FEATURE:
Eternal Flame
An Ongoing and Endless Love for Susanna Hoffs
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ASIDE from using a photo (below)…
that I featured in a 2019 article about Susanna Hoffs, I am also going to repeat some things I have said about the amazing musician. This is quite a short feature that is not tied to any anniversary or out there for any reason other than to celebrate an amazing person! There are particular women in music who I have endless love and respect for. Kate Bush and Madonna are examples. Susanna Hoffs is another. She is best known as a co-founder of The Bangles. She founded the group (originally called the Bangs) in 1981 with Debbi and Vicki Peterson. It is amazing to think that the iconic group were formed forty years ago! The Bangles released their first full album, All Over the Place, in 1984. Hoffs embarked upon a solo career after The Bangles disbanded in 1989. Her debut solo album, When You're a Boy, came out in 1991. She has also recorded music as part of Ming Tea (a faux 1960s British group with Mike Myers and Matthew Sweet) and recorded with Matthew Sweet. Hoffs is definitely one of the coolest people in music! I follow her on Twitter. Aside from posting videos of her performing, I love reading about her. She is so inspiring and compelling. She has put out some music the past year or two – including last year’s track, The Only Thing, with Travis -, and I hope that we hear more from her.
I have said this quite a few times before through the years. One of my earliest music memories is seeing the video for The Bangles’ Eternal Flame when I was five or six. I was watching through the banisters as my parents were playing VH1. That song was released in 1989. It features Hoffs on lead vocals. She has said that she actually sang the studio recording of the song completely naked after producer Davitt Sigerson pranked her by telling her Olivia Newton-John recorded nude in the same studio (later revealed to be a lie). Hoffs has said, because the studio was dark and she could not be seen, it was quite freeing – and, actually, she recorded a lot of her parts for the Everything album naked! Aside from that rather intriguing and wonderful fact, it is the sheer beauty and quality of Susanna Hoffs’ writing and vocals that I fell for as a child. Although I loved the other Bangles - Debbi Peterson, Vicki Peterson and Michael Steele -, it is Hoffs that has captivated me. Videos of her in Walk Like an Egyptian and Manic Monday solidified this! One of the most important groups of my early years, I followed her solo work and really love her albums. Her 1996 eponymous album is one that I regularly come back to. Still one of the most sensuous, varied and powerful voices in music, there is nobody out there like Susanne Hoffs!
There are a couple of interviews that I want to drop in before I finish. The first is from 2012, where Hoffs was promoting her album, Someday. Apart from discovering about songs on the album, Hoffs also spoke about The Bangles and her experiences in the group:
“Jeb: The songwriting on the new album is fabulous. How did you meet Andrew Brassell that you co-wrote with?
Susanna: That makes me feel so good. This kid, I met through my niece, moved out to California from Nashville. They were friends and he was playing in the Nashville scene for a long time. She is a big fan of his guitar playing and his songwriting, so he came out for a visit and she introduced him to the family.
His name is Andrew Brassel, but we all just call him Brassell. We all took to him instantly. He was checking out LA to see if he could make a start as a musician here. We welcomed him and showed him around. I had a show with The Bangles on Lilith Fair the weekend that he arrived, so I told him to come up and see the show. He met the girls and we sort of just adopted him.
I never thought we would end up writing songs together. He, eventually, decided to come to LA and I told him that he could stay in my guest room until he got sorted out and figured out where he wanted to live. He had a guitar glued to him the entire time he was here. It really inspired me to see someone who was playing music constantly. He was always making stuff up in the spur of the moment. I would be in the kitchen washing dishes and there would be this music he was playing and I would start hearing these melodies in my head. I would run in and say, “What is that? Is that a song?” He’d say, “I suppose it could be.”
He is one of those people who have a singular focus, which is the beauty of being in your mid-twenties. It is easier to be that way then, than it is for me now, at my age.
We sat down and started writing together and it was an instant click. Because he was a fixture in our household, it kind of forced me to pay attention. Once that creative spark in me got ignited, then it just flowed. It was really an unexpected joy to discover this unexpected writing relationship.
“Jeb: “Regret” is a great song.
Susanna: There were a lot of times when Brassell would observe me and my life and notice what I was going through. When we sat down to write this was all very fresh.
Giving him the opportunity to stay in our guest room allowed us to have very concentrated time focused on our songwriting. We would be sitting around having coffee and I would say, “I always wanted to write a song about regret.” I am talking bout trying to go back and fix things in your life even though it is not a very useful thing to do. We have all been there and done that. We try to get past these regrets. I think I was mentioning this problem about waking up in the middle of the night and thinking about things I had done and things that I wish I had done differently. It is on the darker side of the emotions on the album.
