Emerging from the London punk community, Siouxsie and the Banshees ranked among its most enduring and commercially prosperous outfits. Across two decades their sound progressed from a jagged, rudimentary art-punk approach to a refined and elegant ensemble that collected eighteen U.K. Top 40 singles while also scoring an unexpected American Top 40 entry.
Vocalist Siouxsie Sioux, born Susan Janet Ballion on May 27, 1957, steered the group through every roster shift and sonic adjustment. She and the Banshees’ first members surfaced within the Bromley Contingent, a notorious circle of devoted Sex Pistols followers. Fuelled by the rising punk wave, Ballion took the name Siouxsie and launched the band in September 1976. Bassist Steven Severin, guitarist Marco Pirroni, and drummer John Simon Ritchie—who adopted the alias Sid Vicious—completed the initial lineup. Their debut occurred later that year at the storied Punk Festival inside London’s 100 Club, where a ferocious twenty-minute version of “The Lords Prayer” made up the entire performance.
Vicious soon departed for the Sex Pistols, and Pirroni later joined Adam and the Ants. The remaining duo of Sioux and Severin brought in guitarist John McKay and drummer Kenny Morris, then entered the U.K. Top Ten with the 1978 single “Hong Kong Garden.” Their stark, discordant debut album The Scream appeared later the same year. Two days into the tour supporting the 1979 follow-up Join Hands, both McKay and Morris left without notice. Guitarist Robert Smith of the Cure, the tour’s support act, and Budgie, formerly of the Slits and Big in Japan, stepped in to complete the dates. Smith returned to the Cure, yet Budgie stayed on as a permanent member for the rest of the Banshees’ existence.
With ex-Magazine guitarist John McGeoch now aboard, the band recorded 1980’s Kaleidoscope, a noticeably gentler and more tuneful effort than its predecessors. Powered by the U.K. Top 20 hit “Happy House,” the album climbed into the Top Five. The following year they issued the psychedelic Juju and the singles anthology Once Upon a Time. Simultaneously Sioux and Budgie established the Creatures as a continuing side project. After the 1982 experimental album A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, McGeoch became ill; Smith rejoined temporarily for the scheduled tour. Two 1983 concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall were captured and later released as Nocturne. That same year Severin and Smith collaborated as the one-off project the Glove on the LP Blue Sunshine.
Once recovered, McGeoch chose not to rejoin, so the Banshees recruited former Clock DVA guitarist John Carruthers once Smith had finished contributing to the sessions for 1984’s dark, atmospheric Hyaena. With 1986’s Tinderbox the group finally cracked the U.S. Top 100 album chart, largely thanks to the strong single “Cities in Dust.” After the all-covers set Through the Looking Glass in 1987, Carruthers departed and was replaced by ex-Specimen guitarist Jon Klein and keyboardist Martin McCarrick. Their 1988 release Peepshow, marked by techno influences, delivered the band’s first U.S. chart single, “Peek-a-Boo.”
In 1991—the year Sioux and Budgie wed—the Banshees joined the first Lollapalooza tour. Their accompanying album Superstition became their biggest commercial success and yielded their sole U.S. Top 40 hit, “Kiss Them for Me.” Another singles compilation, Twice Upon a Time, followed in 1992. After a lengthy hiatus the band returned with the stylish 1995 album The Rapture, produced in part by John Cale. A year later, amid the wave of nostalgia sparked by the Sex Pistols’ reunion, Siouxsie and the Banshees disbanded. Sioux and Budgie devoted themselves to the Creatures, while Severin composed the score for the controversial film Visions of Ecstasy.
In 2002 Sioux, Severin, and Budgie reunited with guitarist Knox Chandler for the Seven Year Itch tour, which produced the live album Seven Year Itch and a concert DVD in 2003. Universal Music began issuing remastered editions of the band’s catalog with bonus tracks in 2006. Voices on the Air: The Peel Sessions, compiled from John Peel radio broadcasts recorded between 1978 and 1986, appeared that same year.
