Susanna Hoffs founding father of The Bangles embarks on new profession as novelist at 64

Susanna Hoffs has a nasty case of the guilts. The founder member of Eighties all-girl pop guitar foursome The Bangles glances away to her proper within the spacious, ethereal, Californian dwelling from the place she is Zooming, and appears momentarily perturbed.

“It’s my guitar,” she explains. “It’s just sitting there, kind of… staring at me.”

If Hoffs’ guitar is feeling a bit of uncared for, it’s as a result of she’s quickly swapped it for a keyboard… however not one to make the music which has made her well-known for greater than 4 a long time.

Instead, she’s been writing her debut novel, This Bird Has Flown, which has catapulted her into a complete new profession on the age of 64.

“I will write more songs again soon, I promise,” she says, half to me and half to the out-of-sight guitar. And, to be trustworthy, she’s hardly deserted the music. In the identical week her novel was printed, Hoffs additionally launched a brand new album of canopy songs, The Deep End.

She leans in nearer to the digital camera on her laptop computer and confides: “I also need to… well, get over the fear of songwriting. I suppose that fear is of not writing something brilliant, but it’s also an odd feeling to admit that a person could take several years to write a novel and yet be afraid to write a three-minute song.”

Hoffs was born in 1959 to a Jewish household in Los Angeles, her mom, Tamar, a film-maker, her father, Joshua, a psychoanalyst. She studied artwork at college and there shaped her first band.

Then, in late 1980, aged 22, she positioned an advert in a free paper asking for bandmates, which led her to Annette Zilinskas and sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson.

At first they have been referred to as The Bangs, however they modified it to The Bangles after one other group turned out to have dibs on the identify.

Although they launched their first EP in 1982, it wasn’t till their second predominant album, Different Light, in 1986, that they hit the massive time.

A slew of prime ten hits adopted – Manic Monday, which was written for them by megastar Prince, Walk Like An Egyptian, Eternal Flame, a canopy of Simon and Garfunkel’s Hazy Shade of Winter, and plenty of extra – propelling the foursome to worldwide stardom.

The band cut up in 1989 (although reformed and toured within the Nineties) and Hoffs launched into a solo profession, releasing a number of albums.

Her 40-plus years within the music enterprise have helped to launch this new part of her profession, giving her the uncooked materials for her first novel.

In This Bird Has Flown, her predominant character Jane Start is an American singer who had one hit a decade in the past. She’s making an attempt to claw her means again up the celebrity ladder, however it proves tough. 

Then, on a flight to London, she’s seated subsequent to a charismatic however reserved Oxford professor (suppose Colin Firth relatively than JRR Tolkien), and that’s when love blossoms.

Although The Bangles’ hit Eternal Flame has little question soundtracked 1000’s of weddings over time, switching from writing love songs to a romantic novel can’t have been straightforward.

However, Hoffs had already penned a number of screenplays. Some had even been optioned by movie studios however someway they all the time ended up in “development hell”.

“So I was sitting with my husband, Jay, and our two sons a few years ago, and our older son said, ‘Mom, why don’t you write that novel you’ve always wanted to write?’. And I thought, yeah, why don’t I? It seemed the perfect way to get over this sort of grief of having worked on all these screenplays and projects that never happened.” 

Hoffs’ husband Jay Roach is a film-maker and director whose newest mission is the Patricia Arquette collection High Desert, which was launched on Apple TV Plus this week.

He’s additionally the director of the three Austin Powers films. Hoffs met him at a cocktail party in 1991 and earlier this yr they celebrated their thirtieth wedding ceremony anniversary.

In the acknowledgements to her ebook, Hoffs says, “Our partnership has always felt like a creative collaboration: in raising our children, in supporting one another in our work. My love, respect and gratitude are more than I can possibly express.”

It’s pure that Hoffs has poured loads of her personal experiences into the novel. At the start of the ebook, Jane is doing a “private” – a paid-for efficiency for an elite viewers, on this case for a stag occasion who merely wish to hear her one and solely hit

The Bangles did a couple of “privates” themselves throughout their profession. “We did some in Vegas,” Hoffs remembers. “I’ve always had a fraught relationship with Vegas. You know, it’s not exactly Paris, but it’s some people’s favourite place on Earth. I’m not a gambler, so…”

However, the personal efficiency within the ebook was the truth is loosely primarily based on private expertise. As she recollects: “I can picture us now, getting in the elevator to do a show like that, all standing there, tarted up, like we were back then, and just thinking, ‘This is our job, we have to dress the part’.” 

Looking again, now, Hoffs nonetheless feels awkward about that Las Vegas personal gig. But she received’t be pressed on particulars of who commissioned it. What occurs in Vegas stays in Vegas, it appears. 

In truth, a lot of what occurred within the Eighties, by and enormous, stays within the Eighties. 

Hoffs is – all the time charmingly – circumspect about a lot of the gossip that inevitably surrounds her band.

There’s a personality in her ebook referred to as Jonesy, who wrote the one hit that Jane Start had loved a decade earlier than.

He’s an enigmatic, world pop famous person, within the mould of David Bowie or, maybe, Prince.

Prince, in fact, gave The Bangles their biggest hit Manic Monday, and there have been rumours that Hoffs and Prince – who died in 2016 – have been an merchandise on the time.

“I suppose Jonesy is a bit of Bowie, and maybe David Byrne from Talking Heads,” Hoffs explains. “And of course Prince. Obviously, in my own life, I knew Prince; I was witness to the supernatural talent he had on stage…” Unfortunately she chooses to maintain her personal counsel on something extra private.

Earlier this month, the actor Michael J Fox, selling his forthcoming documentary, Still, which charts each his Parkinson’s battle, mentioned that he doesn’t recall loads of what occurred within the Eighties. 

“I dated Susanna Hoffs from The Bangles, and I can’t even remember it,” was one in every of his feedback. 

Hoffs says she’s additionally “kind of dim on some of those memories”. 

She provides diplomatically: “There were so many occasions, so many fabulous people to meet in the entertainment industry.”

Despite her former famous person standing, Hoffs could be very unassuming these days. After a couple of minutes of chatting to her, it’s straightforward to neglect she was as soon as one of the vital recognisable ladies on the planet. She seems to be again on these halcyon days with fondness.

“Reflecting on it, everything was so eclectic,” she says. “You had bands just like the Human League, say, and The Bangles, and we have been so totally different however we have been being performed facet by facet.”

“At the time, I kind of wrote the Eighties off but, looking back, it was a really interesting era.”

“Interesting” is perhaps an understatement. For example, Hoffs famously recorded the song Eternal Flame completely in the nude. Which begs the question, just how debauched were the 1980s for her? 

On a scale of overindulgence, for example, where wholesome Cliff Richard would be ranked at one and hedonistic Doors frontman Jim Morrison at 10, where did Hoffs and The Bangles sit?

“I definitely wouldn’t be at the Jim Morrison end, by any stretch,” she laughs. “I liked a bit of white wine back then, yeah, and I would have a little bit of liquid courage before sauntering on stage. But now I’m full Cliff Richard.”

She BRANDISHES her mug. “My drug of choice these days is caffeine, black coffee.” She pauses a moment and then adds, “There were some wild and fun times, for sure, but because of my upbringing, my parents gave me this idea: ‘Be creative, be wild; your thoughts can be anything you want, but live life well.’”