Jeb: Was “Raining” the song you did with Mike Campbell of Tom Petty’s band all those years ago? Where did that come from? Surely you were not saving that back for your next solo album all of this time.
Susanna: I have had that so many years it is ridiculous. I showed that song to The Bangles for Sweetheart of the Sun but they didn’t pick it. I found this box with these cassettes in it.
Part of the reason this solo album took so long was that I was writing for myself just as a creative outlet, clear back to 1989. I did a couple of solo albums where I collaborated with other people. Songs that I had just written got left in a shoebox up on a shelf. There were two Bangles records in the last ten years that were made. Things got busy and the song just stayed in the box. I’m so glad that song survived all of those years in the box.
I reconnected with both Mike Campbell and Mitchell Froom, oddly enough through Brassell. How weird is that? He wanted me to come with him to see a show by his friend in Largo, Caitlin Rose, who is a singer songwriter he has worked with over the years. She was playing a show opening for Ron Sexsmith. I had no idea Mitchell would be there. He was there to see Ron and I was there to see Caitlin.
Another time I was seeing another friend of his named Tristan, who is a great singer/songwriter. I went to the show and Benmont Tench, who played on the demo of “Raining” back in 1989, was there. He told me to call Mike. I was really shy. It took a lot of courage for me to call him. I sent him the song because he didn’t remember the song right then. He inspired me to do a rewrite on it and bring it up to date. We went back and worked on it and it has now seen the light of day.
Jeb: You were young and cute when you were with The Bangles, you were, however, a songwriter, which differentiated you from the norm.
Susanna: When I started out it was all about songwriting. It was the opposite of American Idol. It was very garage rock. The Bangles were very much like that. We were kids who sat in their rooms writing songs and put a band together and rehearsed in the garage. We, then, made a cassette that we could take to club owners to get them to let us play in their club. It was very grassroots.
Jeb: Did you think that girls would look up to you or were you just being a musician?
Susanna: I was just being a musician. I was very inspired by the Go-Go’s. It was a fact that I downplayed during The Bangles because we were compared to them one hundred percent of the time. We started to not want to emphasize that. For me, in particular, maybe more so than the other girls in the band, I was very influenced by the Go-Go’s.
I had just graduated from The University of California at Berkeley in the Bay Area and had been smitten by the whole rock scene in the clubs that was going on. I saw the Sex Pistols, I saw Patti Smith. I was going to see all of the punk bands.
When I came back to LA, I was transformed and I wanted to do this. I went to see all of the great LA bands that were coming out in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s. I saw the Go-Go’s at the Whiskey A Go Go.
Jeb: Describe the scene to me.
Susanna: It brought it down from Stadium Rock, which seemed very inaccessible to kids playing music. It was very raw. It no longer seemed unattainable to be in a band. I was very heavily influenced by Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell back when I was in high school, so I wanted to write songs. I was very influenced by Linda Ronstadt but I was more into the folky thing. I was also influenced by Patti Smith.
The bridge between Joni and Patti saw me go from playing acoustic guitar to electric guitar. I was seeing a lot of rock and roll live. When I saw Tina Weymouth playing with the Talking Heads I got very excited about playing in a band. I think the combination of seeing Tina and Patti and the Go-Go’s and a lot of other bands on the scene led me to start putting ads in The Recycler and that is how I ended up meeting the girls in The Bangles.
Jeb: When did you know you were good enough to make it?
Susanna: When we met, though that ad, Vicki [Peterson] and Debbi [Peterson] came over to my house; I was still living at home. We played in the garage and we became a band that night.
We had a friend of the family visiting us from New York, who was staying in our guest room and she heard us play and said it sounded like we had been together a long time. She was amazed. We really clicked. We played “White Rabbit” from Jefferson Airplane, which Vickie and Debbi taught me. It was just two chords and I was like, “Wow, I never realized that. It sounds so complicated.” We played that song and it sounded really good and I said, “Let’s do this.”
We got off to a quick start, but then we had to do what all garage bands do; we had to work on the set list and we had to play some parties and we had to get gigs in Hollywood. We would have to drag our gear to rehearsal studios and all of that. We were not an overnight success. We had a long time where we paid a lot of dues.
Jeb: You were very young. Your album came out and was a hit. How were you mature enough to handle the fame. How did you do it?
