“In the pop world they were truly subversive – A know all kid in a world of grown ups” Mark P, And God Created Punk
Formed in late 1976 by Poly Styrene and Falcon Stuart, X Ray Spex appeared on the top 30 album hit live Roxy Club album with their rallying cry ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours’. In September of that year it was released by Virgin (and banned) as a one off before the band signed to EMI. Every single that followed was an absolute peach and Top Of The Pops appearances followed. By the end of ’78 they had had three hit singles and a hit album ‘Germ Free Adolescence’, which saw the band trapped inside test tubes on the cover. One more single followed in ’79 and then that was it. In August 1979 the band split through musical differences. Poly to go first solo and then become Maharani Devi in the Hare Krishna and BP and Jak to form Classix Nouveaux.
Yet the story above of X Ray Spex is a lot more complex and which up to this point has almost exclusively been the preserve of the late Poly to tell and interpret. Based on her view of the past and people, the internet is littered with erroneous band histories and facts that have spawned further histories believing them to be the truth.
In fact X Ray Spex in concept and execution revolves almost exclusively around Poly Styrene and her manager Falcon Stuart with whom she was having a relationship. It’s the story of one off reggae singles on a disco label, sixties wildness and creativity, hit films, teenage runaways, punk rock, fashion, art, luck, illness, trauma, soft porn, alleged betrayals, UFO’s, breakdown, success and finally break up.
Poly, without question, was one of Punk’s most influential, colourful and greatest artists whose effect is still felt today on bands and people and whose death in April 2011, just as she released her new album, was a sad loss. This entry does not seek to take anything away from that legacy, just correct and/or challenge a few myths and give credit where credit is due.
Poly at The Roxy Club 1977 | Photo – Credit Derek Ridger
Poly Styrene (aka Marianne Elliott-Said) was born in 1957 of British mother and Somali aristocrat father in Bromley, Kent, and brought up in Brixton. As a mixed race child in the sixties and seventies she like others was a target for abuse and the options were fists or words; Poly became adept at the latter.
“It’s always worse when you’re a kid and I used to get it from both sides,” she smiles with uncanny paucity of bitterness. “I got it most from black kids, especially when I was 14 and really felt black, wearing me hair in dreadlocks an’ that, wanting to be black…but the black kids just took the piss out of me.” NME 5.11.77 Tony Parsons
Poly was certainly different; aged fifteen and money in her pocket she ran away from home and embarked on her own wilderness adventure.
I lived on what we foraged in the forest. I did a lot of walking through the night, hitch-hiked from one free festival to the next, stayed in hippie crash-pads. I walked in a stream in north Devon all the way to the sea. I sat on a rock with a guy who looked like he was from another planet, with long, platinum-blond hair, blue robes, white eyebrows. The Return Of Punks First Lady
She moved from town to town staying in cities such as Bath, Bristol and Hastings till treading on a rusty nail in a river of all things, put an end to the adventure as she contacted septicaemia and returned home to be treated. Yet the experience had given her a sense of self confidence where she was able to claim that “it makes being on stage very easy” Sounds, 22.10.77
Whereas before:
“When I was young I used to be so insecure, really full of complexes…you think all sorts of stupid things about yourself , and of course that’s what’s wrong.” NME 13/5/78
What was obvious was she had no lack of confidence and an immense amount of creativity just bursting out.
There’s all this energy burbling inside me, just waiting to explode. In the beginning, that’s important, it’s what makes you do a lot of the things you do, like write songs and play gigs.
She was open to anything;
I like theatre you see. I know I shouldn’t say this – it’s not your popular press punk image is it? But I like theatre. I spend most of my time going to see fringe theatre groups, from about the age of 14 to 17, that’s all I used to do. I like visual things. Lucy Toothpaste Temporary Hoarding
Around this time she met Falcon Stuart (right), son of sculptor Oscar Nemon, and they become a couple. Falcon at this time was some 34 years old and a man with a bohemian background himself. Partner in Bistroteque, a shop with a DJ, in the sixties and a boutique Jumpahead in 1967 featuring paper clothes that could be seen through a seven-inch viewing slit cut in the blanked out window. He was also leader of a commune in the sixties and a photographer and underground film maker of some repute who was responsible for ‘Penetration.’
… a humorous documentary exploring the vicissitudes of the European hardcore scene of the early 70’s. Shown at Cannes in 1974 – the first film of its genre to gain this distinction – it was retitled French Blue for the American market. Deletionpedia
In Sounds Falcon was described as
…ex public schoolboy – well heeled media rebel obsessive, and legend builder with a perceptive porn documentary entitled ‘French Blue’ which he directed. Sounds 9.12.78
Further research finds murkier waters for Falcon as its confusing exactly what his role is. In the IMDB he is listed as involved in three films, some as director and another as music direction.
What’s more confusing is the director of ‘Sensations’ is listed as Lasse Braun who would sometimes appear in his own porn films calling himself Falcon Stuart or Stuart Falcon and in the Wiki entry is credited as being producer of ‘French Blue.’ Confused?? What we do know is he was involved in porn, at least to the point making soundtracks and directing as saxophonist, and a key part in the X Ray Spex story, Ted Bunting recalls.
