Latest news with #Bangles
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘80s Pop Beauty, 66, Still Has Fans Swooning At Rare Concert: 'I'm In Love With You'
'80s Pop Beauty, 66, Still Has Fans Swooning At Rare Concert: 'I'm In Love With You' originally appeared on Parade. Susanna Hoffs, 66, has never looked better. That's a strong statement about The Bangles' lead vocalist and guitarist, an '80s icon as sought after for her stunning looks as she was for her timeless vocal and guitar work. Hoffs shared a video of a recent solo performance at the Beach Life Festival in Redondo Beach, CA, which left fans swooning. One even commented on the video, 'I'm in love with you.' Hoffs' marriage to filmmaker Jay Roach is safe. The couple has been married since 1993 and share two sons, but Hoffs' beauty and poppy performances have always left fans crushing on her. Her recent performance at the Beach Life Festival was no the video, Hoffs shared she serenaded the crowd by walking out to the edge of the stage ramp, which she calls 'a highlight of my life.' Being that close to the Manic Monday singer left fans feeling like they were back in high school, heart fluttering over their favorite were in shock at the 66-year-old's youthful glow (seriously, what's her secret?). One wrote, 'Eternal flame from the eternal beauty ❤️😍🙌.' Another shared, 'You were my crush back in the day🔥.' Commenters weren't just focused on how good Hoffs looked or sounded. The Bangles fans went into action, calling for a tour. One wrote, 'You need to get the band together and go on tour.' We agree. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 '80s Pop Beauty, 66, Still Has Fans Swooning At Rare Concert: 'I'm In Love With You' first appeared on Parade on Jun 3, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 3, 2025, where it first appeared.
Motor Trend
13-05-2025
- Automotive
- Motor Trend
Bronco SUV's New Ford Performance Coastal Package Adds Beachy Theme
Special editions quickly become the life blood of niche vehicles like the Bronco SUV, keeping interest alive well after the initial novelty has worn off. Ford is the master—look at the Mustang lineup over the decades—and while we are trying our best to be jaded and cynical, there is something about this new Ford Performance Bronco Coastal Package that makes us want to jump into our vintage Ocean Pacific jams, crank up the Bangles and, like, head for the beach, dude. The Coastal Package is designed for four-door Broncos, and consists of a 2-inch suspension lift and new silver wheels with matching silver grille, fender flares, and a see-through 'Bimini' top with a silver bucking Bronco logo. The job is rounded out by a full-length stripe decal in chill 1980s colors. Go on, grab Cory Feldman and head down to the beach at Malibu, where you'll find a film crew waiting to feature you in a movie involving lots of women in bikinis. Dude! The Coastal Package is a $5,400 kit available from Ford Performance, and it can be installed by the dealer or an ASE Red Seal–certified technician, which we presume will cost extra. (Actually, you can download the instructions and do it yourself, but then you'll miss out on the 3 year/36,000 mile Ford Performance warranty.) The package can be applied to any 2025 Bronco, provided that Bronco has four doors and was originally ordered in Base, Big Bend (with or without the Black Diamond Package), or Outer Banks trims, but is independent of powertrain—four or six cylinder and manual or automatic are all okay. And hey, why not? The Coastal Package is a cool theme that, like the coast itself, makes every day feel like a vacation. We'd get one.
