The first time Susanna Hoffs and the Peterson sisters sang together and their voices blended, the frisson was unmistakable. “We knew we had something,” Hoffs said. “We created a band in that moment.”

Singer and guitarist Hoffs, 66, beamed at the memory, sitting in her kitchen on a late January afternoon. Her home in Los Angeles’ Brentwood neighborhood is just a few blocks from where the Bangles were born, on a cool evening in early 1981 in her parents’ garage.

“It’s an overused word, but we were organic,” guitarist Vicki Peterson, 67, said. “We formed ourselves, played the music we loved, we really were a garage band.” But a garage band “that somehow became pop stars,” drummer Debbi Peterson, 63, noted. Both sisters were interviewed in video conversations.

The Bangles broke big, scoring five Top 5 hits and storming MTV with inescapable songs like “Manic Monday” and “Eternal Flame.” They were one of the era’s rare all-girl groups — and became one of the most successful female bands of all time — a crew of puckish 20-somethings showcasing their collective songwriting and vocal chops.

But one of the defining bands of the 1980s also ended in spectacular fashion. Less than a decade after its birth, the group imploded in its manager’s Hollywood mansion, the sisterhood of its members lost amid a farrago of fame and mental fatigue.

That story plays out vividly in “Eternal Flame: The Authorized Biography of the Bangles” by Jennifer Otter Bickerdike, out now. Bickerdike fashioned a history of a bygone era in the music business, one in which the outsize influence of major labels, domineering producers and Machiavellian managers could make or break a band.

“When I first encountered the Bangles as a kid, I thought they were powerful, in control, just ruling everything,” Bickerdike said in an interview. “And what was strange, sad and shocking was finding out just how much they had to deal with the agendas of these people surrounding them and the inherent misogyny of the music industry. It was hard to reconcile that with the image of the band that I’d always had.”

The band — first known as the Colours, then the Bangs, before the members settled on the Bangles — spent its early years as part of Los Angeles’ Paisley Underground, a ’60s fetishizing scene that included groups like the Dream Syndicate and the Three O’Clock. Miles Copeland, who managed the Police, signed the Bangles, who released an indie single in 1981 and an EP in 1982 before the group’s original bassist, Annette Zilinskas, exited to pursue rockabilly music.

The Bangles found its missing piece in Michael Steele, known as Micki, who had been an early member of the Runaways, the band formed by the notoriously controlling producer Kim Fowley. The experience had left Steele scarred and wary of joining another girl group, but she came on, bringing together four members who could all write, sing and play. (Steele, who did not participate in the biography, remains an alluring enigma in Bickerdike’s narrative.)

In 1983, the Bangles signed with Columbia Records. The Bangles’ major label debut, “All Over the Place,” was released in 1984 and became a modest success. But in what would become a recurring problem, Columbia kept the band on the road incessantly, and by the time it went into the studio to make the follow-up, “Different Light,” the musicians had hardly written any new material.

Fortunately, pop superstar Prince had become smitten with the Bangles and offered them a lifeline: a song called “Manic Monday.” Rather than sing over Prince’s recorded track as he’d intended, the Bangles rearranged and recut the song. “Manic Monday” reached No. 2 in 1986.

Feeling the album was short of singles, producer David Kahne canvassed publishers for material and seized on a demo of an odd ’60s-style dance number called “Walk Like an Egyptian.” The track featured three of the four Bangles singing lead, but it was Hoffs’ appearance in the song’s video — her brown eyes darting seductively in close-up — that set teenage hearts aflutter and record-store cash registers ringing.

After the Bangles spent a brutal 18 months touring and promoting “Different Light,” Columbia sent them back into the studio. By then, their creative relationships were fraying. Hoffs began collaborating with the writing team of Tom Kelly and Billy Steinberg, alienating her erstwhile songwriting partner, Vicki Peterson.

“For me, it was important to have the writing voice come from the band,” Vicki Peterson said. “I loved writing songs with Susanna. But she had her own reasons for branching out. The label didn’t care, they were just desperate for us to make the next record.”

The Bangles’ third album, “Everything” was another success, selling 1 million copies, with the Hoffs/Steinberg/Kelly songs “Eternal Flame” and “In Your Room” becoming major radio hits. But another hard year on the road left the band physically drained and universally dissatisfied. “Debbi and Vicki weren’t happy with what the perception of what the band was,” said Hoffs, who’d become the focal point for the press.

Hoffs admitted that she was “unsure of everything at that point. The one thing I was sure of was that I couldn’t take the tension in the band. It was too much.”

In Bickerdike’s telling, the Bangles’ new managers, Arnold Stiefel and Randy Phillips, decided it would be easier to handle Hoffs as a solo star, and actively engineered the band’s demise. Knowing they couldn’t divide the Peterson sisters, they instead got in Hoffs’ ear, and dangled a solo deal to Steele to kill any chance of the group continuing as a trio.

Ultimately, the Bangles’ ending left everyone bereft. Hoffs’ solo career never really took off, while Steele’s never even got started. The Petersons were so traumatized, they swore off music, though both eventually found their way back in more low- key projects. “That was the worst thing,” said Debbi Peterson. “Nobody got what they wanted, and the only thing that got destroyed was the Bangles.”

Given the circumstances of the Bangles’ split, the idea the group would ever reunite seemed unlikely. Ironically, it was Hoffs who first broached the idea in the mid-1990s. Still stung by the breakup, Vicki Peterson was resistant, particularly to the notion of becoming a nostalgia act.

But the Bangles did begin writing together again, releasing a new song for “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” — directed by Hoffs’ husband, Jay Roach — in 1999. That year the Petersons, Hoffs and Steele returned to the stage after more than a decade apart, appearing at a Beatles tribute at the Hollywood Bowl. A studio album, “Doll Revolution,” followed in 2003. Though Steele quit the group soon after, the Bangles continued to record and tour regularly for another 15 years (most recently with Zilinskas returning on bass).

Even with their renewed activity in the 2000s, the Bangles were largely overlooked for reappraisals. Their achievements faded among a new generation who perhaps perceived them as a relic of the MTV era, rather than an example of an empowering rock ’n’ roll band.

Recently, the group has taken steps to reclaim its legacy. In addition to the biography, the Bangles are developing a documentary with producer Rick Krim and director Lauren Lazin.

Hoffs is recording a new solo album, working on her second novel and helping adapt her first book, “This Bird Has Flown,” for the screen. Vicki Peterson and her husband, John Cowsill — of the ’60s family band the Cowsills — have a record due this spring. Debbi Peterson has started playing with Scott McCaughey and Peter Buck of R.E.M. in the alt-rock combo the Minus 5.

“What’s important is they’re all still performing, writing, creating,” Bickerdike said. “The Bangles were trailblazers and possibility models when they were in their 20s. And they’re still trailblazers and possibility models in their 60s.”