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Banshee Banter | |
Siouxsie & The BansheesArticle from Making Music, May 1986 |
"Tinderbox" talk with Severin, Budgie, Carruthers. New album, new chords.
The songs, their playing, the performing, their gear, the tunings, their regrets, a mention of fungus, and even their new LP, "Tinderbox" - all Banshee life is here, crammed into one brief interview with Siouxsie's musical cohorts, Steve Severin, Budgie, and John Carruthers.
"Steve Severin: The only bass player I've ever listened to is Holger Czukay from Can... everything else is nonsense."
Do you play together live in the studio when you're recording?
J: We do, in order to get a good feel for the drums; then we might keep the bass, but we always redo the guitar.
B: When we do it initially with all the group in there, I'm trying to pick up on what might be the end result, trying to anticipate what might be coming on top, putting the punctuation in before there's really anything to punctuate - I follow the inflections of the voice crescendo.
So the drums take their cues from the voice?
B: I don't just listen to the voice. It depends what stage the song is at when we're recording it - sometimes we'll have been playing it for quite a long time, and something quirky might happen when you get it to the studio. Or we might still be arranging when we start recording; then I am listening very much to the others.
Where does the bass fit in?
S: I play somewhere between the drums and voice. People used to tell me that I should listen to the drums - I've always thought that's complete nonsense. If you just listen to the drummer, things get stiff: it's more intuitive. The idea of a bass should be to lock the group and the melody together somehow, travelling between all three instruments, trying to find where the actual right timing of the whole group is. On 'Pull To Bits', the bass line just repeats and everything changes over the top of it, with everyone working off that. But playing live, there has to be a performance to it: if you don't play as if you mean it, it sounds awful.
How do you go about getting a good performance in the studio, though?
S: The most important thing is to get the right headphone balance, or the right position of each person in the studio. We all play in the same room if we can.
Are there any songs that shine as good performances?
S: All the performances on the new album, especially 'Parties Fall', which is a brilliant performance, and a terrible mix - our lost cause, that song. 'Candyman' was a good performance... It's partly playing until it's right, but it also depends whether you recorded the song in its embryonic stage, as they develop and gain dynamics when you hear them on stage. With this album, we tried to write and play as much of it as we could before we recorded it.
Are there songs that you regret having recorded in embryonic form?
S: Oh God yes, 'Israel'.
B: We were playing that in the BBC Pebble Mill studios for the Something Else programme, writing the middle section while we were there. It changed after that... it was one of the songs we wrote on tour.
S: All of the last album, "Hyaena", would have been better if we'd gone out, played it, and cut it down a bit.
Although The Banshees are now on their second drummer, and fourth guitarist, and are coming up for their tenth anniversary as a recording band, they remain remarkably vital. I know, 'cos I saw them at Hammersmith Odeon on their last tour, and even with Siouxsie's leg in plaster they were astonishingly powerful. So don't argue. I asked Steve how the Banshees' songs had changed over the years.
S: The arrangements have stayed basically the same, but they change both because we have a new guitarist playing them (most weeks), and because Budgie tends to punctuate to the vocals. One of the reasons we're still here is that we're in a constant state of rebuilding; being a democratic four piece, we had to build up virtually a new group when John joined, and this takes quite some time, as we all have our own ideas.
J: I had to learn about 30 songs in 10 days. It was horrible.
How has John changed the group?
S: I get more lip than I ever did before.
B: It feels like the group felt around the time of "Ju-Ju", when we were quite settled as a unit. That happens when you start to write together.
Did you have to adapt your style?
J: Yeah, very much... it was far more technical than anything I'd done before. I used to rely on effects pedals for doing sound washes, playing noises, and Frippertronics ...
B: Steve uses different bass tunings, so John has to tune accordingly.
J: I just tune to a chord I like, then find the fingerings. I've one standard tuning with the top two tuned down a semi, one where the G string's tuned up a tone. There are 3 songs in the Banshees where the E string is tuned down to get a low D for a drone...
Steve's thick heavy chordal bass style is one of the band's most distinctive elements...
S: In the beginning, because McKay was coming up with such strong chord structures, I hadn't needed to play chords, and the bass had a sort of dynamic role, pushing and pumping. Basically when he and the drummer left, and suddenly it was just Sioux and me, then very quickly Budgie, we realised that we would have to write songs without a guitarist. The first song I really used those chords was 'Christine'.
J: We have to watch where we're playing - sometimes Steve plays right up the neck, which means the guitar either has to go even higher, or lower. If we just played in the same register, the whole thing would be a mass of noise. Steve sometimes cross-picks chords as well, which can also make things difficult for me. So we either play in unison, or apart from each other, to give the songs a bit of space.
Do you have any hints for young musicians?
B: Don't be scared of trying something, even if people tell you it's not the done thing. With playing drums, it's not the speed that counts... it's probably what you don't play. The simplest things are usually the best.
J: If you want to be a session guitarist, learn everything; if you want to be someone like Stanley Jordan, forget everything you were ever told - it doesn't matter what tunings... I think he's probably the most innovative guitarist playing today.
S: Not to follow any trends, I think is the most important thing - we've survived because we've never taken any notice of what was #1. Budgie's never been to the Townhouse for that Phil Collins drum sound, we're never gonna have a Trevor Horn Fairlight sound - these fads aren't going to last very long. Just ignore everybody else and get on with what you want to play, and what your vision of music should be.
Banshee Beat (Siouxsie & The Banshees) |
Tinder Is The Night (Siouxsie & The Banshees) |
Interview by Jon Lewin
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