Gulf Today
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Why a popular, all-female pop rock band broke up
In the autumn of 1989, and just six months after their irrepressibly pretty 'Eternal Flame' had hit the top of the charts the world over, The Bangles imploded. It had been an intense run. Three years earlier, they'd reached No 1 with the novelty smash 'Walk Like an Egyptian'. A year before that, Prince had jammed with the jangle-pop unknowns on stage in an LA nightclub and offered them a song he thought they might like — 'Manic Monday'. Why The Bangles broke up has been subject to debate. Was it the result of an ambitious member with her eye on solo stardom? Or was their management a set of nefarious businessmen who'd divided, conquered and destroyed one of the most significant bands in modern American history? That might have been it. Or maybe The Bangles began fraying much earlier, the inevitable finale for a group whose most famous tracks were sonically at odds with their initial punk-rock leanings. Perhaps, even, it was all to do with their name. Because of a potential lawsuit from a pre-existing band, The Bangs — loud, made-you-look, not rigidly gendered — became the softer, more overtly feminine The Bangles. The writing may have been on the wall from there. Eternal Flame, a new biography cum oral history of the group by the music journalist and cultural historian Jennifer Otter Bickerdike, does not provide an easy answer to the demise of The Bangles – but therein lies its unexpected thrill. The same incidents are recalled in different ways. Three members of the band's lineup – Susanna Hoffs and sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson, who all shared vocals while playing different instruments – contribute separately, celebrating their incredible highs and often disagreeing on their most destructive lows. Producers, songwriters and friends including Boy George and Terence Trent D'Arby supply their two cents. 'There are multiple unreliable narrators in the book,' explains Hoffs today from her home in Los Angeles. (She was that aforementioned member with eyes on solo stardom... or not.) 'Even within the band, everyone has their own point of view. Vicki and Debbi had one way they saw things. I had mine. [Bassist] Michael Steele had hers. I suppose that's what makes it interesting.' For Bickerdike, an early Bangles superfan, her book felt essential. 'The group showed me that you could be totally gorgeous, smart, talented and in control,' she remembers. 'And I asked myself, 'why is there no book on this band that meant so much to me and to other women?'' She corrects herself. 'And not just to other women — The Bangles showed men what women could be.' But the story of The Bangles — as told by its key members — was a lot messier than she had anticipated, serving as a microcosm not just of how the music industry chews up and spits out its talent, but also of the heated interpersonal dynamics of pop groups that attain unimaginable success, then splinter. 'This was the Eighties, and everything was changing,' Vicki recalls. 'As a band, we were (representing) complete and utter freedom, liberation and power.' She chews it over. 'And yet... did we really have those things? There were things we thought were happening, and then this subtext underneath being decided behind closed doors, and mostly by men in suits.' The early days, at least, were blissful. The Petersons grew up in California's San Fernando Valley, raised on a diet of The Beatles, The Mamas & the Papas and The Beach Boys, bands that fused rock and roll with sunny, melodious harmonies. They were determined to start up a band themselves, later recruiting LA native — and fellow Beatles fan — Hoffs via an ad in The Recycler, a Los Angeles newspaper that played a part in forming all sorts of bands from Guns N' Roses and Metallica to Hole. Steele, who'd played with Joan Jett in The Runaways, would join later.
The Independent
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The Bangles: ‘If we were a boyband, we'd have just punched each other out'
In the autumn of 1989, and just six months after their irrepressibly pretty 'Eternal Flame' had hit the top of the charts the world over, The Bangles imploded. It had been an intense run. Three years earlier, they'd reached No 1 with the novelty smash 'Walk Like an Egyptian'. A year before that, Prince had jammed with the jangle-pop unknowns on stage in an LA nightclub and offered them a song he thought they might like – 'Manic Monday'. Why The Bangles broke up has been subject to debate. Was it the result of an ambitious member with her eye on solo stardom? Or was their management a set of nefarious businessmen who'd divided, conquered and destroyed one of the most significant bands in modern American history? That might have been it. Or maybe The Bangles began fraying much earlier, the inevitable finale for a group whose most famous tracks were sonically at odds with their initial punk-rock leanings. Perhaps, even, it was all to do with their name. Because of a potential lawsuit from a pre-existing band, The Bangs – loud, made-you-look, not rigidly gendered – became the softer, more overtly feminine The Bangles. The writing may have been on the wall from there. Eternal Flame, a new biography cum oral history of the group by the music journalist and cultural historian Jennifer Otter Bickerdike, does not provide an easy answer to the demise of The Bangles – but therein lies its unexpected thrill. The same incidents are recalled in different ways. Three members of the band's lineup – Susanna Hoffs and sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson, who all shared vocals while playing different instruments – contribute separately, celebrating their incredible highs and often disagreeing on their most destructive lows. Producers, songwriters and friends including Boy George and Terence Trent D'Arby supply their two cents. 