November 21, 2023 • 50 mins
As a founding member of the iconic all-girl band The Bangles, Susanna Hoffs is perhaps most associated with 80s hits like “Manic Monday,” “Eternal Flame,” and “Walk Like An Egyptian.” After releasing three platinum-selling albums, in 1989 The Bangles broke up. Two years later, Susanna started to release solo material before reuniting with The Bangles at the end of the 90s.
Over the years Susanna has continued to release music and act in movies. She even appeared in all three Austin Powers films as part of a fictional Mod band.
This year Susanna has added another creative pursuit to her repertoire—she’s now a published novelist. Her first book, This Bird Has Flown, was released in April. And she put out her latest collection of cover songs on the album The Deep End produced by the great Peter Asher.
On today’s episode Justin Richmond talks to Susanna Hoffs about how Bruce Springsteen helped The Bangles secure a record deal after seeing them play at an amusement park in Southern California. She also tells the story of first listening to Prince’s demo of “Manic Monday.”
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Susanna Hoffs songs HERE.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. As a founding member of the iconic all girl
band The Bengals, Susannah Hoffs is perhaps most closely associated
with hits like Manic Monday, Eternal Flame, and Walk Like
an Egyptian. After releasing three platinum selling albums, the Bengals
broke up in eighty nine. Two years later, Susannah started
(00:37):
to put out interesting solo material before reuniting with the
Bengals at the end of the nineties. Over the years,
Susanna's continued to release music and even act in movies,
including appearances in all three Austin Powers films as part
of a fictional mod band. This year, Susanna's added another
creative pursuit to her repertoire. She's now a published novelist.
(00:59):
Her first book, This Bird Has Flown, was released in April.
The same month, she put out a new collection of
cover songs called The Deep End, produced by the Great
Peter Asher. On today's episode, I talked to Susannah Hoffs
about how Bruce Springsteen helps the Bengals secure a record
deal after seeing them play at an amusement park just
outside of la She also tells the story of first
(01:20):
listening to Princess demo of Manic Monday. This is broken
record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Mitchman.
Here's my interview with Susannah Hoffs from her home in La.
How long you've been living here?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
About?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Oh my god, this is really going to age me.
But I'm all into being honest about my age.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I'm sixty four.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Don't even look close to your age? Really, I look
older than you can.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
No, you don't.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I look much older than you. No.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
For some reason, sixty four really like has a special like.
I even got weird al who I love Yankovic made
me a special birthday message that it was more than
the usual one, that he's such a kind and wonderful
and talented guy.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
But this year I got the one.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I'm sixty four, full monty, full glorious birthday message.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Anyway. How long have I been living here? About? Twenty years?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Twenty years?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, And the acoustics in this room have been very
friendly to music making and having little music parties.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
And how often are you playing music in here?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Pretty frequently, but we have had a few iconic music parties.
We had members of Crowded House and Colin Hay was
here playing. We had a big we celebrated one of
my birthdays and it turned into this crazy music night.
Lindsay Buckingham has played in here, yep, taking requests.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
No one else is playing right, because how do you
play well along with Lindsay.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Lindsay was playing and he was just and I was
sitting in that little child's.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Chair right there by the piano and looking up.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
At him as he played. Anything I asked for he did.
It was incredible. Wow, yeah, he was so what did
you ask for? I asked for secondhand news? I asked
for go your own way, I think. And then he
and Ben Harper started singing on together on a song
that I'm now forgetting, one of the great songs that
(03:28):
he'd written. Ben Harper was here too, and it was amazing.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Wow. Yeah, we were talking just before the mic started
rolling about your book that you put out. Yes, spurt
his phone, Yes, really.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Good, thank you.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I guess it goes back to being a kid and
a teenager, and I think it's a coping strategy to
want to.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Disappear into a fiction of some form.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I've always loved going to movies, watching movies, reading books,
and I think, you know, there's stories inside of songs too,
And I don't know why, but I just like to
kind of fill my days finding inspiration through those stories.
And again there is a bit of an escape bist
coping mechanism aspect to it, of not wanting to kind
(04:13):
of sit with my own my own worries or fears, and.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I like to just drift away into a story.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
This is your first book, thought me, So would you
write for fun before? Like, have you ever written anything?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I started, I started a novel and I just double
checked in a drawer. It was written in like sort
of small spiral notebooks back and the date on it
is nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
So it was right when the.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Bengals journey, which was most of the eighties from me
going around of trying to find bandmates and advertising myself
in throwaway papers and the eventually meeting Vicky and Debbie
and then the band formed from there. But I had
always had a dream of writing a novel, and I
(04:59):
just kept putting it aside. But towards the end of
the eighties, when I felt the Bengals sort of decade
was kind of winding down and we were all kind
of antsy to do other things, I started a novel.
Now I just it's up there, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Know if is it good.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I don't know because I'd been so immersed in the
journey of writing this bird has flown, which took several years.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
It takes years to write a novel.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And because I never it was always either too lazy
or too impatient to ever take classes. In fact, I
don't even know how to read a musical chart. I
can be handed one and be doing like a choral
part with friends at like Largo, for example, I performed
with Amy Mann a lot of times, and sometimes we
would do like holiday shows, and I'd have to I'd
(05:45):
be handed a chart and I'd pretend to pretend to
read it.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I just kind of look at the shapes. Oh the
note went up there.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
But no.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
I same with pretty much everything I've done in the arts.
I kind of just threw myself in.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Which is interesting because you like you come from I mean,
both your parents are college educated. Yeah, we went to
the same school. We went to Berkeley.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, we both went to Berkeley. My parents met at Yale.
My dad had gone to Yeah. I know, I came
from a very intellectual family, and yet I just I
think it's my impatience and my like a strong urge
to just dive in.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
On average, how long will a writing session last for you?
Short spurts or long long.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Spurts like I'll have to set aside because I've been
doing a lot of promotion for the novel and also
for the new album. You know, in my days have
not sort of you know, opened up for me to
sort of go, okay, I just did you know, spent
four hours doing this other stuff, And it's kind of
a different kind of use of your brain. I think
(06:49):
with the the flow state is where you want to be,
like when your just fingers are going and you're seeing
it somehow in your mind's eye, I guess, and you
just go and you and the characters delight me. They
they I don't know where their voices come from, obviously
in my head and obviously I'm generating them. But sometimes
(07:12):
it actually doesn't feel like that, I guess.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Like the way some songwriters say it feels like, you know,
like Paul McCartney and Yesterday, it's like, oh, the song
must have the song must exist somewhere else. You know,
it seems like he still can't.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Believe, so he doesn't even know how it just came
to him.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
The story of yesterday, as I understand it is he
woke up from a dream with that song, with that
melody in his head, and he was he wrote to it,
but he was positive it was like scrambled eggs.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Did he have another name for it.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Which was yeah, one of those was maybe it was maybe.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
That was I think it was scrambled eggs until he
did did hone hone the lyrics?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
The lyrics. I think he didn't believe it was actually
like his melody. Like he he was like, there must
be an old something I remember from something someone.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Oh my god, that's fascinating. Yeah, you don't know where
these creative sparks.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Come from or how. Yeah, it's a mystery to me too.
It's weird. It's like hearing voices though in your head.
It's a little bit.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Strange, which I mean, I imagine the main character Jane came
to you first.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Yeah, I mean I kind of grappled initially we should
she be an actress? Should she be someone in Hollywood?
A sense that she should be a creative person and
a performer of some sort. But then I thought, you know, oh,
but I know what it's like.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
To be a musician. I know all the different aspects
of that. You know what it.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Feels like to step out onto a stage and have
horrible stage fright and to feel like your heart is
being so loudly. You know the audience can hear it too,
Because that happens to me.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I have to kind of.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
I have different ways that I cope with stage fright,
and one of them is which I didn't give to
Jane because there wasn't.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Time in this.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
You know, you need predicament in a story. Yeah, so
she didn't have time to do the ritual that I do,
which is to listen to something like soul Finger by
the Barcas or something like that.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Something I can dance dance to.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I used to listen to Let's Let's Go Crazy Press,
but before walking onto a stage, Like, there is no
way I could be like me, neurotic human worrying about this,
that and the other. Will the monitors work, will my
guitar work? Will I be able to hear myself? All
(09:38):
the different things that go into performing live.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
So I just have to like dance it out, man.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I mean is that the Bengals days when you would
listen to let's go crazy, I.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Would listen to When did I start doing it?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
I think it was probably after that because I used
to use white wine as my let's go crazy. I
would always have a little bit of a few SIPs
at least or maybe maybe half of a one of
those like plastic cups that you get backstage.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Oh like just like the solo cup.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I have a solo cup.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
The memories are resurfacing now and I'd be like, someone
would try to talk to me, and I'd like, I
can't talk to you now. I'm working on down in
like a quarter of this so that I can have
some liquid courage to step out onto a stage. And
I write about this in the book and become her
(10:33):
or someone who could walk out onto a stage and
strap on her guitar and I don't know, bring it,
bring it and hope that the voice is working and
everything else.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
The writing the book actually made me think about what
that experience was in a deeper way than I kind
of ever had.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
One of the cool things about the character I think
is it's not like a character. It's not an artist
who's at there, you know, creative and commercial peak. It's
like someone who sort of has had that is, you know,
kind of lost their way a bit totally.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
I mean more than that, like everything in her life
that could go wrong has gone wrong. Yeah, dumped and
cheated on by the boyfriend, the long term boyfriend, the producer.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, you know, being thirty three, that.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Alone, Like I remember, it seemed like right now, is
that what you are?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yes, it's going to be okay.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
What you said, it's.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Going to be okay. I can attest to it. At
sixty four, things are really good. So it's all a mindset.
