For members of The Bangles, the quintessential all-female band of the 1980s, “Walk Like an Egyptian” was an aberration — not just a departure from their rock-influenced roots, but running counter to it.
How the quirky single would help propel them to international fame and earn Susanna Hoffs’ flirtily darting eyes a place in music history is laid out in a new book, “Eternal Flame: The Authorized Biography of The Bangles,” released last month.
Author and rock historian Jennifer Otter Bickerdike takes “the girls” from their origins as a teenage garage band in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley to international stardom, and on to their painful breakup in 1989.
“Eternal Flame” uses first-person access to three of the band members, photographs, diary entries and other source materials to shed new light on a largely underappreciated band. It gets a rocky start, in part due to excessive footnoting, and the storytelling can be at times choppy or long-winded, but the book leaves the reader with a poignant and more complex picture of The Bangles’ difficult road to success.
For anyone who binged MTV or frequented the nightclubs of the ’80s, “Walk Like an Egyptian” was a staple of the era. Scenes of the band’s four members — Hoffs, sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson, and Michael Steele — strutting their way across the screen in flashy Egyptian costumes are interspersed with video from a live performance of the song and street scenes of random individuals performing the signature hieroglyphic lope.
Behind the scenes, the reader learns, the celebrity singers were longing for recognition as a serious rock band.
Vicki Peterson, one of three band members to whom Bickerdike was granted “unprecedented access” for the book, loved the Beatles, The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and the Mamas & the Papas. Her younger sister Debbi’s drumming heroes were Ringo Starr and Charlie Watts. Hoffs desired less to be “the Rock and Roll Audrey Hepburn,” as one music promoter described her, and more the punk-poetess Patti Smith. Steele, who declined to be interviewed for the project, came to The Bangles from the hard-driving Runaways.
With “Walk Like an Egyptian,” “Manic Monday,” “Eternal Flame” and two other tunes, The Bangles became the only all-female rock band to sing and play their own instruments on five Top 10 Billboard hits.
As they cut their teeth with changing lineups and hard-won gigs, the band encountered radio stations that would only play one girl band at a time and record executives who would encourage them to raise their hemlines and tease their ’dos to new heights.
Cutting their first studio album, “All Over the Place,” in 1984 was a gruelling and somewhat demoralizing experience, band members recalled. “I remember coming home one night and being in tears,” Vicki said. “I just kept saying, ‘How does anyone ever make a second record? Does anyone do that again?’”
And the music press could be brutal, too — minimizing their musical talents while inventing rivalries with other all-female bands — particularly the Go-Go’s — or nonexistent romantic sparks with Prince, who gave them his “Manic Monday” to record on their second album, 1986’s Different Light.
But celebrity was also a rush of opportunities.
Singer Cyndi Lauper took a liking to the band and tapped them to open for her 1984 Fun Tour, and Prince surprised audiences on occasion when he would appear unannounced on stage and play with the band. Hoffs calls those occasions “magical.” After “Different Light,” with “Walk Like an Egyptian,” was released, The Bangles opened for rock giants Queen at Slane Castle in Ireland. A year later, their music was part of a movie soundtrack.
Ultimately, the band met its end in 1989 amid exhaustion, internal rivalries and artistic differences with their record company. The Petersons describe being summoned to a meeting at their manager’s house, where Hoffs and Steele dropped the bomb that they were unhappy. By the end of the conclave, the band was no more — though they did reform in 1998 to record a song for an “Austin Powers” movie. The Bangles’ last show was on Sept. 15, 2019.
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