'There are multiple unreliable narrators in the book,' explains Hoffs today from her home in Los Angeles. (She was that aforementioned member with eyes on solo stardom… or not.) 'Even within the band, everyone has their own point of view. Vicki and Debbi had one way they saw things. I had mine. [Bassist] Michael Steele had hers. I suppose that's what makes it interesting.' For Bickerdike, an early Bangles superfan, her book felt essential. 'The group showed me that you could be totally gorgeous, smart, talented and in control,' she remembers. 'And I asked myself, 'why is there no book on this band that meant so much to me and to other women?'' She corrects herself. 'And not just to other women – The Bangles showed men what women could be.' But the story of The Bangles – as told by its key members – was a lot messier than she had anticipated, serving as a microcosm not just of how the music industry chews up and spits out its talent, but also of the heated interpersonal dynamics of pop groups that attain unimaginable success, then splinter. Yes, there would be squabbles. There would be jealousies. But that's what you would expect in any family Susanna Hoffs 'This was the Eighties, and everything was changing,' Vicki recalls. 'As a band, we were [representing] complete and utter freedom, liberation and power.' She chews it over. 'And yet… did we really have those things? There were things we thought were happening, and then this subtext underneath being decided behind closed doors, and mostly by men in suits.' The early days, at least, were blissful. The Petersons grew up in California's San Fernando Valley, raised on a diet of The Beatles, The Mamas & the Papas and The Beach Boys, bands that fused rock and roll with sunny, melodious harmonies. They were determined to start up a band themselves, later recruiting LA native – and fellow Beatles fan – Hoffs via an ad in The Recycler, a Los Angeles newspaper that played a part in forming all sorts of bands from Guns N' Roses and Metallica to Hole. Steele, who'd played with Joan Jett in The Runaways, would join later. The music the quartet produced was jangly, earnest and lightly psychedelic, with a scrappy, lived-in feel. Think the foot-tapping groove of 'Hero Takes a Fall', or their winsome cover of Katrina and the Waves' 'Going Down to Liverpool'. 'There was a lot of punk in us,' Hoffs recalls. 'Even though we were kind of power-pop, we were never polished or thought-out.' 'It was raw and so exciting,' adds Debbi, over Zoom from her home in Washington state. 'We were playing these sweaty, disgusting clubs and having a fabulous time, and everybody was going in a similar direction. But then all the other voices came in and kind of tore that apart.' Even today, spread across continents and time zones (I connect with Vicki in London, where she's on holiday), the women occupy clear roles in the Bangles' ecosystem: Vicki feels like the leader, bracingly honest while also a natural peacekeeper; Hoffs is the most emotional, tearing up at one point, and full of positive enthusiasm and enjoyable digressions; Debbi is the most open, both about the harsh realities of being in the group, and how much she was personally affected by its drama. All wax nostalgic on the early years of The Bangles, and their DIY approach to gigging, promoting and dressing. And they're quick to pinpoint the arrival of major-label attention as the moment things went awry. 'These were young women,' Bickerdike says. 'It was a s***load of work, and they're in their early twenties and on the road having to make all these decisions with no one looking out for them. Because the label's looking out for the product.' The band's debut All Over the Place was released in 1984 to moderate success, but a tour with Cyndi Lauper raised their profile exponentially. Sensing an opportunity, Columbia Records took a vested interest in the group's second album. 'The pressure changed, and budgets changed and attitudes changed,' Vicki sighs. Recording of 1986's Different Light was therefore a tortured affair, with producer David Kahne insisting upon a pop polish, one that came into sharper focus after Prince – having become besotted by Hoffs in music videos – presented the group with 'Manic Monday'. That track gave the band their first mega-hit, alongside enormous amounts of free publicity courtesy of Prince and Hoffs, who were never an item – and barely even met – yet became a media fixation. ('Who's the one that slept with Prince?' Joan Rivers once asked the band during an interview.) The general focus on Hoffs became an issue. Songs featuring her lead vocals repeatedly became singles; music videos and TV performances seemed to zero in on her face. Some of the book's participants insist that Hoffs was a natural pop star, able to better work the camera than the rest of the band. (This, inevitably, gets disputed too.) Hoffs herself, though, insists that she was blameless in her increased visibility, and would always correct journalists and label execs who framed her as The Bangles' frontwoman. She says, too, that a famous shot in the 'Walk Like an Egyptian' video – in which her wide eyes glide from side to side – was a fluke. 