Siouxsie Sioux

Biography

Early life (1957–1976)

Siouxsie was born Susan Janet Ballion on 27 May 1957 at Guy's Hospital in Southwark, England. Her older sister and brother were born while the family lived 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. Her mother was in control of the household and did everything. "She didn't really have the choice. I grew up thinking it normal that women went out to work, mended fuses or mowed the lawn". Siouxsie saw her mother as a strong woman; "she kept the family together". However, 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 reported to the police but the incident was quickly swept under the carpet by her family, and was not spoken of again. 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.

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 (1978), 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 retrospectively praised by Don Watson in NME as one of the best debut albums of all time. 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.

Solo (2004–present)

In 2004 Siouxsie toured for the first time as a solo act, playing Banshees and Creatures songs. A live DVD called Dreamshow was recorded at the last London concert, in which she and her musicians were accompanied by a 16-piece orchestra, the Millennia Ensemble. Released in August 2005, Deamshow reached number 1 in the UK music DVD chart.

Her debut solo album, Mantaray, was released in September 2007. Pitchfork wrote, "She really is pop", before finishing the review by declaring, "It's a success". Mojo stated: "a thirst for sonic adventure radiates from each track". Mantaray included three singles: "Into a Swan", "Here Comes That Day" and "About to Happen". In 2008, Siouxsie recorded vocals for the track "Careless Love" on The Edge of Love soundtrack by composer Angelo Badalamenti. She performed it with another Badalamenti number, "Who Will Take My Dreams Away", at the annual edition of the World Soundtrack Awards. After a year of touring, the singer played the last show of her tour in London in September 2008. A live DVD of this performance, Finale: The Last Mantaray & More Show, was released in 2009.

In June 2013, after a hiatus of five years, Siouxsie played two nights at the Royal Festival Hall in London during Yoko Ono's Meltdown festival. She performed 1980's Kaleidoscope album live in its entirety, along with other works from her back catalogue, and her performance was praised by the press. She also appeared at Ono's Double Fantasy concert, to sing the final song, "Walking on Thin Ice". In October 2014, she and fellow Banshee Steven Severin compiled a CD titled It's a Wonderfull Life for the November 2014 issue of Mojo magazine, in which she appeared on the cover. The disc included 15 tracks that inspired the Banshees.

"Love Crime", her first song in eight years, was featured in the finale of the TV series Hannibal in August 2015. Series creator Bryan Fuller called it "epic".

In 2022, Mantaray was remastered at Abbey Road Studios to mark its 15th anniversary. Mantaray, featuring a different artwork, was reissued on black vinyl. Siouxsie returned to the stage in 2023 with a series of live dates. She headlined the Cruel World Festival in Pasadena, California in May, and the Release Athens 2023 festival in June. Her performance in Madrid at the Noches del Botánico was praised by Time Out.

Songwriting

Journalist Paul Morley noted that Siouxsie's songs topics dealt with "mental illness, medical terrors, surreal diseases, depraved urges, sinister intensity, unearthly energy, sexual abuse, childhood disturbances, sordid mysteries, unbearable nervous anxiety, fairytale fears, urban discontent and the bleak dignity of solitude". Many of her songs are about damage; her childhood marked her profoundly. She said, "Damaged lives, damaged souls, damaged relationships. Most of the damage I sing about first happened when I was younger and I am still feeding off it and working it out. Early experiences are what create a lifetime of damage. The songs you write can help you fix the damage. And just the environment you are in is so important and can waste potential and corrupt something. For me, there was neglect. An alcoholic father who is not there because the most important thing for him is just to get alcohol and your mother is trying to compensate for the non-existent second parent so she's never there because she's working all the time and when she is around she's stressed out. Being isolated and not having anyone to connect with, there was just no physical touching back then".

Legacy

Her voice is, in its own right, the common thread through all of it. There is no one who sings like that. And I think there are a lot of people who were influenced by it, but even if you try and sing like her, you can't do that. You can't throw your voice like that. You can't throw harmony like that. That is a very distinct voice. Her technique is a thread between the really far-out stuff and opera and pop music. It's distinct. It's all her own.

