Siouxsie Sioux: Still Rocking and Wailing

London’s 1976 punk movement was a heady scene--a scene in which a 19-year-old named Susan Dallion could emerge from a cluster of Sex Pistols followers and take the stage at the 100 Club to sing a tortuous 20-minute version of “The Lord’s Prayer.”

But today Dallion--known to the world since that night as Siouxsie Sioux--feels disconnected from that past and those fans, dubbed the Bromley Contingent.

“One of them was Billy Idol,” said the singer, who leads Siouxsie & the Banshees in concerts tonight at the Ventura Theatre, Friday and Saturday at the Universal Amphitheatre and Sunday at San Diego’s California Theatre. “And there’s someone else I haven’t really been in touch with but I bump into by accident about every three years. The others I don’t keep in touch with. They could be dead for all I know.”

But there is one thing Sioux treasures from that period.

“I don’t really do much reminiscing,” she said during a phone interview this week. “But I suppose you always look back at how easier things were being young. There’s always a shame that you’re not as naive as you were. That’s the only kind of reminiscing that I do.”

It’s that innocence that Sioux remembers about that night 12 years ago, when she stood on stage with bassist Steve Severin (still with the Banshees), future Adam & the Ants guitarist Marco Pirroni and future Sex Pistol Sid Vicious (on drums!).

“God, I doubt if anything was on my mind,” she said. “I remember asking for three microphones and expecting it to be three times louder than through one microphone. Probably fear was the main thing. It was pretty much an accident, carrying out the bluff and going too far and actually jumping off the cliff.”

Siouxsie landed squarely on her feet, though. One of the few English punk-era bands that thrives to this day, the Banshees have steadily expanded their American audience with each album and tour.

The darkly swirling, dense sound that is the band’s trademark--with Sioux’s versatile wail continuing as the center--has made for a distinctive body of work that set the tone for other Anglo-rock successes of the ‘80s like the Cure (whose Robert Smith was once an adjunct Banshee) and Depeche Mode. The latest LP, “Peepshow”--which playfully strips the sound down to its skeletal framework--is currently at No. 73 in the Billboard album chart.

It almost sounds as if the punk rebels have become an institution themselves. But Sioux insists that the Banshees have not been co-opted.

“It’s something that one expects, after 12 years, to be eaten up by the process,” she said. “But we’re still very much on the outside.”

Sioux, 31, says that though she is getting older, her audience is staying young, which to her means that in many ways the same things that attracted her to the Sex Pistols continue to draw young fans to the Banshees.

“The kids haven’t really got any rebels, no one that’s really against the system,” she said. “Every generation has had some sort of focus for their unrest and discomfort with growing up. But today the music that’s in the charts is probably liked by their parents as well and I think it’s a part of youth that you need something that isn’t liked or understood by the older generation.”

But, though she sees a lot of teen-agers (male and female) who dress like her and see her as a role model, she admitted that the kind of relationship that existed between the Bromley Contingent and the Pistols isn’t there between the Banshees and fans at this point. Still she has hope that a new generation will come along to take the reins as the punks did.

“Well, hopefully something’s got to happen,” she said. “It can’t go on like this. It’s been very closed up.”

And she even admits that the Banshees could easily become the kind of “dinosaur” that punk railed against. In fact, she sounded as if she eagerly anticipates the day when some kid comes along and tells her she’s an old and useless rock star.

“If that needs be, that needs be,” she said. “If we lose track when it comes to deciding when to stop, that should be a sign.”