'The camera was very far away – I could hardly see the camerawoman as she was using a long lens and just zoomed in for that moment. It was what it was. It wasn't intentional.' She admits to being hurt by the way she is characterised in some of the book. 'It was upsetting to read words being put in my mouth, and painting me as somebody ambitious in a way that the rest of the band wasn't. Because we were all ambitious to have success. Yes, there would be squabbles. There would be jealousies. But that's what you would expect in any family.' For the Petersons, it literally was family, which added its own difficulties for Debbi. 'I didn't know where I fit in,' she says. She had only just graduated from high school before hitting the road with the band. 'I had a very strong older sister, and Susanna was very strong and self-aware. I felt like lukewarm water.' She struggled, too, with the increased focus on the band's appearance. 'This was the start of the video generation, so you had to look amazing at all times,' she sighs. 'I remember after we did Top of the Pops or something, Susanna saying, 'How did we look?' – because this stuff would get stuck in your head. I remember thinking, 'shouldn't we be asking 'how did we sound?'' Everything, released in 1988, would prove to be the final Bangles' album released at their commercial peak, and was the product of each Bangle working with their own producers on their own songs. The label also preferred Hoffs's more radio-friendly tracks, among them 'Eternal Flame' and the rockier, sexier 'In Your Room'. This only provoked further discord. Vicki is quick to praise 'Eternal Flame' today, but she admits to having problems with it at the time. 'I was a freakin' rebel,' she says. 'I was determined to make The Bangles the rock band that we started out as. And I knew that to do something so blatantly pop … there was a resistance [on my part].' The group toured the Everything album, but friction between all four Bangles became overwhelming. Management dangled potential solo deals in front of Hoffs and Steele, while the band as a whole were overworked, unhappy and non-communicative. 'If we were a boyband, we'd have just punched each other out,' Debbi laughs. 'But we didn't want to confront things. I remember once Michael Steele got really mad and threw a chair across the dressing room – so there were episodes, but generally there was nothing. We just didn't talk. And we should have.' 'Communication is crucial in bands,' adds Vicki. 'Unless you're working as a unit and talking as a unit, the band will fracture and then, of course, plenty of people will start jumping in to divide and conquer. Which is what happened with us, ultimately.' At management's behest, a meeting was held in 1989 to discuss the future of the band, where Hoffs and Steele announced that they couldn't move forward with The Bangles. The Petersons felt blindsided. 'It was like the worst break-up you could ever imagine,' Debbi says. It took years for the three factions to speak to one another again. At the insistence of Hoffs's husband Jay Roach, the filmmaker behind the Austin Powers movies, the group reunited to record a song for the Austin Powers 2 soundtrack in 1999, and later toured and made a reunion album, 2003's Doll Revolution. More touring followed, before the mercurial Steele departed (she has since retired from public life and declined to contribute to Bickerdike's book) and the band went their separate ways – potentially forever. 'But it was so good to connect again,' Debbi says. 'We'd had space to mature.' Today, the group is sanguine about their history and grateful for their time in the spotlight, even if looking back on some of it was painful. 'I have a very deep and abiding love for my bandmates,' Vicki says. 'So many times I wanted to kill them all, you know? Yet I just adore them.' All are eager, too, for Bickerdike's book to serve as a reminder of the band's significance: along with The Go-Go's, with whom they were endlessly compared at the time, they served as one of the first and certainly most visible all-female pop-rock bands in American music history. 'The last 10 or 15 years, there's been a more superficial appreciation for The Bangles,' Vicki says. 'The hits still resonate, but not necessarily the band or our story, or how we fit into the giant scheme of things. And if somebody wants to learn what was going on in music in the 1980s, I want The Bangles to be a part of that story – we deserve to be. I don't know that we've ever gotten that kind of respect.' 'I'm so grateful for those years,' Hoff says, her eyes moistening. She still remembers the feeling she had during her first meeting with the Petersons, where the three of them sang Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' together. 'I knew in that instant that something huge had just occurred in my life.' She apologises, mopping at her eyes. 'I had no idea what was to come, and yet it happened,' she says. 'It was a magical, miracle thing.'
