The Bangles were one of the top pop groups of the 1980s with a string of hits – Manic Monday, Walk Like An Egyptian, Eternal Flame, among others – in the latter half of the decade. And it was in the midst of this success that a chance meeting in a New Orleans hotel, by way of a Neville Brothers crawfish boil, led to The Bangles sitting in with the Grateful Dead.
Susanna Hoffs, sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson, and Annette Zilinskas formed The Bangles in late 1980 after meeting through the classifieds. Originally calling themselves The Bangs, the group was part of the Paisley Underground scene, a Los Angeles based movement influenced by 60s psychedelia and rock. For The Bangles, that meant taking the acid-laced pop of the British Invasion, mixing it together with a little New Wave, and creating catchy tunes with Byrds-like guitar hooks.
In 1983, bassist Michael Steele, a former member of the punk band The Runaways, replaced Zillinskas, who left for a solo career. As the band tightened their playing with the new addition, they released their first full-length album, All Over the Place, in 1984. Enjoying regular play on college radio and MTV, the record climbed to number eighty despite not charting a single.
Building on that early success, The Bangles tweaked their sound, adding some classic 80s keyboards and thereby making their music a little more synth-driven. These changes paved the way for a 1986 breakout. Early in that year, the band released Manic Monday, which Prince had written and given to them. The single reached number two on the charts and fueled the initial sales of their second album, Different Light. But then the album’s fourth song, Walk Like An Egyptian, entered the radio rotation and quickly shot up to number one. Three more singles from the album charted as well.
The next year, the band recorded a cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s A Hazy Shade Of Winter for the Less than Zero soundtrack, which reached number two on the charts in February 1988. And their third album, Everything, came out that same year, going multiplatinum with hits In Your Room and Eternal Flame, the latter of which was their best-selling single.
It was also in 1988 that The Bangles joined the Dead on stage, singing backup on a two-song encore of Iko Iko and Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door in New Orleans on October 18, 1988. The Bangles were on a stadium tour with George Michael when Hoffs, a longtime Deadhead, spotted the band coming into the same hotel The Bangles were staying at. Hoffs had a word with someone in the Dead family, which quickly netted her and her bandmates an invite to a crawfish boil that the New Orleans originals, the Neville Brothers, were throwing for the Dead. At the party, Hoffs met Jerry and the boys and offered The Bangles as vocal backers for them the next night.
The Iko on that evening is an absolute scorcher with the wise New Orleans crowd singing loudly on the Mardi Gras tune. Art Neville, and perhaps other of the Nevilles, who had opened, sits in rocking alongside Brent. And Jerry is clearly enjoying himself throughout, firing off feisty runs and smiling away, as you can see on the audience shot video. But it might be The Bangles who are having the most fun, boogieing down while providing backup vocals and a little tambourine. The Heaven’s Door that follows is obviously a little more subdued, and we could wish the ladies were turned up more in the mix. But it is a fine capper to the evening and cool moment as the stars of the pop world came over to play with the Dead.
The success and media attention that The Bangles enjoyed proved to be the band’s undoing. The press continued to look to Susanna Hoffs as the leader of the band, which caused friction amongst the other members who shared vocal and songwriting duties with her. And this, added to other tensions and solo offers, led to the disbandment of The Bangles in 1989. A decade later, the band reformed and has enjoyed success throughout the last twenty years, touring and releasing several new albums.
After the Dead show back in ’88, Bob Weir asked Hoffs to go for a walk through the French Quarter and down to the Mississippi. Hoffs claimed that “it was very innocent.” And that very may well have been the case. Regardless, Hoffs told the story decades later after doing a trippy cover of Sugar Magnolia on her and Matthew Sweet’s Under the Covers, Vol. 2.
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