Speaker 1: Pushkin. As a founding member of the iconic all girl
Speaker 1: band The Bengals, Susannah Hoffs is perhaps most closely associated
Speaker 1: with hits like Manic Monday, Eternal Flame, and Walk Like
Speaker 1: an Egyptian. After releasing three platinum selling albums, the Bengals
Speaker 1: broke up in eighty nine. Two years later, Susannah started
Speaker 1: to put out interesting solo material before reuniting with the
Speaker 1: Bengals at the end of the nineties. Over the years,
Speaker 1: Susanna's continued to release music and even act in movies,
Speaker 1: including appearances in all three Austin Powers films as part
Speaker 1: of a fictional mod band. This year, Susanna's added another
Speaker 1: creative pursuit to her repertoire. She's now a published novelist.
Speaker 1: Her first book, This Bird Has Flown, was released in April.
Speaker 1: The same month, she put out a new collection of
Speaker 1: cover songs called The Deep End, produced by the Great
Speaker 1: Peter Asher. On today's episode, I talked to Susannah Hoffs
Speaker 1: about how Bruce Springsteen helps the Bengals secure a record
Speaker 1: deal after seeing them play at an amusement park just
Speaker 1: outside of la She also tells the story of first
Speaker 1: listening to Princess demo of Manic Monday. This is broken
Speaker 1: record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Mitchman.
Speaker 1: Here's my interview with Susannah Hoffs from her home in La.
Speaker 1: How long you've been living here?
Speaker 2: About?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, this is really going to age me.
Speaker 3: But I'm all into being honest about my age.
Speaker 2: I'm sixty four.
Speaker 1: Don't even look close to your age? Really, I look
Speaker 1: older than you can.
Speaker 2: No, you don't.
Speaker 1: I look much older than you. No.
Speaker 3: For some reason, sixty four really like has a special like.
Speaker 3: I even got weird al who I love Yankovic made
Speaker 3: me a special birthday message that it was more than
Speaker 3: the usual one, that he's such a kind and wonderful
Speaker 3: and talented guy.
Speaker 2: But this year I got the one.
Speaker 3: I'm sixty four, full monty, full glorious birthday message.
Speaker 2: Anyway. How long have I been living here? About? Twenty years?
Speaker 1: Twenty years?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the acoustics in this room have been very
Speaker 3: friendly to music making and having little music parties.
Speaker 1: And how often are you playing music in here?
Speaker 3: Pretty frequently, but we have had a few iconic music parties.
Speaker 3: We had members of Crowded House and Colin Hay was
Speaker 3: here playing. We had a big we celebrated one of
Speaker 3: my birthdays and it turned into this crazy music night.
Speaker 3: Lindsay Buckingham has played in here, yep, taking requests.
Speaker 1: No one else is playing right, because how do you
Speaker 1: play well along with Lindsay.
Speaker 3: Lindsay was playing and he was just and I was
Speaker 3: sitting in that little child's.
Speaker 2: Chair right there by the piano and looking up.
Speaker 3: At him as he played. Anything I asked for he did.
Speaker 3: It was incredible. Wow, yeah, he was so what did
Speaker 3: you ask for? I asked for secondhand news? I asked
Speaker 3: for go your own way, I think. And then he
Speaker 3: and Ben Harper started singing on together on a song
Speaker 3: that I'm now forgetting, one of the great songs that
Speaker 3: he'd written. Ben Harper was here too, and it was amazing.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, we were talking just before the mic started
Speaker 1: rolling about your book that you put out. Yes, spurt
Speaker 1: his phone, Yes, really.
Speaker 2: Good, thank you.
Speaker 3: I guess it goes back to being a kid and
Speaker 3: a teenager, and I think it's a coping strategy to
Speaker 3: want to.
Speaker 2: Disappear into a fiction of some form.
Speaker 3: I've always loved going to movies, watching movies, reading books,
Speaker 3: and I think, you know, there's stories inside of songs too,
Speaker 3: And I don't know why, but I just like to
Speaker 3: kind of fill my days finding inspiration through those stories.
Speaker 3: And again there is a bit of an escape bist
Speaker 3: coping mechanism aspect to it, of not wanting to kind
Speaker 3: of sit with my own my own worries or fears, and.
Speaker 2: I like to just drift away into a story.
Speaker 1: This is your first book, thought me, So would you
Speaker 1: write for fun before? Like, have you ever written anything?
Speaker 3: I started, I started a novel and I just double
Speaker 3: checked in a drawer. It was written in like sort
Speaker 3: of small spiral notebooks back and the date on it
Speaker 3: is nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2: So it was right when the.
Speaker 3: Bengals journey, which was most of the eighties from me
Speaker 3: going around of trying to find bandmates and advertising myself
Speaker 3: in throwaway papers and the eventually meeting Vicky and Debbie
Speaker 3: and then the band formed from there. But I had
Speaker 3: always had a dream of writing a novel, and I
Speaker 3: just kept putting it aside. But towards the end of
Speaker 3: the eighties, when I felt the Bengals sort of decade
Speaker 3: was kind of winding down and we were all kind
Speaker 3: of antsy to do other things, I started a novel.
Speaker 3: Now I just it's up there, but I don't.
Speaker 2: Know if is it good.
Speaker 3: I don't know because I'd been so immersed in the
Speaker 3: journey of writing this bird has flown, which took several years.
Speaker 2: It takes years to write a novel.
Speaker 3: And because I never it was always either too lazy
Speaker 3: or too impatient to ever take classes. In fact, I
Speaker 3: don't even know how to read a musical chart. I
Speaker 3: can be handed one and be doing like a choral
Speaker 3: part with friends at like Largo, for example, I performed
Speaker 3: with Amy Mann a lot of times, and sometimes we
Speaker 3: would do like holiday shows, and I'd have to I'd
Speaker 3: be handed a chart and I'd pretend to pretend to
Speaker 3: read it.
Speaker 2: I just kind of look at the shapes. Oh the
Speaker 2: note went up there.
Speaker 1: But no.
Speaker 3: I same with pretty much everything I've done in the arts.
Speaker 3: I kind of just threw myself in.
Speaker 1: Which is interesting because you like you come from I mean,
Speaker 1: both your parents are college educated. Yeah, we went to
Speaker 1: the same school. We went to Berkeley.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we both went to Berkeley. My parents met at Yale.
Speaker 3: My dad had gone to Yeah. I know, I came
Speaker 3: from a very intellectual family, and yet I just I
Speaker 3: think it's my impatience and my like a strong urge
Speaker 3: to just dive in.