Ted Bunting (Saxophonist and Producer) I was working with a Texan keyboardist called Rabbit and we had a deal to record demos which we were doing in a studio on Fulham Palace Road. Rabbit did all the keyboard overdubs for Bob Marley and the Wailers and then since 1979 he’s been with the Who. While we were there this guy came in and said I need a saxophonist for a recording I’m doing in the next door studio. When you’ve finished here could you come and help me out? So I did that and this guy was Falcon Stuart and I went and did the recording. It was the soundtrack for a soft porn movie he was doing (laughs)
Meanwhile Poly had hooked up with Falcon and was also getting into performing and recording, singing in jazz bands with influences including Bowie, Dylan, Iggy, Janis Joplin, Roxy Music and Tina Turner. When it was time to make demos, Falcon thought of Ted Bunting.
Ted Bunting (Saxophonist and Producer): Then weeks or a couple of months later he called me and asked would I come and produce some demos for this young singer songwriter he had got on his books. She was 16 at the time. So around 1975 ish.
In 1976, aged 18, Poly released her first single called ‘Silly Billy’ on GTO records (home of Donna Summer and Heatwave among others) under her own name and produced by Falcon Stuart. The song was a cautionary tale of the perils of teen pregnancy and wasn’t a success. The B Side was co written by Poly and Falcon. Both tracks were again in a reggae/rocksteady style.
Later on when the Spex are successful, the above will feature in NME’s Blackmail Corner revealing amongst other things Poly’s maths teacher at school was none other than pre-Queen Brian May!
But long before that in Hastings in July 1976 she catches the Sex Pistols supporting heavy metal band Budgie on the Pier and like many others had her epiphany.
There was only about thirty people there and the band could hardly play but I realised that I was making everything too complicated.” Mojo
July 3rd 1975 Hastings Pier. Its my birthday and I’ll party if I want to. Eighteen today, what a birthday suprise. Tacky dayglo sign ‘SEX PISTOLS’ market traders or my Freudian peers? Cockles Winkles and Mussels never did like shell fish. I stand centre point in an almost empty ballroom. Three Swedish Babes stared at Johnny.
It’s a question of peer pressure isn’t it? You see other people in your own age group doing things and after that you get ball sorts of things together to compete. I liked the way they were writing about their surroundings: it was definitely a change of consciousness. It was painting the world to be ugly, which it is from a certain point of view: There are horrific things that are happening so why whitewash everything? Englands Dreaming John Savage
Missing from these recollections is that boyfriend Falcon Stuart was also there with her and is no less impressed.
Falcon Stuart (X Ray Spex Manager and Producer): It was the summer of 76 at the end of Brighton Pier. The senior citizens were ballroom surfing in the tearooms on the first floor, but something strange was happening downstairs in the disco space. The Sex Pistols had landed. They were pounding through their set in front of a small exclusive London audience on an awayaday excursion to the seaside. After three minutes you knew they were going to make it: the new order was on its way. Deleted Wiki entry
Falcon Stuart (X Ray Spex Manager and Producer): Energised by the Rotten crew, Poly (Styrene) started to write some more radical lyrics and music exploring the dynamics of consumerism and techno development, laced with teen irony, romance and rebellion. And so it was I started to manage the project that was top become the X-Ray Spex. ‘Flash Bang Wallop’ – Ian Dickson 1999
Indeed, from a very young age, Poly realised she was destined for an artistic life of non-conformity.
I was fascinated by Hollywood glamour. I went through a stage in my teens where I would model myself on a golden era starlet. I always felt uncomfortable living in social housing – it just wasn’t me, I was always fiercely independent. Poly’s Diary
Poly did accept however that her upbringing did give her what her public school educated manager would later describe as a ‘puritanical work ethic’ that along with her ambition got her to where she wanted which was “… adventure, fame, financial independence, all the things a starry eyed young girl could wish for”.
While the Pistols’ gig may have awakened interest, it was a visit to see The Clash at Fulham town hall in October 1976 with John Savage that energised her association with Punk.
“It was a life-changing moment for us both,” he said. Afterwards, further inspired by visits to the Brixton shop Pollocks, which specialised in paint-splattered clothes, she started a stall in Beaufort Market, a punk enclave on London’s Kings Road, selling – as she described it – “Sixties tat”. Poly Styrene: Singer who blazed a trail for punk’s feminist revolutionaries
Her stall was called Poly Styrene and was located in Beaufort Market in the Kings Road in Chelsea. It was indeed the name of the fashion label that she used for her home spun autographed couture, that would give her the art-i-ficial pseudonym and punky-trade-marks that she would later adopt as front-woman of X-ray Spex. http://www.x-rayspex.com/biography/biography1.html
Poly made her own clothes in the true punk DIY way. She made kitsch clothes using plastic, pegs, slogans, day-glo, feathers, Oxfam clothing, she recycled. Zillah
“The Punk explosion was a fashion statement as much as a new attitude and a high energy-music buzz. Street-cred counted and no smart lad wanted to be an industry doll.” Poly Styrene (Aka Maharani Devi) 1998 Flash Bang Wallop by Ian Dickson
Her name ‘Poly Styrene’ is thought up by boyfriend/manager Falcon Stuart though at times she maintained it was her invention.
