Siouxsie & The Banshees – Helter Skelter

15th February 2022 · 1970s, 1978, Music, Punk

Siouxsie & The Banshees brought punk fire and fury to their cover of Helter Skelter, written by John Lennon for The Beatles.

I used to see Siouxsie & The Banshees a lot in the early days; at the time it seemed as if no one was ever going to sign them up. They were the last of that first wave of punk bands to get a record deal.

Perhaps they just didn’t fit into any of the compartments record labels liked, their sound too abrasive and harsh, Siouxsie’s persona too cold and severe, to appeal to the public at large.

That’s probably what I liked about them the most – the fact they seemed so unwilling to compromise. Yet their status grew, almost as a result of them being the last band standing without a record on the shelves. Their debut single Hong Kong Garden didn’t arrive until August 1978.

I especially remember what was the biggest show of a career that had begun at the 100 Club two years earlier where Siouxsie made her debut singing a 20-minute version of The Lord’s Prayer – backed by Sid Vicious on drums and Marco Pirroni on guitar.

The big show was at Alexandra Palace – the old Ally Pally, before it burned down and was rebuilt – and I remember Siouxsie being super-nervous when I was talking to them in the dressing room beforehand because my friend Steve and I knew Nils Stevenson, their manager (and former Pistols road manager).

During their characteristically incendiary show a thick blanket of snow fell on North London, making the city look brighter and more beautiful than ever before from the top of that hill, and I had to trudge down to the bottom sliding through about six inches of snow, to get home.

Thinking about that now, I was doing the opposite of the lyric that opens this song, that they always played, in which Siouxsie sings about getting to the bottom and going back to the top.

At one fo their gigs someone told me it was a Beatles song but I’m not sure I believed them because it didn’t sound like any Beatles song I knew and there was no streaming service or video channel or internet to check it out on in those days, and I didn’t have any Beatles records myself.

Someone else told me it was about Charles Manson and that part made sense because there’s a sinister sense of foreboding behind the song, especially in its opening with Steve Severin’s slow, long-held bass notes and John McKay’s sparse, dissonant shards of guitar, and Siouxsie’s slow, glacial vocal with that ominous lyric about getting to the bottom and going back to the top of the slide.

Then it speeds up towards an anthemic chorus with its nonsense lyric (“Helter skelter, na-na-na-na-na-na-na”), and I can still see Siouxsie stamping her feet like a soldier on the march and pointing her hands towards the audience as it builds to a frenzy when she changes up the lyric: “You may be a lover but you ain’t no FUCKING dancer.”

And the sudden surprise ending.