“I was holding a cock ring”: The story of how Siouxsie Sioux met Marc Almond
I’ve known my best friend for about 12 years at this point, but our initial meeting didn’t exactly see sparks fly. A friend of mine from my university course said she thought I’d get on really well with her boyfriend at the time, and later introduced me to him at a mutual friend’s party. With us both being socially inept young adults, neither of us said much to one another on this first encounter, but after a few further occasions, it blossomed into the friendship we still share today. Pretty standard stuff, right? This is absolutely nothing compared to the first meeting of Siouxsie Sioux and Marc Almond.
At the start of the 1980s, the initial punk movement was on its last legs and had begun morphing into a variety of other tangential trends in the UK. At the forefront of this were nascent genres such as post-punk, new wave, gothic rock and even to a certain degree, electro, and while a lot of these were seemingly trying to find different ways to escape the bursting bubble of punk, there was still plenty of crossover.
Post-punk and gothic rock both attempted to incorporate a sense of darkness and moodiness to the punk sound, while new wave and electro were the much brighter counterparts that used synths as their means of escaping the brashness of punk. While Siouxsie and the Banshees were certainly on the edgier side of things in terms of the overall sound, Almond’s group, Soft Cell, had a lighter feel despite being transgressive in their overtly sexual lyrical themes.
The two friends would most definitely have had good opportunities to meet through their musical exploits, but it was in fact in a men’s leather shop that the two had their first interaction. As Siouxsie put it in an interview with The Independent, it was “the perfect setting to bump into him”, and that her and bandmate Budgie both complimented him on his musical endeavours. “He was very sweet, taken aback that I knew who he was,” she recalled of the encounter. “I said, ‘Come on, you’ve got a number one single.’ I was more surprised that he knew who I was.”
While their mutual modesty about the situation is charming and shows how down-to-earth the pair seemingly are, Almond’s version of events is more centred on embarrassment and being in awe of Siouxsie. “While I was rifling through the whips, chains and accoutrements, I felt a tap on my shoulder, turned around, and had the shock of my life,” Almond remembered. “Siouxsie and Budgie were staring down at me, I was holding a cock ring. I was like a rabbit caught in headlights. Siouxsie told me how much she loved our music in her husky, sexy voice, and I was enthralled.”
Over the years, the two formed a strong friendship and trusted each other as confidants, which Siouxsie claimed can be a hard thing to come by in a fickle music industry. Their shared interests, aside from perusing sex shops, appeared to be endless, with the two finding common ground in their love of all things “camp and gruesome”, as she puts it, and their somewhat shy demeanours both being at odds with the rest of the scene.
It seemed so natural for the two to be friends, and they both claim that they knew within an instant that things would develop into a long-lasting bond. “It was quite natural that I was attracted to him,” Siouxsie continued. “I recognised a kindred spirit. I was struck by his sense of energy, he was wired.” Almond, on the other hand, recognised something far more than just her energy, but her irresistibility. “She never disappoints people when she goes out,” he claimed. “She exudes star quality.” Such beautiful sentiments from two exceptional friends.
