{"id":904206,"date":"2026-09-21T14:54:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T14:54:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/904206\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T14:54:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T14:54:15","slug":"susanna-hoffs-on-the-bangles-new-album-the-list-and-the-eighties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/904206\/","title":{"rendered":"Susanna Hoffs on the Bangles, New Album ‘The List,’ and the Eighties"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSusanna Hoffs<\/a> has a list. When she was a teenager growing up in L.A., she began keeping her list in a leather-bound notebook. That\u2019s where she started writing down the names of everyone she\u2019s ever dated. She began when she was just an arty high-school kid in the 1970s, learning to play guitar by strumming along with her mom\u2019s Beatles records.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut her list kept growing in the Eighties, when Hoffs suddenly blew up into a wildly famous rock star. With her band, the Bangles<\/a>, she sang one massive hit after another, from \u201cManic Monday\u201d to \u201cWalk Like an Egyptian\u201d to \u201cEternal Flame,\u201d strutting her stuff on MTV. The Bangles were making history as one of their era\u2019s only all-woman rock & roll bands, four California girls kicking down doors for female musicians. Yet all the while, she kept scrawling more names, in that same notebook. \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a whole bunch of different names,\u201d she says today, laughing over coffee in a posh NYC hotel. \u201cSome actors. Some fuckwits, in truth. Then I would note if it was just a one-night thing \u2014 it would have a \u20181,\u2019 or maybe a \u20182.\u2019\u201d She flashes a mischievous smile. \u201cIt\u2019s a juicy list.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYears later, Susanna Hoffs has turned that notebook into an excellent album, The List \u2014 her first batch of original tunes in 14 years. \u201cIt\u2019s been fun to revisit not only the old memories, but the whole arc of the thing, over these decades,\u201d she says. The List is full of her signature folk-rock tricks, looking back on her long, twisted, remarkable life in music. Hoffs has made her name as one of rock\u2019s sharpest interpretive singers, with impeccable taste in covers, which is probably why she\u2019s always been weirdly underrated as a songwriter. But 40 years after the Bangles first topped the charts, she\u2019s ready to tell her stories. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tShe made the album in her home, with her producer and kindred spirit CJ Camerieri, who\u2019s worked with Bon Iver, Phoebe Bridgers, and Paul Simon. \u201cCJ introduced me to a whole gaggle of musicians I really fell in love with,\u201d she says. They started tinkering in a studio, but soon switched to more familiar ground. \u201cWe realized that my house had the best acoustics. It was the coziest, warmest, fuzziest environment. So we recorded the whole album in my living room. It was easy for me \u2014 I could just walk downstairs and make coffee, get everybody upbeat and in the mood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThe home environment makes sense, for such a personal project. \u201cI had a Filofax notebook back in the day \u2014 this is how old-school I am,\u201d she says. \u201cVery posh, a nice leather diary. Pre-internet, that\u2019s how I kept track of things. But I wrote down the name of my very first boyfriend, from high school. I don\u2019t even know where he is now.\u201d (She mentions his name \u2014 it only takes about ten seconds to find him alive and well online, though obviously he\u2019s a civilian so nobody should bust him for fumbling a Bangle.) \u201cSo I met the first guy on the list, when I was 17. And then, as I went through my dating life, I just kept adding names to the list.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe kept the list going into her thirties, until the Nineties. But it ends with a name on the final page, in all caps: \u201cJay Roach.