Beaufort Market [pictured below], the Poly Styrene boutique, Kings Road, Chelsea SW3. ”Mad mad day! No sales! Everyone comes to see the curious girl with the braces on her teeth. Me! I am now Poly Styrene, the face of my homespun label. This is fun! THE SUN has even reported me hiding behind a fake façade. Think I will use Poly Styrene for my Nom de Plume. It’s so much cooler, than Mari Elliott, the boring girl next door Cliché. I like this caricature, Poly Styrene feels like a fantasy comic book name from THE BEANO. Diary Of The 70’s, Poly Styrene
I was looking in a porno magazine, and I saw an ad for these spectacles that you can see nude ladies through and they were called X-Ray Spex: that’s why. Shews, #3 July 1977
I found the name Poly Styrene while looking through the Yellow Pages. 1978 Arena Punk Documentary
By Christmas 1976 she and Falcon decided a band was what was needed and they advertised in the Melody Maker and the NME Christmas 1976 for “YOUNG PUNX WHO WANT TO STICK IT TOGETHER”
The way the story is told it seems like X Ray Spex come into being almost fully formed. In fact the band would shift through a variety of drummers and sax players and never really settle. The earliest incarnation features Poly on vocals who also writes all the tunes for the band, Jak Airport (Jack Stafford) on guitars, Paul Dean on bass and Rich T on Drums. There’s’ a twist with the band featuring what some would consider a most unpunklike instrument in the shape of the saxophone and schoolgirl Lora Logic (born Susan Whitby) playing it.
Poly Styrene (X Ray Spex Singer): “They say…’Oh you can’t have a saxophonist in a punk band’, and they see it work, then everybody likes it.” The Jolt 1977.
Lora remembers it differently.
Lora Logic (X Ray Spex Saxophonist): I took a few saxophone lessons then practiced a lot on my own and busked a bit. I joined a folk band for a few weeks but didn’t really like that. I was really rebellious and I wanted to do something different with my life and get into another world. Around autumn ’76, I saw an ad in Melody Maker looking for ‘punk’ musicians. I didn’t even know what punk was but I just showed up. The manager for X-Ray Spex liked the idea of having another woman in the band with Poly so I made it. We got on so well, really hit it off and rehearsed a lot. It was like a dream. http://www.furious.com/perfect/essentiallogic.html 2003
Lucy Toothpaste would later ask in an interview in the Rock Against Racism fanzine ‘Temporary Hoarding’ about why Poly didn’t form an all girls band.
Poly Styrene (X Ray Spex Singer):…I don’t really like all-girl bands anyway; I don’t mind them, but I wouldn’t want to be in an all-girl band. I don’t really care about the sex thing, coz I don’t really think of myself as a girl especially in any case. So it doesn’t matter as long as I like them as people, and everybody works together well.
First stop after just 6 rehearsals was the Roxy Club, the only club dedicated purely to Punk Rock and situated in ex Chagaramas gay night club in seedy Soho/Covent Garden.
Poly Styrene (X Ray Spex Singer): The Roxy Club was our first date. That was the first Punk club in England then. Before that , there was nowhere to play. I’d always been singing, just knocking around, not with a band or anything. then I saw the Sex Pistols, who were the first band I liked. Record Mirror 13.5.78
Tracie at the Roxy Club
The infamous ROXY club in Neal Street, Covent Garden, London WC1. Jon Savage, X-RAY SPEX manager Falcon Stuart and I drop in to check out the ‘talent’, names that scream out, Billy Idol & Generation X, The Buzzcocks, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Captain Sensible & The Damned, Johnny Moped & Chrisie Hynde, Patti Palladin & Judy Nylon, Ari-Up & The Slits, Knox & The Vibrators, Dee Generate, Alternative TV, Gaye Advert & The Adverts, Bruno Wizard and the Rejects.
A cutting edge show case to an audience of spiky tops with studded dog collars and girls on leashes in ripped & torn fishnet stockings, school blazers and vamp make-up.
Stuart and Savage chat to Andy and Susan the proprietors of the ROXY, while I go to the loo. Tracy a sales assistant from Seditionaries crouches on the floor in a corner of the ladies powder room scratching, slashing her wrists with a razor.
Dazed and confused I return to the dance floor to meet Savage, Stuart, Susan and Andy. Poly Styrene & X-RAY SPEX are booked for the following week. Poly’s Diary
The things start to move. Second gig and the band are recorded for the live Roxy Club album that will go Top 30 on its release. Next a residency gig at the Man In The Moon after the owner bought a tie from Poly’s stall.
While Poly often looked naive and innocent and portrayed as very young she was in fact 19, older than a lot of her contemporaries and had already experienced a lot both world-wise and musically. Poly was a woman in control and assured.
“I first met her at the Roxy,” The Slits’ guitarist Viv Albertine remembered. “She was a bit scary, because she had this incredible confidence. Also, unlike most of us, she seemed to have proper talent and to really know what she was doing. She seemed a bit above everything else that was going on there. Her voice was a cut above everyone else, as was her songwriting. She was the real thing. She was very pure of thought. She didn’t indulge in bad feelings. She was rather innocent, certainly very trusting.”
