Siouxsie Sioux Totally Explained

Everything about Siouxsie Sioux totally explained

Susan Janet Ballion (born May 27, 1957 in Chislehurst, London, England), better known by her stage name, Siouxsie Sioux, was the lead singer of Siouxsie & the Banshees and its splinter group The Creatures. She also recorded with artists including Morrissey and Marc Almond.
Her music has been praised by PJ Harvey, Garbage and LCD Soundsystem among others.
In 2004, Siouxsie started a solo career.

Teenage wildlife

She was the youngest of three children, born at Guy's Hospital in South London. She attended Mottingham Secondary Modern School for Girls in Kent. Her mother was a bilingual secretary, her father a laboratory technician who milked serum from poisonous snakes.
   When Sioux was 14, her father died from complications of alcoholism. At age 15, she suffered ulcerative colitis, an experience she described later as "surreal": "it completely de-romanticised the body for me."
   While growing up, Sioux was often left to look after herself in an undisciplined atmosphere. Before his death, her father's alcoholism kept him incapacitated, forcing her mother to work full time. The garden at their home north of Petts Wood grew into a jungle, with high hedges and rambling roses, until the neighbours complained.
   During her teens, she was a self-confessed loner, was into the music of David Bowie, Lou Reed, T. Rex and The Stooges, and she started visiting the local gay discos. She became very well known in the London punk scene for her outrageous glam, fetish and bondage attire, which became staples of punk fashion.
   In the mid-1970s, journalist Caroline Coon created the Bromley Contingent term to talk about a group of eccentric teenagers devoted to the Sex Pistols. Siouxsie was a member of the Contingent, along with fellow Banshees founder Steven Severin.
   Sioux's first gig was with her group Siouxsie and the Banshees, as an unrehearsed fill-in at the 100 Club Punk Festival - two nights in September 1976 - organised by Malcolm McLaren. The group didn't know or play any songs; they improvised as Sioux recited poems and prayers she'd memorized.
   The same month, the Bromley Contingent followed the Sex Pistols to France, where Siouxsie was punched by someone for wearing a cupless bra, black vinyl stockings and a black armband with a swastika on it. This was used to shock the bourgeois and wasn't a political statement. To stop controversy, she later wrote the songs "Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)" (to the memory of the anti-Nazi artist John Heartfield) and the single "Israel".
   One of Sioux's first public appearances was with the Sex Pistols on Bill Grundy's television show in December 1976. In the course of Grundy's interview with the members of the Sex Pistols, the presenter tried to flirt with her. In reaction, Pistols guitarist Steve Jones started to insult him which, created a media furor that had a major impact on the Pistols' subsequent career.

The Siouxsie & the Banshees years

In 1976 Siouxsie formed the band Siouxsie and the Banshees with her friend Steven Severin on bass guitar. Two years later, they released their first single Hong Kong Garden, which instantaneously reached the top 10 in the UK. Their first album, 1978's The Scream, was described by Nick Kent in the NME in the following terms : "The band sounds like some unique hybrid of the Velvet Underground mated with much of the ingenuity of Tago Mago-era Can, if any parallel can be drawn." At the end of the article, he added this remark: "Certainly, the traditional three-piece sound has never been used in a more unorthodox fashion with such stunning results."
   Further key albums Kaleidoscope and Juju included the hit singles "Happy House" and "Spellbound".
   In 1981, Siouxsie formed the group The Creatures with Banshees drummer Budgie, to record music more based on percussion.
   In 1982, the British press greeted the Siouxsie and the Banshees album A Kiss in the Dreamhouse enthusiastically. Richard Cook in the NME finished his review with "I promise. This music will take your breath away."
   In 1996, after recording a series of 11 successful studio albums, Siouxsie and the Banshees announced their split during a press conference called "20 minutes for 20 years".

Solo career

In the middle of the 1990s, Siouxsie started to make one-off collaborations with other artists. Morrissey recorded a duet with her in 1994: they both sang on the single "Interlude", a track that was initially performed by Timi Yuro, a female torch singer of the sixties.
   In 1995, she released the song "The Lighthouse" on the French producer Hector Zazou's album Chansons des mers froides (Songs from the Cold Seas). Sioux and Zazou adapted an excerpt of the poem "Flannan Isle" by English poet Wilfred Wilson Gibson into lyrics. The song included the incantations of a female Nanai shaman recorded in Siberia, and musical performers included Budgie and Mark Isham.
   In 2003, Siouxsie was asked to compose and sing the title track to Basement Jaxx's album Kish Kash. One year later, she toured for the first time as a solo act combining Banshees and Creatures songs : a live DVD called Dreamshow captured the last London concert of September 2004 performed with the Millennia Ensemble. Released in August 2005, this DVD reached the number one position in the UK music DVD charts. Due to that success, Universal signed her on the W14 label. Her first solo album MantaRay was released on September 10, 2007 in the UK, preceded by the "Into a Swan" single released on September 3. MantaRay was released in the U.S. on October 2. The album has gained critical acclaim. The influential site Pitchfork Media wrote "She really is pop" before finishing the review by "It's a success".
   The singer is scheduled for various festivals this summer 2008 : the Wireless Festival in London on July 4 (the same day as Morrissey), "Meta Rock" in Pise, "RockWave" in Athens, "Les Ardentes" in Liège, "Saturday Night Fiber" in Madrid on July 19, Benicàssim on july 20, "HeatWave Festival" in Tel Aviv and "Lokerse Festival" in Lokeren (Belgium) on August 6... Siouxsie will also be on tour in Ireland and Italy for the first time in 9 years.