But for I don't know, it seemed to be a
thing that there's kind of a peak time for I
don't know people in the music business certainly and maybe
even in the movie business that they're being young and
(11:57):
in your twenties even or even like it is a
prime real estate or chance to be you know, if
all goes well, you know, you're you're, people will know
about you, you'll be able to do good work, whether
it's in a movie or in recording industry.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
It was the book in a way, a way to
sort of offset some level of yeah, you know, just
malaise in your own Yeah, it wasn't malaise.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
It was like, how do I stay creative because all
I want to do the juices are flowing, but like
where to put them?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Another screenplay? Try again? You know?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
In that and it was it was how I fell
so deeply in love with the process that like Jay
would come home and go, wait, you're still sitting there
at the kitchen table when I used to write at
the kitchen table, and I'd be like, yeah, and I'm
right in it, like ensconced in this moment, and I
found it just blissful, yea, even though it's hard.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Did you write the album your new album at the same.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Time, Well, I didn't write it, mostly because I was
still very much engaged with the writing of the book
book and when Little Brown bought the book, and then
you go through a period of revisions. I met up
with Peter Asher during right in the mix of Peter.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I did it with the.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Great Peter Asher, who you know was the first president
of Apple Records and produced James Taylor and Linda Ronstett
records that literally changed my life. And I taught myself
to sing. Just like with the book writing, I didn't study.
I just studied by mimicking albums. So whether it was
a Joni Jony albums or Linda albums, you know, and
(13:44):
the Peter Asher were so great.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
So Peter randomly reached out at a very dark place
during the pandemic when we were all really stuck at home,
but we were starting to be able.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
To go out.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
We'd been vaccinated, you know, things were looking brighter. And
I started to go to Malibu twice a week and
we would just sit around with guitars and just sing
like campfire style. Yeah, and then we realized there was
a handful of songs that because I was so engrossed
in doing revisions still on the book, it was fun
(14:17):
to just cover songs. And then it went from sitting
in his living room with guitars and singing to the
idea to call Elvis Costello and on the EP that's
not out yet, Wed, we recorded so much music that
we made an album. It was like we could have
been a double album we were considering, which would be
(14:38):
very old school, like very seventies, but we ended up
putting out the album and then we have sort of
an EP. But Elvis Costello I wanted to I always
wanted to do the Keith Richards high harmony on Connection
there the rolling Stone song, so we sing that together
and I'm Keith and Elvis's mixed. So yeah, that album
(14:59):
has a ever so slightly leaning towards country and western
sort of material. But again, I was still working with
my publishers and doing final revisions during that time and
h and at the same time driving out to Malibu
to this beautiful studio and hanging out with Russ Kunkle
(15:19):
and Leland Sklarr and Waddi walk Tell and Danny Korchmar
during the pandemic incredible.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I mean those are like that, I know, those are
the guys.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
They're amazing and they're wonderful human beings, and I just
I was really kind of like pinching myself the whole time,
like feeling such gratitude.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
You mentioned in the session players your minded me believe
it's on your first record. You had John Entwhistle, I know,
play bass.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I know my first solo record. Yeah, and Mick Fleetwood
I think played on something too.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
John hem Whistle's bass plane is that's amazing. Guy's incredible,
I know. Back to the new record, Yeah, a surprise
under my film was there to lead things off. Yeah,
what are your feelings on the original.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Okay, well I love it.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
I love it, and I love the Stone And because
I was in the Bengals, and because the Bengals Beatles
there was always like a connection for us, because it
was the glue that cemented us. Was like being little
girls growing up and when the British invasion happened and
the Beatles were everything.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You know, the song about Liverpool on the first d Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
So it was so part of like the bengalsgeist. But
I love the Stones, and in the Stones I came
to know and love more like in college and during
the eighties when because I had been so engrossed with
the Beatles music and they were so supreme to me.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
As you know, they just they affected.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
My life so deeply and it kind of got the
ball rolling on my career and or I call it
a career, my journey as a musician and lover of
music above and beyond anything. But yeah, I was just
one day listening to the Stones on my morning walk.
And I'm one of those people who, you know how
(17:09):
some people say I always listened to the lyrics first,
or I always dial in on the music first. I
always considered myself someone who was like more more sort
of entranced by the music, and sometimes I would tune out,
like really focusing in on what are they saying here?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
And that was the case for me.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Weird that I went on to write a novel, but
given that, so I just was listening to it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
And I went, wait a minute, Wait a.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Minute, this is very retro and I thought, wow, like,
how fun it would be to turn the tables.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
My thin defense of it has always been it's thin.
I recognize it, but I've always told they need defend
because I just love the song. It's one of the
great songs. Is it's It's under my thumb the girl
who who once had me down? Yeah, And so it's
like it was it was role reversed. It was it
wasn't that like men need to put their thumb on
women or that make even necessarily in every relationshipiel he's making.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
It's his personal story.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yet men thumb And so now I got Now.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
So he's just saying his truth there, like he's just
expressing his emotion.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, So I just thought much.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
I just was thinking, like, you know, in feminist terms,
that it would be fun to turn the tables on that.
And and and actually there's there's a lot of sexuality
in that song. I mean, there's sexuality in rock and roll.
It is. It is why we love it. You know,
it's intrinsic to the to the genre.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
So I think it's so. I thought I just it was.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
It's all music, really, it's everything gospel, you know, in
an unspoken sort of way.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah, God, we could go on a deep, deep dive
on that we wanted to.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
We have to take a quick break and then we'll
come back with more of my interview with Susannah Hoffs.
We're back with more from Susannah Hafs. When you recorded
the Bengals, what was that experience?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Like the EP that was a little more that was
pre getting signed to Sony. So that was with an
amazing producer, Craig Leon. He was wonderful to work with.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yes, yes, he suicide.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Yeah, he did the Ramones and also did he work
with the Go Gos? I don't think so, but the
Ramones for sure.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Blondie, Yeah, Blondie so cool.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, So Blondie and the Ramones were the notable bands
that he had worked with that you know, we were like, okay, yes,
please please produce EP.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
How did you How did you get connected with him?
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Then our managers maybe we were at that point with
Miles Copeland, who managed the Police, and so it's possible
that Miles it must have been somehow connected to through that.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
How did you get the Columbia contract?
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Well, it was the only record company who was interested
in us, and Peter Philb in the A and our
guy brought Bruce Springsteen to see us play at Magic Mountain.
So Peter Philbin was the only music and our guy
that seemed to have taken an interest in the Bengals,
(20:22):
even though we had a kind of we were a
popular local club band in Los Angeles and we're playing,
you know, tons of gigs at the Whiskey of Go Go,
and and at a.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Time when the LA scene, the club scene was.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
It was happening, New wave was happening, punk rock was happening.
There was kind of a we were somewhere in the
middle between new wave and punk rock, and we were
something that was more like now deemed Paisley Underground, which
was we were a band in the eighties who were
obsessed with music from the sixties and trying to drag
those sounds and the twelve string guitar, electric guitar, like
(20:59):
the Birds and stuff like that into our sound. It
was like the Birds on guitars meets the Mamas and Papas,
So the Mamas and the Mamas we would have been,
you know. Yeah, So at that time we were we
were really part of a very vibrant scene in LA
that wasn't punk but had punk.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Leanings and were scrappy. We weren't polished.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
We were thrift store wearing girls who were mostly self taught.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
There was no sort of American idol sort of like
world at that point, and we wouldn't have wanted that anyway.
We were really we were really a garage band. But anyway,
it was basically kind of crickets from the record industry.
Nobody was like, we weren't on anyone's radar until was
it discouraging?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Not really.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I mean we were young and kind of brash, thinking
like we weren't kind of in some ways we weren't focused.
I wasn't focused on that. I wasn't like the focus
was not and I think this is true for the
whole band. The focus was not we got to become
pop stars. The focus was, you know, we want to
(22:10):
connect with an audience and we want to be ourselves,
you know, And I think that was a good thing
about the band.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
We weren't. There wasn't this Fengali.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Who lined up a couple, you know, different people based
on how they looked and then put them in with
songwriters or anything like that. We were definitely a grassroots
garage band. And interestingly, at the time that Miles Copeland
took us on as management clients, he was also putting
(22:39):
together a version of that other kind of band with
Darryl Hannah was in it.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
It was like all really beautiful sort of models and
actresses that he found and made a girl.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Called what was it called? Oh gosh, I.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Could try to find out the name of it, the
band that it was. I think I want to say
American Girls, which sounds like the name of those dolls.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah. I want to get back to the Columbia stuff.
But to your point of like nose Golly putting you together.
It's interesting too, though that you had Michael Steele in
the group, the bass player, the bass player from the Runaways,
which kind of was even though they were also kind
of put together in right.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah, So Kim Fallely called me when I was living
in the garage of my parents' home in West la
and and I just like I had such radar, you know,
I knew who he was and I was like, no, thanks,
you know.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
It was just before the Bengals.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, it was like in the early days of the Bengals.
Michael didn't join until there was a bass player in
net Zelenskis, who was in the band in those early days.
But right before, around the time, she wanted to leave
to do more country and Western music and wasn't feeling
comfortable in the band. And fair enough, I love Annette,
(23:58):
we're really dear friends to this day, but she wanted
she just wanted to move on. And that's when there
was this opportunity for Michael Steele, who had been in
the Runaways to and she was a very very accomplished
bass player. She loved playing bass. She has a gorgeous voice,
so really closing a great songwriter. She was extraordinarily and
(24:19):
is extraordinarily talented. So when she joined the band, everything
kind of fell into place. And it was around then
that Columbia sort of went and it was just Peter
Philben and he took Bruce Springsteen to see us at
Magic Mountain in Valencia, and all I know is that
Bruce must have liked us enough and said something and
(24:39):
vetted us in some way. And I finally had a
chance to thank him for that when he was at
the What's the Grammy Salute to the Grammy Salute? Yeah,
music care is Grammy Salute? And Jud Apatow, who loves
Bruce Springsteen and John Stewart, was the host that night.
