Siouxsie Sioux

Attributed

• It was meant to be our 15 minutes of fame, but we managed to sustain it for 10 years, which only goes to show how addictive dressing up and making noise for a living can be. [1986]

• [Speaking about her first gig at the 100 Club, a planned improvisation based around 'The Lord's Prayer', though the performance didn't go quite to plan] The intention was to play one number until they threw us off the stage, but they never did.. We got bored before them.

• I grew up trying out Catwoman kicks on people—she and Emma Peel were my mentors when I was young. As soon as Warners, who owned the Batman soundtrack, got involved, 'Face to Face' became the worst experience I've ever had. I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire.

• I'm very dissatisfied with the Superstition album. Stephen Hague's production was too technical and methodical.

• [Regarding the song "Dazzle"] "I wrote the strings for this on a toy piano!" remembers Sioux, fondly. "The sentiment behind it is of lying on the gutter but still looking up at the stars. I'd seen Marathon Man, and I was really intrigued by the guy swallowing diamonds to keep them, and then realising it was like swallowing glass --- that they would pass through his system and tear him apart. So that's the line --- 'Swallowing diamonds, cutting throats'. Quite a lot of this, and 'Swimming Horses', came from visiting Israel for the first time. 'The sea of fluid mercury', in the lyric, is the Dead Sea. We did this crazy thing and hired a car to go to the Dead Sea, Robert (Smith, their then guitarist) had to be the chauffeur, he was the only one who could drive. But, when we got there, it was like 'The Hills Have Eyes' --- all barbed wire and tanks and flags with skull and crossbones on them! We also went to Tel Aviv, where most of the audience were on acid --- which was available after the show, so we took it as well! We ended up on the beach, having a party until sunrise, and, of course, we ended up swimming. The sea was very clear, but there were all these little fish flying out of it. It wasn't the drugs, honest!"

• [October 2003] There's no stopping us now. For the first time, we're in complete control rather than bowing to the whims of a record company. We can do what we like, when we like. People keep asking me when I'm going to retire, like I'm some old mare ready to be put out to pasture. They've asked me that since I was 30, and the answer is still the same. Never!

• [Regarding the split of Siouxsie & the Banshees in 1995, the 2002 reunion tour, and the split again in 2003] It suddenly seemed a good idea to perform songs that we hadn't played for 20 years," explains Siouxsie. "And for a while it was fun. Me and Severin actually seemed to be getting on again. I say seemed. Obviously now I can't stand the sight of the poisonous old toad.