\u201d She met the Hollywood filmmaker on a blind date, married him in 1993, and they\u2019ve remained madly in love ever since. Roach made the classic Austin Powers movies with Mike Myers, with Hoffs rocking out in the Sixties-themed house band Ming Tea. [youtube.com\/watch?v=-HF3x67VK9o] They\u2019re very much the Hollywood It Couple: every time he\u2019s on TV winning an award, he finds a florid way to brag that he\u2019s married to her, as any husband would do. She laughs merrily when she\u2019s reminded of the year he won a Golden Globe for Game Change, and thanked \u201cmy muse, lover, friend, and Jewish rock angel Susanna Hoffs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tBut singing about him on the new album turned out to be a challenge. \u201cThe last name is Jay,\u201d she says. \u201cI have to hold myself back when I get to the line, \u2018You were the last one on my list,\u2019 which often brings a tear to my eye as I sing it. I feel my throat tighten a little bit. When I get close to that moment, I have to go, \u2018Okay, calm yourself, girl.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bangles were a unique presence in the Eighties\u2014an indie-rock garage band who went pop, sending shock waves through MTV. These California girls had a foot in the Sixties, with their intricate Rubber Soul harmonies and jangly guitars. But they also embraced the Eighties glam, big hair and all. \u201cWe had a very thrift-store aesthetic,\u201d she says. \u201cWe kept trying to drag the Sixties kicking and screaming into the Eighties, but we were just scrappy. The Go-Go\u2019s were more polished \u2014 I don\u2019t know if it was the tutus or whatever. They were so great. I think we wanted to separate ourselves. But it worked \u2014 we could do super-melodic emotional songs and we weren\u2019t shoegazery at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bangles\u2019 electrifying 1984 debut, All Over the Place, was Sixties flower-power rock with a postpunk guitar kick and a tough-talking feminist edge. \u201cHero Takes a Fall<\/a>,\u201d written by Hoffs and guitarist Vicki Peterson, blew up on MTV, showcasing the band\u2019s jangly Rickenbackers and acerbic humor, stomping on a fragile male ego. Plenty of Eighties folks heard this song, or saw the video, and flipped for their new favorite band. <\/p>\n

\n\tOne of those people happened to be Prince<\/a>. The Purple One fell in love with their sound (maybe also the singer, though they never dated), and wrote them a hit, \u201cManic Monday,\u201d with Hoffs singing the immortal hook, \u201cCome on, honey, let\u2019s go make some noise!\u201d When they met him at Paisley Park, they jammed until 3 a.m.\u2014he knew all their songs. \u201cManic Monday\u201d reached Number Two on the charts, blocked by the song at Number One: Prince\u2019s \u201cKiss.\u201d It kicked off a flurry of hits: \u201cWalk Like an Egyptian,\u201d \u201cIn Your Room,\u201d the Simon & Garfunkel banger \u201cHazy Shade of Winter.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWe weren\u2019t cool, exactly,\u201d Hoffs says. \u201cWe just wore it on our sleeves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bangles came up in L.A.\u2019s Paisley Underground scene in the early Eighties, where postpunk rockers rediscovered the psychedelic rock of the Sixties, which in fashion terms was strictly taboo. The Bangles, along with bands like the Rain Parade and the Dream Syndicate, taught Eighties kids how to hear music they officially weren\u2019t supposed to like. The scene came together for the 1984 album Rainy Day, reviving obscure nuggets from the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Love, the Velvets \u2014 a vastly influential project that opened a lot of hipster minds.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat was my ex-boyfriend, David Roback, who then went on to do Mazzy Star with Hope Sandoval,\u201d Hoffs says. \u201cDavid was my best friend\u2019s brother. But once a romantic spark occurred between me and David, we became boyfriend and girlfriend. I almost said \u2018lovers\u2019 \u2014 that\u2019s the worst word! But David and I became lovers.\u201d They graduated from Pali High, in Pacific Palisades, then lived together in Berkeley, where she studied ballet, theater, and art. That\u2019s also where they formed their first band together, the Unconscious. It was a powerful musical connection, with a huge influence on both Mazzy Star and the Bangles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were so yin and yang because I\u2019m always bubbly and he had a kind of darkness in him,\u201d Hoffs says. \u201cBut the Mazzy Star stuff was beautiful darkness \u2014 just gorgeous. It was very sad when he passed away\u2014 way too young.\u201d After leading the Rain Parade, Roback started Opal with Dream Syndicate bassist Kendra Smith, which became Mazzy Star when Sandoval replaced Smith on vocals. (Since \u201cFade Into You\u201d and \u201cEternal Flame\u201d have both become timeless classics, it might be surprising to recall they started out in the same place.) Roback masterminded the Rainy Day album, where Hoffs sang Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ll Keep It With Mine\u201d and Lou Reed\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ll Be Your Mirror<\/a>\u201d \u2014 totally unknown songs at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI had a bottle of whiskey in the studio,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI was a little rascally person. I took a swig and sang both songs in just one take. Rock & roll!