After a gap of 45 years and a long career in fashion, original Siouxsie & The Banshees guitarist John McKay releases his first solo album of archive material.

If I was asked to name the two most innovative and influential guitarists of the punk and post-punk era, I would immediately cite Keith Levene and John McKay.

While Levene lasted for three albums with PiL, McKay’s tenure with Siouxsie & The Banshees was even shorter, coming to a close after the first two albums, The Scream and Join Hands.

By 1979 his career in the mainstream was effectively over, but his influence lived on. And now there’s an album, Sixes And Sevens, compiled from archival recordings he made straight after leaving The Banshees.

McKay’s abrasive style, perhaps heard best on the track Metal Postcard with its screeching shards of guitar, has been cited as an inspiration by everyone from Robert Smith and Johnny Marr to Thurston Moore and Steve Albini, by way of U2’s The Edge, Killing Joke’s Geordie Walker, Jim Reid of the Jesus & Mary Chain and Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine.

His style and sound were unique, opening new possibilities for the electric guitar by combining melody with jaggedness and dissonance.

So what happened to John McKay? Well he launched a new post-Banshees project called Zor Gabor but they only ever recorded three songs before he retired from music and began a new career in fashion.

His first solo album, the archival collection Sixes And Sevens featuring 11 songs he recorded after leaving The Banshees with drummer Kenny Morris and bassist Matthew Seligman of The Soft Boys, comes out on 9 May 2025.

This is the first taste, Flare.