Speaker 1: On average, how long will a writing session last for you?
Speaker 1: Short spurts or long long.
Speaker 3: Spurts like I'll have to set aside because I've been
Speaker 3: doing a lot of promotion for the novel and also
Speaker 3: for the new album. You know, in my days have
Speaker 3: not sort of you know, opened up for me to
Speaker 3: sort of go, okay, I just did you know, spent
Speaker 3: four hours doing this other stuff, And it's kind of
Speaker 3: a different kind of use of your brain. I think
Speaker 3: with the the flow state is where you want to be,
Speaker 3: like when your just fingers are going and you're seeing
Speaker 3: it somehow in your mind's eye, I guess, and you
Speaker 3: just go and you and the characters delight me. They
Speaker 3: they I don't know where their voices come from, obviously
Speaker 3: in my head and obviously I'm generating them. But sometimes
Speaker 3: it actually doesn't feel like that, I guess.
Speaker 1: Like the way some songwriters say it feels like, you know,
Speaker 1: like Paul McCartney and Yesterday, it's like, oh, the song
Speaker 1: must have the song must exist somewhere else. You know,
Speaker 1: it seems like he still can't.
Speaker 2: Believe, so he doesn't even know how it just came
Speaker 2: to him.
Speaker 1: The story of yesterday, as I understand it is he
Speaker 1: woke up from a dream with that song, with that
Speaker 1: melody in his head, and he was he wrote to it,
Speaker 1: but he was positive it was like scrambled eggs.
Speaker 2: Did he have another name for it.
Speaker 1: Which was yeah, one of those was maybe it was maybe.
Speaker 3: That was I think it was scrambled eggs until he
Speaker 3: did did hone hone the lyrics?
Speaker 1: The lyrics. I think he didn't believe it was actually
Speaker 1: like his melody. Like he he was like, there must
Speaker 1: be an old something I remember from something someone.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's fascinating. Yeah, you don't know where
Speaker 3: these creative sparks.
Speaker 2: Come from or how. Yeah, it's a mystery to me too.
Speaker 2: It's weird. It's like hearing voices though in your head.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit.
Speaker 1: Strange, which I mean, I imagine the main character Jane came
Speaker 1: to you first.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I kind of grappled initially we should
Speaker 3: she be an actress? Should she be someone in Hollywood?
Speaker 3: A sense that she should be a creative person and
Speaker 3: a performer of some sort. But then I thought, you know, oh,
Speaker 3: but I know what it's like.
Speaker 2: To be a musician. I know all the different aspects
Speaker 2: of that. You know what it.
Speaker 3: Feels like to step out onto a stage and have
Speaker 3: horrible stage fright and to feel like your heart is
Speaker 3: being so loudly. You know the audience can hear it too,
Speaker 3: Because that happens to me.
Speaker 2: I have to kind of.
Speaker 3: I have different ways that I cope with stage fright,
Speaker 3: and one of them is which I didn't give to
Speaker 3: Jane because there wasn't.
Speaker 2: Time in this.
Speaker 3: You know, you need predicament in a story. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: she didn't have time to do the ritual that I do,
Speaker 3: which is to listen to something like soul Finger by
Speaker 3: the Barcas or something like that.
Speaker 2: Something I can dance dance to.
Speaker 3: I used to listen to Let's Let's Go Crazy Press,
Speaker 3: but before walking onto a stage, Like, there is no
Speaker 3: way I could be like me, neurotic human worrying about this,
Speaker 3: that and the other. Will the monitors work, will my
Speaker 3: guitar work? Will I be able to hear myself? All
Speaker 3: the different things that go into performing live.
Speaker 2: So I just have to like dance it out, man.
Speaker 1: I mean is that the Bengals days when you would
Speaker 1: listen to let's go crazy, I.
Speaker 2: Would listen to When did I start doing it?
Speaker 3: I think it was probably after that because I used
Speaker 3: to use white wine as my let's go crazy. I
Speaker 3: would always have a little bit of a few SIPs
Speaker 3: at least or maybe maybe half of a one of
Speaker 3: those like plastic cups that you get backstage.
Speaker 1: Oh like just like the solo cup.
Speaker 2: I have a solo cup.
Speaker 3: The memories are resurfacing now and I'd be like, someone
Speaker 3: would try to talk to me, and I'd like, I
Speaker 3: can't talk to you now. I'm working on down in
Speaker 3: like a quarter of this so that I can have
Speaker 3: some liquid courage to step out onto a stage. And
Speaker 3: I write about this in the book and become her
Speaker 3: or someone who could walk out onto a stage and
Speaker 3: strap on her guitar and I don't know, bring it,
Speaker 3: bring it and hope that the voice is working and
Speaker 3: everything else.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: The writing the book actually made me think about what
Speaker 3: that experience was in a deeper way than I kind
Speaker 3: of ever had.
Speaker 1: One of the cool things about the character I think
Speaker 1: is it's not like a character. It's not an artist
Speaker 1: who's at there, you know, creative and commercial peak. It's
Speaker 1: like someone who sort of has had that is, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of lost their way a bit totally.
Speaker 3: I mean more than that, like everything in her life
Speaker 3: that could go wrong has gone wrong. Yeah, dumped and
Speaker 3: cheated on by the boyfriend, the long term boyfriend, the producer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, being thirty three, that.
Speaker 3: Alone, Like I remember, it seemed like right now, is
Speaker 3: that what you are?
Speaker 2: Yes, it's going to be okay.
Speaker 1: What you said, it's.
Speaker 3: Going to be okay. I can attest to it. At
Speaker 3: sixty four, things are really good. So it's all a mindset.
Speaker 3: But for I don't know, it seemed to be a
Speaker 3: thing that there's kind of a peak time for I
Speaker 3: don't know people in the music business certainly and maybe
Speaker 3: even in the movie business that they're being young and
Speaker 3: in your twenties even or even like it is a
Speaker 3: prime real estate or chance to be you know, if
Speaker 3: all goes well, you know, you're you're, people will know
Speaker 3: about you, you'll be able to do good work, whether
Speaker 3: it's in a movie or in recording industry.
Speaker 1: It was the book in a way, a way to
Speaker 1: sort of offset some level of yeah, you know, just
Speaker 1: malaise in your own Yeah, it wasn't malaise.
Speaker 3: It was like, how do I stay creative because all
Speaker 3: I want to do the juices are flowing, but like
Speaker 3: where to put them?
Speaker 2: Another screenplay? Try again? You know?