Jay and I got a seat at Jud's table, yet
(25:01):
he had never met Bruce, and I said, well, I'll
be brazen and just drag you over there and reintroduce
myself to him, which I did, And I have really
cool picture where it's mostly that you see Bruce's wife,
Patty talking to Tom Hanks's wife Rita. Yeah, and in
the background, I'm smiling and I see and it's a
profile of Jud and Bruce smiling.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
At each other.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
I'll show you.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah. I have not seen Bruce since that.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
No, since the Magic Mountain.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah, no, I mean yeah, it was it.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Like medium then, like oh.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
It was cool.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
I mean we were so we didn't know he was
coming to see us, so we were just like, what's happening,
you know? But I don't think that Bruce thinks of
it this way or even particularly remembers seeing us at
Magic Mountain, But I always put it together that the
one label that wanted us, which was Columbia, or that
(25:55):
were intrigued with us and made that trap all the
way from you know, Century City to Valencia, which is
a bit of a commitment, and also had the thought to.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Bring Bruce Springsteene.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Yes, like, here's this grungey little garage band, all girl band.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
But all I know is.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
That they made that offer shortly after that, So something
he did must have been said.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
He must have liked us enough.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Now, how quickly did you start to make your first record? Oh?
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Well, let's see. David Kahn was our producer, and we
went through a whole I don't remember now, it's a
long time ago, but I remember that we just did
a pretty deep dive into like an extension of what
our rehearsals would have been. But with David there to
kind of think in terms of the record, we rehearsed
(26:48):
and we played a lot of stuff not in the studio, yes, songs,
songs we'd written. We showed him everything we had and
we just kind of went from there. We were a
band that were figured out our sound in part, in
large part by covering songs that we like. That's how
we figured out how to be bangles, you know. Like,
(27:09):
so we would cover a lot of songs and they
were almost always kind of cool, obscure nineteen sixties songs.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Stuff didn't even make records.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Yeah, yeah, like Pushing Do Hard by the Seeds, Debbie
saying that one there was a song called Kicks by
Paul Revere and the Raiders. We liked Paul Revere and
the Raiders songs. I think we might have done two
of their songs. We did where Were You When I
Needed You? Which was the grassroots. I sang that one,
which is like very jangly twelve string.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Looking back on that first record, what is your feeling
towards it?
Speaker 3 (27:43):
I think good, you know, I'd like probably a lot
of people you talked to who've made records, and like,
many decades have passed. I haven't revisited it in a
long time, but I do remember we've recorded a lot
of it up at place called Skylight, I think in Panga,
So that was cool, and there was different Hollywood studios
(28:06):
that we worked in. I just remember that I learned
a lot from David Kahn. He was really obsessed with arrangement.
And I feel happy that Prince discovered us through Hero
Takes a Fall, which was a song that Vicky and I,
who were really kind of a writing team within the band,
(28:26):
came up with in the garage where I was living.
It was that early on before we could kind of
like afford to move out of, in my case, my parents' house.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
You know, I was still living at home.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
So we're to think now when I think back on it,
because then I suddenly had this like job that was
a real job, and then I was on a label,
and you know, I had commitments and responsibilities. I wasn't
just a kid post college living in my parents' garage,
although I did live there for a big, big, big
(28:58):
chunk the majority of the Bengals thing, I was living
in a garage. Really yeah, just because once it took
off and we were traveling all over the place, I mean,
no one thought to buy houses until way later in
the process. We there was like a year where we
all were like, wait a minute. It really took us
a long time. It was towards the tail end of
(29:21):
the decade of the eighties where we sort of actually
were like, there was the year that everybody bought a car,
so we weren't used driving a car that our parents
had happened. You know, I bought a white BMW.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Three twenty five.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
It was snazzy, get on a car phone, hardwired into
it with a curly chord.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
You know, there was that eighty seven.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Amazing they had the car, I had a car phone.
I remember being mesmerized by those as a kid.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
When I said, yeah, I know, they were like, whoa,
They're like from the future.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, isn't it like ancient history?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
That record was so cool because it sounds like you
guys really figured out who you were from the EP
to the first kind of full length. Yeah, it seems
like you and VICKI kind of figured out your song.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, sort of for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Rhythm, yes, guys. Yeah. How did it feel when the
next record came out and it was such a big
because it's all these steps. It's like you do the
EP and you sign and you do this big record.
Then it's like the next record is like huge.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah, that was crazy.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
So there was a big leap somehow from the studio
we were working in Tapanga for that first album all
over the place, and then we went to Sunset Sound Factory,
which is the smaller of the two Sunset Sounds that
are sister studios, and that's where we started to work
on Different Light with David Kahn again. That record ended
(30:51):
up having some radio hits, including Manic Monday. So Prince
had really he really liked our video of Hero Takes
a Fall, which was that song that Vicky and I
wrote in the garage on the prompting of David Kahn
to write something that wasn't like a cowby, like a
that kind of beat and more like a four on
the floor beat. So when we were writing Hero Takes
(31:14):
a Fall, we were kind of playing drums on our thighs,
you know, like holding the beat that way and kind
of getting the rhythm. And so a lot of things
opened up from that first album and then Prince saw somehow.
Prince had this idea that I should come over and
get this cassette from him at Sunset Sound, the big
(31:35):
mother ship studio on Sunset, and he had a song
to share with us, and it was Manic Monday. So
during that recording of Different Light at Sunset Sound Factory,
I came back with the cassette from Prince and we
recorded that.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Song and he had offered me yeah, oh yeah yeah,
and I have the cassette upstairs. Wow, yeah, I can
show you if you want. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
So we just kind of hovered around a cassette player
and I was immediately like, oh my god, this would
be great to sing. And so then we recorded it
and at Sunset Sound Factory and it came out really well,
and then it became the first single on that record
and it became a hit, our first like top forty
(32:24):
radio hit.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
How was it having a hit?
Speaker 2 (32:27):
It was nuts.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
We were on tour Columbia had released it as the
first single off the Different Light record, and we were
just standing on a corner and somebody pulled up in
a convertible and something sounded familiar, but not familiar, because
if it was the Beatles song playing on the radio,
I would have been like, oh it took We all
had this weird delayed reaction of like, oh shit, that's
(32:51):
our song, that's Manic Monday. Like there was this weird,
like I don't know, delay in connecting the dots, and
then we were like off to the races at that
point that this song just started to go up the
charts and it got to number two, which was pretty
good because Prince was I think Kiss.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Was number one, and We and Manic Monday was number.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Two and Prince. It offered you other songs.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
He there was another song listed on the cassette called
Jealous Girl. I bet you that demo's floating around. But
the weird thing is, I wanted to digitize that cassette
and I took it to a friend's studio and we
went through the whole cassette and Jealous Girl did not play.
(33:34):
So I don't know if it just like the ravages
of like a cassette sitting in a box for thirty years,
is to blame or not. I don't know. It was
just never but I think it's probably in his archive.
I think we could google it and we could maybe
find it pull it up.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, we're going to pause for a quick break and
then come back with more from my interview with Susannah Hoffs.
We're back with the rest of our conversation with Susannah Hoffs.
Did you know that Walk Like Egyptian was going to
be the hit that it was? No, that is the
most bizarre, you know, it's like it's a great song,
(34:10):
but it's it's so out of left field. I know.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
I think that's the brilliance of it. So I was
at David's office, David Kahn up at Columbia, and he
wanted to play me some songs there, just share some
things that had crossed his desk, and one of them
was Marnie Dixon. I want to say, oh god, I'm
going to get it wrong. I'll try to find out
there was a woman who had covered it, and also
(34:35):
Charlie Sexton had covered it, of all things. So I
recently was able to talk to him about that, but.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
He released it.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
I think so.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
I think if you google you'll find other versions. These
other versions are probably somewhere. But David played it for me,
and I just thought it had this really again nineteen
sixties bossa Nova like there was something about it. The
rhythm of it was so interesting, the shaker being so predominant,
and the kind of I don't know, it sounded like
(35:07):
something from a movie or something like or from another time.
So we just we all were kind of curious to
try it out because sometimes when you're in the studio,
you record more than you think you record more than
you think you're gonna need, and then you pick the
best or the most catchy or connect with people the most,
so you just never know. There's a lot of lore
(35:30):
within the band because you know, different people in the
band were singing different parts, you know, and not everybody
got to sing a part, you know. W I know
always felt kind of left out, and I totally I
can really empathize with that. But we had no idea
that that song would catch on the way it did.
It was the third single, If She Knew What She Wants,
(35:51):
a Jewells share song that I sang was a second single,
and it did moderately well, and it was very bangles.
It was lush harmon these all the way through. It
was a beautiful song.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Oh thank you.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
That was kind of let it go was like a
chance for all of us to feel in because we
wrote it together as a foursome and we sang it
together as a foursome. So we kind of needed that
as it was one of the last songs we recorded
on that album. Yeah, it was kind of like the
band needed that. Yeah, it was like a really bonding yeah,
you know what. I loved that one, and we all
(36:27):
wrote it I think, yeah, together.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
I guess I want to jump to the next record,
because you know, you and Vicky kind of have like
a songwriting thing. But then you discover Tom.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Kelly, Yeah, Philly stigin very good.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah. How did that kind of song How did that
kind of songwriting trio happen?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Oh, that's great question.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
I think that by the time Different Light had run
its cycle out in the world and all the touring
and you know, us opening for Queen at slain Castle,
and just like everything had shot up, you know, with
the success of that record, and our our lives were
not our own lives.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
That we were living.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Like what happens when that when that occurs in the
journey of a band, you know. So we after living
like so closely for so long and being on tour
and having no autonomy everyone in the band, but we decided, Okay,
that's the end of that tour cycle, let's start writing
for the next record, the next record, And no one
(37:30):
wanted to write with each other, like everyone wanted to
be totally away from the other members, so like just
needed autonomy. So somehow I met Billy, and Billy introduced
me to Tom and we just hit it off. As
a songwriting team. Immediately I had heard some of the
stuff they had done, and I thought they were great,
(37:53):
and they were so fun, and their work partnership was strong,
and they really knew each one brought a very specific
thing to the table. Billy was very much the lyricist,
but you know, had melodic ideas as well, and arrangement ideas.
