August 28, 2011 |
FROM THE VAULT (SUMMER 2011)
The history of rock’n’roll will record that every band has a moment when they are unspeakably beautiful. It is often aligned with age; sometimes it is not the band we are looking at but the youth inside them. The youth in their skin and muscle tone, in their hips and confidence.
It is hard to see the raw youth in Siouxsie and the Banshees. The boys in the band can be boy-ish at times, but she is never particularly girl-ish. She is always more woman than girl, but if you look closely you can see the youth in Siouxsie. But it’s not the first thing you will notice.
Siouxsie Sioux, aged 19 in 1976, interviewed on TV, in a café (she is smoking) by Janet Street-Porter. Siouxsie has amazing make-up, which she must have done herself – black lips, meticulous eyebrows, they are all right angles and strong lines, a black star painted over one eye, again with sharp edges. And a perfect blonde quiff.
At this point her band have played one gig (with Sid Vicious on drums). She has been photographed as a punk, at the very beginning of the punk thing by the tabloids and Harpers & Queen. She is one of very first followers of the Sex Pistols, one of the first in Britain. And she had the smarts to know, perhaps instinctively, that if your image is in the media, it is good to connect the image to something.
From the start, her surface is perfect, with a face that could launch a make-up range or Lagerfeld collaboration. And her career would be different today, when music and beauty and fashion industries are more aligned. But Siouxsie in 1976 presents an image that hasn’t been over-capitalised. She is buried treasure…
Siouxsie Sioux has discussed her influences: Dusty Springfield, Julie Newmar (Catwoman in the TV Batman), Diana Rigg, Carolyn Jones (from The Addams Family) and Ava Gardner. From a young age, she said, “I’d already begun to identify with brunettes”.
A few punk and post-punk women are brunette – Chrissie Hynde, Gaye Advert, PolyStyrene – maybe the peroxide was for the boys, like Banshees peroxide blond Steve Severin. The blonde/brunette divide becomes more interesting if you compare Siouxsie to Madonna.
Its not always recalled, but Siouxsie influenced a nation of British and some European, Japanese, American and Canadian girls. And with several of her modes: early punk, post-punk and goth (although she dislikes this last tag).
There is a fourth phase of influence if you look at recent images of Siouxsie in her fifties, in heels and catsuit, photographed at Pam Hogg, blazing another trail. Opening more space and potential style.
But she is best remembered for her mythic influences from the distant past… 1979, then. Siouxsie as brittle femme in Umbro sports shorts (vinyl, very short), black tights, Westwood Sex T-shirt (the one with the photograph of bare breasts) and white strappy heels. Very black, shiny and new wave but with elements of the classical feminine wardrobe.
The year 1979 holds a particular spell. Her entire band look beautiful and iconic in 1979. All are Bowie fanatics; they dress in deconstructed suiting – presumably second-hand. They are photographed in Victorian rooms: bare floorboards, tired plaster, black clothes, pale skin and cigarettes.
In these 1979 images the guitarist John McKay has Bowie’s hair from Low and The Man Who Fell to Earth. Kenny Morris (drums) and Siouxsie are like reflections of each other: brunette, Ziggy-ish hair – her hair is spiky, man-ish. The whole look is post-punk black, not so shiny, more art school, dusty and English. And this sets or anticipates the tone for the early 1980s, certainly for Psychedelic Furs and Echo and the Bunnymen.
By 1979 Siouxsie has dropped the black star round her eye for a kabuki, Theda Bara and Pola Negri silent-movie queen, Oriental look. She wears thick make-up from eyelash to base of the eyebrow. It goes well with the second-hand suiting, the more monochrome clothing.
Severin says they always wore black. “No other colours were allowed. It’s a very common look now. But back then it was unusual.”
By 1981, 1982 and 1983 something shifts. The band change. Original members Kenny Morris and John McKay quit. They are replaced by peroxide slender, muscular drummer Budgie and two guitarists, John McGeoch (Duran-ish hair, tall, stylish) and Robert Smith (bleak sixth-form look, again stylish).