Speaker 3: In that and it was it was how I fell
Speaker 3: so deeply in love with the process that like Jay
Speaker 3: would come home and go, wait, you're still sitting there
Speaker 3: at the kitchen table when I used to write at
Speaker 3: the kitchen table, and I'd be like, yeah, and I'm
Speaker 3: right in it, like ensconced in this moment, and I
Speaker 3: found it just blissful, yea, even though it's hard.
Speaker 1: Did you write the album your new album at the same.
Speaker 3: Time, Well, I didn't write it, mostly because I was
Speaker 3: still very much engaged with the writing of the book
Speaker 3: book and when Little Brown bought the book, and then
Speaker 3: you go through a period of revisions. I met up
Speaker 3: with Peter Asher during right in the mix of Peter.
Speaker 2: I did it with the.
Speaker 3: Great Peter Asher, who you know was the first president
Speaker 3: of Apple Records and produced James Taylor and Linda Ronstett
Speaker 3: records that literally changed my life. And I taught myself
Speaker 3: to sing. Just like with the book writing, I didn't study.
Speaker 3: I just studied by mimicking albums. So whether it was
Speaker 3: a Joni Jony albums or Linda albums, you know, and
Speaker 3: the Peter Asher were so great.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Peter randomly reached out at a very dark place
Speaker 3: during the pandemic when we were all really stuck at home,
Speaker 3: but we were starting to be able.
Speaker 2: To go out.
Speaker 3: We'd been vaccinated, you know, things were looking brighter. And
Speaker 3: I started to go to Malibu twice a week and
Speaker 3: we would just sit around with guitars and just sing
Speaker 3: like campfire style. Yeah, and then we realized there was
Speaker 3: a handful of songs that because I was so engrossed
Speaker 3: in doing revisions still on the book, it was fun
Speaker 3: to just cover songs. And then it went from sitting
Speaker 3: in his living room with guitars and singing to the
Speaker 3: idea to call Elvis Costello and on the EP that's
Speaker 3: not out yet, Wed, we recorded so much music that
Speaker 3: we made an album. It was like we could have
Speaker 3: been a double album we were considering, which would be
Speaker 3: very old school, like very seventies, but we ended up
Speaker 3: putting out the album and then we have sort of
Speaker 3: an EP. But Elvis Costello I wanted to I always
Speaker 3: wanted to do the Keith Richards high harmony on Connection
Speaker 3: there the rolling Stone song, so we sing that together
Speaker 3: and I'm Keith and Elvis's mixed. So yeah, that album
Speaker 3: has a ever so slightly leaning towards country and western
Speaker 3: sort of material. But again, I was still working with
Speaker 3: my publishers and doing final revisions during that time and
Speaker 3: h and at the same time driving out to Malibu
Speaker 3: to this beautiful studio and hanging out with Russ Kunkle
Speaker 3: and Leland Sklarr and Waddi walk Tell and Danny Korchmar
Speaker 3: during the pandemic incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean those are like that, I know, those are
Speaker 1: the guys.
Speaker 3: They're amazing and they're wonderful human beings, and I just
Speaker 3: I was really kind of like pinching myself the whole time,
Speaker 3: like feeling such gratitude.
Speaker 1: You mentioned in the session players your minded me believe
Speaker 1: it's on your first record. You had John Entwhistle, I know,
Speaker 1: play bass.
Speaker 3: I know my first solo record. Yeah, and Mick Fleetwood
Speaker 3: I think played on something too.
Speaker 1: John hem Whistle's bass plane is that's amazing. Guy's incredible,
Speaker 1: I know. Back to the new record, Yeah, a surprise
Speaker 1: under my film was there to lead things off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what are your feelings on the original.
Speaker 2: Okay, well I love it.
Speaker 3: I love it, and I love the Stone And because
Speaker 3: I was in the Bengals, and because the Bengals Beatles
Speaker 3: there was always like a connection for us, because it
Speaker 3: was the glue that cemented us. Was like being little
Speaker 3: girls growing up and when the British invasion happened and
Speaker 3: the Beatles were everything.
Speaker 1: You know, the song about Liverpool on the first d Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it was so part of like the bengalsgeist. But
Speaker 3: I love the Stones, and in the Stones I came
Speaker 3: to know and love more like in college and during
Speaker 3: the eighties when because I had been so engrossed with
Speaker 3: the Beatles music and they were so supreme to me.
Speaker 2: As you know, they just they affected.
Speaker 3: My life so deeply and it kind of got the
Speaker 3: ball rolling on my career and or I call it
Speaker 3: a career, my journey as a musician and lover of
Speaker 3: music above and beyond anything. But yeah, I was just
Speaker 3: one day listening to the Stones on my morning walk.
Speaker 3: And I'm one of those people who, you know how
Speaker 3: some people say I always listened to the lyrics first,
Speaker 3: or I always dial in on the music first. I
Speaker 3: always considered myself someone who was like more more sort
Speaker 3: of entranced by the music, and sometimes I would tune out,
Speaker 3: like really focusing in on what are they saying here?
Speaker 2: And that was the case for me.
Speaker 3: Weird that I went on to write a novel, but
Speaker 3: given that, so I just was listening to it.
Speaker 2: And I went, wait a minute, Wait a.
Speaker 3: Minute, this is very retro and I thought, wow, like,
Speaker 3: how fun it would be to turn the tables.
Speaker 1: My thin defense of it has always been it's thin.
Speaker 1: I recognize it, but I've always told they need defend
Speaker 1: because I just love the song. It's one of the
Speaker 1: great songs. Is it's It's under my thumb the girl
Speaker 1: who who once had me down? Yeah, And so it's
Speaker 1: like it was it was role reversed. It was it
Speaker 1: wasn't that like men need to put their thumb on
Speaker 1: women or that make even necessarily in every relationshipiel he's making.
Speaker 2: It's his personal story.
Speaker 1: Yet men thumb And so now I got Now.
Speaker 3: So he's just saying his truth there, like he's just
Speaker 3: expressing his emotion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I just thought much.
Speaker 3: I just was thinking, like, you know, in feminist terms,
Speaker 3: that it would be fun to turn the tables on that.
Speaker 3: And and and actually there's there's a lot of sexuality
Speaker 3: in that song. I mean, there's sexuality in rock and roll.
Speaker 3: It is. It is why we love it. You know,
Speaker 3: it's intrinsic to the to the genre.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So I think it's so. I thought I just it was.
