Sue suzy

Susan Ballion was born at Guy's Hospital in Southwark , London. She was the youngest of three children. Father and mother met in the Belgian Congo : she was a secretary-translator, he was a technician in a medical laboratory that produced snake venom ^[4] .

Susan's father was a drunken alcoholic. Susan told me that she hated her father, and once even tried to poison him by pouring a mixture of salt and pepper into a glass. In relation to his youngest daughter, he was only verbally rude, but the elder sister later told scary stories about knives, broken dishes and broken window frames ^[4] .

At the same time, being sober, Ballion was witty and intelligent; he loved books: he read Sartre himself, recommended to his daughter Kipling . Susan studied at the Mottingham Secondary Modern School for girls in Kent . When classmates asked what her father was doing, Susan made up a variety of stories; she could not admit that he was sitting and drinking continuously. Because of this, she did not invite anyone to her home ^[4] .

In childhood and early adolescence, Susan did not like boys. She participated in peer games (such as Catch and Kiss, Kiss and Chase), but if other girls, when caught, allowed themselves to be kissed, then she crammed a bunch of grass with the ground in her mouth. Later, in clubs, when a man came up behind and touched her, she immediately turned around and immediately beat him in the face ^[4] .

When Susan was 14, her father died from the effects of alcoholism. Soon after, she became seriously ill; suffered an attack of ulcerative colitis and for some time was dying. Susan said that the disease completely “demystified the body in its mind” ^[7] . From her father, Susan inherited a love of books and a hatred for the medical profession (he called doctors "charlatans"). Hence, her deep contempt for alcoholics and drug addicts (she called heroin users “just as alcoholics — boring and crushed”) ^[4] .

Susan was lonely in her youth; listened to the music of David Bowie , Lou Reed , Roxy Music , T.Rex , The Velvet Underground , The Stooges , and visited the local gay disco. Here is the influence of the older sister: she studied at an art college and talked with many men of non-traditional sexual orientation. Gays were the first men in the life of Susan, with whom she began to feel comfortable, freed from the expectation of sexual aggression or drunken rudeness ^[4] .

By the mid-1970s, Susan had become one of the most prominent figures in only the emerging punk community. In many ways, it was Susan who influenced the development of punk-image with her robes, in which glam and fetish attributes were used. Once she entered the bus in a transparent skirt, demanded a 50% discount for it and received it. Another time I entered the Pips wine bar in Bromley - with a friend named Berlin, driving him on a leash, in a dog collar. For some time, Susan wanted to become a model, but for this kind of work she looked too unusual. She was thinking about a career as a secretary, but it ended up working in a club. In one of the Bromley institutions, at a party where cocaine was supposed to sniff from rotating records, the waiter-Suzy, armed with a leather whip, had only a plastic apron and nothing more ^[4] . At the same time, men did not dare to approach her, and approached, she looked so threatening. As the Guardian later wrote, “... somewhere between walks on the Strand ^{[~ 1]} and the first acquaintance with the Patti Smith Horses album, Susan Ballion turned into Siouxsie” ^[4] .

In the mid-1970s, the term "Bromley contingent" ( born Bromley Contingent ) appeared: so the journalist Caroline Kun called a group of eccentric teens, Sex Pistols fans, who in some sense influenced the development of punk image . Among the contingent participants were Susie and Steve Severin . Suzy recalled: the mother was worried about her daughter's nightly adventures only in the sense that her daughter in fishnet stockings and heels would freeze (“Take a sweater,” she constantly repeated) ^[4] . ^{[~ 2]}

In September 1976, the Bromley Contingent headed to France to accompany the Sex Pistols. Here Suzy was physically assaulted by a certain Arab for a bandage with a swastika she was wearing. Subsequently, she said that Nazi paraphernalia was designed to “shock the bourgeoisie” and was not intended to make a concrete political statement ^[8] . Later, Susie wrote the song “ Metal Postcard (Mittageisen) ”, in memory of the fight against Nazi German artist John Hartfield (he was an anti-fascist).

One of Susie’s first public appearances was with the Sex Pistols on the Bill Grundy television show on Thames Television in December 1976. Standing next to the group, Suzy ridiculed the presenter when he asked her how she was doing. She replied, "I always wanted to meet you, Bill." Grundy, who was drunk, suggested a meeting after the show. This directly provoked a reaction from guitarist Steve Jones, who responded with a series of excesses that had never been heard on early evening television.