Influence on other artists

Siouxsie & the Banshees were one of the most successful, groundbreaking post-punk new wave bands.
They had a strong impact on trip-hop acts.

Covered by :

Tricky covered "Tattoo" to open his second album Nearly God. . The original version of "Tattoo" is available on the B side of Dear Prudence or on the Banshees' Downside Up box set.
Massive Attack covered and sampled "Metal Postcard" on their song "Superpredators (Metal Postcard)" for the movie soundtrack The Jackal
LCD Soundsystem covered "Slowdive" for a compilation in 2006
Jeff Buckley covered live a Siouxsie / The Creatures song called "Killing Time", originally composed in 1989 on the album Boomerang.
The Beta Band sampled "Painted Bird" on their track "Liquid Bird" from the Heroes to Zeros album
Red Hot Chili Peppers covered "Christine" live at the V2001 festival.
The Mars Volta covered "Pulled to Bits" for the 'Wax Simulacra' single.
Arcade Fire singer Win Butler suggested covering the 1988 Siouxsie song : "The Last Beat of My Heart" to the band Devotchka.

Hailed by:

Shirley Manson of Garbage stated that her all time favourite singers are Siouxsie and Frank Sinatra. Manson also wrote in the foreword of the official Siouxsie and the Banshees biography in 2003 by Mojo magazine journalist Mark Paytress : "I learned how to sing listening to The Scream and Kaleidoscope." The singer of Garbage also told the Melody Maker that she's a special liking for the first Siouxsie album.

Morrissey stated in 1994: "None of them are as good as Siouxsie and the Banshees at full pelt. That's not dusty nostalgia, that's fact."

Johnny Marr from The Smiths stated on the BBC Radio 2 in February 2008 that he rated very high McGeoch for his work on Siouxsie's "Spellbound".

PJ Harvey selected in her top ten favourite albums of year 1999 : "Anima Animus" by The Creatures aka Siouxsie.

Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood claims that while recording their song "There There", producer Nigel Godrich tried to get guitarist Jonny Greenwood to sound like the Banshees' John McGeoch. .

The Cure were influenced by the band. In 2003, Robert Smith declared in Mark Paytress's Siouxsie biography : "Siouxsie and The Banshees and Wire were the two bands I really admired. They meant something." He also pinpointed what the Join Hands tour brought him musically. "On stage that first night with the Banshees, I was Blown away by how powerful I felt playing that kind of music. It was so different to what we were doing with The Cure. Before that, I'd wanted us to be like The Buzzcocks or Elvis Costello, the punk Beatles. Being a Banshee really changed my attitude to what I was doing." He also talked about the band to Steve Sutherland in 1985 to describe The Head on the Door : "It reminds me of the Kaleidoscope album, the idea of having lots of different sounding things, different colors."

U2 are also fans of the band. The Edge presented Siouxsie with an award at a Mojo ceremony in 2005.

Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction made a parallel between his band and the Banshees: "there are so many similar threads : melody, use of sound, attitude, sex-appeal. I always saw Jane's Addiction as the masculine Siouxsie & the Banshees."

Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters said at the 2005 Brit awards that she wouldn't be a singer without Siouxsie. She also stated in Metro that the Banshees is her all time favourite band.

Musical genre

Shirley Manson of Garbage declared how she considered the band musically.
Shirley Manson, excerpt of the Foreword of the Siouxsie & The Banshees biography by Mark Paytress (2003)

Personal events

Sioux married Budgie in 1991. The following year, ostensibly "fed up with fans staring through the windows of their basement flat" in west London, she and Budgie moved to France. They lived in a converted farmhouse in a small village in south west France, where they'd "a garden, cats and mountains of books."
In June 2005, she won the Icon Award at the Mojo Honours in London.
In 2007, she appeared in advertising materials for a line of false lashes from cosmetics company, Shu Uemura. She recently announced on BBC Radio 2's The Weekender that she and Budgie are not musical partners anymore. In an interview with The Sunday Times in August 2007, she clarified that they'd divorced. In an interview with The Independent, she said, "I've never particularly said I'm hetero or I'm a lesbian. I know there are people who are definitely one way, but not really me. I suppose if I'm attracted to men then they usually have more feminine qualities."

Discography

For her works with Siouxsie & The Banshees, see Siouxsie & the Banshees discography. For her works with The Creatures, see The Creatures discography.

Solo album

MantaRay (2007) #39 UK

Solo singles

2007 "Into a Swan" #59 UK

2007 "Here Comes That Day" #103 UK

2008 "About to Happen" UK #154 UK

DVD

2005 Dreamshow

Collaborations with other artists

Morrissey :"Interlude" (single recorded in duet) (1994)

Hector Zazou : "The Lighthouse" (song recorded as guest on the Chansons des mers froides Songs from the Cold Seas album) (1995)

Marc Almond : "Threat of Love" (song recorded in duet for the Open All Night album) (1999)

Basement Jaxx : "Cish Cash" (song recorded as guest on the Kish Kash album) (2003) Film appearances of songs include The Punk Rock Movie (Don Letts, 1977); Jubilee (Derek Jarman, 1977); Out of Bounds (Richard Tuggle, 1986); Batman Returns (Tim Burton,1992); Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995); The Craft (Andrew Fleming, 1996); (Grosse Pointe Blank) 1997.The Filth and the Fury (Julien Temple, 2000); 24 Hour Party People (Michael Winterbottom, 2002); Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006); Monster House (Gil Kenan, 2006); Notes on a Scandal (Richard Eyre, 2006); Doomsday (Neil Marshall, 2008)

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