The Absence: Memoirs Of A Banshee Drummer Budgie – Punk77 Review August 2025

Memoirs of drummers are few and far between, but this one by the legendary Budgie is an interesting one because is it a music memoir or a journey of self-analysis? I think the answer is a bit of both, but more of the latter, making it an interesting affair.

The book starts off with Budgie witnessing his mum dying in the family home in St Helens. The event impacts him and his father especially, and it is the Absence that is the name of the book and which, according to Budgie will have repercussions throughout his life.

But back to the music. Never a rabid punk, his influences were varied from hard rock to jazz and that would give him adaptability. First off, he drummed in the short-lived Spitfire Boys, then Big In Japan and had a brief affair with singer Jayne Casey. He then famously played live on the seminal post-punk album Cut by The Slits and later became the drummer in Siouxsie and the Banshees after Kenny Morris left, as well as a member of the side project The Creatures, until they split.

The added spice to the story is that he was married to Siouxsie until they divorced in 2007. With the Banshees a notably closed shop, the book promises to be an interesting experience, given the only insight into the band came from Mark Paytress’s excellent oral account with the members.

It’s interesting reading this book straight after An Anarchy Of Demons by Charlie Harper and comparing the two books. Like Budgie, Charlie didn’t exactly have an easy childhood, but the effect on him and exposure to all the excesses of rock’n’roll is negligible, and he takes to the life like living and breathing. Of course if you read the book others around him weren’t so lucky.

I always felt the Banshees, at least at the beginning, till Kaleidoscope were anti-rock.  But the book confirms the Banshees always wanted to be part of the music machine (They were disappointed they weren’t invited to Live Aid, according to Budgie) and all it offered; they were just we’re a little bit more snobby about it. In other words they happily indulged in the sex, drink, drugs and rock’n’roll orbit but alternative to the rock world. It’s oddly fitting that their permanent road crew was also Motorheads!

But while Charlie slummed it, the Banshees lived it up in ever more plush and expensive accommodation, travel and expensive tailoring. Budgie recounts to get his hair so white he would spend 8 hours in a salon while quaffing a couple of bottles of expensive Chablis.

Disappointingly, there’s surprisingly little on his time with The Slits. The Slits & Spitfire Boys got on really well mainly due to Paul Rutherford and who they regarded as a boy Slit. Funny enough, early footage of The Slits with Budgie playing live at the end of 1978 shows the songs sounding exactly the same as before. He reveals that with multiple rehearsals and demo sessions, it was Dennis Bovell who changed the whole percussion drum element and had Budgie tutored on how to play reggae beats, which he gratefully accepted and integrated into his playing.

Likewise you can assume a similar transition/training was occurring with Viv’s guitar playing to be able to move from the slabs of punk chords and noise to the more spatial clipped undistorted sounds that would eventually become the reworked songs on Cut. It’s a bit cringeworthy that Budgie signs off this period by saying he had to leave the band, otherwise he would have fallen in love with one of them.

That same narcissism exhibits itself when he reveals that in the audition for the Banshees he obviously fancies Siouxsie, and wonders if she fancies him. Little does he know he’s now entering into a punk Fleetwood Mac. Severin & Siouxsie had been together but split up by manager Nils Stevenson who convinced Severin it was bad for the band. Very forward-thinking of him, except he then had a relationship with Siouxsie. It’s never stated in the book, but there does seem to be a constant (sexual?) unspoken tension between Severin & Siouxsie, who are the main drivers of the band.

And after the period of instability around Kaleidoscope, the band settles with the brilliant John MGeoch and they become part of the machine, and for Budgie their golden period will peak with Ju Ju. It then becomes a treadmill of album, tour, album, tour, rinse and repeat and long gaps between performances with the temptation to indulge.

Budgie’s accounts of the Banshees’ albums/songs are pretty sparse. Apart from The Creatures, I don’t get a sense of emotional connection with his drumming to the bands or songs and often it will be the technical aspect that floats his boat that he elaborates on. On the Creatures, he’s more effusive, but then again, he is providing all the instrumentation.

Make no mistake, Budgie is a fantastic drummer and a zillion miles away from the standard four-four drum beat in approach and execution and constantly evolving. Drummers should check out his descriptions of how he achieved sounds, use of effects and the thought process behind them to hopefully inspire them to experiment. Check out his description in the book of how Strutting Rooster was recorded, which was dictated by the hot and humid conditions in Hawaii.

He’s described as the drummer’s drummer and that comes across. It makes you smile that the influences he brought, but dare not mention, were John Bonham and wait for it Phil Collins and that In The Air Tonight bombastic sound! Kudos to him as well for mentioning the unfashionable band with the same name as him and recalling humming their wonderful first album opener Guts as we walked down the street so he knew his hard rock as well.

And detachment is a word that comes to mind quite frequently. As the book goes on and the band have more success, the tight knit band grow ever more apart and detached. Albums become harder to do, take longer and become less successful. A string of guitarists are hired and fired; some for Spinal Tapesque reasons. McGeoch, as we know, is callously dispensed with because of his drinking, while all the rest are doing the same. Long tours, long time between gigs, filled with ever-increasing drinking and drugs begin to take their inevitable toll on health and relationships as well.

As we know, Siouxsie & Budgie begin a love affair that’s intensified by them working closely together on The Creatures album and the heady rush of that blossoming is well captured. However, there is a downside that has repercussions. The romance is carried on furtively as they dupe the rest of the band under their noses. When it comes out, courtesy of the Creatures bathroom photoshoot, inevitably the band dynamics change.

The relationship goes pear-shaped and Budgie doesn’t hold back. He’s fairly cursory in detailing his out-of-control drinking, drug taking, affairs and flirting and extra marital romances but Siouxsie seems to be able to match him stride for stride. A telling moment is a stripper in the US that Budgie likes, but it’s Siouxsie who ends up with her. Each suffered parental loss but each is a closed book to the other on that loss.
 
So, back to the absence referred to in the book and I found myself reflecting as you do. My stepbrother Ian’s Dad died suddenly when he was 14 and sent him into a spiral of drugs and then alcoholism that affected him and his own family to his death. My sister Yvonne was a similar age when our parents split up and not amicably, uprooting all the family, which had a devastating effect on her teenage years. For myself, aged around seven, it had a psychological impact that manifests itself in different ways that is now part of my DNA.

So for Budgie, the ‘absence’ of his mother has its own psychological issues that manifest down the line in multiple addictions to numb pain and loss of love. Redemption, as in so many of these rock n roll addiction books, comes from divorce, abstention and rebuilding lives. I would be curious to know if Budgie had been to an analyst, because there are two separate references to forced homosexual encounters that may or may not have led to rape. They are mentioned, but dismissed, in a few sentences. These horrific encounters in themselves cause psychological trauma that the victim self-medicates with alcohol and drugs to help submerge. Add in his catholic guilt and he certainly had a monkey on his back.

It’s one heck of an interesting book. Does the book hurt the Banshees’ legend or Siouxsie? Course not – she’s an icon and diva and together as a band Siouxsie & The Banshees were magnificent.

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