Speaker 1: It's all music, really, it's everything gospel, you know, in
Speaker 1: an unspoken sort of way.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 3: Yeah, God, we could go on a deep, deep dive
Speaker 3: on that we wanted to.
Speaker 1: We have to take a quick break and then we'll
Speaker 1: come back with more of my interview with Susannah Hoffs.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Susannah Hafs. When you recorded
Speaker 1: the Bengals, what was that experience?
Speaker 3: Like the EP that was a little more that was
Speaker 3: pre getting signed to Sony. So that was with an
Speaker 3: amazing producer, Craig Leon. He was wonderful to work with.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, he suicide.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he did the Ramones and also did he work
Speaker 3: with the Go Gos? I don't think so, but the
Speaker 3: Ramones for sure.
Speaker 1: Blondie, Yeah, Blondie so cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Blondie and the Ramones were the notable bands
Speaker 3: that he had worked with that you know, we were like, okay, yes,
Speaker 3: please please produce EP.
Speaker 1: How did you How did you get connected with him?
Speaker 3: Then our managers maybe we were at that point with
Speaker 3: Miles Copeland, who managed the Police, and so it's possible
Speaker 3: that Miles it must have been somehow connected to through that.
Speaker 1: How did you get the Columbia contract?
Speaker 3: Well, it was the only record company who was interested
Speaker 3: in us, and Peter Philb in the A and our
Speaker 3: guy brought Bruce Springsteen to see us play at Magic Mountain.
Speaker 3: So Peter Philbin was the only music and our guy
Speaker 3: that seemed to have taken an interest in the Bengals,
Speaker 3: even though we had a kind of we were a
Speaker 3: popular local club band in Los Angeles and we're playing,
Speaker 3: you know, tons of gigs at the Whiskey of Go Go,
Speaker 3: and and at a.
Speaker 1: Time when the LA scene, the club scene was.
Speaker 3: It was happening, New wave was happening, punk rock was happening.
Speaker 3: There was kind of a we were somewhere in the
Speaker 3: middle between new wave and punk rock, and we were
Speaker 3: something that was more like now deemed Paisley Underground, which
Speaker 3: was we were a band in the eighties who were
Speaker 3: obsessed with music from the sixties and trying to drag
Speaker 3: those sounds and the twelve string guitar, electric guitar, like
Speaker 3: the Birds and stuff like that into our sound. It
Speaker 3: was like the Birds on guitars meets the Mamas and Papas,
Speaker 3: So the Mamas and the Mamas we would have been,
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, So at that time we were we
Speaker 3: were really part of a very vibrant scene in LA
Speaker 3: that wasn't punk but had punk.
Speaker 2: Leanings and were scrappy. We weren't polished.
Speaker 3: We were thrift store wearing girls who were mostly self taught.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There was no sort of American idol sort of like
Speaker 3: world at that point, and we wouldn't have wanted that anyway.
Speaker 3: We were really we were really a garage band. But anyway,
Speaker 3: it was basically kind of crickets from the record industry.
Speaker 3: Nobody was like, we weren't on anyone's radar until was
Speaker 3: it discouraging?
Speaker 2: Not really.
Speaker 3: I mean we were young and kind of brash, thinking
Speaker 3: like we weren't kind of in some ways we weren't focused.
Speaker 3: I wasn't focused on that. I wasn't like the focus
Speaker 3: was not and I think this is true for the
Speaker 3: whole band. The focus was not we got to become
Speaker 3: pop stars. The focus was, you know, we want to
Speaker 3: connect with an audience and we want to be ourselves,
Speaker 3: you know, And I think that was a good thing
Speaker 3: about the band.
Speaker 2: We weren't. There wasn't this Fengali.
Speaker 3: Who lined up a couple, you know, different people based
Speaker 3: on how they looked and then put them in with
Speaker 3: songwriters or anything like that. We were definitely a grassroots
Speaker 3: garage band. And interestingly, at the time that Miles Copeland
Speaker 3: took us on as management clients, he was also putting
Speaker 3: together a version of that other kind of band with
Speaker 3: Darryl Hannah was in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was like all really beautiful sort of models and
Speaker 3: actresses that he found and made a girl.
Speaker 2: Called what was it called? Oh gosh, I.
Speaker 3: Could try to find out the name of it, the
Speaker 3: band that it was. I think I want to say
Speaker 3: American Girls, which sounds like the name of those dolls.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I want to get back to the Columbia stuff.
Speaker 1: But to your point of like nose Golly putting you together.
Speaker 1: It's interesting too, though that you had Michael Steele in
Speaker 1: the group, the bass player, the bass player from the Runaways,
Speaker 1: which kind of was even though they were also kind
Speaker 1: of put together in right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Kim Fallely called me when I was living
Speaker 3: in the garage of my parents' home in West la
Speaker 3: and and I just like I had such radar, you know,
Speaker 3: I knew who he was and I was like, no, thanks,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: It was just before the Bengals.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like in the early days of the Bengals.
Speaker 3: Michael didn't join until there was a bass player in
Speaker 3: net Zelenskis, who was in the band in those early days.
Speaker 3: But right before, around the time, she wanted to leave
Speaker 3: to do more country and Western music and wasn't feeling
Speaker 3: comfortable in the band. And fair enough, I love Annette,
Speaker 3: we're really dear friends to this day, but she wanted
Speaker 3: she just wanted to move on. And that's when there
Speaker 3: was this opportunity for Michael Steele, who had been in
Speaker 3: the Runaways to and she was a very very accomplished
Speaker 3: bass player. She loved playing bass. She has a gorgeous voice,
Speaker 3: so really closing a great songwriter. She was extraordinarily and
Speaker 3: is extraordinarily talented. So when she joined the band, everything
Speaker 3: kind of fell into place. And it was around then
Speaker 3: that Columbia sort of went and it was just Peter
Speaker 3: Philben and he took Bruce Springsteen to see us at
Speaker 3: Magic Mountain in Valencia, and all I know is that
Speaker 3: Bruce must have liked us enough and said something and
Speaker 3: vetted us in some way. And I finally had a
Speaker 3: chance to thank him for that when he was at
Speaker 3: the What's the Grammy Salute to the Grammy Salute? Yeah,
Speaker 3: music care is Grammy Salute? And Jud Apatow, who loves
Speaker 3: Bruce Springsteen and John Stewart, was the host that night.
