Siouxsie and the Banshees

• 1. Introduction

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  Siouxsie and the Banshees took their first stage as a band on the 20th of September 1976, not because they were ready, but because a slot opened up at the 100 Club Punk Festival and Siouxsie Sioux decided to fill it. They had no band name, no rehearsed material, and only two borrowed musicians: Marco Pirroni on guitar and Sid Vicious on drums. What they played was a 20-minute improvisation built around "The Lord's Prayer." They intended it to be a one-off. It wasn't.

  Over the next two decades, the band Siouxsie founded with bassist Steven Severin would release eleven studio albums and thirty singles, survive multiple line-up collapses, chart in both the UK and the US, and earn a place among the most restless musical forces of their era. The Times called them "one of the most audacious and uncompromising musical adventurers of the post-punk era". Joy Division, the Cure, U2, the Smiths, Radiohead, Massive Attack, and Jeff Buckley have all cited them as an influence.

  How did a band formed on impulse at a punk festival become so widely felt? And what does it mean that they spent twenty years refusing to stay the same?

• 2. Punk Origins

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  Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin first met at a Roxy Music concert in September 1975. Glam rock had faded, and neither of them had found anything new to latch onto. From February 1976, they began following the Sex Pistols around, part of a loose crowd that journalist Caroline Coon dubbed the "Bromley Contingent" because most of them came from the Bromley area of south-east London. Severin came to despise the label: "There was no such thing, it was just a bunch of people drawn together by the way they felt and they looked."

  When word spread that a band had dropped out of the 100 Club Punk Festival, organized by Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, Siouxsie proposed they fill the gap. Two days of preparation and two borrowed players later, they were on stage.

  The band the duo then built through 1977 went through an early guitarist who was fired mid-set in May, then replaced by John McKay in July. By November of that year, two things happened that would shape the band's identity: they appeared on Granada Television's So It Goes, hosted by Tony Wilson, and they recorded their first John Peel session for BBC radio. That session introduced what reviewers would later describe as "motorik austerity" in the drum patterns, "space in the sound", and "serrated guitars". The band described their own music as "cold, machine-like and passionate at the same time".

• 3. The Scream and After

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  In early 1978, the band was selling out venues in London but struggling to find a record deal that would give them, in their words, "complete artistic control." Polydor offered that guarantee and signed them in June. Their first single, "Hong Kong Garden," featuring a xylophone motif, reached the UK top 10 shortly after release. An NME reviewer called it "a bright, vivid narrative, something like snapshots from the window of a speeding Japanese train, power charged by the most original, intoxicating guitar playing I heard in a long, long time."

  The debut album The Scream followed in November 1978. NME's Nick Kent wrote of it: "Certainly, the traditional three-piece sound has never been used in a more unorthodox fashion with such stunning results." The second album, Join Hands, arrived in 1979. Melody Maker's Jon Savage described one track, "Poppy Day," as "a short, powerful evocation of the Great War graveyards."

  The Join Hands tour then produced one of the defining crises of the band's history. A few dates in, in September, drummer Kenny Morris and guitarist John McKay walked out after an argument at an in-store signing and quit. The Banshees' manager phoned Budgie, formerly with the Slits, who agreed to audition and was hired. Finding a guitarist proved harder. Robert Smith of the Cure was already on tour as the support act. He offered his services. Having seen too many "rock virtuosos," the band accepted. Smith finished the tour and then returned to the Cure.

• 4. A Shape-Shifting Decade

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  Kaleidoscope, released in 1980 with John McGeoch now on guitar, was built around an unusual idea: each song should sound completely different, regardless of whether the material could be performed live. Synthesizers, sitars, and drum machines all appeared. Melody Maker described it as "a kaleidoscope of sound and imagery, new forms, and content, flashing before our eyes." The album peaked at number 5 on the UK albums chart, and this line-up toured the United States for the first time that November.

