Hippies vs. Punks: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Pt. 1, Punks Go Post

As a regular feature of Hippies vs. Punks we have been exploring the undercard of some prominent music festivals of the era. For the Hippies, we have dipped into the Aquarian Family Festival of May 1969 and the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of June 1970. For the Punks, it is harder because they eschewed anything that smacked of Hippiedom, and the multi-day or daylong music festival was a Hippie-era staple.

The one storied Punk music festival is known as the 100 Club Punk Special, which took place on two nights, September 20 and 21, 1976, at the 100 Club in London. The headliners were Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned, and Buzzcocks; basically, a hall of fame of first wave UK Punk. The undercard featured Subway Sect (explored in a previous Hippies vs. Punks post) as well as the first-ever appearance of Siouxsie and the Banshees (with a pre-Pistols Sid Vicious on drums).

The story goes that Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin, Sex Pistols groupies who belonged to the Bromley Contingent, pushed their way into a slot at the 100 Club Punk Special that was vacated at the last moment. With future Adam and the Ants lead guitarist Marco Pirroni, Siouxsie and the Banshees took the stage after Subway Sect and played a medley of the "Lord's Prayer," Twist and Shout," "Deutschland Uber Alles," and "Knocking on Heaven's Door." As Siouxsie describes it in a Sounds article from 1977, "That 100 Club gig/the intention was to play one number until they threw us off the stage/but they never did/we had to end it."

Siouxsie and Severin would next appear on a stage of a different sort. In December of 1976 the Bromley Contingent appeared on the Today evening TV program and were interviewed along with the Sex Pistols by host Bill Grundy. Siouxsie, stunning with platinum blonde hair and Hippie-ish face paint, coquettishly says she has always wanted to meet Bill Grundy, which prompts Grundy to lewdly suggest an assignation after the show. This sets Steve Jones off on a string of profanity. Words never heard on English TV. The rest, as they say, is history:

If there was one event that led to the explosion of UK Punk it was the Today interview; it filled the tabloids for a week. Siouxsie graced the front page of the Daily Mirror with the headline "Siouxsie's a punk shocker."

The Bromley Contingent would also figure in the other great Sex Pistols public relations windfall, the boat-ride-turned-police-melee on the Thames during Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee anniversary celebration, June of 1977. But by that time Siouxsie and Severin had stopped being groupies and started performing regularly and writing songs as Siouxsie and the Banshees. Peter Fenton was added as a guitarist; Kenny Morris, on drums.

To hear what the band sounded like in its Punk heydey listen to the demo recorded for EMI the same month as the Pistols police melee on the Thames.

Shortly after recording the EMI demo, Fenton is replaced on guitar by John McKay. The early Sioux-Severin-Morris-McKay can be heard in the Peel Sessions from November 1977.

We're still in the Punk period. Never Mind the Bollocks has been released at the end of October.

The next Peel Sessions appearance, from early February 1978, a half month after the Pistol's Winterland implosion, still has a Punk vibe. But something has changed. Something has shifted. One can hear that in "Hong Kong Garden," which would reach number seven on the UK Singles Chart at the end of summer.

By this time the band is in the studio with producer Stephen Lillywhite recording their debut album, The Scream (1978), which is released in November.

The Scream is a great album that was well received and peaked at number 12 on the UK Albums Chart. I would class it as one of the main pillars of Post-Punk along with Metal Box (1979), Entertainment! (1979) and Unknown Pleasures (1979). "Overground" is an incredible song:

Siouxsie and the Banshees 1979 followup album, Join Hands, is generally not as well received as The Scream.

In particular, the studio reprise of "The Lord's Prayer," the song that began it all for Sioux and Severin, is usually panned by the critics. But I think it is an exceptionally strong record.

There is tendency to downplay the excellence and the impact of The Scream and Join Hands, partly I think because of the success of Kaleidoscope (1980) and Juju (1981), albums which will be our focus next Friday. Siouxsie and the Banshees as time rolled on would be thought of mostly in relation to these two albums, as well as A Kiss in the Dreamhouse (1982). But in doing so I think we've missed out on some of the richness of Post-Punk.