Siouxsie Sioux
Susan Janet Ballion, known as Siouxsie Sioux, is an English singer and songwriter. She came to prominence as the singer and main lyricist of the rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees. They released 11 studio albums from 1978 to 1995, and had several UK top twenty singles including "Hong Kong Garden", "Happy House" and "Peek-a-Boo", plus a top 25 single in the US Billboard Hot 100 with "Kiss Them for Me".
Siouxsie also formed a second group, the Creatures, in 1981, with whom she released four studio albums and singles such as "Right Now". After disbanding the Creatures in the mid-2000s, she has continued as a solo artist using the name Siouxsie, and released the album Mantaray to critical acclaim in 2007.
AllMusic named Siouxsie as "one of the most influential British singers of the rock era". Her songs have been covered by Jeff Buckley, Tricky, LCD Soundsystem, and sampled by Massive Attack and the Weeknd. In 2011, she was awarded for Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Q Awards, and in 2012, she received the Inspiration Award at the Ivor Novello Awards.
Biography
Early life (1957–1976)
Siouxsie was born Susan Janet Ballion on 27 May 1957 at Guy's Hospital in Southwark, England. She is ten years younger than her two siblings. Her sister and brother were born while the family was in the Belgian Congo. Her parents met there and worked for a few years. Her mother, Elizabeth, was of Scottish and English descent and was a secretary who spoke both French and English. Her father, Marc, was a bacteriologist who milked venom from snakes, and came from Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium. In the mid-1950s, before Siouxsie's birth, the family moved to England.The Ballions lived in a suburban district in Chislehurst, Kent. Siouxsie was an isolated child, being unable to invite friends to her house because of her alcoholic, unemployed father. Despite his issues, Siouxsie regarded him as intelligent and well-read, and sympathised with his inability to fit in with a "rigid, middle-class society". During moments of sobriety, her father shared with her his love for books. Siouxsie was aware that her family was different; the Ballions were not involved in the local community and Siouxsie, aware that her family's house differed from the neighbours', would later state that "the suburbs inspired intense hatred."
At the age of nine, she and a friend were sexually assaulted by a neighbour. The assault was ignored by both her parents and the police, and was not spoken of in the family. The incident and the way it was treated led Siouxsie to distrust adults. Years later, she stated:
I grew up having no faith in adults as responsible people. And being the youngest in the family I was isolated – I had no one to confide in. So I invented my own world, my own reality. It was my own way of defending myself – protecting myself from the outside world. The only way I could deal with how to survive was to get some strong armour.
Her father died of alcoholism-related illness when Siouxsie was 14 years old, resulting in a decline in her health. Siouxsie lost a great deal of weight and failed to attend school. After several misdiagnoses, she was operated on and survived a bout of ulcerative colitis. During the weeks of recovery in mid-1972, she watched television in the hospital and saw David Bowie on Top of the Pops.
At 17, she left school. During this period she began visiting the local gay discos frequented by her sister's friends. She later introduced her own friends to that scene. In November 1975, the Sex Pistols performed at the local art college in Chislehurst. Siouxsie did not attend, but one of her friends told her they sounded like the Stooges, and that singer Johnny Rotten had threatened students attending the gig. In February 1976, Siouxsie and her friend Steven Severin went to see the Sex Pistols play in London. After chatting with members of the band, Siouxsie and Severin decided to follow them regularly. In the following months, journalist Caroline Coon coined the term "Bromley Contingent" to describe this group of eccentric teenagers devoted to the Sex Pistols.
Siouxsie became well known in the London club scene for her glam, fetish- and bondage-inspired attire, which later became part of punk fashion. She would also heavily influence the later development of gothic fashion with her signature cat-eye makeup, deep red lipstick, spiky dyed-black hair, and black clothing. In early September 1976, the Bromley Contingent followed the Sex Pistols to France, where Siouxsie was beaten up for wearing a cupless bra and a black armband with a swastika on it. She claimed her intent was to shock the older generation, not to make a political statement. She later wrote the song "Metal Postcard ".
Following the DIY ethos and the idea that the people in the audience could be the people on stage, Siouxsie and Severin decided to form a band. When a support slot at the 100 Club Punk Festival opened up, they decided to make an attempt at performing, although at that time they did not know how to play any songs. On 20 September 1976, the band improvised 20 minutes of music while Siouxsie sang the "Lord's Prayer".
