| The Bangles - An Interview With Debbi Peterson
“I was really getting tired of the whole girl band / boy band thing with the air-traffic control things on their faces and the bellybuttons... ugh”, The Bangles’ drummer/vocalist Debbi Peterson laughs, glad that rock is back just in time for her band’s triumphant return to the public consciousness after almost fifteen years away. “Oh yeah, well I love all that [new rock] stuff, all rock bands with guitars are okay by me, I think that’s great”. It seems fitting that the group, who are often named as one of the most influential of both their time-period and in the field of all-female rock bands, have returned during the new rock uprising to cast a knowing eye over their protégées – as well as rocking out alongside them. But how does it feel to be back being ‘The Bangles’ full-time? “Well, it’s kind of an amazing feeling, especially seeing as two of us now have children, so it’s just a different world now than it was in the ‘80s. In the ‘80s it was all ‘Bangles this, Bangles that’, and we had no other lives, but now that we have children and other things going on in our lives it’s interesting trying to shuffle it all around”. Peterson has found that time spent living life has informed their work in a new way, and the songs are now painted with a different perspective to the one they shared as carefree Paisley Underground party girls in the mid-‘80s. “I think you become more aware of life and you can put that into your song writing; you’re definitely a lot more experienced and I think it does affect you - I think it grounds you a bit, too. Suddenly you realise, when you start getting crazy about something you just think, ‘hang on a minute… what’s more important here?’” she laughs. The reunion took a slow and tentative path, and although all the members of the band got on with their own lives, projects and families in the interim, Peterson is the first to admit that she missed her old pals and harboured a quiet ‘what if?’ at the back of her mind. “I had a band called Kindred Spirit, and then I just sorta stopped because I had a child, and I just thought ‘hang on a minute, I have no time for anything else’. So I was just thinking ‘well, this is my life now’, but as he [her son, now five years old] started to get a bit older I was thinking, ‘gee, I’d love to play again’, you know? Susanna [Hoffs] and I were talking a lot – because she has kids too – and we started writing together and that’s when it all started falling into place around 1999.” The first single from the album Doll Revolution is ‘Something That You Said’, a trance-tinged ballad that is eerily familiar to the last Bangles song that hit the airwaves back in 1988. Was the band aware of the need to ease fans and listeners back into their sound by picking a single that could serve as a touchstone to ‘Eternal Flame’, still smouldering in the collective FM radio unconscious? “[‘Something That You Said’] seemed like the best one to come out with again, because it’s kinda familiar sounding yet it’s kinda new; in a way it reminisces on the old sound. You have to think about people’s preconceived notions [of the sound] if you want to get it out there”. Although Peterson loves ‘Eternal Flame’ and is pleased that its success brought The Bangles’ music to so many ears, she sometimes wishes that they had received as much attention for some of their other work. “They [ballads] were [only] a part of our sound. I mean, it’s a lovely song, ‘Eternal Flame’, and even though it had the harmonies and stuff, I think there was so much more of The Bangles’ [sound] that people never really got to hear. I really liked ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’ because it had the big vocal thing, but also the real rock guitar sound”. One thing
that the band has noticed since their reformation has been how many artists
name check them as idols, but did they ever hope that they’d be
seen as role-models? More than anything, though, the band are happy to be able to play for their fans again after a long period of wishing and hoping. “I think it’s great that we’ve had the opportunity to get out there again, and get people hearing what we do – and liking it – and seeing how much people love the album. They’re so happy that we’re back together again… the look on their faces just says it all.” Says Peterson. “It’s really exciting; you get so involved in it you don’t think about how much you’re affecting someone’s life, and how happy they are that you’re doing this again. When you see that, it’s just like, wow, you know?” Has the band’s audience grown alongside them, or will they pick up new fans who are aware of their status as trailblazers and influences upon so many new girl bands? “We first thought, when we were starting our shows, that the audience was going to be, well you know, the older generation – but we were surprised to find that there were a lot of younger kids. Oddly enough, a lot were kids who were, like, five years old in the ‘80s and now they’re old enough to go see the shows [by themselves]. Or, they listen to their mum and dad’s old Bangles records”, she says, pausing. Peterson laughs, realising that she is now one of the mums herself, “That sounds so weird”. If you’re only as young as you feel, then, for The Bangles it’s as if not a day has passed. Eternal flame, indeed.
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