Speaker 3: Jay and I got a seat at Jud's table, yet
Speaker 3: he had never met Bruce, and I said, well, I'll
Speaker 3: be brazen and just drag you over there and reintroduce
Speaker 3: myself to him, which I did, And I have really
Speaker 3: cool picture where it's mostly that you see Bruce's wife,
Speaker 3: Patty talking to Tom Hanks's wife Rita. Yeah, and in
Speaker 3: the background, I'm smiling and I see and it's a
Speaker 3: profile of Jud and Bruce smiling.
Speaker 2: At each other.
Speaker 1: I'll show you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I have not seen Bruce since that.
Speaker 1: No, since the Magic Mountain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean yeah, it was it.
Speaker 1: Like medium then, like oh.
Speaker 2: It was cool.
Speaker 3: I mean we were so we didn't know he was
Speaker 3: coming to see us, so we were just like, what's happening,
Speaker 3: you know? But I don't think that Bruce thinks of
Speaker 3: it this way or even particularly remembers seeing us at
Speaker 3: Magic Mountain, But I always put it together that the
Speaker 3: one label that wanted us, which was Columbia, or that
Speaker 3: were intrigued with us and made that trap all the
Speaker 3: way from you know, Century City to Valencia, which is
Speaker 3: a bit of a commitment, and also had the thought to.
Speaker 2: Bring Bruce Springsteene.
Speaker 3: Yes, like, here's this grungey little garage band, all girl band.
Speaker 2: But all I know is.
Speaker 3: That they made that offer shortly after that, So something
Speaker 3: he did must have been said.
Speaker 2: He must have liked us enough.
Speaker 1: Now, how quickly did you start to make your first record? Oh?
Speaker 3: Well, let's see. David Kahn was our producer, and we
Speaker 3: went through a whole I don't remember now, it's a
Speaker 3: long time ago, but I remember that we just did
Speaker 3: a pretty deep dive into like an extension of what
Speaker 3: our rehearsals would have been. But with David there to
Speaker 3: kind of think in terms of the record, we rehearsed
Speaker 3: and we played a lot of stuff not in the studio, yes, songs,
Speaker 3: songs we'd written. We showed him everything we had and
Speaker 3: we just kind of went from there. We were a
Speaker 3: band that were figured out our sound in part, in
Speaker 3: large part by covering songs that we like. That's how
Speaker 3: we figured out how to be bangles, you know. Like,
Speaker 3: so we would cover a lot of songs and they
Speaker 3: were almost always kind of cool, obscure nineteen sixties songs.
Speaker 1: Stuff didn't even make records.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, like Pushing Do Hard by the Seeds, Debbie
Speaker 3: saying that one there was a song called Kicks by
Speaker 3: Paul Revere and the Raiders. We liked Paul Revere and
Speaker 3: the Raiders songs. I think we might have done two
Speaker 3: of their songs. We did where Were You When I
Speaker 3: Needed You? Which was the grassroots. I sang that one,
Speaker 3: which is like very jangly twelve string.
Speaker 1: Looking back on that first record, what is your feeling
Speaker 1: towards it?
Speaker 3: I think good, you know, I'd like probably a lot
Speaker 3: of people you talked to who've made records, and like,
Speaker 3: many decades have passed. I haven't revisited it in a
Speaker 3: long time, but I do remember we've recorded a lot
Speaker 3: of it up at place called Skylight, I think in Panga,
Speaker 3: So that was cool, and there was different Hollywood studios
Speaker 3: that we worked in. I just remember that I learned
Speaker 3: a lot from David Kahn. He was really obsessed with arrangement.
Speaker 3: And I feel happy that Prince discovered us through Hero
Speaker 3: Takes a Fall, which was a song that Vicky and I,
Speaker 3: who were really kind of a writing team within the band,
Speaker 3: came up with in the garage where I was living.
Speaker 3: It was that early on before we could kind of
Speaker 3: like afford to move out of, in my case, my parents' house.
Speaker 2: You know, I was still living at home.
Speaker 3: So we're to think now when I think back on it,
Speaker 3: because then I suddenly had this like job that was
Speaker 3: a real job, and then I was on a label,
Speaker 3: and you know, I had commitments and responsibilities. I wasn't
Speaker 3: just a kid post college living in my parents' garage,
Speaker 3: although I did live there for a big, big, big
Speaker 3: chunk the majority of the Bengals thing, I was living
Speaker 3: in a garage. Really yeah, just because once it took
Speaker 3: off and we were traveling all over the place, I mean,
Speaker 3: no one thought to buy houses until way later in
Speaker 3: the process. We there was like a year where we
Speaker 3: all were like, wait a minute. It really took us
Speaker 3: a long time. It was towards the tail end of
Speaker 3: the decade of the eighties where we sort of actually
Speaker 3: were like, there was the year that everybody bought a car,
Speaker 3: so we weren't used driving a car that our parents
Speaker 3: had happened. You know, I bought a white BMW.
Speaker 2: Three twenty five.
Speaker 3: It was snazzy, get on a car phone, hardwired into
Speaker 3: it with a curly chord.
Speaker 2: You know, there was that eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Amazing they had the car, I had a car phone.
Speaker 1: I remember being mesmerized by those as a kid.
Speaker 3: When I said, yeah, I know, they were like, whoa,
Speaker 3: They're like from the future.
Speaker 2: Yeah, isn't it like ancient history?
Speaker 1: That record was so cool because it sounds like you
Speaker 1: guys really figured out who you were from the EP
Speaker 1: to the first kind of full length. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: like you and VICKI kind of figured out your song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of for sure.
Speaker 1: Rhythm, yes, guys. Yeah. How did it feel when the
Speaker 1: next record came out and it was such a big
Speaker 1: because it's all these steps. It's like you do the
Speaker 1: EP and you sign and you do this big record.
Speaker 1: Then it's like the next record is like huge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was crazy.
Speaker 3: So there was a big leap somehow from the studio
Speaker 3: we were working in Tapanga for that first album all
Speaker 3: over the place, and then we went to Sunset Sound Factory,
Speaker 3: which is the smaller of the two Sunset Sounds that
Speaker 3: are sister studios, and that's where we started to work
Speaker 3: on Different Light with David Kahn again. That record ended
Speaker 3: up having some radio hits, including Manic Monday. So Prince
Speaker 3: had really he really liked our video of Hero Takes
Speaker 3: a Fall, which was that song that Vicky and I
Speaker 3: wrote in the garage on the prompting of David Kahn
Speaker 3: to write something that wasn't like a cowby, like a
Speaker 3: that kind of beat and more like a four on
Speaker 3: the floor beat. So when we were writing Hero Takes
Speaker 3: a Fall, we were kind of playing drums on our thighs,
Speaker 3: you know, like holding the beat that way and kind
Speaker 3: of getting the rhythm. And so a lot of things
Speaker 3: opened up from that first album and then Prince saw somehow.
