The Bangles

The Los Angeles band that came out of a garage-rock scene obsessed with the 1960s and ended up with two of the biggest singles of the 1980s. Susanna Hoffs and the sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson found each other through the classified ads in a weekly Los Angeles paper at the end of 1980, bonding over the Beatles, the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, and by late 1981 were putting out their own single on their own label. Hoffs handed a copy to the radio DJ Rodney Bingenheimer and asked him to play it; he did, and the crowds at their shows grew. They were called the Bangs then, and became the Bangles in 1982 after another band with a prior claim to the name threatened to sue.

They belonged to the Paisley Underground — jangling guitars, close harmonies, garage-rock underneath — and their 1984 debut All Over the Place was admired by critics and bought by almost nobody. Different Light changed that in 1986, carrying Manic Monday, written for them by Prince under the name Christopher, and Walk Like an Egyptian. Eternal Flame followed in 1989. They put four singles into the American Top 10, appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, opened for Queen, and broke up in 1989 under the weight of a press narrative that treated four musicians as one singer and a backing band. They reformed in the late 1990s and are still working, with founding bassist Annette Zilinskas back since 2018.