Susanna Hoffs, singer and guitarist for popular ‘80s band The Bangles, experienced a major shift in her life when she welcomed her two children in the ’90s.
Speaking to Billboard, she explained how the new role brought her to “a crossroads” where she experienced an “identity crisis.”
Last week, Hoffs released a solo album called “The Lost Record,” a collection of recordings she originally made in the garage of her Los Angeles home in 1999 with various musicians.
The Bangles were formed in the garage of my childhood home, so I’ve had a lifetime of recording in garages,” she said.
Hoffs said she told one of the musicians, Dan Schwartz, that she wanted to record in her garage since she had a new baby and didn’t want to leave her home much — she and her husband, film director Jay Roach, share two sons, born in 1995 and 1998.
Because of that, she said the album shows her facing “this sort of identity crisis. I was a mom and married to a filmmaker and living this so-called grownup-life and finding myself at a crossroads, like, ‘How do I juggle all this stuff?’ and trying to figure out how to ‘Do it all.'”
During this time, Roach was also becoming more and more successful — he directed the popular comedy “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” in 1997 and its 1999 sequel, “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.” Hoffs described their relationship “like ships crossing in the night.”
“It was such a reflective time, a really emotional time,” she recalled. “I think when your emotions are right up at the surface like that it’s a great time to write songs.”
She never released the songs because the situation had “become a little bit fraught. There was some discourse between some of the personalities, I think, and maybe it was because the Bangles wanted to get back together and I felt that I had to park this, somehow, for the greater good. It was so long ago. It was just, like the stars were not aligning or something, and I had to shelve it.”
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