The Bangles, like many another 1980s band, have re-formed, but they are not looking back, singer Susanna Hoffs tells Brian Boyd.
One of the original all-girl groups, The Bangles emerged from Los Angeles in the early 1980s and within a few years had become one of the biggest-selling female bands of all time thanks to massive hits such as Manic Monday, Walk Like An Egyptian and Eternal Flame. Now back with the same line-up but with new songs, lead singer/guitarist Susanna Hoffs says they were never the sort of band "who worried about breaking a fingernail while hauling their gear around" and are on a mission, of sorts, to show that "women of a certain age can still rock 'n' roll - to the max".
"Even at the height of our success" says Hoffs, "there was no choreography, no costume changes, no striptease . . . we were a bunch of women who were serious about making music. That sadly has changed in the current climate; I mean, just take a look at some of the new female acts - that's not music, it's showbiz."
While it may seem that every band who even remotely bothered the charts in the 1980s has now re-formed and is bashing out old hits at a venue near you, The Bangles are insistent that this is not a "reunion", this is a continuation of where they left off - writing their own songs and playing them live.
"I suppose the first Bangles period ended in 1989," says Hoffs. "There were some artistic differences over what direction to take and pressure on some of us to pursue solo careers. As the main singer with the band, I was seen as being a bit of a focal point - as all singers are, but really it was Debbi Peterson and Vicki Peterson (who are sisters) who contributed a lot to the Bangles sound with their beautiful use of harmonies. We all went on to various different types of solo careers, but after a while we all just realised that we missed being part of the band."
The Bangles came out of the new wave/Paisely underground scene in the US and were a garage rock band. They began by covering esteemed acts like Big Star and Arthur Lee's Love, but soon patented their own 1960s-influenced guitar-rock sound. "As soon as we developed our own sound, and I suppose it would be that 12-string Rickenbacker sound, people started saying we sounded a bit like The Mamas and the Papas" Hoffs says. "I had always had that real pop influence - which comes from driving around Los Angeles listening to radio stations when you're growing up - so we had this garage rock sound but with a pop spin on it. Then Prince, who was known as Christopher way back then, wrote Manic Monday for us. We followed that up with Walk Like An Egyptian and then had another big smash with Eternal Flame. But the singles weren't really that representative of our sound - they were all produced in that slick 1980s manner".
Hoffs says the band were provoked into recording a new album by the amount of messages that were posted on their website. They began to think about it seriously when Hoffs's husband, a film producer, asked the band if they could come up with a song for the Austin Powers film he was working on. "There was a scene where they needed a song, so we decided to do it," she says. "It worked really well and the four of us felt really comfortable doing it; it was like all those years apart hadn't happened. We were still able to crack each other up, we still liked each other and we figured if the fans were so loyal, we should give it a go. We rented a house, didn't talk to anybody for a few weeks and wrote 40 new songs, which we whittled down to 15 songs for the new album. All four of us were contributing songs . . . There's a cover on there too, an Elvis Costello song called Tear Off Your Own Head (It's a Doll Revolution) and we liked the title so much, we've called the album Doll Revolution."
The band financed the album by playing a rake of live shows and while Hoffs says that they would like to concentrate only on their new songs, she accepts that when they play live, they will have to play the hits as well. "If I go and see Velvet Underground, I want to hear the really great songs that made them famous . . . It'll be great for us to get out there, even as fortysomethings, to show that female acts in this business don't have to dress like they do or dance like they do in order to make an impact. But then, I like to think we've more in common with The Strokes than we do with Britney or Christina . . ."
Doll Revolution is on EMI