40 years ago today, Siouxsie and the Banshees released their excellent cover of The Beatles “Dear Prudence”. This version of the song became the band's biggest British hit, peaking at number 3 on the UK Singles Chart.
Riley cites the fact that Siouxsie and the Banshees would choose to record a song by the Beatles as evidence of the latter's "pervasive influence", and he describes this version as "a surprisingly effective distortion of the Beatles' elegiac original". Further to his view on the "spookiness" evident in the Beatles' 1968 recording, Quantick says that its "ambience [was] so at odds with the floaty hippie vibe of India" that this characteristic "goes a long way toward explaining why the 1980s punk/psychedelic/Goth band Siouxsie and the Banshees were able to cover the song so successfully, bringing out its buried but implicit sun-blinded sense of menace". "Dear Prudence" was the group's first single released on Geffen Records in the United States.
Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play
Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It's beautiful and so are you
Dear Prudence won't you come out and play
Dear Prudence open up your eyes
Dear Prudence see the sunny skies
The wind is low the birds will sing
That you are part of everything
Dear Prudence won't you open up your eyes?
Look around round
Look around round round
Look around
Dear Prudence let me see you smile
Dear Prudence like a little child
The clouds will be a daisy chain
So let me see you smile again
Dear Prudence won't you let me see you smile?