And Tom was just like this incredible melody maker machine.
(38:14):
You know, he was just he just would sit at
the piano or go to the guitar, or go back
to the piano, and just to be in the room
during all this creation with them was extraordinary, and I
was so impressed with songs that they had written, so
I just started to hang out with them and do
songwriting sessions with them. An eternal Flame was me sharing
(38:37):
I'd just been back from a Bengals tour and we
did Graceland like all bands have to do. But the
day we were there, Elvis's eternal Flame in the Garden
of Memories was basically a plexiglass box with a little
flame in it, but it was out because the rain
had filled up the box with rain water and extinguished
the flame. It was out that day, but we were
(39:00):
recreating the scene in spinal Tap where there's singing heartbreak
Hotel and raga harmonies or whatever.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
They were tempting the harmonies and they were face Bill.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
So we were doing that and I came back to
La I had my writing session with Billy, because Billy
always wanted to write lyrics first, which again was unusual
to me because I always thought melody first, and we'll
just jabber something and the lyric will find itself later.
But with Billy, he really had a really strong practice
in doing bringing a lyric to Tom. So we just
(39:31):
sat down. I was just telling him the story about
the Eternal Flame at Graceland it was out, and he went,
eternal Flame. That's a great name for a song. And
I was like, yeah, you're right, and we just sat down,
did the lyrics, and we drove over to Tom's and
we just started working on the music. But when that
turn came in on the two. It's a weird structure
that song because it doesn't have a proper chorus. It's
(39:52):
just the tagline is this burning and eternal flame at
the ends of the verses. So what really was like
the moment of like, uh, you know, the sun breaking
through the clouds. Was that actually it fit with those
lyrics sunshines through the rain, the bridge that repeats, and
there's a really cool place for a guitar solo in
(40:13):
the middle of it. So it's like verse verse bridge
solo bridge verse out, and those bridges were just like
I knew. When that happened, I was like, shit, man,
this is good, you know, this is oh wow, what
is this? This is great and felt so good to
sing that.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
It is a strange song structure, it's not traditional song structural.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
But those bridges were just so beautiful and so fun
to sing. And the other part was like kind of
a here, there and everywhere, kind of you know, be lesque,
very very blesque.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
The verses, yeah, yeah, pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
But it was a real afterthought putting it out, and
it was it hardly made the record.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
It didn't.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
It wasn't voted. We had a thing where we had
a band meeting and everybody had gone off.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Everyone needed to go off and write.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
With other people. Everyone was sick of each other. When
we got back together, everyone you know, kind of showed
their wares. This is what I wrote, was so and
so and so and so, and everybody voted and Eternal
Flame didn't make it, and I was like, wait, it
should be in there.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
I was like really stunned.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Actually, I thought it was like we could use like
a good old fashioned ballad like that, you know, But
it didn't and we It wasn't until halfway to three
quarters of the way through recording that album that David
Segresson said, you know what, I think it's a mistake
not to put Eternal Flame on here. Let's let's go
(41:45):
over to my friend who's a keyboard player. Phil Chanel
was his name, and let's mess around with a Patsy
Cline esque arrangement because I was obsessed with Patsy Cline.
I had discovered her around that time and I think
the movie had come out, and yeah, I was just
blown away by her singing and gorgeous voice, so so
amazing and her story. Yeah, so we went and worked
(42:08):
with Phil and it ended up.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
On the record.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Did you guys have to regroup and read?
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Yeah, I mean it was a weird phase at that
point where everybody was very much aware of like I
want to make sure my songs are that everything was
like very parsed out. Equally, it was less bandish at
that point and davidt you know, was a change in producer.
(42:36):
Having had David Kahn on the first two records, Davitt
could see what was going on even in our behind
the music. His interview, He's like, they were an odd
kind of band we were.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
At that point.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
It just when you have four singer songwriters in a band,
you have to figure out how to make that work.
And it is a lot of personalities. And that's the
great thing about bands, you know. Some of the things
that make bands great are their conflicts. Are are the
ways that they with a disconnects are how disparate points
(43:11):
of view can come together and make something bigger than
you know this, what's that expression? That some of its
parts that yeah, yeah so. But Eternal Flame was a
definite afterthought and it was It was the third single
released on that Alpha album. It was not the first single.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
In Your Room.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Was which which was.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
That's another Billy and Tom song And that was like
me going full George michael on that I wanted that
to sound like?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Was it faith? Was that?
Speaker 3 (43:41):
The that the song that very dry, very dry, not
no reverb like the big eighties reverb. It was so
starkly dry and so like crispin in your face. That
was like I kept obsessively telling David that I wanted
it to have that sound. Yeah, very dry.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
And you also did with with with Tom and Billy.
Did Belinda Carlisle song?
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Oh yeah, what was it?
Speaker 1 (44:07):
I need a dis I need a disguy.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah. Oh I sang on that record, Yeah I did.
I did. I think, I'm I think I did some back.
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Oh Gods and the Bengal Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Yeah, that was always well.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
I I love the Go Gos, you know, like, I
think they inspired me. I didn't feel competitive with them.
In fact, I just wanted to hang out with them,
and I had seen them, I think even before I
met Vicky and Debbie through the ad in the paper
that I had put out advertising for other like minded musicians,
especially girls. The Go Gos really honestly inspired me to
(44:44):
want to be in a band with other girls.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Oh yeah, wow Fully.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Their songs I think were very sixties inspired, so I
felt a kinship there and like a shared sensibility. Belinda
was came from the punk scene very much. I mean
she used to dressing garbage bags.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
They were very off.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
They were avant garde to me, and that was what
I was interested in. They were people who found each
other and figured out how to collaborate.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
I guess a girl group not being a pop act
at that time.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
A girl group compared to a girl band.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
A girl band, right, You guys run through the eighties
is like incredible? Was there the thought that parting ways
was a mistake. I can't imagine being at like the
peak of you guys's powers as a foursome. Yeah, just
like oh man, maybe yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
I think that when you when you have very little
autonomy because your career is so pervading thing that you
have to, you know, show up for, you feel a
little bit claustrophobic after a while, and you start to
kind of wonder what life would be like if you
(45:56):
weren't bound by you know what three other people are
and a management team are kind of pressing you to do.
And I think that by the time we played sn
L in nineteen end of nineteen eighty eight, that was
a very stressful situation. There was a lot of frustration
(46:19):
in some members of the band about, you know, what
the perception of the band was. There was some feeling
that people were deeming me a lead singer in the band,
not just wanted to. Everyone's a singer, so I think that.
And I just think living, you know, on mass and
on tour for so long, and also having managers you know,
(46:42):
wanting you to do that because they benefit from it.
I mean, it's the oldest story in show business that
artists get to a breaking point at some point along
the journey and they're just like, I want to go home,
and I want to meet someone that I can have
in my life.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And not be on the road and lonely.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
And as we were all looking at thirty approaching third,
it just felt like we needed a break.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
And then we took one.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
And then we did regroup multiple times and did did
But then it has a different vibe to it. Once
you decide to take a break, it's it's not it's
not ever quite the same as that that initial existence
you're living.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
It's kind of familiar to most people who are like,
ever take a break from a relationship or something. You know,
then you come back and you're like, yeah, maybe it
works out, but it's like, it's not, it's never.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Yeah, it doesn't have that first magical, you know, excitement
to it. Perhaps yeah, and we did It's interestingly in
my perspective to how when the times that we kind
of came back and made records and with different record
labels or did them ourselves. Most people that I talked
(47:59):
to didn't have any idea that we were still a band.
It was like the more we did, the less people
were like aware.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
I don't know why that was.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
But it's so much I guess was changing too about
the industry.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
And I mean, Nirvana happened. Like what do you do
when your whole mind is blown by a band like
Nirvana and you're like, holy shit, this is genius, like
brilliant music and you're like.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Oh, oh my god.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
You know, but you also have at that same exact time,
you know, Janet Jackson, you know, coming out with all
this incredible like the nineties. Yeah, you know, the nineties happened. Yeah,
time March is on and it's like.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
How do you wear?
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (48:48):
It was great, but you also kind of just the
eighties were like this interesting bubble.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
It was very iconoclastic time for music. It was so
many different things.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
It's strange how that the twentieth century you really can
kind of divide things up neatly by more roughly to
the actual decades, you know, like sometimes it's like eighty
one the eighties star rather than eight or what you know,
But you.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Like, the nineties was so different, don't you think?
Speaker 1 (49:17):
So different? And I don't know that I feel the
difference from decade to decade anymore, Like you know, I don't.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Know, sixties to seventies to eighties to nineties each one,
and really fifties through nineties if you think about it,
it's from that whole chunk of a century. Ye in
a way, right, I mean, it was really notable that
what was going on, like the styles, the sounds, the vibes,
(49:48):
all of it.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Thank you so much for this letting us into your.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
This was amazing. This was very in depth. I feel
great more.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
I feel like I'm leaving things on the table.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
No, no, we're good. We're good.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Thank you Susannahas for taking us through her career with
the Bangles and talking about the creation of her new novel,
This Bird Has Flown. You can hear all of our
favorite songs featuring Susanna on a playlist at Broken record
podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find
all of our new episodes. You can follow us on
(50:26):
Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help
from Lea Rose and Eric Sandler. Our show is engineered
by Echo Mountain. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four
(50:47):
to ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on
Apple podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please
remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app.
Theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richman.
Pushkin. As a founding member of the iconic all girl
band The Bengals, Susannah Hoffs is perhaps most closely associated
with hits like Manic Monday, Eternal Flame, and Walk Like
an Egyptian. After releasing three platinum selling albums, the Bengals
broke up in eighty nine. Two years later, Susannah started
(00:37):
to put out interesting solo material before reuniting with the
Bengals at the end of the nineties. Over the years,
Susanna's continued to release music and even act in movies,
including appearances in all three Austin Powers films as part
of a fictional mod band. This year, Susanna's added another
creative pursuit to her repertoire. She's now a published novelist.
(00:59):
Her first book, This Bird Has Flown, was released in April.
The same month, she put out a new collection of
cover songs called The Deep End, produced by the Great
Peter Asher. On today's episode, I talked to Susannah Hoffs
about how Bruce Springsteen helps the Bengals secure a record
deal after seeing them play at an amusement park just
outside of la She also tells the story of first
(01:20):
listening to Princess demo of Manic Monday. This is broken
record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Mitchman.
Here's my interview with Susannah Hoffs from her home in La.
How long you've been living here?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
About?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Oh my god, this is really going to age me.
But I'm all into being honest about my age.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I'm sixty four.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Don't even look close to your age? Really, I look
older than you can.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
No, you don't.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I look much older than you. No.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
For some reason, sixty four really like has a special like.
I even got weird al who I love Yankovic made
me a special birthday message that it was more than
the usual one, that he's such a kind and wonderful
and talented guy.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
But this year I got the one.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I'm sixty four, full monty, full glorious birthday message.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Anyway. How long have I been living here? About? Twenty years?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Twenty years?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, And the acoustics in this room have been very
friendly to music making and having little music parties.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
And how often are you playing music in here?
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Pretty frequently, but we have had a few iconic music parties.
We had members of Crowded House and Colin Hay was
here playing. We had a big we celebrated one of
my birthdays and it turned into this crazy music night.
Lindsay Buckingham has played in here, yep, taking requests.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
No one else is playing right, because how do you
play well along with Lindsay.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Lindsay was playing and he was just and I was
sitting in that little child's.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Chair right there by the piano and looking up.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
At him as he played. Anything I asked for he did.
It was incredible. Wow, yeah, he was so what did
you ask for? I asked for secondhand news? I asked
for go your own way, I think. And then he
and Ben Harper started singing on together on a song
that I'm now forgetting, one of the great songs that
(03:28):
he'd written. Ben Harper was here too, and it was amazing.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Wow. Yeah, we were talking just before the mic started
rolling about your book that you put out. Yes, spurt
his phone, Yes, really.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Good, thank you.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I guess it goes back to being a kid and
a teenager, and I think it's a coping strategy to
want to.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Disappear into a fiction of some form.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
I've always loved going to movies, watching movies, reading books,
and I think, you know, there's stories inside of songs too,
And I don't know why, but I just like to
kind of fill my days finding inspiration through those stories.
And again there is a bit of an escape bist
coping mechanism aspect to it, of not wanting to kind
(04:13):
of sit with my own my own worries or fears, and.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I like to just drift away into a story.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
This is your first book, thought me, So would you
write for fun before? Like, have you ever written anything?
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I started, I started a novel and I just double
checked in a drawer. It was written in like sort
of small spiral notebooks back and the date on it
is nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
So it was right when the.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Bengals journey, which was most of the eighties from me
going around of trying to find bandmates and advertising myself
in throwaway papers and the eventually meeting Vicky and Debbie
and then the band formed from there. But I had
always had a dream of writing a novel, and I
(04:59):
just kept putting it aside. But towards the end of
the eighties, when I felt the Bengals sort of decade
was kind of winding down and we were all kind
of antsy to do other things, I started a novel.
Now I just it's up there, but I don't.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Know if is it good.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
I don't know because I'd been so immersed in the
journey of writing this bird has flown, which took several years.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
It takes years to write a novel.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And because I never it was always either too lazy
or too impatient to ever take classes. In fact, I
don't even know how to read a musical chart. I
can be handed one and be doing like a choral
part with friends at like Largo, for example, I performed
with Amy Mann a lot of times, and sometimes we
would do like holiday shows, and I'd have to I'd
(05:45):
be handed a chart and I'd pretend to pretend to
read it.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
I just kind of look at the shapes. Oh the
note went up there.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
But no.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
I same with pretty much everything I've done in the arts.
I kind of just threw myself in.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Which is interesting because you like you come from I mean,
both your parents are college educated. Yeah, we went to
the same school. We went to Berkeley.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yeah, we both went to Berkeley. My parents met at Yale.
My dad had gone to Yeah. I know, I came
from a very intellectual family, and yet I just I
think it's my impatience and my like a strong urge
to just dive in.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
On average, how long will a writing session last for you?
Short spurts or long long.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Spurts like I'll have to set aside because I've been
doing a lot of promotion for the novel and also
for the new album. You know, in my days have
not sort of you know, opened up for me to
sort of go, okay, I just did you know, spent
four hours doing this other stuff, And it's kind of
a different kind of use of your brain. I think
(06:49):
with the the flow state is where you want to be,
like when your just fingers are going and you're seeing
it somehow in your mind's eye, I guess, and you
just go and you and the characters delight me. They
they I don't know where their voices come from, obviously
in my head and obviously I'm generating them. But sometimes
(07:12):
it actually doesn't feel like that, I guess.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Like the way some songwriters say it feels like, you know,
like Paul McCartney and Yesterday, it's like, oh, the song
must have the song must exist somewhere else. You know,
it seems like he still can't.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Believe, so he doesn't even know how it just came
to him.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
The story of yesterday, as I understand it is he
woke up from a dream with that song, with that
melody in his head, and he was he wrote to it,
but he was positive it was like scrambled eggs.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
Did he have another name for it.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Which was yeah, one of those was maybe it was maybe.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
That was I think it was scrambled eggs until he
did did hone hone the lyrics?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
The lyrics. I think he didn't believe it was actually
like his melody. Like he he was like, there must
be an old something I remember from something someone.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Oh my god, that's fascinating. Yeah, you don't know where
these creative sparks.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Come from or how. Yeah, it's a mystery to me too.
It's weird. It's like hearing voices though in your head.
It's a little bit.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Strange, which I mean, I imagine the main character Jane came
to you first.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Yeah, I mean I kind of grappled initially we should
she be an actress? Should she be someone in Hollywood?
A sense that she should be a creative person and
a performer of some sort. But then I thought, you know, oh,
but I know what it's like.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
To be a musician. I know all the different aspects
of that. You know what it.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Feels like to step out onto a stage and have
horrible stage fright and to feel like your heart is
being so loudly. You know the audience can hear it too,
Because that happens to me.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
I have to kind of.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
I have different ways that I cope with stage fright,
and one of them is which I didn't give to
Jane because there wasn't.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Time in this.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
You know, you need predicament in a story. Yeah, so
she didn't have time to do the ritual that I do,
which is to listen to something like soul Finger by
the Barcas or something like that.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Something I can dance dance to.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I used to listen to Let's Let's Go Crazy Press,
but before walking onto a stage, Like, there is no
way I could be like me, neurotic human worrying about this,
that and the other. Will the monitors work, will my
guitar work? Will I be able to hear myself? All
(09:38):
the different things that go into performing live.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
So I just have to like dance it out, man.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
I mean is that the Bengals days when you would
listen to let's go crazy, I.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Would listen to When did I start doing it?
Speaker 3 (09:52):
I think it was probably after that because I used
to use white wine as my let's go crazy. I
would always have a little bit of a few SIPs
at least or maybe maybe half of a one of
those like plastic cups that you get backstage.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Oh like just like the solo cup.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I have a solo cup.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
The memories are resurfacing now and I'd be like, someone
would try to talk to me, and I'd like, I
can't talk to you now. I'm working on down in
like a quarter of this so that I can have
some liquid courage to step out onto a stage. And
I write about this in the book and become her
(10:33):
or someone who could walk out onto a stage and
strap on her guitar and I don't know, bring it,
bring it and hope that the voice is working and
everything else.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
The writing the book actually made me think about what
that experience was in a deeper way than I kind
of ever had.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
One of the cool things about the character I think
is it's not like a character. It's not an artist
who's at there, you know, creative and commercial peak. It's
like someone who sort of has had that is, you know,
kind of lost their way a bit totally.
Speaker 3 (11:13):
I mean more than that, like everything in her life
that could go wrong has gone wrong. Yeah, dumped and
cheated on by the boyfriend, the long term boyfriend, the producer.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, you know, being thirty three, that.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Alone, Like I remember, it seemed like right now, is
that what you are?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yes, it's going to be okay.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
What you said, it's.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Going to be okay. I can attest to it. At
sixty four, things are really good. So it's all a mindset.
But for I don't know, it seemed to be a
thing that there's kind of a peak time for I
don't know people in the music business certainly and maybe
even in the movie business that they're being young and
(11:57):
in your twenties even or even like it is a
prime real estate or chance to be you know, if
all goes well, you know, you're you're, people will know
about you, you'll be able to do good work, whether
it's in a movie or in recording industry.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
It was the book in a way, a way to
sort of offset some level of yeah, you know, just
malaise in your own Yeah, it wasn't malaise.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
It was like, how do I stay creative because all
I want to do the juices are flowing, but like
where to put them?
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Another screenplay? Try again? You know?