Siouxsie and the Banshees

In September 1976, Suzy and Steve Severin formed the Siouxsie and the Banshees. They had previously planned to create a team with Billy Idol , but he “changed” the project by joining Chelsea (then to Generation X ). Spontaneous debut of the group took place on September 20, 1976 on the stage of the London 100 Club as part of the 100 Club Punk Festival , organized by McMollin , at the suggestion of which Sid Vicious was seated for the drums . The performance was unrehearsed: the group did not have a repertoire, and the composition on the prayer theme “Our Father” , which Suzy remembered by heart, became basic ^[9] .

The Wall of Noise illustrated the attitude of musicians to music: none of them could play anything. ^{[~ 3]} The group improvised for twenty minutes on “Our Father” and left the stage simply because she was bored with this occupation. Suzy said that in her thoughts she didn’t keep making it a living. One observer called the performance of the group "unbearable." “She was gorgeous,” ^[4] wrote about Susie Caroline Kun.

The first commercial success of the group was released two years later, the single “ Hong Kong Garden ”, which became a hit and received high marks from critics, particularly in the NME ^[10] . Equally enthusiastically greeted the band's debut album ^[11] . Subsequently, the weekly called the disc one of the best in history, putting it on a par with Horses , the album Patti Smith ^[12] .

In 1983, Suzy and Badji formed a third-party project, Creatures (which debuted with EP Wild Things ), a duet that relied more on rhythmic structures and ethnic motifs in their musical experiments. By the end of the 1980s, Suzy Sue had finally changed her image, becoming in a Hollywoodly grandiose, “out of reach” manner, filled with “cold sexuality” and “vampiric splendor” ^[5] .

Collaboration

Since the mid-1990s, Susie has regularly collaborated with other musicians. In 1994, she recorded a duet with Morrissey : the single was released Interlude , a cover version of the song originally performed by Timi Juro .

In 1995, Suzy released the song "The Lighthouse", which was included in the album of French producer Hector Zazu Chansons des mers froides ( English Songs from the Cold Seas ). The text was based on a poem by the English poet Wilfred Wilson Gibson .

In February 1998, Susie, in duet with John Keil , the organizer of the festival With A Little Help From My Friends , held at the Paradiso Club, Amsterdam , performed her previously unreleased song “Murdering Mouth”. The union of both performers seemed so successful that they decided to conduct a joint US tour in the summer of the same year.

In 2003, Sue wrote a song for Basement Jaxx , "Kish Kash": she entered the eponymous album and received a Grammy in the category of dance / electronic. ^[13] .

In 2004, Sue performed her first tour as a solo singer, performing Banshees and Creatures songs. Recorded at the last London Dreamshow DVD concert with the participation of Millennia Ensemble, released in August 2005 and topped the British DVD charts. ^[14] .

In 2007, Susie released her first solo album, Mantaray 2007 , which rose to # 39 at the UK Albums Chart and was praised by critics ^{[15] [16] [17]} .

In 2015, after an 8-year break in work, she recorded a song called “Love Crime” specifically for the final episode of the TV series Hannibal ^[18] .

In 1991, Suzy married Badji , drummer Siouxsie & the Banshees. A year later, the couple moved to the south-west of France ^[19] . In August 2007, Susie announced a divorce in an interview with the Sunday Times .

Albums

Solo

• Mantaray ( 2007 , # 39, UK)

Siouxsie and the Banshees

• The Scream (1978)
• Join Hands (1979)
• Kaleidoscope (1980)
• Juju (1981)
• Once Upon A Time (1981)
• A Kiss In The Dreamhouse (1982)
• Nocturne (1983)
• Hyaena (1984)
• Tinderbox (1986)
• Through The Looking Glass (1987)
• Peepshow (1988)
• Superstition (1991)
• Twice Upon A Time (1992)
• The Rapture (1995)
• The Best of Siouxsie and the Banshees (2002)
• Downside Up (2004)
• Voices (on the Air) (2006)
• At The BBC (2009)

The Creatures

• Feast (1983)
• Boomerang (1990)
• A Bestiary Of (1997)
• Anima Animus (1999)
• Hybrids (remix album, 1999)
• US Retrace (2000)
• Hái! (2003)

Morrissey & Siouxsie

• Interlude (Single, 1994)

• Face to Face . - Suzy Sue in the video for the song from the movie “Batman Returns”.

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