The Siouxsie Sioux and Johnny Cash duet we never got to hear: “It’s fabulous”
In one of the great, creative near misses, new wave pioneer Siouxsie Sioux had mooted a collaboration with Arkansas country icon and ‘I Walk the Line’ singer Johnny Cash.
Speaking on a fan Q&A in 2001 on the Siouxsie and the Banshees website, Sioux was asked whether she was eager to record duets as she’d done previously with Morrissey and Marc Almond. “For various reasons, way too bitchy to mention, it’s not something I’m gagging to do at the moment,” she wryly barbed.
Adding, “I did toy with the idea of approaching PJ Harvey or Johnny Cash ( ‘A Boy Named Sioux’?) to record ‘Murdering Mouth’ with… For the time being, I’ve put it on the back burner and am concentrating only on new material. The sound of another voice that complements is not that easy to find, but when it works, it’s fabulous. Who knows what will turn up?”
‘Murdering Mouth’ was a number from The Creatures side-project. Founded with Banshees drummer Budgie in 1981, the duo’s percussive art-pop would see a string of releases beyond their day job’s dissolution in 1995, eking out Anima Animus and Hái! before calling it quits in 2005. Deploying a similar wide canvas of styles that had set the Banshees apart from much of the post-punk hangover, Sioux and Budgie still flexed just how inventive their pop chops could be with The Creatures’ output.
In 1998, former Velvet Underground founder John Cale, not long after co-producing the Banshees’ final The Rapture, invited The Creatures to guest on his ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ festival in Amsterdam’s Paradiso.
Broadcast on Dutch TV, the pair performed ‘Murdering Mouth’ with Cale on backing vocals, supported by a minor orchestral collective and brass section. Written especially for the event Cale was organising, the bespoke number oozed classic Banshees and Creatures, all skulking energy and feline drama.
Yet, to this day, an official studio version was never cut. Perhaps not quite finding the right vocal, but it’s easy to see why Cash was considered for the eerie pop number.
Cash was the king of collabs. As well as forming his lauded Highwaymen quartet with the likes of Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson, Cash counted an exhaustive litany of credits and session appearances, including Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, and Roy Orbison, having shared the studio with The Man in Black. Yet, Cash was no stranger to contemporary music either, having lent his commanding vocals to U2’s electronically coated ‘The Wanderer’ from 1993’s Zooropa, as well as embarking on his American Recordings series with Rick Rubin.
‘Murdering Mouth’ would see an extremely limited release as a one-track live CD via The Creatures’ Gifthorse fan club, issuing 2,000 copies of their London performance in 2000. With Cash dying in 2003 and The Creatures folding two years later, Sioux’s country reverie was unlikely to ever come to fruition, but it’s an intriguing partnership that begs a big ‘what if?’, Sioux and Budgie’s inventive pop craft scoring Cash’s authoritative, outlaw delivery.