  Juju arrived in 1981 by a different method. The band practised the songs in concert before recording them. Severin later described it as an unintentional concept album that "drew on darker elements." Sounds called it "intriguing, intense, brooding and powerfully atmospheric." It peaked at number 7 on the UK albums chart. Johnny Marr of the Smiths later singled out McGeoch's guitar contributions for praise, calling McGeoch's work on "Spellbound" "clever" with a "really good picky thing going on which is very un-rock'n'roll."

  A Kiss in the Dreamhouse followed in 1982, featuring strings across several tracks. Severin described it as a "sexy album," an intentional contrast to their previous work. NME's Richard Cook ended his review with a direct promise to readers: "I promise...this music will take your breath away." McGeoch, however, was hospitalized after returning from a promotional trip to Madrid, struggling with alcohol problems. The band let him go, and Robert Smith rejoined in November 1982.

  By September 1983, Smith was part of a cover version of the Beatles' "Dear Prudence" that became the band's biggest UK hit, reaching number 3 on the Singles Chart. He left again the following spring before the release of Hyæna, citing health issues from running two bands simultaneously. The band finished out the mid-1980s with Tinderbox in April 1986 and a covers album, Through the Looking Glass, in 1987, the latter motivated by a desire for spontaneity after the lengthy Tinderbox sessions.

• 5. Breaking America

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  Peepshow, recorded in 1988, was built around instrumentation that had little precedent in rock: cello, accordion, horns, and other non-traditional elements joined the mix. Q magazine gave it five stars, writing: "Peepshow takes place in some distorted fairground of the mind where weird and wonderful shapes loom." The lead single "Peek-a-Boo" reached number 52 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking their first real foothold in the United States. It also became the first track to top the US Modern Rock chart, which Billboard had launched that same September.

  "Kiss Them for Me," released in 1991, pushed further. The track mixed strings over a dance rhythm with exotica elements, and featured an uncredited contribution from the then-unknown Indian tabla player Talvin Singh, who also sang during the bridge. The single peaked at number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100 and brought the band to a new audience. The accompanying album, Superstition, led to the band touring the US as second headliners of the inaugural Lollapalooza.

  The following year, director Tim Burton personally requested that the band compose "Face to Face" for the film Batman Returns. In 1993, they recorded new material built on string arrangements and performed at festivals abroad. They then brought in former Velvet Underground member John Cale to produce the rest of what became The Rapture, released in 1995. Melody Maker called it "a fascinating, transcontinental journey through danger and exotica." A few weeks after its release, Polydor dropped the band from its roster.

• 6. Influence and Aftermath

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  Joy Division's Peter Hook saw the Banshees live in Manchester in 1977 and credited them as one of his band's big influences, singling out The Scream as one of his favourite records. Joy Division drummer Stephen Morris traced the effect further back, to the 1977 John Peel session: Kenny Morris played mostly toms, cymbals were absent, and that "foreboding sound" pointed toward something new. Martin Hannett, who produced Joy Division, noted that Siouxsie stood apart from the other bands of 1977.

  Robert Smith declared in 2003: "Siouxsie and the Banshees and Wire were the two bands I really admired. They meant something." He described the first night of the 1979 Join Hands tour as a revelation: "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."

  Thom Yorke has said that seeing Siouxsie perform in 1985 inspired him to become a performer. Jeff Buckley, speaking at a press conference in Lyon, France in March 1995, said: "Siouxsie, I have much of her influence in my voice." He covered "Killing Time" from the Creatures' Boomerang album on various occasions and owned all of the Banshees' albums. Garbage singer Shirley Manson stated: "I learned how to sing listening to The Scream and Kaleidoscope." Massive Attack heavily sampled "Metal Postcard" for their track "Superpredators (Metal Postcard)", recorded prior to their Mezzanine album. The Weeknd sampled different parts of "Happy House" for his song "House of Balloons."

  The band disbanded in April 1996 after twenty years. Siouxsie attributed the split to "the situation with Polydor" and "internal problems as well." John McGeoch died on the 4th of March 2004, after an epileptic seizure in his sleep, at the age of 48. Kenny Morris died on the 15th of January 2026, at the age of 68, after a short illness. In 2025, John McKay released his debut solo album, Sixes and Sevens.