A Girl Named Sioux

We are sitting in the Mountbatten Suite of the Covent Garden Hotel, slumped deep into the yielding comfort of futon-draped rattan chairs. Mozart is busy piddling baroque-muzak softly in the background ("Mozart lift-music," says Siouxsie). And across from our alcove there's the Mountbatten Exhibition sealed behind clinical glass. An imperial red uniform. Some faded newspaper headlines. A scattering of sepia photographs of strange Twilight-Zone figures come adrift in time and space.

A uniformed bellboy with a label identifying him as Chester brings us a dark cafetière of rich coffee with a silver tray of individually hand-crafted biscuits.

All this establishment regalia creates a deliciously apt counterpoint to Siouxsie. She sits forward, face as-close-as-this. Hair in a jet-black bob. Eyes deep and intimate beneath eyebrows precise as scalpel-cuts. But you notice these things because it's Siouxsie. In every other way she's dressed unexceptionally enough. Sparkle nail-varnish. Zip-suede boots with black slacks. Soft gauze top with wine jacket, dark ruffs around neck and cuffs. People walking by on their way to the Reception Desk don't glance twice. Unaware that this is the woman who once outraged the nation on the Sex Pistols vs Bill Grundy TV confrontation.

In the file of press cuttings there's a quote about Siouxsie "not liking to do interviews".

"I don't think anyone does," she admits sharply. "Depends on the interview, really. I haven't done one for a long time. And it's hard doing your first interview when you've not done any for a while. It's something you need to remember how to do."

Suitably chastened and forewarned, I meekly venture to ask about her dates at the Temple Bar Music Centre in Dublin.

"We haven't played Ireland for a long time," she admits. "Cos the last Banshees tour we did didn't go to Ireland. This time it's the Creatures. The Creatures only ever toured once. So I don't even know if they ever played Ireland before. So, it's exciting because the audience won't know what to expect. They haven't a clue... and it's good not to have any preconceptions. I remember we tried to play the Ulster Hall in Belfast around the time of Peepshow (1988), but we were still banned for some incident that occurred in the late '70s, which is funny."

The new Creatures album is as subversively stimulating as we've come to expect. Metal Burundi rhythms. Cool electronics. No intrusive guitars. Just suggestive ventures into Portishead zones with the shimmering stasis and ticking contrapuntal rhythms of "Don't Go To Sleep Without Me". The album is called Anima Animus. That means male/female, right?

"It's the woman within the man, and the man within the woman," she agrees carefully. "There are both elements in both sexes. Interchangeable. It's certainly something that exists within a lot of popular music. But there's still a lot of stereotype-playing too. This sort of macho rock bullshit—I've never liked it and I never will. The role that females are supposed to play within music is usually as something ornamental. It used to be really bad, and maybe it still is really bad. I always found that insulting."

But you've never accepted such restrictions?

"Nooooo! No-no! And I was considered 'difficult' because of that. That's how narrow it was. People are now very scared of being accused of sexism, so they're no longer openly like that. But it's still there."

But aren't boy bands marketed in exactly the same way as decorative sex-objects?

"I know. And I find that just as totally vacuous. It seems to me that more and more and more the industry is grooming acts visually. That seems to be much more the criteria. It's like, when I was growing up, if we saw pop stars that were a bit different, they looked that way because they dressed themselves that way. But now it's gangs of stylists, y'know, even for a lot of people who are so-called credited with being highly individual and weird and freaky. There are teams of stylists and make-up artists there. You know you're talking armies!"

But there's always been homo-erotic elements to the way male pop stars have been presented. Even Elvis . . .

"Oh yeah . . . he wore make-up and dyed his hair, didn't he?"

For a creature like Siouxsie Sioux, where does the persona end, and the person start? Her story begins when Susan Ballion was born on 27th May 1957. That same week Andy Williams was no. 1 with "Butterfly", and Lonnie Donegan, Elvis and the Chas McDevitt Skiffle Group (!) were all in the Top Ten. And from the start she was the girl who liked the kind of outfits that girls in magazine stories never wore. Then I imagine her practising misspelling her name on the covers of her schoolbooks during particularly boring algebra sessions ("Sue" = "Sioux"?). And which pop stars would Susan Ballion have stuck up on her bedroom wall when she was 14?

"Ooooo Mick Ronson, Bowie, Bolan, David Cassidy even—but that was when I was 11. And pictures of horses. I think it was horses I was really into. But actually I loved Mick Ronson, he had such a pretty face."

Personally, I never saw Mick Ronson as a glamorous figure. He always looked more like a brickie.