Jon Savage concurred: “I thought she looked terrific and her voice was terrific. It was full attack mode. No woman had done anything like that remotely before in music performance. She was a real revolutionary who took the energy of the Pistols and punk and transformed it into her own thing.”
With the Man In the Moon gigs, the Roxy album out and X Ray Spex picking up good reviews for their ‘Bondage’ track contribution and their enigmatic front person and with punk firmly in the headlines with the Queens Silver Jubilee, it was no surprise that the Record Companies began sniffing around as they saw cash in Punk Rock.
With other record companies interested, Virgin got the band. with a one off single, releasing the Roxy track and Punk anthem ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours,’ newly produced by Falcon in the studio. It wasn’t expected to sell well, got hardly any promotion yet still sold around 35,000 copies when released in September 1977.
In May 2011 in an interview with John Clarkson Poly puts a negative slant on the EMI deal that’s hard to reconcile with actual quotes from the time.
PS : we thought we were going to be with Virgin permanently, but our manager worked it so that we only did a one off deal. …He came to us and told us that Richard Branson was a megalomaniac and that EMI were offering us more money and a better deal. They weren’t really offering us more money, but he said that they were offering better percentages, so we went with EMI.
I don’t really think that it was the best news because it wasn’t as if they took us up afterwards. We just had a one off album with them, but that might have just been down to our manager…..He might have worked it like that. We didn’t have a proper contract with them. As it was only a one off deal he could have manipulated the situation so that he was making all the money. We were only 18 and, if you’re that young and have a manager, you don’t really know what they are doing behind the scenes.
Yet quotes from the time tell a different story with Virgin’s insistence on wanting to tie in the band to a multi album deal the reason they lost the band.
Poly Styrene (X Ray Spex Singer): We had a one off deal with Virgin Records but in the deal they offered, they wanted too many albums in too short a space of time so we signed with EMI. Record Mirror 23.12.78
And the deal did look a good one – in fact unprecedented for a new wave/punk band and the freedom and backing it gave them. Seems Phil Presky from EMI was impressed from way back at the Spex’s Man In The Moon gigs but the band signed to Virgin in the aftermath of the the Sex Pistols jettison. Eventually the X Ray Spex label was formed as a subsidiary of EMI and Presky became label manager with the band getting a 10k advance, 15% royalty and 20k in advertising for Spex singles that would play a big part in propelling the band and their next two singles into the Top 40 singles charts.
Also in September 1977, just prior to the single release, Lora Logic leaves with the official explanation that she is having trouble maintaining her school studies. In fact she is clinically ousted from the band while away and her sax parts are effectively stolen.
Lora Logic (X Ray Spex Saxophonist): Poly saw that I was getting a little too much of the spotlight and I was just replaced without any notice after a year. They even used all the sax parts I worked out for the album (Germ Free Adolescents) with a new player.
Yeah I had a great time. It was great fun… Before I was kicked out. Well the official line was I had to finish my schooling. It was in two papers.
I showed a couple [Lora’s songs] to Poly and nothing more was said. Either she didn’t like them , or for some other reason. One of them was called ‘Petrol Pump Blues’. We (Essential Logic) still do it – it’s called ‘Horrible Party’ now. http://www.furious.com/perfect/essentiallogic.html 2003
…after returning from a Russian vacation with her parents she called to find out about the next rehearsal. “Didn’t you know? We’ve got a new saxophonist. He copied all my parts and I was out of the band. There had been some reviews saying the sax was X Ray Spex and the manager told me [Poly] felt threatened by the presence of another female presence attracting attention.” Cinderella’s Big Score – Maria Raha 2005
Poly, in Leicestershire’s fanzine Terminally Blitzed #3 and Zilla Minx’s film, explains how the songs were written.
When I’ve got the lyrics I just sing them to myself until I get a melody line. I’m not put off by the thought of difficult chord sequences. I just get on with it.
POLY. ”Yeah, I wrote my lyrics and I basically could do exactly what I wanted to in that band, so for me it was great fun. I could dress wacky, I could dress how I wanted, I could sing about anything and just express myself, I think it was a great teenage adolescent outlet really. Sort of creative expression.” She’s A Punk Rocker UK, directed by Zillah Minx
Lora expands: “Poly would come in with a set of lyrics and a vague idea of melody and we’d all shape it.”
Lora is replaced on saxophone by John Glynn (later Wreckless Eric, PIL, Pragvec among many others) and then permanently by Steve ‘Rudi’ Thompson pilfered from punk band Peroxide Romance when the latter supported the Spex at the Marquee on 26 October 1977.
Rudi arrived in London [in 1976]. Drifted into Peroxide Romance, who were booked to support X Ray Spex on the last moment. Peroxide set their gear up onstage but before Rudi could blow one note Falcon Stuart was telling them to get off because the original support had arrived. Rudi leapt offstage and seized Falcon’s shirt, threatening to throttle him with his own tie forthwith unless the withdraw signal was withdrawn. The following day Falcon rang Rudi offering him the Spex sax number. Andy Courtney. Sounds 9.12.78
Poly on her site remembers it very differently
Rudi was often in the audience at SPEX gigs and had heard through the grapevine that the band were looking for a new saxophone player, due to Lora’s school commitment. Somehow he managed to get backstage and say “Hi!” to Poly and tell her that he played the Sax …Poly invited him to a rehearsal and he joined the gang fast. http://www.x-rayspex.com/x_ray_spex/activity3.html
The band also get some unwelcome publicity in October via Iggy Pop who is in town to play gigs at the Finsbury Park Rainbow. In London he visits the Roxy Club and after jamming on stage with the Outsiders inexplicably picks a fight with Rich T and is bundled out of the club.
