I was nine when I first made contact with the Darkness.

Its emissary was Siouxsie Sioux. My dad played Siouxsie and the Banshees for me and I watched the music video for Spellbound. I saw Sioux dance, I saw her clothes and her makeup and her hair. The music she created was like nothing I had heard before and something clicked into place: I wanted to be goth. 

Since that fateful first contact, I’d like to think I’ve gained a better appreciation for the music that Siouxsie and the Banshees wrote and the style that they popularized. The band lasted for two decades and broke up in 1996, giving them a long stretch of time to spread their dark influence. The Banshees’ early material, especially, created ripples that helped kickstart the goth movement, which, despite its evolution over the years, is still going strong. 

Siouxsie Sioux is the stage name taken up by Susan Ballion, a troubled girl from southeast London. She was born in late May of 1957, and spent her childhood in Chislehurst, Bromley. Ballion grew up with an alcoholic father and experienced sexual assault at the age of nine. She was trapped in between her inner turmoil and the depressingly “normal” suburban life she led, until two important things happened. 

The first of these pivotal events was the release of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust in 1972. Every artist has their moment of realization, and for Sioux, it was seeing Bowie’s performance of ‘Starman’ on television. Bowie had introduced glam rock to a new generation, and Ballion was ready to enter that world.

The other was her introduction to “night life.” Ballion began to spend time in underground gay clubs, which were considered a safe haven for young women, as well as around the up and coming punk scene. She became a member of the Bromley Contingent, an unstructured group of teenagers who seeked to escape the suburbs and soon became avid followers of the band The Sex Pistols. 

As members of the Bromley Contingent, Ballion and her friends went to shows and met other like minded teens, including the likes of Billy Idol, and eventually, at a Roxy Music concert, Steve (Bailey) Severin. This is where things started to get interesting.

Through frantic yet punkishly indifferent planning, cancellations, and improvisations, Susan Ballion became Siouxsie Sioux and stepped onstage with Steve Severin, Sid Vicious (of The Sex Pistols) and Marco Pirroni. Siouxsie and the Banshees played their first gig in November of 1976 at the 100 Club Punk Special. They played for 20 minutes – a chaotic blend of ‘The Lord’s Prayer,’ ‘Twist and Shout,’ ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door,’ and Germany’s National Anthem. Those 20 minutes must have been good, because after the gig, things began to pick up for the Banshees.

For one thing, Nils Stevenson decided to manage the band and secured rehearsal time for them. In 1977, Kenny Morris took over as drummer for Vicious, and Peter Fenton as guitarist for Pirroni. They began to play, starting in February of 1977. That year, Sound Magazine named Sioux the Ice Queen, and they released their first album in 1978, entitled The Scream. By this time, the makeup of the band had changed again to include John McKay in the place of Peter Fenton. And of course, Sioux and Severin were still the heart of the Banshees, holding it together as different members came and went. 

According to John Robb’s comprehensive history of goth, The Art of Darkness, the band’s second album, Join Hands, was similar to The Scream in its sound and claustrophobic feel. It was successful, but it didn’t take off like their first album did. The band had begun to fall apart; a rift was forming between the solidifying entities of Sioux and Severin, Morris and McKay. Morris and McKay left the band during a record signing in Aberdeen. They felt they had no influence in the band and wanted out. They regretted leaving, but it was the choice they made, and they stuck by it. 

Finding themselves without a drummer or guitarist, Sioux and Severin recruited Robert Smith of The Cure, and Budgie from The Slits. Budgie stayed on for a long time, while Smith came and went. Other members include John McGeoch (considered one of the best guitarists the Banshees ever had), along with John Klein from the band Specimen, and Martin McCarrick. 

After the tour, Robert Smith left but they managed to get John McGeogh on board. New band members meant new sounds, and the Banshees’ third album, Kaleidoscope, came together. 

For Kaleidoscope, the band experimented with different instrumentation and a more psychedelic sound. They still kept to their dark roots though, with some of their songs still reminiscent of an earlier, spookier sound.

The whirlwind that was Siouxsie and the Banshees blasted through albums (Juju, A Kiss In The Dreamhouse, Nocturne, Hyæna, Tinderbox) and tours for years, producing hits like ‘Spellbound,’ ‘Happy House,’ and ‘Hong Kong Garden.’ The band continued to change as time went on. Its sound adjusted, Sioux’s look changed, and the guitarists swapped out time and again. All the while, they were consistently creative, playing with styles and instrumentation between albums.