Speaker 3 (12:37):
In that and it was it was how I fell
so deeply in love with the process that like Jay
would come home and go, wait, you're still sitting there
at the kitchen table when I used to write at
the kitchen table, and I'd be like, yeah, and I'm
right in it, like ensconced in this moment, and I
found it just blissful, yea, even though it's hard.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Did you write the album your new album at the same.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Time, Well, I didn't write it, mostly because I was
still very much engaged with the writing of the book
book and when Little Brown bought the book, and then
you go through a period of revisions. I met up
with Peter Asher during right in the mix of Peter.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I did it with the.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Great Peter Asher, who you know was the first president
of Apple Records and produced James Taylor and Linda Ronstett
records that literally changed my life. And I taught myself
to sing. Just like with the book writing, I didn't study.
I just studied by mimicking albums. So whether it was
a Joni Jony albums or Linda albums, you know, and
(13:44):
the Peter Asher were so great.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
So Peter randomly reached out at a very dark place
during the pandemic when we were all really stuck at home,
but we were starting to be able.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
To go out.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
We'd been vaccinated, you know, things were looking brighter. And
I started to go to Malibu twice a week and
we would just sit around with guitars and just sing
like campfire style. Yeah, and then we realized there was
a handful of songs that because I was so engrossed
in doing revisions still on the book, it was fun
(14:17):
to just cover songs. And then it went from sitting
in his living room with guitars and singing to the
idea to call Elvis Costello and on the EP that's
not out yet, Wed, we recorded so much music that
we made an album. It was like we could have
been a double album we were considering, which would be
(14:38):
very old school, like very seventies, but we ended up
putting out the album and then we have sort of
an EP. But Elvis Costello I wanted to I always
wanted to do the Keith Richards high harmony on Connection
there the rolling Stone song, so we sing that together
and I'm Keith and Elvis's mixed. So yeah, that album
(14:59):
has a ever so slightly leaning towards country and western
sort of material. But again, I was still working with
my publishers and doing final revisions during that time and
h and at the same time driving out to Malibu
to this beautiful studio and hanging out with Russ Kunkle
(15:19):
and Leland Sklarr and Waddi walk Tell and Danny Korchmar
during the pandemic incredible.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
I mean those are like that, I know, those are
the guys.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
They're amazing and they're wonderful human beings, and I just
I was really kind of like pinching myself the whole time,
like feeling such gratitude.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
You mentioned in the session players your minded me believe
it's on your first record. You had John Entwhistle, I know,
play bass.
Speaker 3 (15:46):
I know my first solo record. Yeah, and Mick Fleetwood
I think played on something too.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
John hem Whistle's bass plane is that's amazing. Guy's incredible,
I know. Back to the new record, Yeah, a surprise
under my film was there to lead things off. Yeah,
what are your feelings on the original.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Okay, well I love it.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
I love it, and I love the Stone And because
I was in the Bengals, and because the Bengals Beatles
there was always like a connection for us, because it
was the glue that cemented us. Was like being little
girls growing up and when the British invasion happened and
the Beatles were everything.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
You know, the song about Liverpool on the first d Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
So it was so part of like the bengalsgeist. But
I love the Stones, and in the Stones I came
to know and love more like in college and during
the eighties when because I had been so engrossed with
the Beatles music and they were so supreme to me.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
As you know, they just they affected.
Speaker 3 (16:48):
My life so deeply and it kind of got the
ball rolling on my career and or I call it
a career, my journey as a musician and lover of
music above and beyond anything. But yeah, I was just
one day listening to the Stones on my morning walk.
And I'm one of those people who, you know how
(17:09):
some people say I always listened to the lyrics first,
or I always dial in on the music first. I
always considered myself someone who was like more more sort
of entranced by the music, and sometimes I would tune out,
like really focusing in on what are they saying here?
Speaker 2 (17:26):
And that was the case for me.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Weird that I went on to write a novel, but
given that, so I just was listening to it.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
And I went, wait a minute, Wait a.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Minute, this is very retro and I thought, wow, like,
how fun it would be to turn the tables.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
My thin defense of it has always been it's thin.
I recognize it, but I've always told they need defend
because I just love the song. It's one of the
great songs. Is it's It's under my thumb the girl
who who once had me down? Yeah, And so it's
like it was it was role reversed. It was it
wasn't that like men need to put their thumb on
women or that make even necessarily in every relationshipiel he's making.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
It's his personal story.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yet men thumb And so now I got Now.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
So he's just saying his truth there, like he's just
expressing his emotion.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, So I just thought much.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
I just was thinking, like, you know, in feminist terms,
that it would be fun to turn the tables on that.
And and and actually there's there's a lot of sexuality
in that song. I mean, there's sexuality in rock and roll.
It is. It is why we love it. You know,
it's intrinsic to the to the genre.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
So I think it's so. I thought I just it was.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
It's all music, really, it's everything gospel, you know, in
an unspoken sort of way.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
I agree.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Yeah, God, we could go on a deep, deep dive
on that we wanted to.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
We have to take a quick break and then we'll
come back with more of my interview with Susannah Hoffs.
We're back with more from Susannah Hafs. When you recorded
the Bengals, what was that experience?
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Like the EP that was a little more that was
pre getting signed to Sony. So that was with an
amazing producer, Craig Leon. He was wonderful to work with.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yes, yes, he suicide.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Yeah, he did the Ramones and also did he work
with the Go Gos? I don't think so, but the
Ramones for sure.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Blondie, Yeah, Blondie so cool.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Yeah, So Blondie and the Ramones were the notable bands
that he had worked with that you know, we were like, okay, yes,
please please produce EP.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
How did you How did you get connected with him?
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Then our managers maybe we were at that point with
Miles Copeland, who managed the Police, and so it's possible
that Miles it must have been somehow connected to through that.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
How did you get the Columbia contract?
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Well, it was the only record company who was interested
in us, and Peter Philb in the A and our
guy brought Bruce Springsteen to see us play at Magic Mountain.
So Peter Philbin was the only music and our guy
that seemed to have taken an interest in the Bengals,
(20:22):
even though we had a kind of we were a
popular local club band in Los Angeles and we're playing,
you know, tons of gigs at the Whiskey of Go Go,
and and at a.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Time when the LA scene, the club scene was.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
It was happening, New wave was happening, punk rock was happening.
There was kind of a we were somewhere in the
middle between new wave and punk rock, and we were
something that was more like now deemed Paisley Underground, which
was we were a band in the eighties who were
obsessed with music from the sixties and trying to drag
those sounds and the twelve string guitar, electric guitar, like
(20:59):
the Birds and stuff like that into our sound. It
was like the Birds on guitars meets the Mamas and Papas,
So the Mamas and the Mamas we would have been,
you know. Yeah, So at that time we were we
were really part of a very vibrant scene in LA
that wasn't punk but had punk.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Leanings and were scrappy. We weren't polished.
Speaker 3 (21:22):
We were thrift store wearing girls who were mostly self taught.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
There was no sort of American idol sort of like
world at that point, and we wouldn't have wanted that anyway.
We were really we were really a garage band. But anyway,
it was basically kind of crickets from the record industry.
Nobody was like, we weren't on anyone's radar until was
it discouraging?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Not really.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
I mean we were young and kind of brash, thinking
like we weren't kind of in some ways we weren't focused.
I wasn't focused on that. I wasn't like the focus
was not and I think this is true for the
whole band. The focus was not we got to become
pop stars. The focus was, you know, we want to
(22:10):
connect with an audience and we want to be ourselves,
you know, And I think that was a good thing
about the band.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
We weren't. There wasn't this Fengali.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Who lined up a couple, you know, different people based
on how they looked and then put them in with
songwriters or anything like that. We were definitely a grassroots
garage band. And interestingly, at the time that Miles Copeland
took us on as management clients, he was also putting
(22:39):
together a version of that other kind of band with
Darryl Hannah was in it.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
It was like all really beautiful sort of models and
actresses that he found and made a girl.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Called what was it called? Oh gosh, I.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Could try to find out the name of it, the
band that it was. I think I want to say
American Girls, which sounds like the name of those dolls.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yeah. I want to get back to the Columbia stuff.
But to your point of like nose Golly putting you together.
It's interesting too, though that you had Michael Steele in
the group, the bass player, the bass player from the Runaways,
which kind of was even though they were also kind
of put together in right.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Yeah, So Kim Fallely called me when I was living
in the garage of my parents' home in West la
and and I just like I had such radar, you know,
I knew who he was and I was like, no, thanks,
you know.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
It was just before the Bengals.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
Yeah, it was like in the early days of the Bengals.
Michael didn't join until there was a bass player in
net Zelenskis, who was in the band in those early days.
But right before, around the time, she wanted to leave
to do more country and Western music and wasn't feeling
comfortable in the band. And fair enough, I love Annette,
(23:58):
we're really dear friends to this day, but she wanted
she just wanted to move on. And that's when there
was this opportunity for Michael Steele, who had been in
the Runaways to and she was a very very accomplished
bass player. She loved playing bass. She has a gorgeous voice,
so really closing a great songwriter. She was extraordinarily and
(24:19):
is extraordinarily talented. So when she joined the band, everything
kind of fell into place. And it was around then
that Columbia sort of went and it was just Peter
Philben and he took Bruce Springsteen to see us at
Magic Mountain in Valencia, and all I know is that
Bruce must have liked us enough and said something and
(24:39):
vetted us in some way. And I finally had a
chance to thank him for that when he was at
the What's the Grammy Salute to the Grammy Salute? Yeah,
music care is Grammy Salute? And Jud Apatow, who loves
Bruce Springsteen and John Stewart, was the host that night.
