Siouxsie & The Banshees

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'We're not going to explain ourselves any more, we're just going to do what we want and if noone understands that's their problem'..Siouxsie

 

  Quite simply they were magnificent. From humble beginnings at the 100 club where noone in the band  could really play they evolved a set of tunes that would become the album The Scream (1979 Polydor) with a sound radically different from their contemporaries and as fresh today as then and with an image that would launch a thousand hairdos and a run on black dye and make up. A true punk and female icon.
  Back in Bromley Kent UK in the mid seventies a 17 year old called Susan Dallion ,a self confessed loner, was listening to Bowie, Lou Reed, T Rex and Roxy music while most other teenagers were listening to the Eagles in their flares and long hair. In 1974 however, she got together at a Roxy Music gig with Steve Severin (aka Spunker , Havoc) and became kindred spirits and joined up with Bill Broad (Bily Idol). In 1976 their whole world changed after Bill saw the Sex Pistols  and they became  the infamous Bromley Contingent who attached themselves to the Pistols to form the nucleus of an embryonic punk scene. 
 

Susan soon re-invented herself as Siouxsie Sioux, dressing herself in what was then an outrageous mixture of glam, fetish clothing and fishnet, peek a boo shiny plastic bras, spiky stilettos, rubber stocking and swastika armbands; her face was painted "with the obsessive skill of the truly possessed" as it was described at the time. She was the high profile leaderene of punk style , "the female Sex Pistol"

But the fantasy fetish look was to parody "to show that erogenous zones are over rated" she explained of the outfit , " and that tits are no big deal " . If you believe this you'll believe anything. She looked stunning and she knew it as she became the (un ? ) willing tabloids "pin-up punkette". But her and Severin wanted more than image - they wanted to play. In September 1976 they played the 100 Club punk festival. With Sid Vicious on drums and Marco Pirroni on guitar they presented a spontaneous gig as the band wound itself through a 30 minute jam composed of bits of Smoke On The Water, Twist and Shout etc and which came to be known as The Lords Prayer. Excrutiating !!.

 
 

On Dec 1 1976 Siouxsie & Severin were in the Pistols entourage on the ITV Show 'Today'. Everyone concerned became stars overnight. Their first real gig was supporting the Slits at the Roxy; they were unfocused but intense, toying with taboos; nazi imagery , Manson chants. jabbing at the dark side, digging up hidden nasties, twisting the knife in the psyche.

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