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLike the Georgia boys in R.E.M., who started making noise around the same time, the Bangles changed how people heard the Sixties \u2014 suddenly, all this hippie harmony was on the table. \u201cI love that Sixties era,\u201d Hoffs says. \u201cI love the sonic quality of it, the warmth of those recordings. Just beautiful. The Sixties were like, to me, all sunshine-drenched music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCasablanca\u201d is one of the album\u2019s most poignant tales, about a romantic stroll with a surprising rock star: the late great Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. \u201cThe cute one in the band,\u201d she says. \u201cWe were on tour with George Michael in 1988, and we kept noticing kids in tie-dye shirts on the way to New Orleans. I was in the lobby of the hotel, on a day off, staring out the window because I was bored. I see a van pull up. Then all of a sudden, I see the Grateful Dead file out of the back of the van.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tEver the flower child, Hoffs had a word with someone on the Dead tour, who invited the Bangles to the band\u2019s crawfish boil that night. \u201cI said \u2018Count me in, I\u2019ll tell the other girls.\u2019 We were at the Neville Brothers\u2019 place, and Jerry Garcia\u2019s there with his new baby. It was all so Grateful Dead-centric, but so fantastic.\u201d The next night, the Dead brought the Bangles onstage, on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, to sing along and dance \u2014 a truly surreal duet. \u201cWe did \u2018Iko Iko,\u2019 \u201d she recalls. \u201cPeople were throwing the beads at us. It was crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter the show, Weir lured her away. \u201cThat\u2019s how I got to know Bob Weir. He wanted to go on a walk with me. He was a big walker.\u201d They took an innocent evening stroll down Bourbon Street, by the Mississippi River. \u201cThe moment in New Orleans when Bob said, \u2018Let\u2019s go for a walk\u2019 \u2014 there was just something so dreamlike about it, for lack of a better way to describe it. I remember turning around when he said, \u2018Let\u2019s take a walk in the French Quarter.\u2019 He had a flower in his hand, gesticulating with the flower as he talked. He was special. I mean, they all were, but Bob, he had a certain thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNaturally, this rambling California rose adored the Dead. \u201cThey were very meaningful to me.\u00a0 You wouldn\u2019t have thought that necessarily as a person who grew up on pop music and Dionne Warwick records and Burt Bacharach stuff, but I was a music junkie. Later on, when I reconnected with Bob, he remembered that night too, which really touched me. We both cherished that memory.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you\u2019re geeking out about music with Susanna Hoffs, you need to bring your A-game. She\u2019s the kind of deep rock nerd who loves to argue about the nuanced details of history. When the Zombies entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, she gave a heartfelt tribute; she also joined a stage full of fellow legends to sing Bowie\u2019s \u201cAll the Young Dudes.\u201d As she notes proudly, \u201cI was the only non-dude.\u201d A couple of years ago, she did an irreverent revision of the Rolling Stones\u2019 \u201cUnder My Thumb.\u201d \u201cThat was sassy,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was fun to turn the tables and make it girl-centric. Put him under her thumb.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHoffs grew up in the quintessentially 1970s free-spirited SoCal environment. \u201cYeah, I had very liberal-minded, democratic parents. My mother was the daughter of a very cool rabbi. He marched with Martin Luther King. My dad was a psychiatrist. There were no real rules. My dad was the best \u2014 I mean, he took us to see Midnight Cowboy when we were kids, because we wanted to see it. He always said, \u2018Anything you don\u2019t understand, I will explain.\u2019 So anything about sex, my dad was so open. \u2018This is how the body works, and that\u2019s a body part, and then this is how you make a baby.