Susanna: it was hard. It was very scary. You go from the little bubble of your dreams of musical aspiration and all of this excitement and energy and creating your sound and finding your communal voice as a band to being in a business. You find out what your sonic quality is that you want to share with the world, which for us was jangly guitars and four part harmonies. Suddenly, you get signed and enter the business side of it. There are teams of people in suits, mostly men and they are staring at you and sizing you up and trying to figure out what to do with you and how to sell you. You realize that your little bubble of creativity is no longer a little bubble. You’re out in the world subject to a list of people’s opinions that you never thought you had to consider.
We were managed by Miles Copeland, who I love and who did a fantastic job as our manager. After some time, he started working with an all-girl band that he sort of cherry picked from other bands. I think Darryl Hanna may have been in that band; I don’t quite remember all of the details but they were a put together band and they were also incredibly gorgeous. I remember sitting there with The Bangles feeling kind of insecure. We were hit with this feeling of how are we going to deal with this.
We wondered why he was doing that. It was irrational, for sure. I have not even thought of this for years. We thought maybe we were lacking and that there was something missing in The Bangles. It didn’t turn out to be the case, but it is an example of how everyone was judging us and wanting us to deliver things and we were trying to do that.
All of these things come into play and I think that with all-girl bands, in particular, there is a feeling that it is a novelty. We had this pressure to explain ourselves. People would ask us how we came to play our instruments and why we were an all-girl band. It was like it was an odd concept for a girl to play drums or bass. It felt like nobody believed that there could be an authentic inspiration for us. It was bizarre and I never really understood that.
Jeb: What do you think it is about The Bangles that makes people still want to go see you today?
Susanna: I think there is a great nostalgia for the ‘80’s. It was a really fun time for music. We felt like we were drenched in our ‘60’s influence and that we really didn’t fit into the ‘80’s but, then again, “Walk Like an Egyptian” is an anthem for that time. “Eternal Flame” is also a big song for that era, in a music box sort of way. There is a nostalgia for that time period, just like I have nostalgia for ‘70’s music.
I think people want to see bands that are fun. People want a fun night and to see music that makes them feel happy. We are very lucky—very lucky that we are able to be doing this and for that connection that we made with our fans.
The last interview I am pulling from is from last year. Again, Hoffs discussed The Bangles and what the group represented. The fact that the group, as women, were pitted against another female band like The Go-Go’s is a sad reflection of the scene in the 1980s:
“While the decision to form an all-female band was intentional, the stereotypes that accompanied that choice seemed unavoidable. Constant comparisons to the Go-Gos, while not completely unwarranted (Hoffs has admitted their influence), dominated critical appraisals of the band, treating both bands almost as novelties rather than acknowledging their individual and autonomous contributions to the eighties musical soundscape. Hoffs reflects: “There was definitely a funny fixation on…our gender….and if there’s two girl bands, ‘let’s make it a competition’ instead of ‘where are all the girls?’…’where are all the other women?’ I mean, we know they’re out there!”’
For Hoffs, the previous generations of female musicians had paved the way for her own development. In turn, as both a performer and a songwriter, Hoffs’ voice has influenced new generations of aspiring female musicians. “Eternal Flame,” which she wrote alongside Bill Steinberg and Tom Kelly, gave the Bangles an international number 1 hit, and has since become a favorite song for artists (of all genders) to cover. She has put out three solo albums of original material, including the critically acclaimed Someday (2012), which American Songwriter gave 4.5 out of 5 stars and concluded that it was “easily and undeniably Hoffs’ most definitive musical statement to date.” Still, her role as an inspiration for girls ready to rock can still seem surreal. At the release of her last album, Hoffs told Goldmine: “I am very touched and flattered when people say that The Bangles, or I, have been an influence for them. I’m always surprised, because I don’t think of myself that way. It is so moving to me that I could influence somebody to do something positive or to make music.”
What’s next for this vivacious musician?
Hoffs is currently finishing up a new album, and revisiting her past, with the rediscovery of an unreleased album from 1999 that includes collaborations with an exciting line-up of musicians including Dan Schwartz, Bill Bottrell, Dillon O’Brien, and Charlotte Caffey. The future is full of music – new and old – from Hoffs, promising a continuation of the infectious enthusiasm and joy for the art of music making that has characterized her entire career.
This was just an excuse to write about one of my favourite artists. Actually, it is looking ahead to possible music (and, at the very end, there is a playlist featuring some of Hoffs’ key tracks). Go and follow her on Twitter and Instagram, as she is always fascinating! Check out her official website, where there is some bio and great detail that I have not included. Another salute to an amazing human and a musician who, through the decades, has brought so much joy to people. There are so many who are looking ahead to new music and what is coming from the Californian-born treasure. I was seduced by the amazing Susanna Hoffs when I was very young. This is an eternal flame (forgive the pun!) that will…
NEVER lose its heat.