Speaker 3: Prince had this idea that I should come over and
Speaker 3: get this cassette from him at Sunset Sound, the big
Speaker 3: mother ship studio on Sunset, and he had a song
Speaker 3: to share with us, and it was Manic Monday. So
Speaker 3: during that recording of Different Light at Sunset Sound Factory,
Speaker 3: I came back with the cassette from Prince and we
Speaker 3: recorded that.
Speaker 2: Song and he had offered me yeah, oh yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: and I have the cassette upstairs. Wow, yeah, I can
Speaker 2: show you if you want. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So we just kind of hovered around a cassette player
Speaker 3: and I was immediately like, oh my god, this would
Speaker 3: be great to sing. And so then we recorded it
Speaker 3: and at Sunset Sound Factory and it came out really well,
Speaker 3: and then it became the first single on that record
Speaker 3: and it became a hit, our first like top forty
Speaker 3: radio hit.
Speaker 1: How was it having a hit?
Speaker 2: It was nuts.
Speaker 3: We were on tour Columbia had released it as the
Speaker 3: first single off the Different Light record, and we were
Speaker 3: just standing on a corner and somebody pulled up in
Speaker 3: a convertible and something sounded familiar, but not familiar, because
Speaker 3: if it was the Beatles song playing on the radio,
Speaker 3: I would have been like, oh it took We all
Speaker 3: had this weird delayed reaction of like, oh shit, that's
Speaker 3: our song, that's Manic Monday. Like there was this weird,
Speaker 3: like I don't know, delay in connecting the dots, and
Speaker 3: then we were like off to the races at that
Speaker 3: point that this song just started to go up the
Speaker 3: charts and it got to number two, which was pretty
Speaker 3: good because Prince was I think Kiss.
Speaker 2: Was number one, and We and Manic Monday was number.
Speaker 1: Two and Prince. It offered you other songs.
Speaker 3: He there was another song listed on the cassette called
Speaker 3: Jealous Girl. I bet you that demo's floating around. But
Speaker 3: the weird thing is, I wanted to digitize that cassette
Speaker 3: and I took it to a friend's studio and we
Speaker 3: went through the whole cassette and Jealous Girl did not play.
Speaker 3: So I don't know if it just like the ravages
Speaker 3: of like a cassette sitting in a box for thirty years,
Speaker 3: is to blame or not. I don't know. It was
Speaker 3: just never but I think it's probably in his archive.
Speaker 3: I think we could google it and we could maybe
Speaker 3: find it pull it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to pause for a quick break and
Speaker 1: then come back with more from my interview with Susannah Hoffs.
Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of our conversation with Susannah Hoffs.
Speaker 1: Did you know that Walk Like Egyptian was going to
Speaker 1: be the hit that it was? No, that is the
Speaker 1: most bizarre, you know, it's like it's a great song,
Speaker 1: but it's it's so out of left field. I know.
Speaker 3: I think that's the brilliance of it. So I was
Speaker 3: at David's office, David Kahn up at Columbia, and he
Speaker 3: wanted to play me some songs there, just share some
Speaker 3: things that had crossed his desk, and one of them
Speaker 3: was Marnie Dixon. I want to say, oh god, I'm
Speaker 3: going to get it wrong. I'll try to find out
Speaker 3: there was a woman who had covered it, and also
Speaker 3: Charlie Sexton had covered it, of all things. So I
Speaker 3: recently was able to talk to him about that, but.
Speaker 1: He released it.
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 3: I think if you google you'll find other versions. These
Speaker 3: other versions are probably somewhere. But David played it for me,
Speaker 3: and I just thought it had this really again nineteen
Speaker 3: sixties bossa Nova like there was something about it. The
Speaker 3: rhythm of it was so interesting, the shaker being so predominant,
Speaker 3: and the kind of I don't know, it sounded like
Speaker 3: something from a movie or something like or from another time.
Speaker 3: So we just we all were kind of curious to
Speaker 3: try it out because sometimes when you're in the studio,
Speaker 3: you record more than you think you record more than
Speaker 3: you think you're gonna need, and then you pick the
Speaker 3: best or the most catchy or connect with people the most,
Speaker 3: so you just never know. There's a lot of lore
Speaker 3: within the band because you know, different people in the
Speaker 3: band were singing different parts, you know, and not everybody
Speaker 3: got to sing a part, you know. W I know
Speaker 3: always felt kind of left out, and I totally I
Speaker 3: can really empathize with that. But we had no idea
Speaker 3: that that song would catch on the way it did.
Speaker 3: It was the third single, If She Knew What She Wants,
Speaker 3: a Jewells share song that I sang was a second single,
Speaker 3: and it did moderately well, and it was very bangles.
Speaker 3: It was lush harmon these all the way through. It
Speaker 3: was a beautiful song.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you.
Speaker 3: That was kind of let it go was like a
Speaker 3: chance for all of us to feel in because we
Speaker 3: wrote it together as a foursome and we sang it
Speaker 3: together as a foursome. So we kind of needed that
Speaker 3: as it was one of the last songs we recorded
Speaker 3: on that album. Yeah, it was kind of like the
Speaker 3: band needed that. Yeah, it was like a really bonding yeah,
Speaker 3: you know what. I loved that one, and we all
Speaker 3: wrote it I think, yeah, together.
Speaker 1: I guess I want to jump to the next record,
Speaker 1: because you know, you and Vicky kind of have like
Speaker 1: a songwriting thing. But then you discover Tom.
Speaker 2: Kelly, Yeah, Philly stigin very good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. How did that kind of song How did that
Speaker 1: kind of songwriting trio happen?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's great question.
Speaker 3: I think that by the time Different Light had run
Speaker 3: its cycle out in the world and all the touring
Speaker 3: and you know, us opening for Queen at slain Castle,
Speaker 3: and just like everything had shot up, you know, with
Speaker 3: the success of that record, and our our lives were
Speaker 3: not our own lives.
Speaker 2: That we were living.
