The “only musician” in the Banshees, according to Siouxsie Sioux
Siouxsie and the Banshees were grounded by a healthy amount of DIY naivety.
Little in the way of expectations or stuffy rules, the Banshees from the get-go were powered by a potent creative flame, lighting the band’s way toward alternative stardom. Centred on the settled trio of Siouxsie Sioux, Steven Severin, and Budgie, the three carried over punk’s “learn three chords” mantra in their highly inventive approach to popcraft.
Such a lack of formality would see the Banshees travel far, dropping banger after banger of an LP run and ending their tenure as heavyweights of the Lollapalooza era. There’d been help along the way, however. While always planted in a realm of unorthodoxy, John McGeoch brought a studied and highly proficient guitar flair during the early 1980s, and Martin McCarrick expanded their palette with his trained verse in cellos and accordions.
It’s a ratio that largely followed the band right up til their close in 1996. Keeping one ‘real’ musician in the Banshees’ fold to sharpen their sideways post-punk oeuvre, the band’s very first burnish way back in 1976 was established in their trusty group formula when marking their live debut at London’s 100 Club.
“It was totally unrehearsed,” Sioux confessed to The Quietus in 2009. “It’s a well-known cliché that more people claim to have been there than actually could have fitted into the venue. We did turn up to The Clash’s studio, and they let us use their equipment, but it was basically to see how things plugged in! [laughs] How things plugged in and what way up you held a guitar! Seriously. Marco was the only musician in the first incarnation of the Banshees. The rest of us were just let loose.”
Dubbed ‘Suzie and the Banshees’ on the flyer, a last-minute slot at the famed 100 Club Punk Special two-day takeover at the tiny Oxford Street venue saw the fledgling band perform before The Clash on the Sex Pistols’ Monday night headliner.
Lacking much in the way of instrument chops as well as anything resembling material, the Banshees let loose a lengthy, impromptu jam on the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ commenced, the first time Sioux had ever sung to an audience and featuring Sid Vicious on drums and Marco Pirroni on guitar.
Pirroni would go on to form The Models and Rema-Rema, before landing on the pop charts in earnest as one of Adam Ant’s chief highwaymen during his glam theatre heyday, forming a key songwriter partner in his solo career too. And he himself had been another London ‘punk face’ as early as 1975, playing in Bazooka Joe as the headliner to the Sex Pistols very first gig as the support at St Martins Art School.
Yet, in the big bang of UK punk lore, Pirroni can count himself as the first of an esteemed alumni of proper “musicians” that helped kick off one of the defining British bands of the 1980s, the Banshees, thrust from barely proficient jam band to Top of the Pops in two dizzying short years.