For critic Jon Savage, Siouxsie was "unlike any female singer before or since, commanding yet aloof, entirely modern". Viv Albertine from the Slits said:
Siouxsie just appeared fully made, fully in control, utterly confident. It totally blew me away. There she was doing something that I dared to dream but she took it and did it and it wiped the rest of the festival for me, that was it. I can't even remember everything else about it except that one performance.
One of Siouxsie's first public appearances was with the Sex Pistols on Bill Grundy's television show, on Thames Television in December 1976. Standing next to the band, Siouxsie made fun of the presenter when he asked her how she was doing. She responded: "I've always wanted to meet you, Bill." Grundy, who later claimed he was drunk, suggested a meeting after the show, which provoked guitarist Steve Jones to respond with a series of expletives inappropriate for prime-time television. This episode created a media furore on the front covers of several tabloids, including the Daily Mirror, which published the headline "Siouxsie's a Punk Shocker". The event had a major impact on the Sex Pistols' subsequent career, and they became a household name overnight.
Aware of the press surrounding both herself and the Sex Pistols, Siouxsie began to distance herself from the scene and stopped seeing the Sex Pistols after the 15 December 1976 gig at Notre Dame Hall. From then, she focused her energy on her own band, Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Creatures (1977–2003)
In 1977, Siouxsie and the Banshees toured the UK, with Severin on bass, Kenny Morris on drums and John McKay on guitar. One year later, their first single, "Hong Kong Garden" reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart. With its oriental-inflected xylophone motif, Melody Maker deemed it "a glorious debut All the elements come together with remarkable effect. The song is strident and powerful with tantalising oriental guitar riffs plus words and vocals that are the result of anger, disdain and isolation. No-one will be singled out because everyone is part and parcel of the whole. It might even be a hit".Their debut album, The Scream, was one of the first post-punk records released. It received 5-star reviews in Sounds and Record Mirror. The latter said that the record "points to the future, real music for the new age". The music was different from the single; it was angular, dark and jagged. The Scream was later hailed by NME as one of the best debut albums of all time along with Patti Smith's Horses. Join Hands followed in 1979 with war as the lyrical theme.
The 1980 album Kaleidoscope marked the arrival of John McGeoch, considered "one of the most innovative and influential guitarists" by The Guardian, and drummer Budgie. The hit single "Happy House" was qualified as "great Pop" with "liquid guitar" and other songs like "Red Light" were layered with electronic sounds. Kaleidoscope widened Siouxsie's audience, reaching the top 5 in the UK Albums Chart. Juju followed in 1981, reaching number 7; the singles "Spellbound" and "Arabian Knights" were described as "pop marvels" by The Guardian. During recording sessions for Juju, Siouxsie and Budgie formed a second band the Creatures, a duo characterized by a stripped-down sound focused on vocals and drums; their first record, the EP Wild Things, was a commercial success. Record Mirror
reviewed it as an "astonishingly successful exercise. Several Siouxsie voices over Budgie's quite magnificent drums and percussion make up the entire fabric but it never sounds sparse... A surprise and a triumph."
In 1982, the Siouxsie and the Banshees' album A Kiss in the Dreamhouse was widely acclaimed by critics. Richard Cook of NME depicted it as "a feat of imagination scarcely ever recorded". The single "Slowdive" was "a violin-colored dance beat number". They included strings for the first time on several songs. The recording sessions took their toll, and McGeoch was forced to quit the band.
In 1983, Siouxsie went to Hawaii to record the Creatures' first album, Feast, which included the hit single "Miss the Girl". It was her first incursion into exotica, incorporating sounds of waves, local Hawaiian choirs and local percussion. Later that year, Siouxsie and Budgie released "Right Now", a song from Mel Tormé's repertoire that the Creatures re-orchestrated with brass arrangements; "Right Now" soon became a top 20 hit single in the UK. Then, with the Banshees, she covered the Beatles' "Dear Prudence", which reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart. Two albums followed with Smith: Nocturne, recorded live in London in 1983, and 1984's Hyæna. In 1985, the single "Cities in Dust" was recorded with sequencers; it climbed to number 21 in the UK charts. Entertainment Weekly noted that it was the first of a handful of Alternative rock radio hits in the US. 1986's Tinderbox and the 1987 covers album Through the Looking Glass both reached the top 15 in the UK.