\u2019 He was so cool that way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn so many ways, the Hoffs home was the ultimate California dream. \u201cIt was always our house where everybody wanted to hang. And we had a pool table. My dad was really good at pool, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen she met the Peterson sisters, guitarist Vicki and drummer Debbi, they were from a different world, Catholic schoolgirls from the Valley. \u201cTheir parents were so strict,\u201d she recalls, \u201cand they just had completely different upbringings.\u201d But music brought them together. They met in late 1980 when Hoffs put an ad in the paper, looking to start a band. \u201c\u2018Wait, you play guitar, and your sister\u2019s a drummer?\u2019\u201d she recalls asking Vicki. \u201cSo they came over to the garage in Brentwood. I\u2019d done stuff with David Roback, but I wasn\u2019t savvy with technical things \u2014 they just laughed at me. \u2018She\u2019s so green!\u2019 But then we needed to find a song, and they suggested \u2018White Rabbit,\u2019 because it only has two chords.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Jefferson Airplane psychedelic anthem might seem like a weird audition pick, but the musical connection was instant. \u201cI started singing, and something happened,\u201d Hoffs recalls. \u201cWe decided to be a band that night. It was like meeting someone on a blind date, and then jumping in the car, driving from L.A. to Vegas and getting married in an Elvis chapel. That\u2019s how impetuous \u2014 or crazy \u2014 it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHoffs\u2019 mom, listening on the front porch, said, \u201cYou girls sound like a band already.\u201d Susanna replied, \u201cMaybe we are.\u201d Arty young women did not form bands in those days \u2014 not in L.A., not in the Eighties, not without a male Svengali figure pulling the strings. It just wasn\u2019t done. But these women were ahead of their time, mixing folk tunecraft and punk aggro. They first called themselves the Bangs, a sexual double entendre, though another band had already claimed it, so they became the Bangles. They found bassist Michael Steele, a veteran of the Runaways. People tried to pit them against their friends in the Go-Go\u2019s, but the Bangles had their own sound. They had ambition. They had drive.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey also had four ace singer-songwriters in the same band \u2014 a sure way to guarantee constant conflict. It didn\u2019t take long for them to butt heads in public. When they made it to the cover of the Rolling Stone in 1987, both Petersons spent most of the interview trashing their latest album.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSome people are trying to get a Bangles documentary off the ground,\u201d Hoffs sighs. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think it\u2019s ever going to happen. So I\u2019m just going about my business and wishing them well. People usually make documentaries where there\u2019s a major tragedy or major drama. We had a Behind the Music episode, which is all [sings suspenseful music] \u2018da-da-DUNNNN! Then this happened!\u2019 With the documentary, I always think, \u2018Well, you already have the Behind the Music. It\u2019s not going anywhere.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat Behind the Music from Y2K did go into some of the band conflicts \u2014 especially how much the other Bangles hated \u201cEternal Flame,\u201d their most famous hit. It\u2019s a sublime Eighties ballad, full of angelic harmonies, yet a deeply eccentric one \u2014 almost half of it is the \u201crepeat the chorus forever\u201d coda. It sounded like nothing else on the radio. Hoffs wrote it with outside pros Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. \u201cThe \u2018say my name\u2019 part on \u2018Eternal Flame\u2019 was a complete left turn,\u201d Hoffs says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just verse-chorus-verse. When we got to that part, when me and Tom and Billy were writing together, my brain exploded.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tEverybody on earth loved this song. With three exceptions. \u201cEternal Flame\u201d hit Number One in 1989, but became one of those hits that dooms a band. (The Eighties had lots of those stories.) It ripped the Bangles apart in a matter of months. \u201c\u2018Eternal Flame\u2019 is a beautiful song,\u201d Vicki Peterson said on Behind the Music. \u201cWhitney Houston could have a hit with it. Why are we doing it?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cVicki said something that I thought she shouldn\u2019t have said,\u201d Hoffs admits, more bemused than anything else. \u201cBecause she slagged Whitney Houston. I was like, \u2018Don\u2019t slag Whitney Houston!