The best guitarist Siouxsie Sioux thought the Banshees ever had: “My first choice”
Siouxsie Sioux was a one-woman revolution during her heyday in the gothic landscape of late 1970s England, but the contributions of her surrounding Banshees is impossible to ignore.
Although it was her name on the record sleeves, the ever-changing landscape of that surrounding group had a colossal effect on her output.
A multitude of musicians passed through the ranks of the Banshees over the course of the band’s extensive tenure. Among them was Robert Smith of The Cure, who eventually left upon realising that, as a Banshee rather than a frontperson, he had far less say in the artistic direction of the group – although the workload was still colossal. It was a realisation that multiple Banshees members came to at one time or another. Then again, a guitarist couldn’t ask for a much better leader than Siouxsie Sioux.
Nevertheless, the constantly shifting line-up of The Banshees invariably affected the group’s output. Sioux might have been a constant, undying source of gothic excellence, but the musicians who surrounded her varied exponentially, and she certainly had her favourites.
While the aforementioned Smith did not endear himself to the frontwoman by quitting the band a few days before a concert, John McGeoch tended to rank far higher in her estimations.
Arriving at The Banshees, having honed his skills both with Magazine and Visage, the Scottish guitarist had already played a key role in defining the sound of the post-punk age, but it was his time with The Banshees that truly cemented his legendary nature, especially in the eyes of Siouxsie Sioux.
“John McGeoch was my favourite Banshee guitarist, though that was a long time ago,” she once revealed in a fan Q&A.
McGeoch was essential to the early 1980s output of the group, routinely hailed as their greatest period, with tracks like ‘Spellbound’ driven in no small part by his six-stringed stylings. Ultimately, though, his time in the group was cut short when the mental strain of The Banshees’ exhaustive touring and recordings schedules culminated in a nervous breakdown in Autumn 1982.
Alongside McGeoch, though, Sioux also highlighted the underrated talents of another guitarist in that same quote. “My first choice [for a reformed Banshees line-up] would be Knox Chandler,” the performer shared. “Who played on ‘The Rapture’ tour and on ‘Anima Animus’ and small US tour at the end of ‘99.”
Given the timeline of that tour, arriving shortly after the ultimate demise of Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1996 and performing instead with the splinter group Creatures, it is no surprise that Chandler was never really given his dues within the group.
As Sioux put it, “I always thought it a pity he joined the Banshees just as we decided to implode.”
Nevertheless, Sioux never forgot the quality of the Louisville session musician, who was seemingly second only to McGeoch, who tragically passed away in 2004, in doing so preventing a reunion of The Banshees’ ‘classic’ line-up.
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