Well, whatever would Edvard Munch
have said?
have said?
Siouxsie & The Banshees
'The Scream'
(Polydor) 1978
Good day, second-class of '78! And now for the last goddam
time in my life - I ask you, who wants to be David Bowie when
they graduate? Hands up!
Kate - dear, you're too maudlin and pretty and healthy, and the
fathers fancy you more than the daughters do. Is that any way
for a teen queen to be? Besides, you cover too many markets.
Howard - you don't cover any, and anyhow you're bald and "the
kids" can't "dance to it".
Japan and Ultravox - I will NOT tolerate over-made-up, non-
starter gangs in my classroom!
Adam - you have the mark of a loser (sorry, kid, not of exotic Cain) on you, and besides, you're
podgy.
Siouxsie - ah, Siouxsie, come up front here and show the boys and girls how it should be done.
One: must be skinny, wear a mass of make-up and look asexual enough to accommodate every
closet's ambivalent fantasies.
Two: blind the critics with words and silence and all but a few ungrateful hack swine with long
memories - who don't understand and are NEVER gonna understand - will lick your soles for the
privilege of sitting through an interview's worth of verbal contempt from you.
Three: flirt with the all-time contraband coquette that is Fascism, however lightly (an armband, a
salute, a sentence) and it will still get that ridiculously uncool yet controversial minority going.
Four: get out of your depth.
And I have come to hate glamour hangover (Bowie, Eno and Pop). They hang on and on. How I
wish they would drop dead and take Miss Banshee with them, just to spare me this task.
Factoid: since the Second World War retreated comfortably back into the realms of imagery,
Germanic girls (or otherwise descended girls whom the liberated sicko mind can twist into being
Teutonic) singing songs about death, doom and decay are very artistically credible.
Fact: until recently, Siouxsie And The Banshees included in their song set a song they had
written called 'Love In A Void'. This song featured the line "Too many Jews for my liking". This,
says Siouxsie, was a metaphor for too many fat businessmen waiting to pounce, suck the youth
from and cast aside new talent.
I do not see the connection.
I, self-righteous square that I am, consider "Too many Jews for my liking " to be the most
disgusting and unforgivable lyric-line ever written, though God knows there has been more
appalling filth written within rock'n'roll than in every other branch of entertainment taken together.
None of it comes in sight of Siouxsie, though. She is well into her twenties, so ignorant youth is no
excuse, however lame. Therefore she must be either evil or retarded - well, can YOU think of any
other way out? To shock? No-the pain and dreadful implications of this sentence could only be
justified into a means of outrage by aforementioned retard.
I am still particularly disgusted by the way Jewish writers (Viv Goldman) and otherwise extremely
moral writers (Chris Brazier) have drooled over the silly cow, letting her get away with that line as
long as she promises, "Oh, it was an unwise choice, I'll change it as soon as I can think of
something better!"
Well, take your shocking song and stick it up your rude white ass, Sioux, because here's a review
that doesn't believe in running with the pack.
Oh daddy please, pretty please, won't you beat up that nasty girl and make her fade away? She
hurts my ears and she bores me and the only reason she hasn't been written off yet as a corny
"art-rock" act is that she once used to hang around some, ah, punk band.
Standing alone, the Banshee sound is a self-important threshing machine: loud, heavy and
levelling, the sound of suet pudding.
Start with an instrumental circa 'Warsawaza'. Instrumentals are as pretentious as shit, I don't care
who does them. Chuck Berry never felt the need to, so screw you, Sioux. Follow it with
black-and-white era-horror-films to impress the impressionable.
I just heard Sioux on Hullabaloo, whining away in that Chislehurst-climber accent about how
'Summer Nights' being Number One for seven weeks was actually brain-washing. Never mind,
dear, you can always sleep guilt-free and tight at night in the sound knowledge that none of your
recordings are ever going to put people in that loathsome position, huh? I wish they were showing
clips from that capitalist, corporation-made, youth-exploitation film Grease on the TV right now. I
could do with some send-up, affectionate, overground food for thought after sitting through all
this wood-worm brain-rot hen-type-brooding from Siouxsie's boys.
Ah well, kid, take it to yourself and examine your subconscious. Maybe you'll love it. Me, I keep
seeing Siouxsie up there in her swastika armband making nothing but a fashion accessory out of
the death of millions of people.
And I honestly don't think that a really sensitive person like myself can ever see beyond that.
Julie Burchill
(NME 18TH NOVEMBER 1978)
'The Scream'
(Polydor) 1978
Good day, second-class of '78! And now for the last goddam
time in my life - I ask you, who wants to be David Bowie when
they graduate? Hands up!
Kate - dear, you're too maudlin and pretty and healthy, and the
fathers fancy you more than the daughters do. Is that any way
for a teen queen to be? Besides, you cover too many markets.
Howard - you don't cover any, and anyhow you're bald and "the
kids" can't "dance to it".
Japan and Ultravox - I will NOT tolerate over-made-up, non-
starter gangs in my classroom!
Adam - you have the mark of a loser (sorry, kid, not of exotic Cain) on you, and besides, you're
podgy.
Siouxsie - ah, Siouxsie, come up front here and show the boys and girls how it should be done.