This new band are more colourful and more confident. They now play to 5,000 people at a time. They are distant and mythic on-stage and beautifully lit. It must be amazing to live on these vast, dark stages in distant cities (Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam) picked out by fiery red and cold blue spotlights.
The music also changes in the early 1980s. It is more sensual, tribal, visceral and evil. Certain songs – Arabian Knights, Melt and Night Shift – are artistic peaks.
You can see the new confidence in Siouxsie. Her style is less violent, more romantic. She crimps her hair to a wild crescendo. She covers herself in layers of black and layers of cloth; black leather skirts, black leather boots but now with vintage gold and black embroidery, black lace gloves ringed with diamanté, scraps of antique lace tied around her waist, her calves and the tops of her boots.
And she looks comfortable on stage, relaxed as a rock star. She is a cut-up queen, cutting up tights to make sleeves; she is into tassels and trails, her colours are black, diamond and gold. She is a mass of detail: glitter, bangles, armlets, tiny stars painted onto her cheekbones, a diamanté garter, the eye make-up is amazing, she is like a painting by Klimt.
Siouxsie in 1982 and 1983 is Black Virgin or Black Witch to Madonna’s White Virgin of 1984. And Madonna is also into detail: bangles, lace, crimps, belts, fabric ties, elbow-length gloves. They both have perfect cheekbones for the camera, although Madonna, for most of her career, is always more girl-ish. Always.
Drummer Budgie: fit body, long peroxide hair, sporty headband, black fishnet T-shirt with canary-yellow vest and pink leggings. He is into Olivia Newton-John Physical and the Princess Di spectrum of early 1980s colour.
Guitarist McGeoch dresses like the Banshees’ fans – black leather jacket, black jeans. Sometimes in a sleeveless black jacket to reveal tattoos (no one had tattoos in 1981).
Guitarist Robert Smith, better known as Robert Smith of The Cure, mainly in black but starts wearing Siouxsie’s lipstick after a night on opium. And he starts to dress like Severin (shades, beads, crucifixes).
The Banshees were not the children of bankers or other stars. They made their own outfits. There were no stylists. Punk and post-punk UK is grimy; there are photographs of Siouxsie holding a pint. You will not find photographs of Madonna or Mariah Carey with a pint.
The world of the Banshees is low-rent, late-night sizzle; red vinyl sofas, dark mirrors, ashtrays, speed, vodka, amyl nitrate, fishnets. Another England. Budgie recalls his first meetings with the band. “I was there with my roll-ups and pint and they had Rothmans and vodka and orange juice. I thought they were very posh.”
Siouxsie can also be man-ish in a tuxedo or what looks like, in one very early photograph, a Wehrmacht Feldblouse – and there’s a touch of YSL in her appreciation of jackets and suiting.
She describes dressing for their first gig in 1976. “I sat at home and got my outfit together: black vinyl drainpipes, bondage shoes, a black T-shirt with a few slashes in it and, for some reason, a pair of scissors around my neck… I borrowed my sister’s black pinstripe jacket out of her wardrobe… I also had a swastika armband and I’d painted a black star over one eye, which was supposed to look a bit Clockwork Orange.”
She and the band drop the swastikas quite quickly. It’s too strong an image to work with. You would have to be a very powerful or contrary artist to sustain a career with that kind of imagery.
At times, Siouxsie and the Banshees prefigure Madonna, flesh out new wave and post-punk black and shine a light onto the long road of goth that ends with Marilyn Manson. But they also have their own ways with fashion and identity. I would pull them back from the shadows and watch the old films and photographs carefully – this way lies darkly glittering treasure.
Images, quotes and inspiration: Siouxsie & the Banshees: The Authorised Biography by Mark Paytress (Sanctuary); Ray Stevenson’s Siouxsie and the Banshees Photo Book (Symbiosis)
by Tony Marcus