In 1988, the single "Peek-a-Boo" marked a musical departure from her previous work, anticipating hip hop-inspired rock with the use of samples. NME called it an "oriental marching band hip hop with farting horns and catchy accordion" and Melody Maker "a brightly unexpected mixture of black steel and pop disturbance". The Peepshow album received a five star review in Q magazine. The ballad "The Last Beat of My Heart" issued as a single, saw her using accordion and strings.
Siouxsie and Budgie then went to Andalusia in Spain to record the second Creatures album, Boomerang. The songs featured backing music ranging from flamenco to jazz and blues styles and brass on most songs. The first single was "Standing There". NME called Boomerang "a rich and unsettling landscape of exotica". Anton Corbijn visited the group during the recording near Jerez de la Frontera, and Siouxsie convinced him to take photographs in colour, unlike his prior work which was in black-and-white: the photos used for the promotion showed Siouxsie and Budgie in fields surrounded with sunflowers. In 1990, she toured for the first time with the Creatures, in Europe and North America.
On 1991's dance-oriented "Kiss Them for Me" single, Siouxsie and the Banshees used South Asian instrumentation, which had become popular in the UK club scene with the growth of bhangra. Indian tabla player Talvin Singh took part in the session and provided vocals for the bridge. With "Kiss Them for Me", the Banshees scored a hit on the US Billboard Hot 100 peaking at number 23. After the release of Superstition which received enthusiastic reviews, the group co-headlined the first Lollapalooza tour.
In 1992, film director Tim Burton requested that she write a song for Batman Returns, and the Banshees composed the single "Face to Face".
In the mid-1990s, Siouxsie started to do one-off collaborations with other artists. Suede invited her to a benefit concert for the Red Hot Organization. With guitarist Bernard Butler, she performed a version of Lou Reed's "Caroline Says". Spin reviewed it as "haughty and stately". Morrissey, ex-lead singer of the Smiths, recorded a duet with Siouxsie in 1994: they both sang on the single "Interlude", a track that was initially performed by Timi Yuro, a female torch singer of the 1960s. "Interlude" was released under the banner "Morrissey and Siouxsie".
The last Banshees studio album, The Rapture, was released in 1995; it was written partly in Toulouse, where she had recently moved. After the accompanying tour, the Banshees announced their split during a press conference called "20 Minutes into 20 Years". The Creatures became her only band. At the same time, she released the song "The Lighthouse" on French producer Hector Zazou's album Chansons des mers froides, with jazz trumpetist Mark Isham. Siouxsie and Zazou adapted the poem "Flannan Isle" by English poet Wilfred Wilson Gibson.
In February 1998 former Velvet Underground member John Cale invited her to a festival called "With a Little Help From My Friends" at the Paradiso in Amsterdam. The concert was shown on Dutch national television and featured an unreleased Creatures composition, "Murdering Mouth", sung as a duet with Cale. The two toured the US from June until August, performing "Murdering Mouth", and Cale's "Gun" together as the encores of a Creatures and Cale double bill.
The following year, Siouxsie and Budgie released Anima Animus, the first Creatures album since the split of the Banshees. It included the singles "2nd Floor" and "Prettiest Thing". The material had an urban sound, blending art rock and electronica. Anima Animus was described by The Times as "hypnotic and inventive". Also in 1999, Siouxsie collaborated with Marc Almond on the track "Threat of Love".
In 2002, she did a short reunion tour with the Banshees titled The Seven Year Itch. That same year, Universal released The Best of Siouxsie and the Banshees as the first reissue of her back catalogue.
In 2003, Siouxsie and Budgie released the last Creatures album, Hái!, which was in part recorded in Japan, collaborating with taiko player Leonard Eto. Peter Wratts wrote in Time Out: "Her voice is the dominant instrument here, snaking and curling around the bouncing drumming backdrop, elegiac and inhuman as she chants, purrs and whispers her way around the album". He called the record a "spine-tingling achievement". Hái! was preceded by the single "Godzilla!". That year, Siouxsie was featured on the track "Cish Cash" by Basement Jaxx, from their album Kish Kash, which won Best Electronic/Dance Album at the Grammy Awards.