The Lost Women of Rock Music: Female Musicians of the Punk Era

272 Pages·2012·15.16 MB·English

by  Helen Reddington

The LosT women of
rock music
Studies in Popular Music
Series Editors: Alyn Shipton, journalist, broadcaster and former lecturer
in music at Oxford Brookes University, and Christopher Partridge, Profes-
sor of Religious Studies, Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion
at Lancaster University
From jazz to reggae, bhangra to heavy metal, electronica to qawwali,
and from production to consumption, Studies in Popular Music is a
multi-disciplinary series which aims to contribute to a comprehensive
understanding of popular music. It will provide analyses of theoretical
perspectives, a broad range of case studies, and discussion of key issues.
Published
Open Up the Doors: Music in the Modern Church
Mark Evans
Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures
Graham St. John
Dub in Babylon: Understanding the Evolution and Significance of
Dub Reggae in Jamaica and Britain from King Tubby to Post-Punk
Christopher Partridge
Send in the Clones: A Cultural Study of the Tribute Band
Georgina Gregory
Forthcoming
Global Tribe: Technology, Spirituality and Psytrance
Graham St. John
Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures
Edited by Titus Hjelm, Keith Kahn-Harris and Mark LeVine
The LosT women of
rock music
femaLe musicians of The Punk era
second ediTion
heLen reddingTon
In memory of Ari Up (1962–2010) and Poly Styrene (1953–2011),
two beautiful women with an immeasurable ability to both entertain
and inspire
Published by Equinox Publishing Ltd.
UK: Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield, S3 8AF
USA: ISD, 70 Enterprise Drive, Bristol, CT 06010
www.equinoxpub.com
First edition published in hardback by Ashgate Publishing in 2007.
© Helen Reddington 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permis sion
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reddington, Helen.
The lost women of rock music : female musicians of the punk era /
Helen Reddington. -- 2nd ed.
p. cm. -- (Studies in popular music)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-84553-957-3 (pb)
1. Punk rock music--History and criticism. 2. Rock musicians. 3.
Women rock musicians. I. Title.
ML3534.R3855 2012
781.66082’0941--dc22
2011012088
ISBN 978-1-84553-957-3 (paperback)
Typeset by CA Typesetting Ltd, www.publisherservices.co.uk
Printed and bound in the UK by MPG Books Group
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
General Editor’s Preface viii
Introduction 1
1 A Ladder Through the Glass Ceiling? 14
2 Media Gatekeepers and Cultural Intermediaries 48
3 The Brighton Scene 76
4 Noise, Violence and Femininity 108
5 The Aftermath 131
6 The Social Context: Academic Writing on Subcultures,
the Rock Press and “Women in Music” 157
7 Conclusion 178
Notes 202
Appendix: List of Interviewees 242
Bibliography 243
Index 254