"No! No!" she protests in animated shock-horror. "That picture on the cover of his Slaughter On 10th Avenue album? He wasn't at all like a brickie! No—some of the others (in The Spiders From Mars) were. Trevor Bolder. And Woody Woodmansey with the huge sideburns—gross, gawd, they were horrible! They were brickies in glam-rags. And I hated Sweet as well. I really wasn't fooled by the likes of Sweet. But no—Mick Ronson had a sweet pretty face. Not a brickie!"

After these early infatuations would come the difficult, dysfunctional adolescence?

"When adolescence hits you and you're feeling vulnerable, particularly when you don't have a skin like a rhino, you either shrivel up and go hide in the corner, or you deal with it by finding some really good armour. By standing in the middle of the road and screaming at the top of your voice.

"But there's a price to pay for over-protecting yourself—you harden yourself to everything, and lose what's really precious. People think that cynicism is the modern attitude. And yes there is a veneer, and yes being sensitive and stumbling at every stone that's thrown at you can be destructive—you're not going to survive it. But hopefully you can toughen without becoming totally cynical and losing that innocence."

After that, I see an untidy set of preconceptions galloping ahead of her.

"During my first excursions up to London around my late-teens, my first sort-of pals were always gay. It was only within the gay community that I felt any kind of lack of pressure from the clichés that girls of that age go through. And being in a gay club or whatever was the first sane place I felt I was in. And as far as anyone being homophobic—I've never understood that, in the same way that I could never understand racism or any kind of 'ism'. But you can tell that in society in general, even in the law, that it's still there. They've grudgingly passed a law that you can now have a gay relationship—just, at the age of 16. While it has always been legal for someone to be pregnant and married at that age. So that's how backward things still are."

Then there was Punk. To Julie Burchill it was "shit in safety pins". It was also the last gasp of vinyl-based humanity. It was running around hyper and making things happen. And it was an extreme hazard-sport acted out in shit-pits and grot-holes. Oh, Brave New World! Now, it's like trying to remember that month you spent on Mars.

But at its centre were the Banshees—John McKay's jagged unorthodox chording pinned down by the deep precise rhythm seduction, perfectly counterpointing Siouxsie's taut vocal, austere ambience and compellingly monstrous presence.

"I feel like I gatecrashed my way into the music world," she laughs. "I certainly wasn't invited. And it was only supposed to last 10 or 15 minutes. Turned into bloody 20 years!!"

In the Heaven-Knows-We're-Miserablist-Now Punk aftermath, Siouxsie is the Goth it's OK to like, creating worlds like a novelist, art like a painter, and intrigue like a riddler, sucking in elements of 19th-century Symbolism, Fin de Siècle Decadence and Surrealism, then exhaling it all streamlined with a futuristic Fascistic fetishistic edge.

But when she puts that Banshee stage make-up on—the surface "shiny and silken"—is she putting Siouxsie on over Susan Ballion? Is Siouxsie another shell of carefully contrived armour?

"No. That's a very cartoony idea of what my image is. It's not like that. I've never worn white pan-stick make-up. And I don't just wear black, that's a real misconception. And if the external attraction is all there is, then I find it quite worthless. There's got to be more than that."

But the make-up is an important part of the spectacle.

"Oh yes. It's almost a ritual. And part of the ritual is the preparation. It's like any drug culture—it's not just the drug, it's the whole paraphernalia that goes with it. As with any fetish or obsession, it's not just the end result, it's the build-up, the preparation, the lead-up and the whole ritualising of it."

And there's always been that pronounced fetishistic element to Siouxsie's stage persona.

"I certainly hope so. I suppose there's a lot of Fetishism within the performer/voyeur relationship. That's what it's all about really. People watching something happening. And obviously, the performer is responding to the voyeur. It's two-way. It's interactive. That's not a bad thing. But you can't claim that it isn't that."

So performing provides a sexual buzz?

"I suppose yes, it's got an element of that to it. But having the time of your life isn't always 'Yeeeaaaahhhh!!!' like that, y'know. That's not the only expression of having the time of your life. It can be frightening. But it can also be very emotional, or very uplifting. I think to be uplifted is the real hooked drug of it."

It's an adrenaline high?

"That as well. But you know there's a downside too. When you're failing, when you're not quite making it in your own terms. You can come off-stage and everyone says 'great gig, great gig', but you cannot be consoled. You know it was fucking shit! And that's the worst feeling in the world."

So why did the Banshees come to an end?

"As a band evolves and grows together, the characters in the band become more defined and developed. It's inevitable. It happens with all bands that last for a long time. It's not normal for a band to last that long. The Banshees were very much a working band. Very much a live band. Four people. A democracy of sorts. It had its way of doing things. And it had its baggage that came with it. But because you know each other so well, the intuition and the spark of things just happening doesn't happen the same. There seems to be less surprises."

Simultaneously, of course, there was The Creatures, initially as a side project.