Speaker 3: Like what happens when that when that occurs in the
Speaker 3: journey of a band, you know. So we after living
Speaker 3: like so closely for so long and being on tour
Speaker 3: and having no autonomy everyone in the band, but we decided, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's the end of that tour cycle, let's start writing
Speaker 3: for the next record, the next record, And no one
Speaker 3: wanted to write with each other, like everyone wanted to
Speaker 3: be totally away from the other members, so like just
Speaker 3: needed autonomy. So somehow I met Billy, and Billy introduced
Speaker 3: me to Tom and we just hit it off. As
Speaker 3: a songwriting team. Immediately I had heard some of the
Speaker 3: stuff they had done, and I thought they were great,
Speaker 3: and they were so fun, and their work partnership was strong,
Speaker 3: and they really knew each one brought a very specific
Speaker 3: thing to the table. Billy was very much the lyricist,
Speaker 3: but you know, had melodic ideas as well, and arrangement ideas.
Speaker 3: And Tom was just like this incredible melody maker machine.
Speaker 3: You know, he was just he just would sit at
Speaker 3: the piano or go to the guitar, or go back
Speaker 3: to the piano, and just to be in the room
Speaker 3: during all this creation with them was extraordinary, and I
Speaker 3: was so impressed with songs that they had written, so
Speaker 3: I just started to hang out with them and do
Speaker 3: songwriting sessions with them. An eternal Flame was me sharing
Speaker 3: I'd just been back from a Bengals tour and we
Speaker 3: did Graceland like all bands have to do. But the
Speaker 3: day we were there, Elvis's eternal Flame in the Garden
Speaker 3: of Memories was basically a plexiglass box with a little
Speaker 3: flame in it, but it was out because the rain
Speaker 3: had filled up the box with rain water and extinguished
Speaker 3: the flame. It was out that day, but we were
Speaker 3: recreating the scene in spinal Tap where there's singing heartbreak
Speaker 3: Hotel and raga harmonies or whatever.
Speaker 2: They were tempting the harmonies and they were face Bill.
Speaker 3: So we were doing that and I came back to
Speaker 3: La I had my writing session with Billy, because Billy
Speaker 3: always wanted to write lyrics first, which again was unusual
Speaker 3: to me because I always thought melody first, and we'll
Speaker 3: just jabber something and the lyric will find itself later.
Speaker 3: But with Billy, he really had a really strong practice
Speaker 3: in doing bringing a lyric to Tom. So we just
Speaker 3: sat down. I was just telling him the story about
Speaker 3: the Eternal Flame at Graceland it was out, and he went,
Speaker 3: eternal Flame. That's a great name for a song. And
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, you're right, and we just sat down,
Speaker 3: did the lyrics, and we drove over to Tom's and
Speaker 3: we just started working on the music. But when that
Speaker 3: turn came in on the two. It's a weird structure
Speaker 3: that song because it doesn't have a proper chorus. It's
Speaker 3: just the tagline is this burning and eternal flame at
Speaker 3: the ends of the verses. So what really was like
Speaker 3: the moment of like, uh, you know, the sun breaking
Speaker 3: through the clouds. Was that actually it fit with those
Speaker 3: lyrics sunshines through the rain, the bridge that repeats, and
Speaker 3: there's a really cool place for a guitar solo in
Speaker 3: the middle of it. So it's like verse verse bridge
Speaker 3: solo bridge verse out, and those bridges were just like
Speaker 3: I knew. When that happened, I was like, shit, man,
Speaker 3: this is good, you know, this is oh wow, what
Speaker 3: is this? This is great and felt so good to
Speaker 3: sing that.
Speaker 1: It is a strange song structure, it's not traditional song structural.
Speaker 3: But those bridges were just so beautiful and so fun
Speaker 3: to sing. And the other part was like kind of
Speaker 3: a here, there and everywhere, kind of you know, be lesque,
Speaker 3: very very blesque.
Speaker 2: The verses, yeah, yeah, pretty cool.
Speaker 3: But it was a real afterthought putting it out, and
Speaker 3: it was it hardly made the record.
Speaker 2: It didn't.
Speaker 3: It wasn't voted. We had a thing where we had
Speaker 3: a band meeting and everybody had gone off.
Speaker 2: Everyone needed to go off and write.
Speaker 3: With other people. Everyone was sick of each other. When
Speaker 3: we got back together, everyone you know, kind of showed
Speaker 3: their wares. This is what I wrote, was so and
Speaker 3: so and so and so, and everybody voted and Eternal
Speaker 3: Flame didn't make it, and I was like, wait, it
Speaker 3: should be in there.
Speaker 2: I was like really stunned.
Speaker 3: Actually, I thought it was like we could use like
Speaker 3: a good old fashioned ballad like that, you know, But
Speaker 3: it didn't and we It wasn't until halfway to three
Speaker 3: quarters of the way through recording that album that David
Speaker 3: Segresson said, you know what, I think it's a mistake
Speaker 3: not to put Eternal Flame on here. Let's let's go
Speaker 3: over to my friend who's a keyboard player. Phil Chanel
Speaker 3: was his name, and let's mess around with a Patsy
Speaker 3: Cline esque arrangement because I was obsessed with Patsy Cline.
Speaker 3: I had discovered her around that time and I think
Speaker 3: the movie had come out, and yeah, I was just
Speaker 3: blown away by her singing and gorgeous voice, so so
Speaker 3: amazing and her story. Yeah, so we went and worked
Speaker 3: with Phil and it ended up.
Speaker 2: On the record.
Speaker 1: Did you guys have to regroup and read?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was a weird phase at that
Speaker 3: point where everybody was very much aware of like I
Speaker 3: want to make sure my songs are that everything was
Speaker 3: like very parsed out. Equally, it was less bandish at
Speaker 3: that point and davidt you know, was a change in producer.
Speaker 3: Having had David Kahn on the first two records, Davitt
Speaker 3: could see what was going on even in our behind
Speaker 3: the music. His interview, He's like, they were an odd
Speaker 3: kind of band we were.
Speaker 2: At that point.
Speaker 3: It just when you have four singer songwriters in a band,
Speaker 3: you have to figure out how to make that work.
Speaker 3: And it is a lot of personalities. And that's the
Speaker 3: great thing about bands, you know. Some of the things
Speaker 3: that make bands great are their conflicts. Are are the
Speaker 3: ways that they with a disconnects are how disparate points
Speaker 3: of view can come together and make something bigger than
Speaker 3: you know this, what's that expression? That some of its
Speaker 3: parts that yeah, yeah so. But Eternal Flame was a
Speaker 3: definite afterthought and it was It was the third single
Speaker 3: released on that Alpha album. It was not the first single.
Speaker 2: In Your Room.
Speaker 1: Was which which was.
Speaker 3: That's another Billy and Tom song And that was like
Speaker 3: me going full George michael on that I wanted that
Speaker 3: to sound like?