Acknowledgements
I should like to thank the following for participating in the realization of
this book:
Zillah Ashworth, Steve Bassam, Mavis Bayton, Steve Beresford, Mufti
Berridge, Stevie Bezencenet, Gina Birch, Gaye Black, Julie Blair, Rick Blair,
Carrie Booth, Rachel Bor, Sue Bradley, Brunel University, Phil Byford,
Patrick Campbell, Sara Cohen, Caroline Coon, Rhoda Dakar, Heather De
Lyon, Barb Dwyer, Nick Dwyer, Sally Feldman, Sara Furse, Martin Greaves,
Rachel Groom, Kate Hayes, Kienda Hoji, Suzy Home, Joby Jackson, Dave
Laing, Andrew Linehan, Lora Logic, Paloma McLardy, Wendy Malem,
Diana Mavroleon, June Miles-Kingston, Stuart Morgan, David Muggle-
ton, Liz Naylor, Keith Negus, Nora Normal, Lucy O’Brien, Alex Ogg, Nadya
Ostroff, Sarah-Jane Owen, Dave Peacock, the late John Peel, Tessa Pollitt,
Annie Randall, Sheila Ravenscroft, Penny Rimbaud, Mel Ritter, Christine
Robertson, Rockin’ Rina, Jean Seaton, Clive Selwood, Hester Smith, Ros
Smith, Alison Sorrell, Attila the Stockbroker, Poly Styrene, Vi Subversa,
Penelope Tobin, Geoff Travis, the University of Westminster, the Univer-
sity of Wolverhampton, Ari Up, Enid Williams, Jane Woodgate, Adrian
York, my family, all those who answered the original questionnaires in
2001,1 and my students for their interest and feedback.
For the second edition I would also like to thank:
Viv Albertine, Shanne Bradley, Stella Clifford, Daniel Coston, Jane Munro,
Pauline Murray, Bethan Peters, Kate Stephenson, Martin Stephenson,
Poly Styrene, Lucy (‘Toothpaste’) Whitman, Lesley Woods, and the Uni-
versity of East London.
Particular thanks go to Caroline Coon for her photograph of Tessa
Pollitt, bass-player of The Slits, used on the cover. Caroline explains:
I took the photo on 15 June 1977 at Sussex University, Brighton.
It is early evening, still light outside, as The Slits are on first as
support for The Clash, whose urban landscape backdrop can
just be seen propped up behind Tessa against the student hall
windows. Tessa joined The Slits two weeks before their first gig
in March 1977 – so when I took this photo she had only been
performing for three months.
General Editor’s Preface
The upheaval that occurred in musicology during the last two decades of
the twentieth century has created a new urgency for the study of popular
music alongside the development of new critical and theoretical models.
A relativistic outlook has replaced the universal perspective of modern-
ism (the international ambitions of the 12-note style); the grand narra-
tive of the evolution and dissolution of tonality has been challenged, and
emphasis has shifted to cultural context, reception and subject position.
Together, these have conspired to eat away at the status of canonical
composers and categories of high and low in music. A need has arisen,
also, to recognize and address the emergence of crossovers, mixed and
new genres, to engage in debates concerning the vexed problem of what
constitutes authenticity in music and to offer a critique of musical prac-
tice as the product of free, individual expression.
Popular musicology is now a vital and exciting area of scholarship, and
the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series aims to present the best research
in the field. Authors will be concerned with locating musical practices,
values and meanings in cultural context, and may draw upon methodol-
ogies and theories developed in cultural studies, semiotics, poststructur-
alism, psychology and sociology. The series will focus on popular musics
of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is designed to embrace the
world’s popular musics from Acid Jazz to Zydeco, whether high tech or
low tech, commercial or non-commercial, contemporary or traditional.
Professor Derek B. Scott
University of Leeds, UK
Introduction
The location was the Music and Power Conference at Brunel University in
2001. I had just presented a paper relating to this study, and I was taking
questions. A male member of the audience asked the following question:
“I have a friend who plays in an all-girl band. On their posters they have
a photograph of the band. Why should they resort to a gimmick like this
if they want to be taken seriously?”
The fact that, twenty-six years after the Sex Discrimination Act, an
all-girl band should still be regarded as a gimmick, and that their use
of a photograph on their posters (as many male bands do) should be
regarded as an attempt to cash in on this gimmick did not strike him as
remarkable at all.
Rationale
The original study that preceded this book was undertaken because, as
one of the participants in what I had thought was going to be a revo-
lution in rock music, I became more and more frustrated at the lack
of documentation about what actually happened at the time from the
point of view of its female protagonists.1 Histories of punk are often
personal and metrocentric, from Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming 2 to
Malcolm McLaren’s many versions of events (in particular his film The
Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle 3) in which he is the star and everyone else
supporting players. One of British punk’s myths is the London-focused
span of some histories: the enduring version of punk as described by
some sources started in 1976 and ended in 1978 with the demise of
The Sex Pistols. I contend that punk, by its anarchic nature, existed in
many forms long before and long after this; it existed and continues
to exist as a self-definition by certain people regardless of location. In
the period covered here, it was a sort of voluntary therapy invented
and undertaken by an “unwanted” generation. This work is a social and
cultural study that relies heavily, in places, on my personal memories
and involvement, and on oral sources; there are therefore tensions
between my own involvement in the history and its narrative and the
other sources that are drawn upon. These tensions are acknowledged
and assessed where appropriate.