Siouxsie Sioux

Susan Janet Ballion, better known by her stage name Siouxsie Sioux (/ˈsuːziː suː/, born 27 May 1957), is an English singer, songwriter, musician and producer. She is best known as the lead singer of the alternative rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees (1976–1996) and the drums-and-voice duo the Creatures (1981–2005). Siouxsie and the Banshees released 11 studio albums and several UK Top 20 singles including "Hong Kong Garden", "Happy House", "Peek-a-Boo", plus a US Billboard Top 25 hit "Kiss Them for Me". With the Creatures, Siouxsie recorded four studio albums and the hit single "Right Now". She has also sung with artists such as Morrissey and John Cale. After disbanding the Creatures in the mid-2000s, she has continued as a solo artist and released Mantaray in 2007. AllMusic named Siouxsie as "one of the most influential British singers of the rock era". Siouxsie was born Susan Janet Ballion on 27 May 1957 at Guy's Hospital in Southwark, England. She is 10 years younger than her two siblings. Her brother and sister were born while the family was based in the Belgian Congo. lHer parents met in that colony and stayed working there for a few years. Her mother, Betty, was of half Scottish and half English descent, and was a bilingual secretary who spoke French.Her father was a bacteriologist who milked venom from snakes, and was a Walloon from the French-speaking part of Belgium. In the mid-1950s, before Siouxsie's birth, the family moved to England. The Ballions lived in a suburban district in Chislehurst. Siouxsie had an isolated youth. Her friends invited her home, but she could not reciprocate as her father drank at home and did not work. She was aware that her family was different. The Ballions were not involved in the community and lived in a house that was different from the neighbours'. Elsewhere, "life in all its normality was being paraded". She later said: "The suburbs inspired intense hatred". At the age of 9, Susan and a friend were seriously sexually assaulted. The most damaging aspect was that the assault was ignored by her parents. The episode became an unspoken item. From that moment, she started to acquire disrespect for adulthood. Years later, she stated: "I grew up having no faith in adults as responsible people. And being the youngest in the family I was isolated – I had no-one to confide in. So I invented my own world, my own reality. It was my own way of defending myself – protecting myself from the outside world. The only way I could deal with how to survive was to get some strong armour". Her father died when Siouxsie was 14 years old, resulting in an immediate adverse effect on her health. She lost a lot of weight and missed school. After several misdiagnoses, she was operated on and survived a bout of ulcerative colitis. During the weeks of recovery in summer 1972, she watched television in the hospital and saw David Bowie on Top of the Pops. At 17, she left school. It was during this period that she began frequenting the local gay discos where most of her sister's friends used to go.She introduced her own friends to that scene. In November 1975, a new young group called Sex Pistols performed at the local art college in Chislehurst. Siouxsie did not attend, but one of her friends told her how their singer threatened the string of students present at that gig. He added that they sounded like the Stooges. In February 1976, Siouxsie and her friend Steven Severin (then still called Steven Bailey) went to see Sex Pistols play in the capital. After chatting with members of the band, Siouxsie and Severin decided to follow them regularly. In the following months, journalist Caroline Coon coined the term "Bromley Contingent" to describe this group of eccentric teenagers devoted to the Sex Pistols. Siouxsie became well known in the London club scene for her glam, fetish and bondage attire, which later became part of punk fashion. She would also later epitomise gothic style with her signature cat-eye makeup, deep red lipstick, spiky dyed-black hair and black clothing. In 1977, Siouxsie began touring in England as Siouxsie and the Banshees. Journalist Paul Morley noted that Siouxsie's songs topics dealt with "mental illness, medical terrors, surreal diseases, depraved urges, sinister intensity, unearthly energy, sexual abuse, childhood disturbances, sordid mysteries, unbearable nervous anxiety, fairytale fears, urban discontent and the bleak dignity of solitude". Many of her songs are about damage; her childhood marked her profoundly. She said, "Damaged lives, damaged souls, damaged relationships. Most of the damage I sing about first happened when I was younger and I am still feeding off it and working it out. Early experiences are what create a lifetime of damage. The songs you write can help you fix the damage. And just the environment you are in is so important and can waste potential and corrupt something. For me, there was neglect. An alcoholic father who is not there because the most important thing for him is just to get alcohol and your mother is trying to compensate for the non-existent second parent so she's never there because she's working all the time and when she is around she's stressed out. Being isolated and not having anyone to connect with, there was just no physical touching back then".