Siouxsie & The Banshees’ ‘Join Hands’ turns 47 on 7 September
Siouxsie & The Banshees released “Join Hands” on 7 September 1979 through Polydor Records, produced by Nils Stevenson and Mike Stavrou.
Siouxsie & The Banshees released their second studio album, “Join Hands”, on 7 September 1979 through Polydor Records. The album turns 47 this year. Nils Stevenson, the band’s manager, produced it with Mike Stavrou, recording at AIR Studios in London during May and June 1979. Ian Morais assisted with engineering.
The album took the First World War as its lyrical starting point, after the band had watched televised scenes of repression in Iran and observed the two-minute silence marking the war dead in November 1978. The opening track, “Poppy Day”, set words from John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” against tolling bells; “Icon” and “Regal Zone” carried the theme further, the latter addressing the Iranian revolution. The closing track, a 14-minute studio recording of “The Lord’s Prayer”, reprised the song the band had famously performed at their debut show at the 100 Club Punk Festival in September 1976.
What is on Siouxsie & The Banshees’ ‘Join Hands’
Side one ran “Poppy Day”, “Regal Zone”, “Placebo Effect”, “Icon” and “Premature Burial”, the last of which gave the album its title. Side two opened with “Playground Twist”, the sole single, followed by “Mother/Oh Mein Papa” and “The Lord’s Prayer”. Siouxsie Sioux sang and played piano, John McKay played guitar and saxophone, Steven Severin played bass, and Kenny Morris played drums and percussion. A 2006 remastered reissue added the non-album single “Love in a Void” and the previously unreleased instrumental “Infantry” as bonus tracks. Rob O’Connor designed the released sleeve, built around photography of four statues from London’s Guards Memorial, after Polydor rejected the band’s original artwork, a distorted Holy Communion card image designed by John Maybury.
“Join Hands” reached number 13 on the UK Albums Chart and was later certified silver by the BPI. It was the last album to feature the band’s original lineup: McKay and Morris quit abruptly on the day of release, hours before a show at the Capitol Theatre in Aberdeen, and never returned. Siouxsie later described the record as reflecting the band’s state at the time: “We were lonely and isolated and that comes across in the music.” She added that “musically, Join Hands was an uncompromising album but it still sounds modern today.” Author Simon Reynolds has cited the album, alongside “Juju”, as a major source of gothic rock’s sound and lyrical themes.
About Siouxsie & The Banshees
Siouxsie & The Banshees formed in London in 1976, growing out of the Bromley Contingent scene around the Sex Pistols. The original lineup, with Siouxsie Sioux on vocals, Steven Severin on bass, and a rotating cast including Sid Vicious on drums for their debut performance, played “The Lord’s Prayer” as an improvised, 20-minute set at the 100 Club Punk Festival in September 1976. The band signed to Polydor Records in 1978 and released its debut album, “The Scream”, that November, followed by “Join Hands” in 1979.
McKay and Morris’s departure on the day of “Join Hands”‘ release forced a rapid rebuild: Robert Smith of The Cure and briefly Budgie filled in on the resumed tour, and John McGeoch joined on guitar alongside Budgie on drums for “Kaleidoscope” in 1980, covered here in Siouxsie and the Banshees’ ‘Kaleidoscope’ turns 46 on 1 August. The band continued through “Juju” (1981), “A Kiss in the Dreamhouse” (1982), and the covers album “Through the Looking Glass” (1987), reaching a commercial peak with “Peepshow” (1988) and its hit single “Peek-a-Boo”, before “Superstition” (1991) and final album “The Rapture” (1995) closed the studio catalogue. The band disbanded in 1996; Siouxsie and Budgie continued as The Creatures.
Siouxsie Sioux has remained active on Side-Line’s radar since, including a 2024 collaboration with Iggy Pop on “The Passenger” for a Magnum ad campaign, reported in Siouxsie Sioux and Iggy Pop collaborate on ‘The Passenger’ for Magnum Ice Cream ad – Out now, and former guitarist Jon Klein’s 2023 reworking of a Banshees classic with Jah Wobble, covered in Former Siouxsie & The Banshees guitarist Jon Klein teams up with Jah Wobble for a new version of a Siouxsie classic. Forty-seven years on, “Join Hands” remains the fault line between the band’s original punk-era lineup and the post-punk and gothic direction that followed.
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