Banglemania!

Travel back with me in time, to Sheffield in 1986 (I mean, how can you refuse an offer like that? Where else have you got to be on a Monday night in lockdown?). I was nine years old and about to discover my first-ever favourite pop band, courtesy of the cultural behemoth (ahem) that is Walk Like An Egyptian (I repeat, ahem). I remember watching the video and just being absolutely smitten by the tune. So, that was the first single I ever ‘bought’ (my parents bought it for me, for 99p, I believe, from Our Price), followed by the accompanying album, Different Light, and the band’s previous, debut album, All Over The Place, both on cassette. And that was that. My obsession with Susanna, Vicki, Michael and Debbi had begun.

At the time, I loved them for their catchy, brilliant tunes, but also for their image. As a little girl teased for her unruly curls, I adored their long, straight, 60s-style hair. I was fascinated by the little plaits they wore at the sides. I loved their outfits and their make-up. I had a complete crush on the bassist, Michael, and have nurtured a desire for poster-paint-red hair ever since. I listened to my cassettes over and over again, panicking when they got chewed up in my tape player and carefully looping them back in with a biro. I dreamed of being in the band. I drew pictures of them. I spent hours cutting photos out of Smash Hits and arranging them on my wardrobe doors with Blu Tack. It was a real love affair. I SO wanted to be a Bangle.

Inevitably, I drifted away from listening to the Bangles in my teenage years, but I came back to them about 14 years ago, when I met my now husband. It was immediately, painfully (hahahaha) apparent when we met that we had very few musical interests in common. By that time, I was mostly interested in synth pop. The Bangles had been elbowed out of my No1 spot in 1987 by my beloved Pet Shop Boys, and I’d followed up in the 90s with completely out-of-time obsessions with the Human League, Gary Numan and Heaven 17 (this was when my contemporaries were arguing over Blur and Oasis, by the way – can you imagine? LOLS). In 2006, my new boyfriend, by contrast, whilst having a pretty eclectic taste and an extremely varied CD collection, was mostly all about the jingly-jangly indie and classic 60s tunes. So, as a way to find common ground one night when he was in my studio flat, I dug out my Bangles CDs. Because, as much as they might be synonymous with the 80s, the Bangles took their inspiration and their sound very much from the 60s. They adored the Beatles, Fairport Convention and Love. They were steeped in that sound. And so, having fallen in love with their catchy melodies and beautiful harmonising, I’d found myself with a SLIVER of my music collection that I could reasonably hope my new man would like. And he did. (I can’t tell you how handy those CDs have been on our car journeys over the past decade and a half.) So, that’s how I came to revisit the Bangles, and listening to them as an adult has only made me love and respect them even more.

You see, I feel very strongly that the Bangles are a cruelly underrated band. Sure, by the time I discovered them, they’d already had one monster hit, Manic Monday (written by Prince), and a few years later they would have another one, Eternal Flame. So, yes, on one level, it’s hard to describe the Bangles as ‘under the radar’ or ‘ignored’. But what they are is criminally undervalued as musicians and songwriters. I suspect that most people who know Manic Monday or Eternal Flame don’t know that the Bangles started as a rough-and-ready garage band. That they all play their own instruments. That they are all songwriters. That Different Light, the exceedingly polished and glossy and sanitised album that made them superstars in 1986, isn’t actually representative of who and what they are as a band. It’s interesting to me that lead guitarist Vicki Peterson once said that their cover version of Simon & Garfunkel’s Hazy Shade of Winter was the song that came closest to showing what they are like as a live band. It’s a ballsy, take-no-prisoners recording and one of my favourites. I also love the fact that drummer Debbi Peterson was so horrified by Walk Like An Egyptian (which they didn’t have a hand in writing) that she refused to play or sing on it (hence her miming the whistling part in the video). Yet despite the fact that they are clearly Women Who Rock, I fear that the Bangles (in their 80s prime, at least) were often seen as ‘just’ a fluffy pop group. And that is deeply unfair (by the way, I don’t think it’s necessarily for sexist reasons; I have the same theory about A-ha, who are three men. Maybe that’s a subject for another blog entry?). They are a proper, banging, all-female rock band, which, along with the Wilson sisters of Heart, makes them pioneers, and anyone doubting their credentials should listen to their last album before their (thankfully not terminal) split in 1989, Everything.

Oh, Everything really is (everything). It’s a sublime tapestry of sumptuous, velvety rock and pop with effortlessly beautiful harmonies, heartbreakingly gorgeous melodies and some seriously hard-edged rock. It swerves from dark to light, sweet to aggressive, and every note, every bassline, every harmony is perfect. It’s my favourite of the three Bangles albums from the 80s (probably one of my favourite albums of all time, in fact), and every song deserves to be there; there is no weak link. Whilst Eternal Flame is ‘the famous one’, it’s not my favourite. That honour would go to In Your Room, Be With You or Something To Believe In. But all in all, it’s an absolute triumph. Which makes it all the more bittersweet that the production of this utterly perfect album led to the band splitting up. There is a track on their Greatest Hits album, called Everything I Wanted, which apparently didn’t make the cut for Everything. It’s one of my favourite songs in the world. It’s brilliant. Which tells you how great the rest of the album is, and maybe why it all fell apart.  

Thankfully, the Bangles reformed in the early 2000s, and released a comeback album, Doll Revolution (standout moment for me, Something That You Said). Then my favourite Bangle, Michael With The Flaming Hair, left the band again, and they carried on as a threesome. I bought their next album, and whilst it’s not entirely to my taste (I am, after all, only an accidental visitor to the 60s, and they can occasionally lean a bit too folky for me), I will always be in thrall to the way the Bangles write, sing and harmonise. It’s pure magic. And that’s why, 34 years after I first heard them, I still listen to these amazingly talented rock goddesses all the time, and I can’t imagine the soundtrack to my life (or our marital car journeys, to be honest) without them.