The Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs – HuffPost 9.26.11

Mike Ragogna: What’s your advice for new artists?

Susanna Hoffs: Well, I think it’s okay to embrace your love of music, even if that means learning some of your favorite songs. For me, it was singing Linda Ronstadt songs and singing Joni Mitchell songs and singing Bonnie Raitt songs and singing Beatles songs and singing Dusty Springfield songs. I mean, I really owe a lot to singing along with my favorite female voices and female artists. A few more that come to mind are Lulu, Dionne Warwick… singing all those Burt Bacharach songs and Diana Ross with all the Supreme records. I taught myself how to sing just copying them. I mean, I grew up in Los Angeles and still live in Los Angeles and you’re in a car a lot here, so my mom — I have a really great mom who loves music as much as I do. She was always playing the radio and bringing home records. I mean, she brought us all The Beatles records when we were like four or five years old. She just was always playing music, and that’s how I learned. So, that’s good. Another thing that we did as kids was just teaching each other, really folk-style, how to play. Everybody got taught “Blackbird” and things like that. You feel like a really good guitar player when you learn that and you’re young. I mean, just learning other songs is really useful.