ legacy. A series of war memorials replace the flailing limbs of ‘The Scream’ and childhood hatred, ancestral horrors and religion flood into the monochrome to give a pale, stained-glass window tint. There’s nothing bad or obvious, just something hollow, and a poor version of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ taking up most of the second side doesn’t help. "’Join Hands’ maintains the Banshees on the devastating level attained by ‘The Scream’", concluded Paul Morley, but compared with ‘The Scream’s’ scatter of silvered guitar, there’s something lacking in McKay’s performance on the record. Weeks later he became the Banshees’ third guitar casualty - Marco Pirroni ended up fat and in Adam And The Ants, Peter Fenton was sacked, and McKay finished by sticking a dummy in his hotel room bed and walking out on a national tour, taking drummer Kenny Morris with him. Some time later, Robert Smith, lying comatose in Venice, was apparently revived by a passing Norman St. John Stevas. Life has never been easy for the guitarist with the Banshees. SPANISH JOURNALIST to Siouxsie: "What DO you do to your guitarists?" "String them up by their balls". "Why did you choose John Carruthers?" "Because he hasn’t got any balls so we knew he wouldn’t object". John Carruthers, seventh guitarist of Siouxsie And The Banshees, buys plastic Flintstone models, and laughs when I remind him of his departure from Clock DVA. He walked out after a DVA show in Paris, but not before jumping on Adi Newton’s favourite trumpet. "I was always the pop side of DVA," he says, "Adi was the avant-garde side". So what does he bring to the Banshees? "Conciseness". STEP THREE: "We’ve come to play ..." LP: Kaleidoscope (++++) Singles: Happy House (+++++) Christine (+++++) SIOUX AND Severin opened the window and in fluttered John McGeoch, a page from an old Magazine, and Budgie, the only drummer everyone likes. They’ll tell you they always said they wanted to be pop stars, but it was only now that they began to play the game, if not in earnest, at least in Technicolor. ’Happy House’ was a delightful irony, a postcard in primary colours, its perspective knocked askew by Budgie’s offbeat drums. ’Christine’ was bright, brilliant and faintly ludicrous, although ‘Eve White/Eve Black’ could still chill and thrill. On ’Kaleidoscope’, even the horror stories are full colour. Sometimes you feel an urge for one of those cold, grey chords, but the mastery of their pop twist is still something to wonder at, not wander at. SIOUXSIE AND Budgie, inseparable and insoluble. We spend many hours together getting into a state accurately described by Peter Anderson as "nae brains". I expected to find Siouxsie withdrawn, apathetic and arrogant, I found her approachable, funny and likeable. I ask her why she still does it. "Because I enjoy it," she replies after the San Sebastian show, and I believe she still does. "Because I want to make the definitive Banshees album," she continues, and I doubt they ever will. When it comes to chatting, drunken Art talk, or falling out of the bus doing chicken impersonations and singing ’Rock Lobster’, Siouxsie’s a scream. When it comes down to questions and answers she hates it. This won’t be the last of Siouxsie Sioux, but I’m told it could be the last Siouxsie interview. Ironically it’s not really an interview at all. In the end she agrees to finally commit words to tape, at 4.30a.m. on my last ’night’. "You must have learned so much more about what we’re like from being around with us," she says, "than from sitting down and asking particular questions." STEP FOUR: "but her nails are deep in your skin." Singles: Israel (+++++) Spellbound (++++) Arabian Nights (++++) LP: Juju (+++) ISRAEL WAS splendour incarnate, best heard in its live form, with the clouds sweeping past in back projection it symbolised another peak, and for all its moments (’Spellbound’, Halloween’ and ’Monitor’) ’Juju’ could do no more than mark time. Paul Morley’s review said a lot about the banshees of the time ("the Banshees are a terrific vision, and exclusive attraction, a peak in entertainment, Siouxsie And The Banshees - the toy display of hair, skirt, boys, vanity, flash, thigh, smile, cheek to cheek, back to back") but not a lot about ’Juju’. It was an archetypal banshees LP, compelling, not disastrous (that was to wait for ’Hyaena’), but nothing truly special. HIGH OVER the top of the hill that is the old town of San Sebastian, a Madonna statue looks over the bay, where Spanish holiday makers walk along the promenade. Not a plastic windmill or a tourist stall in sight. The way is lined only with old and rotting trees. From the hill you can also see into the newer section of the town, where the riot police are gathering. San Sebastian forms an unlikely focus for the fervour of the Basque terrorists - here the squeals of tourists from the beach are often known to blend with the sound of cracking skulls from the backstreets as disruptions are quelled. Today it’s the usual scene, a protest against the extradition of terrorists from France. Where now there’s turmoil, tomorrow will see only a steady stream of the dark-clothed faithful, assembled to pay homage. Not to the Banshees though - that comes later, if no less placidly. This is the congregation for morning mass at San Sebastian church. Behind his dark glasses, Severin’s eyes are bright and alert, the pay-off for staying in the hotel last night and an early bed. My shades are worn for more practical reasons, not the least being to conceal the dark circles that are the wages of another night’s drinking with Sioux and Budgie (Rock’n’roll, phew!!