Los Angeles Times
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The Bangles' memoir retraces the band's steps of walking like Egyptians, meeting Prince and making history
Long before their chart domination, global popularity and, ultimately, their implosion, the Bangles began with an ad on a big board in the Sunset Boulevard shopfront of Musicians Contact Service. Sisters Debbi and Vicki Peterson had been in various bands since their early teens, playing the Troubadour while still in high school. After placing an ad for a female musician, because an all-female lineup had been the sisters' plan from the moment they picked up a guitar and drumsticks, a fortuitous call from singer-guitarist Susanna Hoffs gelled the foundations of the Bangles. Their first jam session in Hoffs' parents' Brentwood garage involved bonding over Jefferson Airplane, Arthur Lee and the Beatles. Another ad in L.A. stalwart the Recycler attracted 18-year-old Annette Zilinskas. Though she'd never played bass, and the ad called for a bassist, Zilinskas enthusiastically agreed to learn. They cut their first recorded single in 1981 at Radio Tokyo in Venice as the Bangs, then convinced KROQ to give it a spin. Their star was on the rise, aligning with the simultaneous rise of another all-female L.A. band, the Go-Go's. Comparisons were the bane of their early career. Eventually Micki Steele joined on bass for the Bangles' first album, 'All Over the Place' (1984). When second album 'Different Light' came out in 1986, the band bore emotional scars of a demanding, contentious recording process under producer David Kahne. It was the beginning of their major chart success, and also their fracturing as a unit. Third album 'Everything' (1988) was a true showcase of the band's songwriting prowess and diverse influences as they took greater control over their production. Changes in management, being pitted against each other by media, and the pressure cooker of fast fame led to a breakup in 1998, before a reformation and two further albums, 'Doll Revolution' in 2003 and 'Sweetheart of the Sun' in 2011. The history of the band, in their own voices, is told in a new, official biography, 'Eternal Flame' by Jennifer Otter Bickerdike. Hoffs and the Peterson sisters spoke with The Times to recall key events in the Bangles' history and how the band shaped their lives. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. When Jennifer approached you about a memoir of the Bangles, were you immediately on board or did you have questions and concerns? Susanna: Jennifer initially touched base with Vicki, then the first time we spoke we hit it off immediately. She's fun, and she gets an obsessional joy in these stories. And we all agreed, the three of us. Michael Steele has sort of stepped away, so she wasn't a participant in the biography. I thought that if there was going to be a biography about the Bangles, it would be best to fact-check it or at least contribute my side of the story. It's quite a Rashomon story, where everyone has a differing point of view, and it is interesting that there are different points of views going beyond even the three Bangles who participated. There are quite a few unreliable narrators, 40 years beyond the '80s. I won't lie, some of the things that were said were painful. [In regard to descriptions of Hoffs' childhood home in Brentwood], the Petersons had a perception of my life that doesn't align with my recollection of my childhood in some cases. You responded to an ad for a female musician to join a band and the book describes instant chemistry between you, Vicki and Debbi. Is that how you remember it? Susanna: I'll always be amazed how the band found each other through that ad in the newspaper. I was trolling the Recycler magazine to try to find bandmates. After graduating from UC Berkeley, I moved into this dilapidated garage in my parents' house because I didn't have a job, apart from a minimum wage job that wasn't going to pay for an apartment. So I lived very happily in that garage. When I first met Vicky and Debbi, I was living in that little converted garage, and I had a mattress on the floor. And that day into the night, they came over and we jammed and we played 'White Rabbit' [by Jefferson Airplane] at their suggestion, which was genius. Thank you, Vicki and Debbi, because I loved that song. One of the things that glued the three of us was our mutual love of 1960s music. So, there was this crazy feeling in the room that day about our love of '60s music. I always thought of it as being like I got engaged to Vicki and Debbi, having known them for two hours. And I always thought we could have gone off to like a wedding chapel in Vegas that night and said 'I do' to each other because that was how fast it was, that was how intense our bonding was that night. I'm so grateful for it, and the Bangles. Vicki: I spoke to Susanna for the first time when she was calling in response to an ad our former lead guitar player had put in the paper. Debbi and I had been playing together since high school. Our