Bangles fight image as 1980s girl band
The band has been back together for nearly a decade and continues to tour.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Considering the onslaught of reunion tours hitting the road this year, The Bangles singer-guitarist Vicki Peterson stresses this is not the case with the “Walk Like an Egyptian” band.
In fact, the Los Angeles-based outfit has been back together for nearly a decade, thank you, and views its upcoming club tour, which includes a show next Thursday at the House of Blues, as less of a walk-down-memory-lane affair than other bands of its ilk.
“The more we play, and I keep on reminding my bandmates about this, the more we’re out there, the more it’s known we have been a viable band for a long time,” said Peterson, calling from her Los Angeles home. “This was the criteria for me to work with this band again. I was happily settled in New Orleans, and playing a whole different kind of music with a whole bunch of different people, when [singer] Susanna [Hoffs] started calling and saying, ‘What do you think about working together again?’
“At the time, several bands from the ’80s were regrouping and all of these reunions, and I said, ‘I don’t know if I’m interested in the whole reunion thing.’ I sort of predicated it on the idea of if we write new stuff and still feel like there’s still something to say musically, then I’m game.”
Fighting its own image
The good news is The Bangles did reunite in the late ’90s, eventually resulting in the 2003 album “Doll Revolution” featuring new material. The bad news is the effort quickly fell into obscurity as the all-girl-group, which had fought incessant comparisons to The Go-Gos when it first arrived on the rock scene in the early ’80s, was now fighting an uphill battle against its own image.
During a stretch in the mid-’80s, the band strung together a slew of pop hits, including “Walk Like an Egyptian,” “If She Knew What She Wants,” “Hazy Shade of Winter,” “In Your Room,” “Eternal Flame,” “Be With You” and, of course, “Manic Monday.”
It’s the latter track, which was written by Prince during his “Purple Rain” period, that truly stands out as a pop song for the ages.
“It was an honor,” Peterson said. “I don’t know if he wrote ‘Manic Monday’ for us. He’s such a prolific writer; he still is. At the time he was kind of turning them out like Ryan Adams or something. I think he sent us a cassette of a few songs, and it seemed like ‘Manic Monday’ was something that we could have written ourselves. It’s one of the reasons we said, ‘Let’s give this a try.’”
Planning new album
After recently releasing its first live DVD, “Return to Bangleonia,” which was recorded at the Hollywood, Calif., House of Blues in 2000, The Bangles are currently planning another studio effort. Peterson said the album will be harmony-oriented, with a focus on the band’s love of psychedelic folk rock.
Fans wanting a sneak peak may get a new song or two at the group’s upcoming Cleveland date, which the guitarist stressed will be anything but a greatest-hits kind of show.
“It’s more than that, because what I like to say if you’re coming to hear one particular Bangles song, chances are you’ll hear it, but come to hear all of the other stuff,” Peterson said. “We dig deep into The Bangles songbook, and we play album cuts from the early stuff and we play newer stuff and some covers. It’s a pretty fun show.”