Susanna Lee Hoffs (born January 17, 1959) is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and actress. With Debbi Peterson and Vicki Peterson, she founded the Bangles in 1981. Their debut album, All Over the Place (1984), was acclaimed by critics but sold poorly. Their second album, Different Light (1986), was also warmly received by critics and was certified double-platinum in 1987 and triple-platinum in 1994. It contained the US number two single "Manic Monday" written by Prince and the number one single "Walk Like an Egyptian." The group's third album, Everything (1988), included the US top ten charting "In Your Room" and number one "Eternal Flame," both written by Hoffs with Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. Hoffs was lead vocalist on five of the seven singles released by the Bangles, resulting in her being seen as the face of the group even though all four members shared lead vocal duties. Following tensions including resentment at Hoffs' perceived leadership and the stress of touring, the band split in 1989. They reformed in 1999 and released the albums Doll Revolution (2003) and Sweetheart of the Sun (2011).
Hoffs' first solo album, When You're a Boy (1991), was followed by Susanna Hoffs (1996). Neither of the releases proved to be as popular as the Bangles' albums, although they yielded two charting singles in the US, the top 40 hit "My Side of the Bed", and "All I Want". She recorded several songs for films and formed the faux-British 1960s band Ming Tea with Mike Myers and Matthew Sweet. Hoffs teamed with Sweet to produce Under the Covers, a series of cover song albums. Her 2012 album Someday was followed by two more cover albums Bright Lights (2021) and The Deep End (2023).
Hoffs' first novel, This Bird Has Flown, a romantic comedy about a struggling musician, was published by Little Brown in 2023. It received favorable reviews, and Universal Pictures purchased the rights to the novel for a screen adaptation.
Susanna Lee Hoffs was born in Los Angeles, California, on January 17, 1959. She is the daughter of film director/writer/producer Tamar Ruth (née Simon) and Joshua Allen Hoffs, a psychoanalyst. Her family is Jewish. She has two brothers, John and Jesse. She has said that her home environment "wasn't really traditional" and that it was an "atheist, intellectual, creative world". She said that while her mother was religious and kept kosher, her father was secular. Her maternal grandfather, Ralph Simon, was a rabbi in Chicago and her maternal uncle, Matthew Simon, was rabbi emeritus for the B'nai Israel Congregation of Maryland and marched with Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights movement. Hoffs visited Israel for the first time at the age of 12 to see her grandparents, and she celebrated her bat mitzvah at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.
Hoffs took ballet classes as a child, and started playing guitar in elementary school, learning chords from her uncle. She attended Palisades High School, and received a bachelor's degree in art in 1980 from the University of California, Berkeley, where she switched majors between dance, theater, film, and art. While in college, she worked as a production assistant and made her acting debut as part of a cast that included Richie Davis, Rae Dawn Chong, and Dennis Franz, in the 1978 film Stony Island directed by Andrew Davis and co-written by her mother. With college friends, she attended the final Sex Pistols show at Winterland Ballroom and a Patti Smith concert that inspired her to pursue a career in music.
In the late 1970s, while a student at UC Berkeley, Hoffs and her then-boyfriend David Roback formed the Psychiatrists, later changing their name to the Unconscious. In one account, Hoffs said that the short-lived group would perform for 50 minutes, to reflect the duration of "psychiatrists' hours", but in a 2012 interview she said that this early group never performed in public.
The Bangs: first releases and name change
Back home after college in the summer and fall of 1980, Hoffs sought potential bandmates by posting an ad in the local free newspaper The Recycler, and leaving hand-drawn flyers in the ladies' room of the Whisky a Go Go at a Go-Go's concert. In December, she answered an advertisement looking for musicians to join a group.
The woman who had placed the ad had previously been in a band with sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson and shared a house with them, but was not at home when Susanna called. When Vicki picked up the phone, she and Susanna hit it off, talking about favorite bands and the recent death of John Lennon, and what he meant to them both. When the Petersons met up with Hoffs at the latter's apartment in her parents' garage in Brentwood, they decided to start a band.
They originally named their group the Colours, but changed it to the Supersonic Bangs after Hoffs saw an article about 1960s hairstyles in an old copy of Esquire – and subsequently shortened their name to the Bangs. Hoffs said that the group "liked the double-entendre of the name" and that "you can read a lot into it. There was something kind of gutsy about it." Annette Zilinskas joined as the group's bass player alongside Hoffs on rhythm guitar, Vicki Peterson on lead guitar, and Debbi Peterson on drums. The group's influences included The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and The Hollies, among other '60s groups. Hoffs and the Petersons shared lead vocals.
Hoffs said that the band's "first real performance" was at Laird International Studios, where Vicki worked as a secretary. The Bangs played other venues and began to gain a following in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley throughout 1981, and recorded their debut single, "Getting Out of Hand" b/w "Call on Me," releasing it on their own Downkiddie Records label. The first pressing of 1,000 copies would soon sell out, and subsequent pressings would eventually reflect their next name change. In a 1987 Rolling Stone article, the critic Susan Orlean described the band's early audience as "mostly boys, who appreciated their tough-enough music and playfully flirtatious stage presence". Author James Dickerson later characterized the group's loyal audience as "made up of horny high-school and college-age males who relished their in-your-face sexuality", and commented that the musicians had gained their success through their own efforts, without intervention from any man.
Miles Copeland of I.R.S. Records saw the Bangs at a show and signed them to his Faulty Products label. He had previously signed the Go-Go's, likewise an all-female band, whose albums had been commercially successful. In 1982, following a legal claim by another group called the Bangs, Hoffs and her bandmates changed their name again to the Bangles. Meanwhile, Faulty Products folded, and the band's self-titled EP was eventually released on I.R.S. Records in 1982. In 1983, the group was signed to Columbia Records, and Zilinskas left and was replaced by Michael Steele. Hoffs also played a role in a student film in 1982, The Haircut, a comedy short starring John Cassavetes.
Critical and commercial success
The Bangles released their first full album, All Over the Place, in 1984 on Columbia Records; it was acclaimed by critics but sold poorly. Their breakthrough was the 1986 single "Manic Monday", written by Prince, which reached number two on the charts in the US, the UK, West Germany and Austria, as well as reaching number one in South Africa and the top five in Sweden, Switzerland and Norway. This single was included on the album Different Light (1986), which was warmly received by critics and was certified double-platinum in 1987, then triple-platinum in 1994. "Walk Like an Egyptian" from the same album reached number one in the US in December 1986, and was their first American gold record single. It also became number one in the charts for Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and West Germany. Dickerson wrote that "Manic Monday" and "Walk Like an Egyptian" were more appealing to women and girls than the band's previous records had been. Hoffs first met Prince in 1984 and the pair spoke regularly. He attended some of the group's concerts and occasionally appeared on stage with them. Paul Evans and Ernesto Lechner of The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) wrote that Hoffs had "mastered a singing style that combined pep, coy sweetness, and an occasional plaintive resonance".