Part of what made the Banshees so special was the way Sioux approached music. According to The Art of Darkness, she once said (in an interview with Michael Bracewell), “I was never attracted to being a very proficient singer or player…I was interested in creating a vision…trying to create an atmosphere: how sound resonates and makes an effect.” This is part of why she loved McGeoch so much. She felt he could really understand what she wanted him to do with sound. 

The Creatures, formed with Budgie in 1981 around the time Juju came out, was Sioux’s other band. It started as a side project, but after the Banshees broke up, she and Budgie, who were married by then, continued to make music as The Creatures until 2004. Sioux and Budgie divorced in 2007. 

Sioux was not a perfect person. Especially during her early days in the Bromley Contingent, Sioux tried to be as provocative as possible. She often dressed in provocative clothing–she called it armor–but she also tried to be as offensive as possible. Sometimes she and other members of the Bromley contingent or the punk scene wore Nazi regalia.

It’s important to note that the Nazi armbands were in poor taste, and that Sioux was not a Nazi. At the time, punk artists tended to go for what would be the most attention-grabbing and offensive, with little regard for political correctness. As stated by a BBC article, it was “trying to get up the noses of their parents.” Or as Sioux put it, “a way of watching someone…go completely red-faced.” It doesn’t make it right, but it does explain the trend. 

Siouxsie Sioux’s more positive influence spread out in ripples that never truly faded. Many of the bands that became popular in the 1980s drew influence from the Banshees: Joy Division, The Cure, Radiohead, and The Smiths. Morrissey of The Smiths said in an interview, “If you study modern groups, those who gain press coverage and chart action, none of them are as good as Siouxsie and the Banshees at full pelt.” And, of course, artists taking inspiration from these 80s bands were indirectly influenced by Siouxsie and the Banshees as well, reaching into the present day. Some more modern artists claim the Banshees as a direct inspiration as well, including The Weeknd and U2. 

After the Banshees’ fourth album, Juju, came out in 1981, Kris Needs of Louder happened to be on the merchandise crew for the album tour. He “noticed the goth movement starting to emerge, with Siouxsie and the Banshees as reluctant figureheads.” According to The Art of Darkness, even before then, around the release of Kaleidoscope, there were Siouxsie clones everywhere.  

This element of fame, the fact that her style seemed to have taken on a life of its own, was weird for Sioux. Additionally, people were calling her “the queen of goth,” something that she was not. John Robb quotes her saying, “There are so many things in goth you cannot do, you have to fit a certain template and that was something we were fighting against.” Sioux resisted being confined by a single label or by how the media portrayed her.

Thus, although the Banshees had a massive influence on goth music, it’s important to note that Siouxsie Sioux never considered herself goth, but rather “gothic” and associated herself with the punk movement. She would not be boxed in, and for good reason. According to a piece in Dazed, “In its original form, goth style was as much about startling individualism as belonging to a clique: something encapsulated by Sioux’s exotic make-up, bejewelled gloves and…gear.” 

Siouxsie and the Banshees had their own style, musically and aesthetically. Sioux would make her own clothes in the style she wanted if they did not exist, and her makeup look has become iconic. She and other like-minded young people met and mingled and shared the magic of makeup “at the movement’s high church nestled in Soho’s backstreets, known as The Batcave.”

The Batcave was a goth club. It was the place to be during the 80s, when punk aesthetic was not mass produced and club members made their clothes from whatever they could find, leaving “goth” a much more individualized aesthetic. It was about breaking stereotypes and making people upset. 

Gothic and punk fashion still exist today, but they are no longer as radicalized. Over time it has split into many different specific aesthetics, but each one still has its roots in the original “trad goth” which we can still attribute to Siouxsie Sioux. It has become normalized enough that you can find manufactured gothic clothes and style tips online; you don’t have to make them yourself. 

But you can if you want to! That’s the beauty of goth. Regardless of the existing categories, people can still express their individual creativity – like Sioux, they don’t have to be boxed into one category when there are more accurate ways for them to define themselves. 

Siouxsie Sioux herself still plays music and performs as a solo artist. I came across some live footage of a show she played in London from 2023. Sioux wields a commanding stage presence, spinning and kicking and emoting, even playing the guitar for one song. She has not lost her zeal, and I noticed, even, that she did the same kicking sequence during ‘Spellbound’ that she did performing it in 1981. She still performs in intense, eye-catching costumes and heavy eye makeup. 

I think it’s safe to say that Sioux still embraces the individualistic side of punk that she championed so long ago. The phenomenon that is goth is not dead. The Ice Queen will pull it from the darkness. 

Siousxie Sioux once said, “I was never attracted to being a very proficient singer or player…I was interested in creating a vision…trying to create an atmosphere: how sound resonates and makes an effect.”