§hakespears §ister FAQ

Are you new to the Sisterverse? Ever wonder what's behind some of the phrases you hear on the SS mailing list? Ever wonder how to pronounce Siobhan's NAME?! This page has the answers.

Q) Shakespear's Sister: what is it?

A) Shakespear's Sister was a pop-glam-goth band, started in 1988 by Siobhan Fahey. Coming fresh out of the 80's pop group Bananarama, Siobhan was tired of drudging away as part of three, and wanted to be in control of her own group, with a darker, more mature sound. She recruited Marcella Detroit, a solo guitarist who had worked with Eric Clapton among others, and along the way the group became a duo, backed up by guitarist Gully, keyboardist Clare Kenny, Chuck Sabo and Carrie Booth. Sister broke big with their worldwide hit "Stay", but Siobhan was beginning to feel trapped in a "group" once again, and Marcella was resenting her own lack of control in the "duo". In 1993, the pair disbanded, with Marcella releasing a solo album "Jewel", and Siobhan continuing to record what would be Sister's final album. In 2004, Siobhan announced that Shakespears Sister was officially over. She is currently working on more material for a solo album, and has become a very in-demand DJ in top nightclub hot spots all over London. You can read much more on the bands' history in the articles section of this site, and on Neil Goward's SS Info Page.

Q) Where did the band's name come from?

A) A long twisty story. The English author Virginia Woolf invented "Judith", a fictional sister of William Shakespeare in a feminist essay called "A Room Of One's Own." In the 1980s the punk band the Smiths (Siobhan Fahey's favorite band) wrote a song titled "Shakespeare's Sister", which is where Siobhan took it from.

Q) Why does everyone keep misspelling Shakespeare?! And where's the apostrophe mark? Sloppy, sloppy...

A) Actually, it's supposed to be like that. A friend, creating a logo for the band in the early days, misspelt the bard's name and the band kept the mistake to distinguish themselves. The apostrophe is sometimes used, depending on how much of an anal- grammatic your webmaster is. :-) Siobhan herself has said she prefers it without the apostrophe, so out of courtesy to her, most fans drop it as well.

Q) The two women look identical. Which one's which?

A) Siobhan has long black hair in most pictures you will see on websites, though in the early days of the band she had it shorter. Marcella is the one with the short bob that was one-sided during the 1992/93 era. Marcella's also the one with the guitar, though Siobhan can be seen playing one in later video clips. The giveaway is their voices. Siobhan is the one with the low husky voice, Marcella is the one with the high operatic voice.

Q) How DO you pronounce Siobhan's name, anyway?!

A) It's an Irish name, and it's pronounced Shu-vawn. Lots of people on the SS mailing list call her by her nickname, which is Shuv. Other famous Siobhans: Siobhan Fallon, Siobhan McKenna (both actresses)....and as anyone who's ever searched for Siobhan Fahey on a search engine knows, there's a witch named Nushae Siobhan Fahey who's got a webpage of 101 spells not worth memorizing. :-)

Q) What is Siobhan rapping about in "I Don't Care"...and in "Emotional Thing", and other SS songs?

A) Good question. Um, really good question...no one's really sure. Well, we do know that the "poem" Siobhan recites halfway thru "I Don't Care" is a spin on Edith Sitwell's poem, "The Hornpipe". There is a very good article on Neil Goward's page (in the Fanzine section, issue 2, I believe) about Edith Sitwell's life and how the original poem came to be. Here's the Sisters' version, as well as can be made out:

"In a borealic iceberg came Victoria
Queen Victoria sitting shocked upon the rocking horse of a wave
Said to the laureate;
'This minx of course is sharp as any lynx
And blacker, deeper than the drinks
As any hottentot
Without remorse
But the minx is she
and the drinks you can see
Are hot as any hottentot
And not the goods for me.
Hot as any hottentot
And not the goods for me."

That's how I heard it, thought I could be wrong. As for the "Emotional Thing" poem, no one has said where that's from, if anywhere. Here's what I heard:

"And the sky sucked me up into its ????
The air was sweet
Over and over with your damn Matterhorn of excess
Into the daffodils
By the black swan and that ugly dress
(unintelligible lyric)
Do you dream of success?"

It seems like this most certainly must be another interpretation of another poem or literary work. This, I think is one of the hallmarks of Shakespear's Sister: the fact that they were so literary, that they did quote all these famous authors and didn't dumb themselves down for the public -- yeah, only English majors know who Virginia Woolf is, so what? Cool.

Q) Where can I send my obsessively gushing fan mail to Siobhan and Marcella?!

A) Now, behave. :) Your best bet at reaching either Marcella or Siobhan may be to simply send them email, at their official websites. Lots of people I know have gotten nice responses from the both of them over the years.

Hope some of your questions were answered. A great, GREAT place for SS info is the Shakespear's Sister Mailing List Archive. Many times I've posted a question on the mailing list, then gone to the archive, only to see it had been discussed months ago...whoops! It takes a while to pore over all of them, but I highly recommend it.

"...As one riddle closes, another opens..."

Okay. So we all know who Shakespear's Sister was, and we all know how Siobhan came to choose the name, and we all know it was a Smiths song. Now I ask the burning question: What the FLIP is this song about?!! What has this got to do with Judith Shakespeare or Virginia Woolf or anything?! Even Siobhan calls it "a lesser work". For all we know it could be the most profound song ever written, or it could be Morrisey thumbing his nose at all of us. (It very well could, at that.) Here are the lyrics as well as I've been able to hear them, read and decipher for yourself:

"Shakespeare's Sister"
by The Smiths

Young bones groan
and the rocks below say
"Throw your skinny body down son"
But I'm going to meet the one I love
So please don't stand in my way
I'm going to meet the one I love
No mama let me go
Young bones groan
and the rocks below say
"throw your white body down"
But I'm going to meet the one I love
At last at last at last
I'm going to meet the one I love
let it out let it out
No mama let me go
I thought that if you had an acoustic guitar
then it meant that you were
a protest singer
Oh I can smile about it now
but at the time it was terrible
No mama let me go


(Special thanx to Nickirain for supplying the mystery lyric...protest singer! :-)


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