Jay and I got a seat at Jud's table, yet
(25:01):
he had never met Bruce, and I said, well, I'll
be brazen and just drag you over there and reintroduce
myself to him, which I did, And I have really
cool picture where it's mostly that you see Bruce's wife,
Patty talking to Tom Hanks's wife Rita. Yeah, and in
the background, I'm smiling and I see and it's a
profile of Jud and Bruce smiling.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
At each other.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
I'll show you.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Yeah. I have not seen Bruce since that.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
No, since the Magic Mountain.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Yeah, no, I mean yeah, it was it.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Like medium then, like oh.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
It was cool.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
I mean we were so we didn't know he was
coming to see us, so we were just like, what's happening,
you know? But I don't think that Bruce thinks of
it this way or even particularly remembers seeing us at
Magic Mountain, But I always put it together that the
one label that wanted us, which was Columbia, or that
(25:55):
were intrigued with us and made that trap all the
way from you know, Century City to Valencia, which is
a bit of a commitment, and also had the thought to.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Bring Bruce Springsteene.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Yes, like, here's this grungey little garage band, all girl band.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
But all I know is.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
That they made that offer shortly after that, So something
he did must have been said.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
He must have liked us enough.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Now, how quickly did you start to make your first record? Oh?
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Well, let's see. David Kahn was our producer, and we
went through a whole I don't remember now, it's a
long time ago, but I remember that we just did
a pretty deep dive into like an extension of what
our rehearsals would have been. But with David there to
kind of think in terms of the record, we rehearsed
(26:48):
and we played a lot of stuff not in the studio, yes, songs,
songs we'd written. We showed him everything we had and
we just kind of went from there. We were a
band that were figured out our sound in part, in
large part by covering songs that we like. That's how
we figured out how to be bangles, you know. Like,
(27:09):
so we would cover a lot of songs and they
were almost always kind of cool, obscure nineteen sixties songs.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
Stuff didn't even make records.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Yeah, yeah, like Pushing Do Hard by the Seeds, Debbie
saying that one there was a song called Kicks by
Paul Revere and the Raiders. We liked Paul Revere and
the Raiders songs. I think we might have done two
of their songs. We did where Were You When I
Needed You? Which was the grassroots. I sang that one,
which is like very jangly twelve string.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Looking back on that first record, what is your feeling
towards it?
Speaker 3 (27:43):
I think good, you know, I'd like probably a lot
of people you talked to who've made records, and like,
many decades have passed. I haven't revisited it in a
long time, but I do remember we've recorded a lot
of it up at place called Skylight, I think in Panga,
So that was cool, and there was different Hollywood studios
(28:06):
that we worked in. I just remember that I learned
a lot from David Kahn. He was really obsessed with arrangement.
And I feel happy that Prince discovered us through Hero
Takes a Fall, which was a song that Vicky and I,
who were really kind of a writing team within the band,
(28:26):
came up with in the garage where I was living.
It was that early on before we could kind of
like afford to move out of, in my case, my parents' house.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
You know, I was still living at home.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
So we're to think now when I think back on it,
because then I suddenly had this like job that was
a real job, and then I was on a label,
and you know, I had commitments and responsibilities. I wasn't
just a kid post college living in my parents' garage,
although I did live there for a big, big, big
(28:58):
chunk the majority of the Bengals thing, I was living
in a garage. Really yeah, just because once it took
off and we were traveling all over the place, I mean,
no one thought to buy houses until way later in
the process. We there was like a year where we
all were like, wait a minute. It really took us
a long time. It was towards the tail end of
(29:21):
the decade of the eighties where we sort of actually
were like, there was the year that everybody bought a car,
so we weren't used driving a car that our parents
had happened. You know, I bought a white BMW.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
Three twenty five.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
It was snazzy, get on a car phone, hardwired into
it with a curly chord.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
You know, there was that eighty seven.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Amazing they had the car, I had a car phone.
I remember being mesmerized by those as a kid.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
When I said, yeah, I know, they were like, whoa,
They're like from the future.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, isn't it like ancient history?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
That record was so cool because it sounds like you
guys really figured out who you were from the EP
to the first kind of full length. Yeah, it seems
like you and VICKI kind of figured out your song.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, sort of for sure.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Rhythm, yes, guys. Yeah. How did it feel when the
next record came out and it was such a big
because it's all these steps. It's like you do the
EP and you sign and you do this big record.
Then it's like the next record is like huge.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah, that was crazy.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
So there was a big leap somehow from the studio
we were working in Tapanga for that first album all
over the place, and then we went to Sunset Sound Factory,
which is the smaller of the two Sunset Sounds that
are sister studios, and that's where we started to work
on Different Light with David Kahn again. That record ended
(30:51):
up having some radio hits, including Manic Monday. So Prince
had really he really liked our video of Hero Takes
a Fall, which was that song that Vicky and I
wrote in the garage on the prompting of David Kahn
to write something that wasn't like a cowby, like a
that kind of beat and more like a four on
the floor beat. So when we were writing Hero Takes
(31:14):
a Fall, we were kind of playing drums on our thighs,
you know, like holding the beat that way and kind
of getting the rhythm. And so a lot of things
opened up from that first album and then Prince saw somehow.
Prince had this idea that I should come over and
get this cassette from him at Sunset Sound, the big
(31:35):
mother ship studio on Sunset, and he had a song
to share with us, and it was Manic Monday. So
during that recording of Different Light at Sunset Sound Factory,
I came back with the cassette from Prince and we
recorded that.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Song and he had offered me yeah, oh yeah yeah,
and I have the cassette upstairs. Wow, yeah, I can
show you if you want. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
So we just kind of hovered around a cassette player
and I was immediately like, oh my god, this would
be great to sing. And so then we recorded it
and at Sunset Sound Factory and it came out really well,
and then it became the first single on that record
and it became a hit, our first like top forty
(32:24):
radio hit.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
How was it having a hit?
Speaker 2 (32:27):
It was nuts.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
We were on tour Columbia had released it as the
first single off the Different Light record, and we were
just standing on a corner and somebody pulled up in
a convertible and something sounded familiar, but not familiar, because
if it was the Beatles song playing on the radio,
I would have been like, oh it took We all
had this weird delayed reaction of like, oh shit, that's
(32:51):
our song, that's Manic Monday. Like there was this weird,
like I don't know, delay in connecting the dots, and
then we were like off to the races at that
point that this song just started to go up the
charts and it got to number two, which was pretty
good because Prince was I think Kiss.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Was number one, and We and Manic Monday was number.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Two and Prince. It offered you other songs.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
He there was another song listed on the cassette called
Jealous Girl. I bet you that demo's floating around. But
the weird thing is, I wanted to digitize that cassette
and I took it to a friend's studio and we
went through the whole cassette and Jealous Girl did not play.
(33:34):
So I don't know if it just like the ravages
of like a cassette sitting in a box for thirty years,
is to blame or not. I don't know. It was
just never but I think it's probably in his archive.
I think we could google it and we could maybe
find it pull it up.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, we're going to pause for a quick break and
then come back with more from my interview with Susannah Hoffs.
We're back with the rest of our conversation with Susannah Hoffs.
Did you know that Walk Like Egyptian was going to
be the hit that it was? No, that is the
most bizarre, you know, it's like it's a great song,
(34:10):
but it's it's so out of left field. I know.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
I think that's the brilliance of it. So I was
at David's office, David Kahn up at Columbia, and he
wanted to play me some songs there, just share some
things that had crossed his desk, and one of them
was Marnie Dixon. I want to say, oh god, I'm
going to get it wrong. I'll try to find out
there was a woman who had covered it, and also
(34:35):
Charlie Sexton had covered it, of all things. So I
recently was able to talk to him about that, but.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
He released it.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
I think so.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
I think if you google you'll find other versions. These
other versions are probably somewhere. But David played it for me,
and I just thought it had this really again nineteen
sixties bossa Nova like there was something about it. The
rhythm of it was so interesting, the shaker being so predominant,
and the kind of I don't know, it sounded like
(35:07):
something from a movie or something like or from another time.
So we just we all were kind of curious to
try it out because sometimes when you're in the studio,
you record more than you think you record more than
you think you're gonna need, and then you pick the
best or the most catchy or connect with people the most,
so you just never know. There's a lot of lore
(35:30):
within the band because you know, different people in the
band were singing different parts, you know, and not everybody
got to sing a part, you know. W I know
always felt kind of left out, and I totally I
can really empathize with that. But we had no idea
that that song would catch on the way it did.
It was the third single, If She Knew What She Wants,
(35:51):
a Jewells share song that I sang was a second single,
and it did moderately well, and it was very bangles.
It was lush harmon these all the way through. It
was a beautiful song.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Oh thank you.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
That was kind of let it go was like a
chance for all of us to feel in because we
wrote it together as a foursome and we sang it
together as a foursome. So we kind of needed that
as it was one of the last songs we recorded
on that album. Yeah, it was kind of like the
band needed that. Yeah, it was like a really bonding yeah,
you know what. I loved that one, and we all
(36:27):
wrote it I think, yeah, together.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
I guess I want to jump to the next record,
because you know, you and Vicky kind of have like
a songwriting thing. But then you discover Tom.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
Kelly, Yeah, Philly stigin very good.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah. How did that kind of song How did that
kind of songwriting trio happen?
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Oh, that's great question.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
I think that by the time Different Light had run
its cycle out in the world and all the touring
and you know, us opening for Queen at slain Castle,
and just like everything had shot up, you know, with
the success of that record, and our our lives were
not our own lives.
Speaker 2 (37:04):
That we were living.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Like what happens when that when that occurs in the
journey of a band, you know. So we after living
like so closely for so long and being on tour
and having no autonomy everyone in the band, but we decided, Okay,
that's the end of that tour cycle, let's start writing
for the next record, the next record, And no one
(37:30):
wanted to write with each other, like everyone wanted to
be totally away from the other members, so like just
needed autonomy. So somehow I met Billy, and Billy introduced
me to Tom and we just hit it off. As
a songwriting team. Immediately I had heard some of the
stuff they had done, and I thought they were great,
(37:53):
and they were so fun, and their work partnership was strong,
and they really knew each one brought a very specific
thing to the table. Billy was very much the lyricist,
but you know, had melodic ideas as well, and arrangement ideas.
