Siouxsie & The Banshees 77-79
By the end of 1977 The Clash, Sex Pistols and The Damned were running riot with their aggressive power based Punk giving birth to a hoard of 3 chord diaspora which would eventually turn into the Oi movement. You might have been fooled into thinking that despite having three chords punk only had one string to it’s guitar. Nothing could be further than the truth, the original lack of musical ability had enhanced the musical creativity rather than hindered it as novice musicians weren’t constrained by the chains of musical conformity. The likes of Wire, Gang of Four and the Slits pushed at the edges of the norm, where as bands like A Certain Ratio and Cabaret Voltaire smashed through the barriers of conformity with experimental aural palates.
Two bands stood out for me in 78, Adam & the Antz as well as Siouxsie and the Banshees. The two had a lot in common. Both came from the art side of punk with musical formats that challenged. Live they were visually strong with Adam and Siouxsie dominating a room with a dark presence and both bands resonated a distant cool……these guys were too stylish to engage with the audience. If you spent hours getting ready to see The Antz….hair jelled, cool new black shirt from PX, black peg trousers from Flipp the American Store….then you spot Andy Warren the Antz bass player after the gig, he looks over eyeing you beneath his extra long wedge haircut……with a withering look that tells you to go home and try again.
My first encounter with The Banshees was at the Vortex club, like The Marquee it was on Wardour Street but at the top end near Oxford Street. Every punk I met had been telling me that this was the band to see, so I jumped at the chance when I saw they were playing at THE new punk venue. When I got to the club it was packed even though it was a week night and the place didn’t close until 2am with bands coming on around midnight. When Siouxsie came on the place was rammed…….as they launched into Make Up to Break Up the place went wild with a throng of pogoing teenagers, second song in was Helter Skelter a Beatles song from the White Album. I just loved it, the drummer had a different toms based sound, McKay the guitar player had a fuzzy edge that drove the songs on and the bass player just looked iconic. The show ended with the theme from Gerry Anderson’s Captain Scarlett…..leaving a room full of sweaty but happy punks. Me and my mate stayed until chucking out time, only because we had no where to go……the tube back to my aunty’s in Acton had long stopped, but even if it hadn’t she wouldn’t have allowed me to get home at 2 in the morning. So I had said I was staying with another mate, but in fact we both planned to doss about the west end until the first tube started at about 6am. We left the club as the band were moving out there gear and wandered around Soho and Piccadilly. At about 4am we bumped into two other punks who were curled up in the entrance of The Regent Hotel, an establishment that had seen better times. We struck up a conversation and the four of us sat there for a couple of hours exchanging ideas and putting the music world to rights until the Underground was ready to take us home.
The interesting thing at the time was that record companies had gone from hating punk, forcing bands to start their own up labels, to Chief Execs demanding that their A&R department sign a punk band. This started a gold rush of deals being offered to anyone with spikey hair…..many average bands who had spent five years trying to make it simply cut their hair and got a pair of straight leg trousers and despite limited talent secured a record deal. Meanwhile on the London scene two of the standout bands, Antz and Banshees couldn’t get a deal……..yet went on to be two of the biggest selling bands to emerge from the movement. Hower I did have six tracks recorded on a cassette that I had taped from two Banshees sets from the John Peel Show. In December 77 they did their first session followed by another two months later, luck for us all the great man was a fan…..Peel sets where always four song but some how I only have 6 from the two sets, I presume when John said”here’s the first song from tonights session” I scrambled around looking for a blank cassette!…..sets were recorded at BBC studios Maida Vale Studio, and as I found out when I recorded mine….you never did get to meet the great man….just spent a day with the producer.
I was now a convert and made a point of seeing Siouxsie whenever I could, at small venues like The Nashville, The Marquee and Bones club Reading, to slots on bills at The Rainbow and The Roundhouse. The band were just getting better and better and Siouxsie was fast becoming the female face of the revolution as she pulsated punk style with her dark “Cabaret” Weimar look. Gaye Advert had actively not wanted to be this year’s icon, The Slits had a street dweller chic thing going on which wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, Poly Styrene was your whacky art school student. Debbie Harry was the pin up girl of acceptable punk (New Wave)……….but the Bromley Belle represented the strong female roll model to which todays stars owe a debit of gratitude.
The great thing about the Sioux, Severine, Morris, MaKay outfit is the uniqueness of their two album tenure. The Scream and Join Hands are just so different to the generality of the world around them. Starting with the statement sleeve designs…..no traditional band on the cover like The Beatles, Stones, Clash, Generation X, Stranglers and The Damned…..instead we have art as the champion. The Scream as you would expect reflects their earlier set prior to the only catchy “single” song Hong Kong Garden being introduced. So whilst the single predated the release of the LP it does not appear on the recording leaving it void of pop and very much in the avant-garde rock genre. McKay’s guitar sound paves a way for future generations while Morris’s skin bashing symbolless drums provides a rolling thunder bedrock. For me the stand out track is METAL with the monotonous rhythm which bleeds the drudgery of a factory machine beating out a continuous repetition that ends up feeling like music.
Join Hands the second album is slower and could arguably be the birth of GOTH, as was true for a lot of punk bands their sophomore offerings reflected a more musically talented group of musicians and there was time to be spent in the studio as the album wasn’t being rushed out by the record company to cash in on the punk fad. Kenny’s toms still underpin the tracks but the slower tempo really allows McKay’s unique guitar sound to distance S&TB from other bands. Of course there is actually a single on this disc, Playground Twist, whilst not the most popiest it did get in the UK top 30 which meant an appearance on Top of the Pops…….maybe even at this early point there was a realisation that if you are to make art in the form of a long player you still need pop to open the door, a trick that the Banshees and The Cure were to exploit in the following years.
Sadly as the shows to promote JOIN HANDS got underway Morris and McKay left the group….leaving the support band’s guitarist to step in an play for both The Cure and The Banshees for the rest of the tour. Obviously Siouxsie and Severine went from strength to icons in the next decade. I am forever disappointed that Morris and McKay never did reappear again in a major incarnation. Every time I listen to these two albums it takes me back on the journey from that shabby disco Jaqueline’s (the Vortex) to seeing The Banshees a few years later at the hallowed halls of the Hammersmith Odeon