Siouxsie has influenced artists of many genres. She had a strong impact on two trip-hop acts. Tricky covered 1983's proto trip-hop "Tattoo", to open his second album Nearly God, and Massive Attack sampled "Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)" on their song "Superpredators (Metal Postcard)" for the soundtrack to the film The Jackal.

Other acts have covered Siouxsie's songs. Jeff Buckley performed "Killing Time" several times; he first recorded it during a radio session for WFMU in 1992. LCD Soundsystem recorded a cover of "Slowdive" for the B-side of "Disco Infiltrator", which was also released on Introns. Santigold based her track "My Superman" on the music of "Red Light". In 2003, the Beta Band sampled "Painted Bird" on a track titled "Liquid Bird" on their Heroes to Zeros album. Red Hot Chili Peppers performed "Christine" at the V2001 festival and introduced it to their British audience as "your national anthem". "Christine" was also revisited by Simple Minds. Indie folk group DeVotchKa covered "The Last Beat of My Heart" at the suggestion of Arcade Fire singer Win Butler in 2007. The Weeknd sampled "Happy House" on the 2011 song "House of Balloons", which he later performed at the 2021 Super Bowl LV halftime show.

Morrissey said that "Siouxsie and the Banshees were excellent. They were one of the great groups of the late 70s, early 80s". In 1994, discussing modern bands, he also stated: "None of them are as good as Siouxsie and the Banshees at full pelt. That's not dusty nostalgia, that's fact". Another member of the Smiths, Johnny Marr, said: "Really my generation was all about a guy called John McGeoch, from Siouxsie and the Banshees. He was a great player". Marr hailed McGeoch for his work on Siouxsie's single "Spellbound". Marr qualified it as "clever" with "really good picky thing going on which is very un-rock'n'roll". Radiohead also cited McGeoch-era Siouxsie records when mentioning the recording of "There There". Their singer, Thom Yorke, said: "The band that really changed my life was R.E.M. and Siouxsie and the Banshees ...". "My favourite show I ever saw then was Siouxsie and she was absolutely amazing. ... She's totally in command of the whole audience". Yorke added that she "made an especially big impression in concert, she was really sexy but absolutely terrifying." Sonic Youth singer and guitarist Thurston Moore named "Hong Kong Garden" as one of his 25 all-time favourite songs, and declared: "she possesses one of the great voices of our generation".

Personal life

Siouxsie married bandmate Budgie in May 1991. The following year, they moved to the southwest of France.

In an interview with The Sunday Times in August 2007, she announced that she and Budgie had divorced. In an interview with The Independent, she said: I've never particularly said I'm hetero or I'm a lesbian. I know there are people who are definitely one way, but not really me. I suppose if I am attracted to men then they usually have more feminine qualities.

In 2015, she left Condom, Gers in France and she moved back to London. In 2023, she teamed up with PETA to protest against animal testing. In a letter to Japanese conglomerate Ajinomoto, the world's largest manufacturer of monosodium glutamate (MSG), she wrote that the company "should be leading the way with compassion, not falling behind. Please, stop being spellbound by bad science and end these cruel tests immediately."

Discography

DVD

2005 Dreamshow No. 1 UK

2009 Finale: The Last Mantaray & More Show No. 4 UK

Collaborations with other artists

Morrissey: "Interlude" (single recorded in duet) (1994)

Hector Zazou: "The Lighthouse" (song recorded as guest on the Chansons des mers froides/Songs from the Cold Seas album) (1995)

Marc Almond: "Threat of Love" (song recorded in duet for the Open All Night album) (1999)

Basement Jaxx: "Cish Cash" (song recorded as guest on the Kish Kash album) (2003)

Angelo Badalamenti: "Careless Love" (song recorded as guest for The Edge of Love film soundtrack) (2008)

Suede: "Caroline Says" (written by Lou Reed, performed on 30 July 1993 at a Red Hot & AIDS Benefit concert)

John Cale: "Murdering Mouth" (a Siouxsie song; performed live as a duet in 1998 during The Creatures/John Cale's US double bill, No How Tour)

Yoko Ono: "Walking on Thin Ice" (duet performed on 23 June 2013 in London)