Speaker 2: Was it faith? Was that?
Speaker 3: The that the song that very dry, very dry, not
Speaker 3: no reverb like the big eighties reverb. It was so
Speaker 3: starkly dry and so like crispin in your face. That
Speaker 3: was like I kept obsessively telling David that I wanted
Speaker 3: it to have that sound. Yeah, very dry.
Speaker 1: And you also did with with with Tom and Billy.
Speaker 1: Did Belinda Carlisle song?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, what was it?
Speaker 1: I need a dis I need a disguy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh I sang on that record, Yeah I did.
Speaker 2: I did. I think, I'm I think I did some back.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh Gods and the Bengal Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was always well.
Speaker 3: I I love the Go Gos, you know, like, I
Speaker 3: think they inspired me. I didn't feel competitive with them.
Speaker 3: In fact, I just wanted to hang out with them,
Speaker 3: and I had seen them, I think even before I
Speaker 3: met Vicky and Debbie through the ad in the paper
Speaker 3: that I had put out advertising for other like minded musicians,
Speaker 3: especially girls. The Go Gos really honestly inspired me to
Speaker 3: want to be in a band with other girls.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, wow Fully.
Speaker 3: Their songs I think were very sixties inspired, so I
Speaker 3: felt a kinship there and like a shared sensibility. Belinda
Speaker 3: was came from the punk scene very much. I mean
Speaker 3: she used to dressing garbage bags.
Speaker 2: They were very off.
Speaker 3: They were avant garde to me, and that was what
Speaker 3: I was interested in. They were people who found each
Speaker 3: other and figured out how to collaborate.
Speaker 1: I guess a girl group not being a pop act
Speaker 1: at that time.
Speaker 2: A girl group compared to a girl band.
Speaker 1: A girl band, right, You guys run through the eighties
Speaker 1: is like incredible? Was there the thought that parting ways
Speaker 1: was a mistake. I can't imagine being at like the
Speaker 1: peak of you guys's powers as a foursome. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: like oh man, maybe yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think that when you when you have very little
Speaker 3: autonomy because your career is so pervading thing that you
Speaker 3: have to, you know, show up for, you feel a
Speaker 3: little bit claustrophobic after a while, and you start to
Speaker 3: kind of wonder what life would be like if you
Speaker 3: weren't bound by you know what three other people are
Speaker 3: and a management team are kind of pressing you to do.
Speaker 3: And I think that by the time we played sn
Speaker 3: L in nineteen end of nineteen eighty eight, that was
Speaker 3: a very stressful situation. There was a lot of frustration
Speaker 3: in some members of the band about, you know, what
Speaker 3: the perception of the band was. There was some feeling
Speaker 3: that people were deeming me a lead singer in the band,
Speaker 3: not just wanted to. Everyone's a singer, so I think that.
Speaker 3: And I just think living, you know, on mass and
Speaker 3: on tour for so long, and also having managers you know,
Speaker 3: wanting you to do that because they benefit from it.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's the oldest story in show business that
Speaker 3: artists get to a breaking point at some point along
Speaker 3: the journey and they're just like, I want to go home,
Speaker 3: and I want to meet someone that I can have
Speaker 3: in my life.
Speaker 2: And not be on the road and lonely.
Speaker 3: And as we were all looking at thirty approaching third,
Speaker 3: it just felt like we needed a break.
Speaker 2: And then we took one.
Speaker 3: And then we did regroup multiple times and did did
Speaker 3: But then it has a different vibe to it. Once
Speaker 3: you decide to take a break, it's it's not it's
Speaker 3: not ever quite the same as that that initial existence
Speaker 3: you're living.
Speaker 1: It's kind of familiar to most people who are like,
Speaker 1: ever take a break from a relationship or something. You know,
Speaker 1: then you come back and you're like, yeah, maybe it
Speaker 1: works out, but it's like, it's not, it's never.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't have that first magical, you know, excitement
Speaker 3: to it. Perhaps yeah, and we did It's interestingly in
Speaker 3: my perspective to how when the times that we kind
Speaker 3: of came back and made records and with different record
Speaker 3: labels or did them ourselves. Most people that I talked
Speaker 3: to didn't have any idea that we were still a band.
Speaker 3: It was like the more we did, the less people
Speaker 3: were like aware.
Speaker 2: I don't know why that was.
Speaker 1: But it's so much I guess was changing too about
Speaker 1: the industry.
Speaker 3: And I mean, Nirvana happened. Like what do you do
Speaker 3: when your whole mind is blown by a band like
Speaker 3: Nirvana and you're like, holy shit, this is genius, like
Speaker 3: brilliant music and you're like.
Speaker 2: Oh, oh my god.
Speaker 3: You know, but you also have at that same exact time,
Speaker 3: you know, Janet Jackson, you know, coming out with all
Speaker 3: this incredible like the nineties. Yeah, you know, the nineties happened. Yeah,
Speaker 3: time March is on and it's like.
Speaker 2: How do you wear?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: It was great, but you also kind of just the
Speaker 3: eighties were like this interesting bubble.
Speaker 2: It was very iconoclastic time for music. It was so
Speaker 2: many different things.
Speaker 1: It's strange how that the twentieth century you really can
Speaker 1: kind of divide things up neatly by more roughly to
Speaker 1: the actual decades, you know, like sometimes it's like eighty
Speaker 1: one the eighties star rather than eight or what you know,
Speaker 1: But you.
Speaker 2: Like, the nineties was so different, don't you think?
Speaker 1: So different? And I don't know that I feel the
Speaker 1: difference from decade to decade anymore, Like you know, I don't.
Speaker 3: Know, sixties to seventies to eighties to nineties each one,
Speaker 3: and really fifties through nineties if you think about it,
Speaker 3: it's from that whole chunk of a century. Ye in
Speaker 3: a way, right, I mean, it was really notable that
Speaker 3: what was going on, like the styles, the sounds, the vibes,
Speaker 3: all of it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for this letting us into your.
Speaker 2: This was amazing. This was very in depth. I feel
Speaker 2: great more.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm leaving things on the table.
Speaker 2: No, no, we're good. We're good.
Speaker 1: Thank you Susannahas for taking us through her career with
Speaker 1: the Bangles and talking about the creation of her new novel,
Speaker 1: This Bird Has Flown. You can hear all of our
Speaker 1: favorite songs featuring Susanna on a playlist at Broken record
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find
Speaker 1: all of our new episodes. You can follow us on
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Speaker 1: Theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richman.