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Siouxsie Sioux

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Cover of Siouxsie & the Banshees single "Shadowtime".
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Cover of Siouxsie & the Banshees single "Shadowtime".

Susan Janet Ballion (born May 27, 1957) in Bromley, England is better known by her stage name, Siouxsie Sioux. Sioux is lead singer of the influential punk/gothic rock band Siouxsie & the Banshees and lead singer of The Creatures.

In the mid-1970's, Siouxsie Sioux was a member of the Bromley Contingent; a group of bored, suburban teenagers devoted to the Sex Pistols. Other members included Billy Idol, Soo Catwoman, fellow Banshees founder Steven Severin and others.

Contents

Early life

She was the youngest of three children, born at Guy's Hospital in South London. She attended Mottingham Secondary Modern School for Girls in Kent. Her mother was a bilingual secretary, her father a laboratory technician who milked serum from poisonous snakes.

When Sioux was 14, her father died from complications of alcoholism. At age 15, she suffered ulcerative colitis, an experience she described later as "surreal." Later she stated that "it completely de-romanticised the body for me."

While growing up, Sioux was often left to look after herself in an undisciplined atmosphere. Even before his death, her father's alcoholism kept him incapacitated, forcing her mother to work full time. Even the garden at their home north of Petts Wood grew into a jungle, with high hedges and rambling roses, until the neighbours complained.

During her teens, she was a self-confessed loner and started getting into music like David Bowie, Lou Reed, T Rex and The Stooges and started visiting the local gay discos. She became very well known in the London punk scene for her outragous glam, fetish and bondage attire, which became staples of punk fashion.

Professional career

Sioux's first gig was as an unrehearsed fill-in at the 100 Club's "Punk Rock Festival" - two nights in September 1976 - organised by Malcolm McLaren.

In 1976 the Bromley Contingent followed the Sex Pistols to France, where Siouxsie was punched by an Arab for wearing a cupless bra, black vinyl stockings and a black armband with a swastika on it. Sioux later said that the armband was intended as a campy joke and that she did not, at that time, appreciate the implications of wearing a swastika. "The Nazis were not only anti-Semitic but anti-anyone different, anti-anyone like me."

Grundy interview

One of Sioux's first public appearances was with the Sex Pistols on Bill Grundy's television show. It was on that show that the Pistols garnered attention for releasing a stream of expletives at Grundy's provocation. In the course of Grundy's interview with the members of the Sex Pistols, he tried to flirt with her:

Grundy: "Are you worried, or are you just enjoying yourself?"
Sioux: "Enjoying myself."
Grundy: "Are you?"
Sioux: "Yeah."
Grundy: "Ah, that's what I thought you were doing."
Sioux: "I always wanted to meet you."
Grundy: "Did you really?"
Sioux: "Yeah."
Grundy: "We'll meet afterwards, shall we?"
It was to this that Pistols guitarist Steve Jones reacted by calling Grundy a "dirty bastard" and a "fuckin' rotter," and the interview went downhill from there.

With the Banshees

Shortly after the Grundy interview, Sioux formed Siouxsie and the Banshees with fellow Bromley Contigent members Steven Severin on bass, Marco Pirroni on guitar, and, for a brief time, future Sex Pistols bassist John Simon Ritchie, better known as Sid Vicious. When Vicious joined The Sex Pistols he was replaced by Kenny Morris. Pirroni joined up with Adam and the Ants and was replaced with Peter Fenton who in turn was replaced by John Mckay. The original lineup was in part conceived by Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren as a fill-in band at the 100 Club.

From their first album, 1978's The Scream, to their breakup in 1996, Siouxsie and the Banshees were one of the most successful, groundbreaking punk rock bands, and helped create the "goth" style of music and dress; Sioux's trademark black eyeliner, bondage gear, and icy stage persona was a huge influence on later Goth, Deathrock and Punk acts.

In 1981, she and Budgie formed The Creatures, who sporadically perform and record to this day.

More recent years

Sioux married Budgie in 1991. The following year, ostensibly "fed up with fans staring through the windows of their basement flat" in west London, she and Budgie moved to France. They now live in a converted farmhouse in a small village in south west France, where they have "a garden, cats and mountains of books." A few years ago, they set up their own label, Sioux Records, and they have recently finished building a studio in their house.

Sioux is the featured vocalist on the title track to Basement Jaxx's 2003 album Kish Kash.

She won the Icon Award at the Mojo Honours in London in June 2005.

Sioux has started work on her first solo album, which is slated to be released in early or mid 2007. In 2005, she released a DVD from her "Dreamshow" tour which went to the top of the UK Music DVD Charts and was a huge hit with her fans.

Albums

[[Image:Siouxsie-onceuponatime.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Cover of [[Once Upon a Time: The Singles|Once Upon a Time]].]]

Siouxsie & the Banshees

Film appearances of songs include The Punk Rock Movie (Don Letts, 1977); Jubilee (Derek Jarman, 1977); Out of Bounds (Richard Tuggle, 1986); Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995); The Craft (Andrew Fleming, 1996); The Filth and the Fury (Julien Temple, 2000); 24 Hour Party People (Michael Winterbottom, 2002).

References

External links

 

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