bass player had married and moved on, and we let our lead guitar player go, and it was just the two of us. When Susanna called, it felt serendipitous. We were both unmoored, devastated by the recent assassination of John Lennon. We spoke for 45 minutes on the phone and just connected. Debbi and I got in our station wagon, drove to Susanna's house and played together. We immediately connected emotionally and musically. I said to Debbi, 'Whoa, I think we found her!' In past interviews you've said it was the relentless touring that led to the end of the band. Tell me about the beginning of the end as you recall it. Susanna: There are so many eras of the Bangles. Bands are like families, and even more so since we had the sibling dynamic of Vicki and Debbi already, and there was a slight sense of movable factions. At first, Vicki and I were a writing team, and later on Michael started to contribute amazing songs. We were trying to live as a family on the road, so there was the wear and tear of the road along with having little autonomy as young women inching towards the end of our 20s. It was such a pressure cooker in so many ways. We were bound to the idea of being a unit, but there were a lot of men in suits telling us what to do, and it was confusing to navigate that. I had a good relationship with [producer] David Kahne at Columbia when we got started, but I think Vicki and Debbi had a more fraught relationship with him. Towards the end of the '80s, there was a definite feeling that we needed space and for the third album ['Everything,' 1988], we all went off and we weren't writing with each other much at that point. Together with the producer and voices of the record label, it was art by committee. There was a lot of voices, discourse and trying to make it work, and I think we did. How did working with David Kahne affect your relationships with each other and how do you feel about that first album today? Vicki: That first album was a struggle in a lot of ways, but listening to it now, it sounds like us. David Kahne was a staff producer at Columbia, and we didn't feel we could fire him since we were new to the label. He didn't have a lot of faith in what we could do, so that impacted our confidence. I remember thinking, 'I don't know how anyone makes more than one record.' Ironically, we went on to work with him again. Debbi: We had our set together and our sound the way we wanted it from playing around clubs. Having someone come in and say, 'No, you should do this,' felt like we were being molded into something I didn't feel we were as a band. We were rough around the edges, punky, and I liked that. Of all the albums and songs the Bangles have released, which stand out to you as work you're proud of and that stand the test of time? Susanna: I'd start with 'Hero Takes a Fall,' which my son Jackson heard at Whole Foods in Chicago the other day. That song was on the first Columbia record. Vicki and I wrote it, and that was so fun. We had books of poetry, and that concept came from all our flipping through books and getting inspiration. That song was a game-changer, it triggered Prince's interest in the Bangles. He saw the video that we filmed in San Francisco, and it led to this wonderful feeling that an artist as wonderful as Prince was interested in us. We were at shows and he'd come out of the wings, playing his guitar and blowing everyone's minds, including mine. Then there's 'Manic Monday.' That turned out to be an amazing moment when that became a hit. Vicki: We were thrilled and honored that Prince wanted to give us two songs. He was a prolific writer and he parceled out songs to people that he cared about or was working with. I thought 'Manic Monday' was something we could do, and it was close enough to who we were. It was approachable, and people still reference it all the time. 'Walk Like an Egyptian' was a late addition to 'Different Light' (1986). How do you feel about it? Susanna: I loved 'Walk Like an Egyptian.' That was a really quirky song. I remember going to the Columbia offices and David [Kahne] played me the Marti Jones version of it to get my take on it. We'd done most of the record, and he said, 'on a lark, what if we did 'Walk Like an Egyptian'?' It was such an odd, idiosyncratic work and it really worked for the Bangles. It was basically a No. 1 song from 1986 to 1987. Vicki: My memory is that it was late in the process and Kahne brought it into rehearsal. I remember thinking it was a cool groove, but the weirdest song I'd ever heard. Marti Jones was on the original, and so I thought, 'I don't know why we're doing this,' but I was up for it. You re-formed the band 20 years ago for the fourth album and have performed since. Is it an avenue you want to put energy toward, still, and what has it meant to your life and identity to be a Bangle? Vicki: We haven't performed together as a band since 2019. Even in the late '80s we never officially broke up. Debbi: It was a hiatus. Vicki: The Bangles is always a part of our lives, our individual and collective identities.