Not long after Rich T (left) is also bundled out of the band. An interview by Tony Parsons in November 1977 erroneously called Richard Tee as ‘also known as BP.’ Lora Logic explains in an Essential Logic interview in 1980 in the fanzine ‘Mental Children’ that he was sacked because his hair was too long. He joins Essential Logic.
BP (Big Paul) was BP Hurding and who was previously the drummer in band Shag Nasty who had played with X Ray Spex at some of the Man In the Moon gigs. Prior to the he was a roadie/helper for prog band Stonehenge and their punk incarnation Menace and will remain the Spex drummer till the end.
Poly first spotted BP in another punk band, he gave her some pictures of the band, because he was looking for a manager. She thought he was perfect for X-RAY SPEX and very naughtily poached him for the SPEX line-up. http://www.x-rayspex.com/x_ray_spex/activity3.html
Riff Starr of Shag Nasty recalls:
“Shag Nasty” had some great times and some not so. Like losing Paul (BP) Hurding to the X- Ray Spex. He was a great drummer and probably more of a musician than the rest of us. He also had more of a musical drive and you could see it. This is probably why Poly poached him from us. She knew he was good. They watched him grow and had a place that needed to be filled, and Paul was put into that place. It was the right place at the right time for him. Soon after Paul joined them they started recording, I think, and then they went on the USA tour. There was no hard feelings. Still none now. http://whycontrol1977.blogspot.com
In an interview from Sounds (9.12.78) mention is made of the ‘Germ Free Adolescents’ backing tracks being laid down in November. As the album was released in November 1978 it can only mean the tracks were done in November 1977 a full year earlier before their initial release. This would explain why there’s a continuity in sound between later singles and the general 1977 feel of the album. In fact demos of the songs were done much earlier which featured Lora as we mentioned before.
Ted Bunting (Saxophonist and Producer): The next thing I knew was I got called in to do some playing. Why me? I was a versatile player and it was probably easier for me to record the songs. It was just an afternoon…The band were there and all the backing tracks had been done. It may well have been that Laura had recorded them and they told her they needed redoing. I wasn’t involved in any of the band politics and would have kept out of it. Laura’s always been fairly bitter about my involvement which I understand. My dealings with the band were very much mediated by Poly and Falcon. And I think I did more tracks than Poly reckons but I’m not bothered.
Again Poly’s has a very different take on events.
During the recording of X-RAY SPEX’s first album GERMFREE ADOLESCENTS, their manager Falcon Stuart brought in another saxophonist, TED BUNTING, one of his public school boy chums from GT MOORE AND THE REGGAE GUITARS. Falcon asked him to overdub a sax riff on IDENTITY and DAY THE WORLD TURNED DAY-GLO and it is in fact TED BUNTING’s saxophone that feature’s on these two tracks. TED BUNTING was obviously a very slick player, with years of experience, but this move on the part of their manager, made Rudi feel very insecure. Poly’s Punky Party
In November the band also play at the ‘Front Row Festival’ with Steel Pulse, The Stranglers, 999, The Saints among others, a three-week event at the Hope and Anchor, Islington that is captured for a future recording.
1978 started well with a Peel session in February. March saw the excellent ‘The Day The World Turned Day-Glo’ released and an appearance on the influential weekly music show Top of The Pops on BBC 1 as the single reached number 23. They also appear on the Hope and Anchor Festival album with ‘Lets Submerge’ and it reaches number 28 on release in March. Their track is again produced by Falcon Stuart.
The band then decamped to the USA and embarked on a two week residency playing twice a night at the end of March at the famous CBGB’s in New York In 1978 which was captured on bootleg. Amongst those who turned out to see them were members of Blondie and Richard Hell from the Voidoids. They returned to the UK in April but troubled times lay ahead.
Hilly Kristal (CBGB’s Owner): My favourite British band was X-Ray Spex with Poly Styrene. they were wonderful. Their manager Falcon, was one of the nicest people in the business. Punk: Colegrave & Sullivan
It’s about now that the world of X Ray Spex begins to take a turn for the worst as Poly begins to crack up. On 30 April, the band appeared at the Rock Against Racism gig at Victoria Park, Bow, Tower Hamlets. Also on the bill were Steel Pulse, The Clash, The Ruts, Sham 69, Generation X and Tom Robinson Band. Twenty four hours after arriving back in the UK the Spex were onstage at the Hackney Park Anti Nazi league concert with a be turbaned Poly unravelling to reveal a naked skull shorn only hours earlier and along with that a general mental unravelling.
