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