The complete Siouxsie and the Banshees playlist
UK Punk was a flash-in-a-pan moment. The era’s most iconic group, the Sex Pistols, lasted about three years before packing it in. Siouxsie and The Banshees, on the other hand, are still at it today, over 40 years since the release of their debut album, The Scream. As one of the most enduring groups of the 1970s punk explosion, their output serves as a document of the changing face of British guitar music from the late 1970s to the present day.
As you would expect of a band that started pumping out albums in 1978, Siouxsie and The Banshees have undergone numerous lineup changes. Vocalist and band leader Susan Janet Ballion and bassist Steven Severi witnessed them all, from the group’s inception to the release of their recent album All Souls. Formed by a group of Roxy Music fans turned Sex Pistol addicts, Siouxsie and The Banshees came together in September 1976, making their live debut later that year at Malcolm McLaren’s Punk Festival at London’s 100 Club, where they performed a set featuring a 20-minute rendition of ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ with Marco Pirroni on guitar and John Simon Ritchie (Sid Vicious) on drums.
The performance left the 100 Club’s audience scraping themselves off the floor. After unleashing a furious set peppered with lines from Twist & Shout’ and ‘Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles’, an exhausted Sid Vicious decided he’d had enough and smashed his kit into a pulp of wood and canvas. “I picked up my beer, got off the stage and walked through the audience,” Siouxsie recalls in her memoir. “There was a pause then everyone started clapping. As I walked away, I had no idea I’d be doing this for the next 30-plus years.”
By 1978 and the release of their first album, Siouxsie and The Banshees were selling out venues across London. By that time, Vicious had joined The Sex Pistols, and Pirroni was off forming Adam & The Ants. After finding replacements in the form of John McKay and drummer Kenny Morris, The Banshees entered the UK top ten with their single ‘Hong Kong Garden’. McKay and Morris left the group halfway through the band’s subsequent 1979 tour, at which point Robert Smith of The Cure and former The Slits drummer Budgie were welcomed into the fold.
Over the years, Siouxsie and The Banshees reinvented themselves time and time again – always managing to keep that forward-thinking ethos at the heart of their craft. The band has put out eleven studio albums, three live albums, and four compilation albums in total. Below, you’ll find a 14-hour playlist of the band’s music in chronological order, stretching from 1978 to the present day. Happy listening.
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