- Ed.). Horror tales of Aussie gay clubs, swapped stories of LA and the memory of a late-night soaking cum photo session with Budgie float in a brain still swimming. There’s not a glance as we enter the church, Severin and I in black and grey, dark glasses and blond hair, Peter Anderson modelling soggy wrestling boots and snapping shots at the back of the service. Later, when transcribing the tape, I’ll be grateful for the entertainment provided by the chanting voices, filling the lengthy gaps between my stuttered and Severin’s ponderous answers. He tells me he has little faith left in the music press. I ask him how it feels now the people that once had faith in him (Paul Morley, Chris Bohn) no longer do. There’s a long pause. "I’m not really sure how this... I don’t particularly want to talk about... I don’t think that Morley has ever done anything that..." Do you think that the music business does operate as some sort of contagion that will suck in anyone who comes in contact? "That’s pretty true, but I think that’s one of the reasons that we try and keep a bit off centre from all that rubbish. I don’t think people really judge us on what we’re doing, it’s just what we’re doing in a certain arena. "I think that what Morley was trying to say was that we should make more of an attempt to be a positive force on the other side from pop people who don’t really care much for their craft. But we don’t have the inclination or the energy to waste in doing such, we just get on with what we’re doing and if it looks as though we’re not trying then that’s nonsense because... there’s more rubbish on the other side of what we do. "We never intend to be on an independent label and live in that sacrosanct world. We’ve dived straight into the pop world and made music that is quite perverse for that medium." You dived into the arena as lions, and you’re beginning to look like Christians... "That’s not one of my fears. I don’t think we could ever be Duran Duran." But do you think you have the same amount of perversity as you once did? "I’ve no idea. I think we’ll always have a certain kind of edge, whether it was pronounced as it was... I don’t think it can be anymore, because so much has happened. I don’t think anything has come up in the wake of what we do that would make us stop and drastically alter what we do." But I remember promises of a more schizophrenic Banshees, the diversity of Can and Beefheart on LPs, the gloss and glamour of T. Rex and Roxy Music on the singles. ‘Hyaena’ seems so much flatter than I would have hoped. "Well, I always thought that idea of the combination was a pretty inadequate way of trying to describe what we were trying to do. There never was any master plan, and there never has been. Those are influences that I don’t think have any bearing any more." Sioux said the other night that she hated acceptance, is that a reaction that you have too? "I think that was more true maybe two years ago, that was what we rebelled against. We’ve spent maybe the last two years staggering around, simple because... I know exactly what she means, I don’t particularly want to be the darlings of the young marrieds, which is what other ’rock’ bands that have come up since us are becoming. "The problem is that people expect a certain reaction from you, a certain kind of portrayal of an image that is partly our doing and partly something that’s been foisted upon us." Do you feel then that because the image of the Banshees has been cheapened by imitators, it is now more difficult to be the beginnings of what has become a cliché? "I think we’re well aware of that. I think we were aware when we were writing ’Juju’ that some of what we were doing was a smirk at ourselves and a smirk at our image. I think it’s obvious that there’s so much more to us than that, though. "I still think that you can’t dismiss what we caused out of hand. I think we have given to people the same thing as Roxy Music and Bowie gave to Sioux and I when we were younger. Whether people have taken it on superficial values, or whether they’ve really dug into it for inspiration is their side of it. "I can’t see there’s anything wrong with instigating some sort of clan. Like all groups our appeal is sometimes reduced to some lowest common denominator, but I think it’s a bit worthier or a bit more disruptive than other types of clans. "There was something definitely going on for a while though that was nothing like anything