I had had a bad experience on tour just before I did the Rock Against Racism gig. I was going through a personal trauma
“If somebody said I was a sex symbol, I’d shave me ‘ead tomorrer,” cackled Poly Styrene. ” Oh Bondage Up Yours” ain’t about sex particularly. In fact I don’t even think of myself as a girl when I’m on stage. I think I’m sexless. Girls that go and flaunt themselves are using the oldest trick in the book. I’m just me. I just do what I feel like. Do anything you wanna do. Individualism. That’s what it’s all about isn’t it ?’ Sounds, 1977
PS: I had said in the press right at the beginning that if I became a sex symbol I would shave my head. I wasn’t a sex symbol, but that traumatic experience was of a sexual nature. I had a breakdown and I went down to John Lydon’s house and shaved my head. Everyone there thought that I was mad, but it was just some kind of symbolic thing. I just felt that I wanted to shave my head. Penny Black
Styrene’s innocence was rocked when her relationship with Stuart petered out after he directed a pornographic film. “I had arguments with him about that,” she told me, “especially when I heard that the girl in it felt so unclean she used to take five baths a day.
This claim is difficult to substantiate and is made more confusing because as we’ve seen Falcon Stuart is one of many alter egos used by Lasse Braun, an Italian pornographer, film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and researcher.
July 1978 saw the single Identity released which again made the charts reaching number 24 and again saw the band appear on Top Of The Pops. While written a year previous about Tracy carving herself up and smashing mirrors in the Roxy Club, the lyrics very spookily seemed to reflect Poly’s current troubled state of mind.
It’s not long after this that things get very much worse. What caused the whole breakdown is open to conjecture as Poly has said different things over the years.
PS : That was on tour in Doncaster. I saw a UFO. It was all around the same time. After that traumatic experience I was pretty hyper. Our roadies used to give us a little bit of marijuana before we went to sleep because after a gig you are really buzzed up. You can’t really sleep. You’re too excited, so they always used to give us a little bit of that when we went back the hotel. I don’t think they gave us anything hallucinogenic but that night I was really stressed. I had just come back from America and New York and I had gone straight into doing a tour, and then obviously I had that whole traumatic experience. Rather than deal with it, I went into denial and then ended up doing another tour, and after that I started to go into something else which was even more far out. John Clarkson interview
She felt energised, visionary, religious. Objects crackled with electric shocks when she touched them. “It felt like a bad omen,” she remembers. “Like I was doing something wrong, misguiding people. It made me think I needed to be careful before I put ideas out into the world. My mother thought I was hallucinating, and I was put in the Maudsley [Hospital]. Because if you see things and hear voices, you’re considered to have schizophrenia. I really missed playing. But in hindsight, it got me off the treadmill. I’d been growing up in the public eye, with all my teenage angst. Independent 2008
PS : I was dealing with a lot and then to be given a label like that, only to find out later that I wasn’t and that they had got it wrong, was really difficult. They said to me “You’re a young girl who has got out of her depth and you will never be able to work again.” That is a very hard thing to be told at 21. John Clarkson interview
I had to get away from it all… mostly I just rested… It’s not true I went bonkers. It just got too much. there were plenty of pressures on me…I went to New York. It really turned my head. All that attention – they treat you like you’re really different. it got to me…I was worn out and doing drugs…I was smoking a lot. People were all around telling me how wonderful I was. I didn’t start to exactly believe it, but I started to get very insecure. Record Mirror, 30.12.78
May 19th was the last time the band played live and Poly went off to Mauritius on a long recuperating holiday following the stay in a mental hospital. Meanwhile the band were off the road for nearly six months and managed to rehearse some 6 times. While Poly recovered Falcon Stuart remortgaged his house to cover the £200 a week wage bill for the band. The rest of the band had survived on £30 a week and though they claimed loyalty to Poly the lump sum pay off three months after the release of Spex product written into their contract must have been a deciding factor to stay put or risk losing everything as it was all tied in with Poly.
The rumour mill started running. The strangest being the following from Julie Burchill in an NME interview with Poly 21.10.78.
One even started hearing strong stories on the Cafe Society circuit that the X Ray men and Falcon Stuart had laid plans to throw Poly out and bring in a beautiful half-caste actress to sing lead. Apparently the silly kid saw the error of her ways just in time and bowed out before Poly got to hear of it.
By late November Poly was back in a comeback gig at Essex University suntanned, Coldstream Guards jacket and peaked cap bedecked and ready to resume with all the cogs of the music industry behind her.
They got hip management, autonomous product control and a connected influential tour agency working in perfect synchronisation. To ensure that X-Ray Spex hit the bull’s-eye all Poly has to do is sit, sing, sleep and ignore the panic button. Andy Courtney.Sounds 9.12.78
Hell their album was even featured in Woolworths traditional mammoth Christmas advertising campaign. Where were the punk ideals? When questioned on this point she said the following.
Every band sells out to a point. What does ‘sell out’ mean in any case, unless you totally change what you want to do in order to make money. 23.12.78
Or was she?
And what of the relationship with Falcon? Though the band had moved out of Falcon’s five bedroom townhouse, Poly was occupying the basement flat. If there was trauma or bad blood between the pair it didn’t show in the interviews.
And every time she laughs Falcon looks at her like she’s beat polio….Andy Courtney. Sounds 9.12.78
With Poly commenting.
