She came to prominence as the leader and main lyricist of the rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees , who were active from to Siouxsie also formed a second group, the Creatures , in With the Creatures, she released four studio albums and singles such as " Right Now ". After disbanding the Creatures in the mids, she has continued as a solo artist, using just the name Siouxsie, and released the album Mantaray to critical acclaim in AllMusic named Siouxsie as "one of the most influential British singers of the rock era".
Her sister and brother were born while the family was in the Belgian Congo. Her mother, Betty, was of Scottish and English descent and was a secretary who spoke both French and English. In the mids, before Siouxsie's birth, the family moved to England.
The Ballions lived in a suburban district in Chislehurst , Kent. Siouxsie was an isolated child, being unable to invite friends to her house because of her alcoholic, unemployed father. Siouxsie was aware that her family was different; [ 9 ] the Ballions were not involved in the local community and Siouxsie, aware that her family's house differed from the neighbours', would later state that "the suburbs inspired intense hatred. At the age of nine, she and a friend were allegedly sexually assaulted by a stranger in a park.
The assault was ignored by both her parents and the police, [ 10 ] and was not spoken of in the family. The incident and the way it was treated led Siouxsie to distrust adults. I grew up having no faith in adults as responsible people. And being the youngest in the family I was isolated β I had no one to confide in.
So I invented my own world, my own reality. It was my own way of defending myself β protecting myself from the outside world. The only way I could deal with how to survive was to get some strong armour. Her father died of alcoholism-related illness when Siouxsie was 14 years old, resulting in a decline in her health.