that has happened since." When you say you’ve been staggering, what do you mean by that? "It was a conscious decision... I think McGeoch leaving was an end of a straight line. We’d received critical acclaim for ’Dreamhouse’ and we would have just kept on touring and fallen into the sort of traps that people like Morley and Chris Bohn think we have done. "Instead we’ve spent two years doing things like this, coming to Spain and France for a month, with no real intention of promoting a product. During that time all these pop people have come up and it has been just as confusing for us as for everyone else, but it was the only way to keep it clear to carry on. If we’d kept on a certain treadmill, albeit a treadmill that we’d invented, we would have been exhausted by now. What we needed was a lack of direction for a while, in order to be able to look around and see where we were and where we could go." Having said that, ’Hyaena’ had less identity than any Banshees LP so far. As Biba Kopf said, it sounded so like the Banshees it could have been the Sex Gang Children. "I don’t think the Sex Gang Children could have written ’Dazzle’ in a million years." Given a year or so, they could have mustered ’Pointing Bone’. You simply expect better. "Uummm... I tend to agree with a lot of that. I think about half of it is up to scratch." So why was it put out? "Well, we were aiming for something that was almost impossible, to try and get an LP out of a band that didn’t really exist, and Robert’s desire to be a pop star ground everybody down to one of the lowest points the band’s ever had. But knowing how frustrated we were and how awful it was to make the album over such a length of time, I was really pleased with the way it came out... it could have been much worse. It fails in a few ways for me. It’s not as good as ’Dreamhouse’, but then those kind of records don’t happen very often. "This interview has dwelled much more on the gloomy side than I would have wished it to, I actually feel more optimistic than I sound, and harking back to the failures of last year isn’t really what I want to put across. I’d rather say that there is a resurgence of the Banshees, but it’s not really my place to do so - that’s really down to the quality of the next record, but somehow I know that will be there, just on instinct." As incense blends with instinct the confession comes to an end, and we walk into the watery winter light. STEP FIVE: "I opened up new wounds." Singles: Fireworks (++++) Slowdive (+++++) Melt (+++++) LP: A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (+++++) "THIS MUSIC will take your breath away," promised Richard Cook, and it did. Again Siouxsie And The Banshees seemed to have confounded all expectation. When they seemed to be heading for cliché, ’Fireworks’ opened a burst of sexual shivers. The cover was a blatant plagiarisation of Klimt which set hippy spotters’ dials twitching and began the ’Siouxsie Sioux eats opium’ rumours. For all that, ‘Dreamhouse’ is superb. Siouxsie’s favourite. The last great Banshees LP? Eureka! After striking gold, could the Banshees continue to exist? "I WAS brought up in a pub you know," says Budgie one night. Peter Anderson and I listen attentively from under the bar and begin to understand why he’s still sitting on the stool. "It was great, used to hear some great stories. "One of the best ones was about this bloke who just found a rabbit lying in his front garden. He took it in and put it in the kitchen, left a cabbage leaf on the floor for it and put the rest of the cabbage in the sink. "In the morning he wakes up, goes downstairs and... no sign of the rabbit. He searches everywhere. Eventually he finds it sitting in the sink. No cabbage just this huge obese rabbit, unable to move out of the sink." MIS-STEP LP: Nocturne (-) WHY? DOES IT ever seem difficult to be Siouxsie Sioux? "Of course it does, I’m not completely confident, I’d be a complete wanker of I was confident all the time. "But I’m the best critic of the group and of myself. It makes you retreat totally though. Like what we were saying the other night about going out, you said ‘Is it because of who you are that you feel uneasy in clubs now?’ and it probably is. I mean the Banshees don’t want to be like this... I mean stars are stars, and it’s brilliant that they exist, and the Banshees are stars. "But now someone’s a star just as soon as they read they are. Success is their only justification, when they read in the press that they’re Number One they feel that they’re stars. At one time it was just the opposite - you could feel that you were Number One even if you only sold 10 records. It wasn’t restricted to music either, you could see them on the street or anything." STEP SEVEN: "I’m in a state of catalepsy/Do I really exist" LP: Hyaena (++) Singles: Dear Prudence (++) Dazzle (+++½) IT’S ALL been said. IN BARCELONA a TV studio is waiting for the Banshees. Back in England, I’m still watching. Don
Watson 15/12/84 |
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