"The first time we did the Creatures it happened as a mistake, yes. It wasn't by any kind of design. It was whilst writing for the Juju (1981) sessions that me and Budgie just did something together while the other two were out of the room. And it was John McGeoch who actually said, 'Oh this track doesn't need anything else doing to it.' And that was a song called 'But Not Them', which subsequently ended up on an EP. It was drums and voice, just using those varied primal elements, and as a result it was sonically very unique. Almost like using just primary colours.

"It really had a sound, and an approach of its own, very simple and basic. It was a lot more visceral. A very different dynamic. There's a lot more air. A lot more space. And because of that combination of elements it was very immediate. And so once we'd done something like that we said 'well God, it'd be nice to keep it separate'. So then we did an album, but the Creatures only happened when there was a break of some kind of window in The Banshees' schedule. Until, around the time of the final Banshees album I found I was actually looking forward to doing the Creatures. I was actually longing for a kind of 'back to basics'. A real simplicity, I think generally. It coincided with a lot of real changes in my life."

And now, in truth, Siouxsie seems very much like a woman at peace with herself, and her career. Released from the commercial expectations imposed on her by the Banshees' baggage, and revelling in the artistic freedoms provided by the DIY or DIE operation through which the Creatures operate, things are looking good for Siouxsie Sioux.

"But," as she adamantly points out, "I haven't mellowed out. I feel pretty much the same. I've just done a few more things, that's all. I hate this horrible cliché of people reaching this thirty-ish number, getting married, having kids, and like giving up on life. 'I've done my wild bit'—I find that really sad. It doesn't have to be like that. Nobody's forced to live that lifestyle. I like extremes. I do like things that refuse to sit in the middle ground. I like people to be bold about what they do. I don't see the point of like, tiptoeing around an issue. I just find that really . . . cowardly is the word."

Everywhere that I go, I see me,

in a life that I had not long ago,

I'm not recognised or heard

but I swear I was me, I was me, I was me!

— "I Was Me" by The Creatures

"America has got a big problem with sex," says Siouxsie suddenly. "England is repressed sexually. But in America it's the hypocrisy. The acceptance of certain things. And the un-acceptance of other things. It's acceptable so long as you're not caught doing it. Do you know what I mean?"

Siouxsie warms to the subject. "In America you can't see a film without Huge Inflated Breasts—you know what I mean? Then they'll have someone else whose y'know, relatively small, and yet you can see her nipples, and it's like they have to be airbrushed out. It's like what the fuck's going on? They'd be so happy if the woman's breasts didn't have nipples.

"I just find it ridiculous. It's all about sexuality, it's overt, but it's all really distanced. It's not at all tactile. For instance, it's fine if it's a cartoon, or if it's phone-sex. Because that's all about distance. It's nothing to do with connecting with people. It's not about getting close. It's superficial. It seems—wow!—so explicit and up-front, but it's not. It's very clinical. A friend of mine—well, not a friend, an acquaintance—she had the boob-job, and the irony is that afterwards she couldn't bear to be touched. Cos it was too painful. I find it really bizarre. I don't find Hugely Inflated Breasts attractive at all . . ."

Perhaps it's an identity thing? There's a very lyrically strange track on Anima Animus called "I Was Me". It seems to be about a confusion of identity. About other people assuming or taking over your identity. Like Siouxsie taking over Susan? Or Siouxsie's reactions to seeing a "Siouxsie-clone"? Is there a story behind that track?

"I didn't write it purely from that angle. But there could be that element about it. It's got lots of different levels. This album is a lot more personal. Not confessional. That's not the way I write. But I like things that have an ambiguity to them. I don't tend to write from just a flat one-way point-of-view. I like to look at things from a number of angles. And that song has elements of an early Twilight Zone story to it. And there was also a film called The Double Life of Véronique. I don't know if you saw it? But it's a kind-of spooky story about, not quite meeting your doppelgänger, but traces of that person having been there before you. An impostor. And I remember the Twilight Zone story. It was one of the old black and white ones, and it's about somebody arriving at a bus station where people keep ignoring her, saying 'but you've already checked that bag in', and things get really confusing as she protests 'but I've only just got here!' Then she's running outside and sees the bus pulling away and there's a guy saying to her 'but you just left on that bus' . . . and she sees the face in the window pulling away as well. And it's side-face, but it seems to be her!"

An alternative interpretation that occurred to me was that perhaps it was about your reactions to watching old videos of yourself, and seeing a person there that you no longer quite recognised.

"Er . . . possibly. I mean, subconsciously. That's a very weird idea."

Weird, sure, but as Siouxsie has demonstrated over the past 23 years, there's nothing she can't get her head around. Here's to the next quarter of a century.

The Creatures play The Temple Bar Music Centre, Dublin on 16th February.