Bangles singer Susanna Hoffs’ newest cover is her debut novel, ‘This Bird Has Flown’
At age 64, the musician-author isn’t exactly singing a new tune; she tells The Times of Israel that she’s had a passion for literature her whole life and is a voracious reader
Those familiar with ’80s pop music have definitely heard The Bangles’ singer Susanna Hoffs belt out the band’s chart-topping hits such as “Manic Monday,” “Walk Like an Egyptian,” “Hazy Shade of Winter,” and “Eternal Flame.”
And while for the past 40-plus years Hoffs has been penning lyrics, she’s only recently published her first novel — interestingly, about a female musician.
It began when Hoffs’s son, Jackson, nudged her to take the plunge and pursue her lifelong dream of writing a book. And almost like one of those magical stories of a band’s demo tape landing in the hands of a music exec who signs them to a record deal, Hoffs had a similarly enchanting experience.
Just one day after Hoffs’s literary agent received a draft of her novel, “This Bird Has Flown,” she emailed Hoffs to set up a meeting, which soon led to a publishing deal. Then the newbie author received even more good news: Hollywood had come knocking, too. Universal Pictures acquired the rights shortly after, and Hoffs is now adapting the novel for the screen.
“This Bird Has Flown” hit shelves on April 4, three days before the release of her fifth solo album, “Deep End,” whose kick-off single is an updated cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb.”
The novel tells the story of musician Jane Start, who, broke and recently broken up with, ends up living in her parents’ house. It’d been 10 years since her one and only hit, and out of desperation, she takes a karaoke bachelor party gig. Things change on a dime when Start’s manager, Pippa, sends the musician to London for a reboot. While on the flight, Start meets an intriguing stranger, an Oxford professor of literature, with whom she is soon smitten.
“I decided to make my protagonist a musician and songwriter because it’s a job I know well. I’ve experienced the joy of making music, the thrill of performing, but also the challenges of being in the music business. I also wanted to give readers a peek behind the curtain of what it’s like to face an audience with your heart thumping so loudly you fear they can hear it too, and then somehow, to find your voice,” said Hoffs, 64. “Then uncovering a few skeletons in the attic and grappling with a character so damaged inside about her perception of herself as a musician. So, she opens herself up for love and ultimately opens herself creatively.”
To get her creative juices flowing, Hoffs took solitary walks as well as reread classic books from her youth: “The Great Gatsby,” “The Sun Also Rises,” and “Sophie’s Choice.”
“I love nothing more than disappearing into other people’s stories and having an excuse to get out of my own head. It’s always been a love for me, a passion. Also, there is probably some pathology in it, that I don’t want to be in my own head with my own worries and problems. I just love the escapism of it,” she said.
“There is another part of my book that was really me wanting to write using some themes from a couple of my favorite books — ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Rebecca’ — where the ghosts of people’s pasts, can they doom your chances of finding love? And as humans how we all have to grapple with those feelings. In the case of Jane Start, it’s on the heels of a terrible breakup in which we find her bereft, hopeless, having been dumped and cheated on, and having failed beyond having this one-hit wonder,” said Hoffs.
“It is a story of defeat, but also resilience. The characters are shaped with a bed of wit. She loves people even that are difficult to love. I love writing people who are difficult, or even slightly obnoxious,” she said.
Since she was quite young, Hoffs has been drawn to music, art, and theater while surrounded by the creative set — including her artist and filmmaker mother Tamar Simon Hoffs, and family friends such as actors Leonard Nimoy and Ben Gazzara.
“They were always playing pool,” Hoffs said of the Gazzaras. She recollected that she and their daughter Liz, who were friends, would often make their parents martinis.
“It really informed my childhood, overhearing the conversations of adults, and the crazy lives of people in show business. It was an interesting time,” said Hoffs.
The latest music would be played in her home. A friend of her mother worked at Capitol Records and provided the Hoffs family with “fresh off the press” Beatles albums. These formative inspirations would later manifest themselves in her novel.
“My love of Great Britain is probably sparked by my obsessional love of The Beatles. I was imbued as a child with all the sounds and the harmonizing — of course, it informed the sound of The Bangles,” Hoffs said.
A budding musician as a girl, Hoffs learned how to play guitar from her uncle, a musical instrument store owner. By age 22, she had already placed a newspaper ad looking for a guitarist bandmate, which led to the formation of The Bangles in 1981.
Three years later, her connection with Nimoy came in handy as he co-starred in the band’s video “Going Down to Liverpool” — a subtle ode to the Fab Four’s town. The Bangles for some time remained a rarity: an all-female quartet that made regular rotation on the radio dial. Hoffs said it was “a thorn in our sides” that they were so often referred to by writers and broadcasters as an “all-girl band.”
“We felt that we were a band just like any band, and that fixating on the gender as if it was a novelty — the concept of it was just unsatisfying and frustrating,” Hoffs said. “I think at the time it felt uncomfortable to be thought of as a novelty act. ‘Let’s bring out the girl band!’ We considered ourselves to be a band like any other band, hard at work, looking to write the best possible songs.”
Though it would be easy to assume “Eternal Flame” was inspired by the ner tamid — the eternal flame found in most synagogues — she explained that the song’s title actually came after visiting Elvis Presley’s gravesite, which happened to also have an eternal flame. But in terms of her own Jewish stories, she said that one of her fondest memories was her coming-of-age ceremony.
When Hoffs was 12, her family traveled to Israel to celebrate her bat mitzvah and visit her grandparents, who had an apartment in Jerusalem as well as a condo in Caesarea. Her grandfather, Rabbi Ralph Simon, who was at the time the spiritual leader of a synagogue in Chicago, led services for Susanna and her 13-year-old brother John at the Western Wall. Two years later the family returned for another visit.
“The two trips to Israel were wonderful. Those were very important trips that I took,” Hoffs said.
Her uncle Matthew Simon — her mother’s eldest brother — had followed in his father’s footsteps and was a rabbi in Maryland. The two family rabbis officiated Hoffs’s 1993 marriage to her husband Jay Roach. In homage to her Jewish roots, at Aimee Mann’s annual Christmas show in 2014, Hoffs played a Hanukkah tribute song to the tune of “Walk Like An Egyptian.”
Hoffs also recalled the story of meeting fellow member of the tribe Paul Simon (no relation), someone she said she idolized since the early days of the folk duo Simon and Garfunkel. The Bangles happened to be in Amsterdam on tour at the same time as Simon and were invited to his soundcheck and show.
“It took my eyes to adjust to realize — this person who was coming into focus. I was looking into the eyes of Paul Simon, who was thanking me. He told me, I never got to thank you for covering ‘Hazy Shade of Winter,’ and I was speechless and tongue-tied, standing a few inches away from Paul Simon, one of my heroes,” she said. “It was just a beautiful connection, and the whole night was beautiful. Then, I got the chance to talk to him after the show. I’ll never forget it. It was life-changing.”
Things have come full circle. The Bangles, Hoffs said, have also received their share of fan appreciation, and it’s something she takes to heart.
“It only takes that one second to hear a song or look at a work of art to change your life. It’s incredible that art can do that — inspire, bring joy, bring consolation if you are suffering,” Hoffs said.
“More of those kinds of stories are filtering down to me and the other members of the band, and it makes us feel wonderful,” she said. “It’s a wonderful feeling to know that we might have inspired anyone to do what we did or want to create music or art and express themselves in this way.”
