(Credits: Far Out / Siouxsie and the Banshees)
Sun 22 February 2026 10:00, UK
Other bands may have seen greater critical stature or iconic status, but no band that orbited the 100 Club Punk Special weekender back in 1976 enjoyed the commercial endurance as Siouxsie and the Banshees.
No one present at London’s famed Oxford Street venue could have seen it coming. Taking to the stage with a pre-Sex Pistols Sid Vicious behind the drum kit, the hastily assembled Banshees let loose a semi-improvised version of the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ that went on for about 20 minutes, a chaotic but memorable live debut for a band that otherwise boasted no other material.
Through Today show Bill Grundy controversies and “The Filth and the Fury” tabloid horror, Sioux would find herself at the centre of the punk explosion, upending the pop charts and turning the establishment upside down.
Yet, her and bassist Steven Severin’s creativity was already looking far beyond punk’s peripheries once 1979’s Join Hands sophomore LP had been unleashed. Recruiting drummer Budgie and Magazine guitarist John McGeoch for 1980’s Kaleidoscope, the quartet began to conjure a wildly eclectic and psychedelic approach to their new wave offerings.
It’d all come to a head on 1982’s A Kiss in the Dreamhouse. Their fifth album and follow-up to Juju, the Banshees captured a marvel of exotic and dramatic post-punk, all inventive arrangements and sonic weirdness that would point toward a creative direction the band would follow for the rest of the decade. The only issue within the team at that point, however, was their manager, Nils Stevenson.
A former SEX associate and subsequent road manager for the Sex Pistols, Stevenson became an early supporting force to the Banshees, stepping up to manage the fledgling band and sharing production duties on debut single ‘Hong Kong Garden’. Later departing in 1981, stating, “It isn’t fun anymore,” Stevenson developed a heroin habit that would prompt Pistols guitarist Steve Jones to nearly drag him to rehab two years later.
It turned out that Stevenson was still in love with Sioux, having dated back during The Scream era. Since then, Budgie had entered the Banshees’ fold, quietly became an item, and started their percussive side project, The Creatures. Splashed on their debut Wild Things EP was the topless pair in an erotic embrace, with Sioux seemingly toasting the occasion by chucking a glass of champagne over the two of them. The other Banshees thought little of the cover, while Stevenson felt the twisting knife of unrequited love in his gut.
“He became erratic and unreliable,” Sioux told Uncut in 2012. “He came out to the last show in New York at The Peppermint Lounge and just… lost it. One particular situation got out of control, and John pinned him against a wall and said, ‘Just fucking go home.’ He was too obsessive towards me, and I felt suffocated by it. It was almost a Play Misty for Me scenario. He’d be waiting outside my house… it was almost scary.”
Stevenson would be forced to leave his managerial duties not long after, persisting as a pop entrepreneur and media personality before dying of a heart attack in 2002 at 49 years old, his body discovered two days later by original Banshees guitarist Marco Pirroni.