One: must be skinny, wear a mass of make-up and look asexual enough to accommodate every
closet's ambivalent fantasies.
Two: blind the critics with words and silence and all but a few ungrateful hack swine with long
memories - who don't understand and are NEVER gonna understand - will lick your soles for the
privilege of sitting through an interview's worth of verbal contempt from you.
Three: flirt with the all-time contraband coquette that is Fascism, however lightly (an armband, a
salute, a sentence) and it will still get that ridiculously uncool yet controversial minority going.
Four: get out of your depth.
And I have come to hate glamour hangover (Bowie, Eno and Pop). They hang on and on. How I
wish they would drop dead and take Miss Banshee with them, just to spare me this task.
Factoid: since the Second World War retreated comfortably back into the realms of imagery,
Germanic girls (or otherwise descended girls whom the liberated sicko mind can twist into being
Teutonic) singing songs about death, doom and decay are very artistically credible.
Fact: until recently, Siouxsie And The Banshees included in their song set a song they had
written called 'Love In A Void'. This song featured the line "Too many Jews for my liking". This,
says Siouxsie, was a metaphor for too many fat businessmen waiting to pounce, suck the youth
from and cast aside new talent.
I do not see the connection.
I, self-righteous square that I am, consider "Too many Jews for my liking " to be the most
disgusting and unforgivable lyric-line ever written, though God knows there has been more
appalling filth written within rock'n'roll than in every other branch of entertainment taken together.
None of it comes in sight of Siouxsie, though. She is well into her twenties, so ignorant youth is no
excuse, however lame. Therefore she must be either evil or retarded - well, can YOU think of any
other way out? To shock? No-the pain and dreadful implications of this sentence could only be
justified into a means of outrage by aforementioned retard.
I am still particularly disgusted by the way Jewish writers (Viv Goldman) and otherwise extremely
moral writers (Chris Brazier) have drooled over the silly cow, letting her get away with that line as
long as she promises, "Oh, it was an unwise choice, I'll change it as soon as I can think of
something better!"
Well, take your shocking song and stick it up your rude white ass, Sioux, because here's a review
that doesn't believe in running with the pack.
Oh daddy please, pretty please, won't you beat up that nasty girl and make her fade away? She
hurts my ears and she bores me and the only reason she hasn't been written off yet as a corny
"art-rock" act is that she once used to hang around some, ah, punk band.
Standing alone, the Banshee sound is a self-important threshing machine: loud, heavy and
levelling, the sound of suet pudding.
Start with an instrumental circa 'Warsawaza'. Instrumentals are as pretentious as shit, I don't care
who does them. Chuck Berry never felt the need to, so screw you, Sioux. Follow it with
black-and-white era-horror-films to impress the impressionable.
I just heard Sioux on Hullabaloo, whining away in that Chislehurst-climber accent about how
'Summer Nights' being Number One for seven weeks was actually brain-washing. Never mind,
dear, you can always sleep guilt-free and tight at night in the sound knowledge that none of your
recordings are ever going to put people in that loathsome position, huh? I wish they were showing
clips from that capitalist, corporation-made, youth-exploitation film Grease on the TV right now. I
could do with some send-up, affectionate, overground food for thought after sitting through all
this wood-worm brain-rot hen-type-brooding from Siouxsie's boys.
Ah well, kid, take it to yourself and examine your subconscious. Maybe you'll love it. Me, I keep
seeing Siouxsie up there in her swastika armband making nothing but a fashion accessory out of
the death of millions of people.
And I honestly don't think that a really sensitive person like myself can ever see beyond that.
Julie Burchill
(NME 18TH NOVEMBER 1978)
| RETURN TO THE SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES INTERVIEW |
| Julie Burchill along with her then sidekick (and later her first husband) Tony Parsons was solely responsible for mapping the N.M.E. lifeline to UK Punk Rock in it's adolescent years of 1976-79. This teenage Bristolian answered an ad for a 'hip young gunslinger' on New Musical Express staff and luckily the serious music paper that had no fingers on the pulse of any teenager at the time offered her the job. She quickly up and left her Bristol roots and headed to the London metropolis in early 1976. She went on to cram many a blank page with wit, venom and good old fashioned libel. This 16 year-old typewriter baby was working in an alledged environment of people taking drugs, getting drunk and having nervous breakdowns, and all this was just in the N.M.E. offices! Take all this and stick it against a backdrop of prickly Punk Rock and what more could a gobby teen want? She quickly became the hack from hell which got her noticed by the kids plus other journalistic establishments. She soon made the move on to more mainstream rags when Punks first wave crashed. Julie now a mother of two is based in Brighton and on her third marriage. And still as venomous and aggressive in her writing style. Her targets these days ain't the darlings of the new wave more like fossils of the new Political arena and quite often on display in tabloid publications such as the Guardian and Time Out. She's currently doing a new column for The Times. Another Punk made good or bad you tell me? Peter Don't Care (Extract taken from The Suffragette #7 'Women In Punk - The first wave' fanzine Summer 1998) |
| RETURN TO THE SIOUXSIE AND THE BANSHEES INTERVIEW |