And Tom was just like this incredible melody maker machine.
(38:14):
You know, he was just he just would sit at
the piano or go to the guitar, or go back
to the piano, and just to be in the room
during all this creation with them was extraordinary, and I
was so impressed with songs that they had written, so
I just started to hang out with them and do
songwriting sessions with them. An eternal Flame was me sharing
(38:37):
I'd just been back from a Bengals tour and we
did Graceland like all bands have to do. But the
day we were there, Elvis's eternal Flame in the Garden
of Memories was basically a plexiglass box with a little
flame in it, but it was out because the rain
had filled up the box with rain water and extinguished
the flame. It was out that day, but we were
(39:00):
recreating the scene in spinal Tap where there's singing heartbreak
Hotel and raga harmonies or whatever.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
They were tempting the harmonies and they were face Bill.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
So we were doing that and I came back to
La I had my writing session with Billy, because Billy
always wanted to write lyrics first, which again was unusual
to me because I always thought melody first, and we'll
just jabber something and the lyric will find itself later.
But with Billy, he really had a really strong practice
in doing bringing a lyric to Tom. So we just
(39:31):
sat down. I was just telling him the story about
the Eternal Flame at Graceland it was out, and he went,
eternal Flame. That's a great name for a song. And
I was like, yeah, you're right, and we just sat down,
did the lyrics, and we drove over to Tom's and
we just started working on the music. But when that
turn came in on the two. It's a weird structure
that song because it doesn't have a proper chorus. It's
(39:52):
just the tagline is this burning and eternal flame at
the ends of the verses. So what really was like
the moment of like, uh, you know, the sun breaking
through the clouds. Was that actually it fit with those
lyrics sunshines through the rain, the bridge that repeats, and
there's a really cool place for a guitar solo in
(40:13):
the middle of it. So it's like verse verse bridge
solo bridge verse out, and those bridges were just like
I knew. When that happened, I was like, shit, man,
this is good, you know, this is oh wow, what
is this? This is great and felt so good to
sing that.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
It is a strange song structure, it's not traditional song structural.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
But those bridges were just so beautiful and so fun
to sing. And the other part was like kind of
a here, there and everywhere, kind of you know, be lesque,
very very blesque.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
The verses, yeah, yeah, pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
But it was a real afterthought putting it out, and
it was it hardly made the record.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
It didn't.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
It wasn't voted. We had a thing where we had
a band meeting and everybody had gone off.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Everyone needed to go off and write.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
With other people. Everyone was sick of each other. When
we got back together, everyone you know, kind of showed
their wares. This is what I wrote, was so and
so and so and so, and everybody voted and Eternal
Flame didn't make it, and I was like, wait, it
should be in there.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
I was like really stunned.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Actually, I thought it was like we could use like
a good old fashioned ballad like that, you know, But
it didn't and we It wasn't until halfway to three
quarters of the way through recording that album that David
Segresson said, you know what, I think it's a mistake
not to put Eternal Flame on here. Let's let's go
(41:45):
over to my friend who's a keyboard player. Phil Chanel
was his name, and let's mess around with a Patsy
Cline esque arrangement because I was obsessed with Patsy Cline.
I had discovered her around that time and I think
the movie had come out, and yeah, I was just
blown away by her singing and gorgeous voice, so so
amazing and her story. Yeah, so we went and worked
(42:08):
with Phil and it ended up.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
On the record.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Did you guys have to regroup and read?
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Yeah, I mean it was a weird phase at that
point where everybody was very much aware of like I
want to make sure my songs are that everything was
like very parsed out. Equally, it was less bandish at
that point and davidt you know, was a change in producer.
(42:36):
Having had David Kahn on the first two records, Davitt
could see what was going on even in our behind
the music. His interview, He's like, they were an odd
kind of band we were.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
At that point.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
It just when you have four singer songwriters in a band,
you have to figure out how to make that work.
And it is a lot of personalities. And that's the
great thing about bands, you know. Some of the things
that make bands great are their conflicts. Are are the
ways that they with a disconnects are how disparate points
(43:11):
of view can come together and make something bigger than
you know this, what's that expression? That some of its
parts that yeah, yeah so. But Eternal Flame was a
definite afterthought and it was It was the third single
released on that Alpha album. It was not the first single.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
In Your Room.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Was which which was.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
That's another Billy and Tom song And that was like
me going full George michael on that I wanted that
to sound like?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Was it faith? Was that?
Speaker 3 (43:41):
The that the song that very dry, very dry, not
no reverb like the big eighties reverb. It was so
starkly dry and so like crispin in your face. That
was like I kept obsessively telling David that I wanted
it to have that sound. Yeah, very dry.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
And you also did with with with Tom and Billy.
Did Belinda Carlisle song?
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Oh yeah, what was it?
Speaker 1 (44:07):
I need a dis I need a disguy.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah. Oh I sang on that record, Yeah I did.
I did. I think, I'm I think I did some back.
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Oh Gods and the Bengal Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Yeah, that was always well.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
I I love the Go Gos, you know, like, I
think they inspired me. I didn't feel competitive with them.
In fact, I just wanted to hang out with them,
and I had seen them, I think even before I
met Vicky and Debbie through the ad in the paper
that I had put out advertising for other like minded musicians,
especially girls. The Go Gos really honestly inspired me to
(44:44):
want to be in a band with other girls.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
Oh yeah, wow Fully.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Their songs I think were very sixties inspired, so I
felt a kinship there and like a shared sensibility. Belinda
was came from the punk scene very much. I mean
she used to dressing garbage bags.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
They were very off.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
They were avant garde to me, and that was what
I was interested in. They were people who found each
other and figured out how to collaborate.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
I guess a girl group not being a pop act
at that time.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
A girl group compared to a girl band.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
A girl band, right, You guys run through the eighties
is like incredible? Was there the thought that parting ways
was a mistake. I can't imagine being at like the
peak of you guys's powers as a foursome. Yeah, just
like oh man, maybe yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
I think that when you when you have very little
autonomy because your career is so pervading thing that you
have to, you know, show up for, you feel a
little bit claustrophobic after a while, and you start to
kind of wonder what life would be like if you
(45:56):
weren't bound by you know what three other people are
and a management team are kind of pressing you to do.
And I think that by the time we played sn
L in nineteen end of nineteen eighty eight, that was
a very stressful situation. There was a lot of frustration
(46:19):
in some members of the band about, you know, what
the perception of the band was. There was some feeling
that people were deeming me a lead singer in the band,
not just wanted to. Everyone's a singer, so I think that.
And I just think living, you know, on mass and
on tour for so long, and also having managers you know,
(46:42):
wanting you to do that because they benefit from it.
I mean, it's the oldest story in show business that
artists get to a breaking point at some point along
the journey and they're just like, I want to go home,
and I want to meet someone that I can have
in my life.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
And not be on the road and lonely.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
And as we were all looking at thirty approaching third,
it just felt like we needed a break.
Speaker 2 (47:11):
And then we took one.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
And then we did regroup multiple times and did did
But then it has a different vibe to it. Once
you decide to take a break, it's it's not it's
not ever quite the same as that that initial existence
you're living.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
It's kind of familiar to most people who are like,
ever take a break from a relationship or something. You know,
then you come back and you're like, yeah, maybe it
works out, but it's like, it's not, it's never.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Yeah, it doesn't have that first magical, you know, excitement
to it. Perhaps yeah, and we did It's interestingly in
my perspective to how when the times that we kind
of came back and made records and with different record
labels or did them ourselves. Most people that I talked
(47:59):
to didn't have any idea that we were still a band.
It was like the more we did, the less people
were like aware.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
I don't know why that was.
Speaker 1 (48:09):
But it's so much I guess was changing too about
the industry.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
And I mean, Nirvana happened. Like what do you do
when your whole mind is blown by a band like
Nirvana and you're like, holy shit, this is genius, like
brilliant music and you're like.
Speaker 2 (48:31):
Oh, oh my god.
Speaker 3 (48:33):
You know, but you also have at that same exact time,
you know, Janet Jackson, you know, coming out with all
this incredible like the nineties. Yeah, you know, the nineties happened. Yeah,
time March is on and it's like.
Speaker 2 (48:46):
How do you wear?
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (48:48):
It was great, but you also kind of just the
eighties were like this interesting bubble.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
It was very iconoclastic time for music. It was so
many different things.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
It's strange how that the twentieth century you really can
kind of divide things up neatly by more roughly to
the actual decades, you know, like sometimes it's like eighty
one the eighties star rather than eight or what you know,
But you.
Speaker 2 (49:14):
Like, the nineties was so different, don't you think?
Speaker 1 (49:17):
So different? And I don't know that I feel the
difference from decade to decade anymore, Like you know, I don't.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Know, sixties to seventies to eighties to nineties each one,
and really fifties through nineties if you think about it,
it's from that whole chunk of a century. Ye in
a way, right, I mean, it was really notable that
what was going on, like the styles, the sounds, the vibes,
(49:48):
all of it.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
Thank you so much for this letting us into your.
Speaker 2 (49:52):
This was amazing. This was very in depth. I feel
great more.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
I feel like I'm leaving things on the table.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
No, no, we're good. We're good.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Thank you Susannahas for taking us through her career with
the Bangles and talking about the creation of her new novel,
This Bird Has Flown. You can hear all of our
favorite songs featuring Susanna on a playlist at Broken record
podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube
dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find
all of our new episodes. You can follow us on
(50:26):
Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help
from Lea Rose and Eric Sandler. Our show is engineered
by Echo Mountain. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider
subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription
that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four
(50:47):
to ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on
Apple podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please
remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app.
Theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richman.
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.