[our manager] twice remortgaged his house, and put the band up and always asks the band before he does anything. We know about it. Record Mirror, 13.5.78
Yet the signs were there that something had changed. She was late for gigs and missed soundchecks; onstage she was held back behind the band for a dramatic entrance, travelled separately and was treated with kid gloves which considering her breakdown wasn’t exactly not understandable. The Arena documentary saw a Poly wanting time by herself, frightened of turning into the character people saw onstage, wary of the untruthfulness of being on stage and people looking at you and scrutinising you, being a star and travelling miles to gigs to play for a hundred people. In short, everything wasn’t well.
Not only that where was the new material? By this time (December 1978) Poly and the band had written very little new material and hadn’t played since May 17th at London’s Roundhouse. Poly featured in Decembers issue of a pop/teen magazine saying she intended to write some new songs about
” …vanity, ageing film starts, silent movies – more about people as opposed to objects. Andy Courtney. Sounds, 9.12.78
BP Hurding: Poly wanted to all slow stuff, acoustic numbers, and we didn’t want to do that….NME, 25.8.79
In fact fireworks were thrown by a hostile audience which finally killed off any doubt Poly might have had for her distaste for live work and the audience. The band sat about waiting. Remember that the band hadn’t written any of the songs so would only get cash on delivery of product or gigs.
The writing was on the wall for the band.
The band auditioned for another singer to take Poly’s place. It was unsuccessful but one who auditioned was Tex Axile (ex Moors Murderers and Peroxide Romance allegedly).
Jak Airport and BP Hurding began to look to starting another band, as not only were differences apparent with Poly, but Rudi and Paul Dean who they described as
…going for Bob Dylan…trad pop….intellectual student music. NME 25.8.79
As opposed to their high energy music.
Poly in the Penny Black claims it was all Falcon’s fault.
PB : Had you and the rest of the band moved away from each other by that point as well ?
PS : We were still friends at that point. I still used to do some demos with Jak, but Jak was still very connected with my manager. He used to block everything that I used to do. He didn’t let much come out except for that first album. I think that was more to do with an ego issue rather than a business problem really. It was a male ego problem. Men naturally like to place themselves as superior over women. John Clarkson interview
The next thing to come out was a snippet in the NME of 14.7.79 saying Poly was in the throes of cutting a solo album saying the “the project is hush hush, though the reason for such secrecy is unclear.”
The recordings were of softer material and using session men.
Finally, after months of speculation, X Ray Spex announced their split in NME of 11.8.79.
What happened next?
On her website Poly erroneously says BP and Rudi disappeared and a strange claim about a Kim Carnes song which was actually written in 1974.
Rudi penned and recorded his own song ORIGINS ARE SUSPECT and then disappeared along with BP HURDING, who had also been writing and had co-written BETTY DAVIES EYES. http://www.x-rayspex.com/x_ray_spex/activity3.html
When Spex split Dean and Rudi played with Tex Axile in the short lived Agent Orange band. Rudi then played with The Members on their album At The Chelsea Nightclub, toured the album with them and finally joined full time as part of their horn section in 1981. More luck for Airport and BP Hurding who formed Classix Nouveaux and who were initially managed by Falcon again and who achieved some success on the fringes of the burgeoning New Romantic movement. Jack Stafford died in 2004 and BP Hurding is happy in the USA and does no interviews about the time occasionally commenting on Facebook.
Again interestingly in the light of Poly’s comments on her manager stifling her creativity and him bringing Ted Bunting that caused the band split. Guess what happens on her solo album ‘Translucence’ which was the fruits of those acoustic tracks?
Ted Bunting (Saxophonist and Producer): I produced it and GT Moore was on it again. It went on a long time. Poly was absolutely determined that she wanted an album with no distortion. That was more accurate than it being entirely acoustic.
I was living in Holland and I got the call. Would I come over to London to produce the album. They had put down some tracks. I listened and got a feel and basically they were a bit of a mess. I said two things: First the cheapest thing would be to start again and secondly I didn’t think it was commercially viable but was happy to work on it. If they wanted it commercially viable I didn’t think we should be doing this. Poly agreed and said; “I know what you mean, but it’s what I want to do.”
No X Ray Spex members were involved even on the tracks I had inherited. It was a weird process. In the end I cleaned up the existing tacks and recorded four more with GT Moore and the seventeen year old Richard Madely from Trinidad who had played drums on the Jeff Beck album ‘Blow by Blow’.
So we did that and Falcon came back and said the new tracks sound great but the old tracks need some work. Eventually there as nothing left of the old tracks. It was all replaced. EMI footed the bill. I’m sure they would have preferred another X Ray Spex album.
Right to the end for Poly, Falcon appears to be the bogeyman for everything bad that happened to her. In no interview I’ve ever seen has she referred to him by name – always as ‘my manager.’ I’ve no idea what happened to make her feel this way and I’ve no interest in conjecture or digging deeper. It all just sounds a little sad.
PS : … think I have as a person and as an artist. I have control of my art now, much more than I did. When I was in X Ray Spex, I was very young and because I was in a relationship with my manager I kept thinking “I’ll let him do that. We’ll let him do that”. It didn’t work out letting him deal with it and I lost a lot of money as well. I learnt a lot from that. Just because it was a relationship I kept thinking “It is okay. I can trust him” and he would say “Just sign this” and I would sign it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had to really get beyond that and on top of things.
