Susanna Hoffs on how an 'identity crisis' shaped the 'lost archive'

A post-Bangles (the first time) Susanna Hoffs already had a solo album, When you're a boybehind her and was starting to capture the second when she got a call from David Baerwald, Dan Schwartz and some of the other musicians involved in Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club — and began a long path to The Lost Recorda collection of these songs and their subsequent recordings due out October 18 on Baroque Folks Records.

“They were just approaching me. I went to David Kitai's studio and we created our own version of something along the lines of what they had done Tuesday Night Music Club,” Hoffs recalls Bulletin board via Zoom. “It was like we met together every week. We were sitting down, working on songs. There was a day when Joni Mitchell showed up. I have a recording of David Baerwald, me and Joni singing 'Love Potion No. 9″. She really liked that song.”

This is not one of the 10 pieces The lost record, but it would actually be another few years before Hoffs actually recorded these songs—in 1999, in the garage of her home on Blythe Avenue in West Los Angeles, where she lived with her husband Jay Roach and their two young children. “Dan Schwartz came up to me and said, 'Do you want to do some music?' Should we pick up where we left off with the David Baerwald sessions?' recalls Hoffs, who had reunited with the Bangles a year before recording “Get the Girl” for Roach's film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. He will tour with the group in 2000, but in his time The Lost Record sessions considered herself in “a chapter that isn't the Bangles”.

“I said to Dan, 'Yeah, but we can do it in my garage. I have a new baby and I'm kind of staying at home right now.' He said, “Yes,” and we had all these great people – Jim Keltner, Dan, Brian McLeod, all these people. It was a real garage band situation, which I loved. The Bangles were created in the garage of my childhood home, so I've had a lifetime of recording in garages.”

The Lost Record hard to hear though. The songs – including the psychedelic-flavoured 'Under a Cloud', which appeared on the Bangles recorded for their 2011 album Sweetness of the Sun — dominated by diverse singer-songwriter songs like “I Don't Know Why,” “Grateful,” “November Rain,” “As It Falls Apart” and “Who Will She Be” and orchestral tracks like “I” The ll Always Love You (The Anti-Heartbreak Song), 'I Will Take Care of You' and 'Life on the Inside', the latter co-written with Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go's.

“I grew up on the Bangles, but the Go-Go's had come before that and really inspired me, the idea of ​​an all-girl band,” notes Hoffs. “So writing with Charlotte and Jane was really special. It was just a very creative time. I was reaching out to all the people I knew and loved from the 80s to the 90s. It was like a group of friends, a creative group of friends.”

Lyrically, Hoffs recognizes this The Lost albumHer songs found her struggling with “this kind of identity crisis. I was a mom and married to a director and I was living this so-called adult life and I was at a crossroads, like, “How do I juggle all these things?” And trying to figure out how to “Do It All.” The deceptively lofty 'Living Alone With You' in particular was inspired by how, with Roach's film career taking off, the pair “were like ships sailing through the night”.

“It was such a thoughtful moment, a really emotional moment,” she recalls. “I think when your feelings come to the surface, it's a really good time to write songs.”

Hoffs doesn't remember why The Lost Record done, well lost. “I think it got a little crowded,” he says. “There was some discussion between some of the personalities, I think, and maybe it was because the Bangles wanted to get back together and I felt I had to park that, somehow, for the greater good. It was so long ago. Just like the stars didn't align or something, and I had to shelve it.

“But I always enjoyed these sessions. I had such a love for the material and those recordings because they were so honest and kind of basic and stripped down. It was so much the spirit of creativity in that garage. I'm so glad it's finally coming out.”

Hoffs hopes to play some of the songs live. mentions the possibility of returning to playing regularly at the Largo nightclub, as he has done in the past. She has other work on the go, including a Bangles documentary and a second book following her 2023 novel This bird flewwhich Universal optioned for a film adaptation. And Hoffs is working on a new album of her own to follow last year's The Deep Endwhich he says will combine new songs with re-recordings of Bangles favorites accompanied by New York string ensemble YMusic and will be released next year.

“I'm out and about, making music and my next book and everything else,” Hoff says. “I live for art and art and music have always driven me. I think when I put my mind to something and I'm so passionate about it, I can't stop myself. I'm so grateful to have had this ability in my life.”