\u2019\u201d And I was so horrified. \u2018You didn\u2019t just say that. She\u2019s an icon!\u2019 And she slagged my most popular song \u2014 the Number One Bangles hit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe kicked off her solo career with a real oddity, When You\u2019re a Boy, with the glam-pop hit \u201cMy Side of the Bed,\u201d the rock ballad \u201cUnconditional Love,\u201d and the bizarro Bowie cover \u201cBoys Keep Swinging,\u201d where she sings, \u201cLife is a pop of the cherry, when you\u2019re a boy!\u201d It was obvious she had no desire to play the conventional pop game, as she\u2019s kept proving ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tShe also tried acting, in the trashy Eighties beach flick The Allnighter, directed by her mother Tamar Simon Hoffs. \u201cOh God,\u201d Hoffs groans. \u201cThat was just to help my mom do her low-budget movie. It\u2019s very cheesy, but it\u2019s become a weird, terrible cult classic. Like Beach Blanket Bingo, with worse dialogue and Eighties hair.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHoffs has kept continually active \u2014 she just published her first novel in 2023, the acclaimed best-seller This Bird Has Flown, about a rocker trying to make a comeback. She teamed up with longtime pal Matthew Sweet for a great string of crate-digging Under the Covers albums, under the name Sid & Susie, until his recent stroke. \u201cI love to cover stuff with Matthew,\u201d she says. \u201cWe were like kids in a candy store back in that time.\u201d Her recent albums Bright Lights and The Deep End feature her interpretations of everyone from Nick Drake to Billie Eilish. On The List, she collaborates with a wide range of peers like Rufus Wainwright, Dan Wilson, Edie Brickell, and Wendy Melvoin.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut these days she\u2019s on a roll with CJ Camerieri. Their next project is covering favorite albums in their entirety, starting \u2014 where else? \u2014 with the Beatles. \u201cWe\u2019re remaking the Help! album, song by song,\u201d she says. \u201cThe opening line is, \u2018When I was younger, so much younger than today.\u2019 It hits home now that my older self wanted to revisit my younger self. Songs like \u2018The Night Before\u2019 \u2014 that could be a 67-year-old lady\u2019s perspective, looking back. We\u2019re doing Revolver next.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Bangles\u2019 songbook still holds up smashingly, from \u201cDover Beach\u201d on the debut to \u201cGlitter Years\u201d on Everything. But the band\u2019s crucial place in history gets obscured, since they were an Eighties band who broke up right before the Nineties explosion of female rock stars. So they failed to cash in on the freedoms of an era they helped to inspire. (When Kim Deal started the Breeders, she famously proclaimed them \u201cthe Bangles from hell.\u201d) Hoffs is genuinely surprised to hear that the Bangles remain a touchstone for how modern pop sounds. When she asks for examples, she dutifully listens to songs like Olivia Rodrigo\u2019s \u201cU + Me = <3\u201d or Taylor\u00a0.<\/p>\n

\n\tSwift\u2019s \u201cHits Different,\u201d both jangle-pop guitar bangers in the Bangles mode, both new to her.<\/p>\n

\n\tShe also pauses to watch a video clip she hasn\u2019t seen in 40 years: the Bangles on MTV in 1985, on the late-night alt-rock showcase IRS\u2019 The Cutting Edge<\/a>. They\u2019re in the back of the van, pre-fame, pre-pop glitz, just four punk girls on their way to the next gig, doing a scruffy sing-along on a 1966 nugget from the Mamas and the Papas, \u201cCreeque Alley.\u201d She smiles. \u201cTotal thrift-store aesthetics,\u201d she says. \u201cYou know what? The Eighties were great!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s part of why The List has so much emotional resonance \u2014 the sound of an adult sifting through her old stories, letting them tell her something new, with nothing bitter or jaded getting in the way. No doubt many listeners will wish they\u2019d kept their own notebook over the years. \u201cMaybe they can go back in time and cobble together a little list for themselves,\u201d she says. \u201cThat guy was a dick! No, that girl was wonderful!\u2019 Whatever it is. But that\u2019s music for you. Music\u2019s the beginning, middle, and end of every day. There\u2019s always a song for every feeling or every day or every moment \u2014 any time you want it, it\u2019s there. You can just pluck it from the ether.\u201d<\/p>\n

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