PS : We had moved on and had now split up as a couple and I think it was an ego and a stress thing for my manager. I was getting too big for him and he didn’t like it. He wanted to be the big guy in the relationship, so the way to do that was to write me off with a little solo career and move on and work with these other bands, which is understandable. Men do have these kinds of issues in relationships. He wasn’t being especially mean to me. People have relationship issues sometimes and that is how he dealt with his. I wasn’t too happy with it at the time though.
It gets harder and harder to reconcile Poly’s views of events.
Falcon was an interesting character – I worked with him when he was Danielle Dax’s manager in 87-88. He was still on the scene with Poly Styrene (or Maharani as she was calling herself then) in 1985 – and he was still her manager although she was not doing any music then. Postman Not Letterbox, Punk77 Forum, 2012
Forever referred to in interviews as ‘my manager,’ Falcon Stuart never responded to any of Poly’s claims. Supporting Poly doing her low key solo thang he again remortgaged his house for music and could arguably claim to have broke Adam & The Ants in their Kings of The Wild Frontier breakthrough phase. Later he would be involved with Amazulu (ok so not every idea is a good idea !) and went on to have quite a career in music ranging from Adam & The Ants to the mid nineties indie scene and music and art in post Glasnost Ukraine. Without doubt Falcon Stuart is the unsung influence of X Ray Spex – the man who helped form, construct, direct and bankroll the band and for a long time the partner of Poly Styrene.
Poly and X Ray Spex would reform in 1991 with Paul Dean and Lora Logic as the only original members and release Conscious Consumer before Lora and Poly again fell out and Poly was hit by a fire truck incapacitating her. Replacing Lora on the tour before Poly’s accident was…almost…
Ted Bunting (Saxophonist and Producer): She got back in contact years later and I was delighted to hear from her. She was interested in making more music and wanted me to do the tour. I couldn’t do it and in the end she did it with the guy from Madness playing the sax. I never played again with Poly.
Poly and Paul Dean played as X Ray Spex in 2008 for a gig at the Roundhouse before an acclaimed final solo outing Indigo Generation in 2011. In the same year she passed away.
in 2021 a film ‘I am A Cliche’ by her daughter Celeste was released and told the story and her search to understand her mother. Again it is one sided and barely touches on Falcon Stuart.
Poly Styrene and X Ray Spex – much love but very very complicated!
Ignoring the anger and nihilism of their contemporaries X Ray Spex instead set “vivid word portraits of consumer fantasy gone mad ” (Burchill & Parsons ‘Boy Looked At Johnny’) and held up a mirror to punk against a background of glass shattering vocals, driving punk guitar /bass/drums and that most unpunk of instruments the saxophone.
The lyrics arguably some of the most astute Punk commentaries. The music pure punk.
The brilliant thing about Spex’s songs was that each song was a concept in it’s own right which worked as both music and a message. the Pistols were about anarchy, The Clash revolution, and Spex offered a third option, exploring the delights and dangers of consumerism and the techno synthetic universe. Falcon Stuart 1999 Flash Bang Wallop by Ian Dickson
They are a bit subversive that’s what I like, that’s the only way I like to write really.
The songs are not all that political. Well they are… well they’re not. What i do is, highlight certain aspects of my surroundings, I bring things to the forefront so that people can make up their own minds what it’s all about. Shews 3 Fanzine July 1977
Describing her songs… I don’t like the idea of having a message. It’s a bit pretentious, kind of like you’re fooling someone or something. I just like the idea of our songs being a reflection of what’s happening, nothing more, nothing less. People can make up their own minds. Record Mirror 13.5.78
There is hardly anything about women in my songs…they’re all asexual – Shews 3 Fanzine July 1977
Her songs are all of such diverse perceptive brilliance that they run through rapid chord changes of emotion in your soul and make you think that the fact that X Ray Spex are not bombarding the charts with a scatter gun release of smash it singles of X-Tee-Rex nationwide dimensions is nothing less than criminal waste. NME Tony Parsons 5.12.77
While a lot of focus goes on the lyrics, the songs, tunes and sound are what place them in the Punk movement of 1977 and gives them a resonance now. Even more so the sax sound originating from Lora Logic is retained through their career and is as important as Poly’s voice in the sonic soup. Jak Airports guitar is as beefy as the Pistols and the rhythm section as solid and tight as any punk band of the time.
Five singles….
Oh Bondage Up Yours! / I Am A Cliché (September 1977 Virgin)
In 1977 we said ”Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard but I think Oh Bondage Up Yours. 1.2.3.4.”
Punk77 says: As close to the defining punk sound of 1977 as Anarchy In The UK, White Riot, New Rose or No More Heroes. Stuart Home in ‘Cranked Up Really High’ unfairly describes X Ray Spex as ‘giving novelty records a bad name’ with the song. Without resorting to psycho analysis it makes you wonder whether ‘Bondage’ is her personal plea to just lose herself and control
“..because I’ve always liked playing the victim…up to a point. Beyond that point! No wayyyy!” NME 13/5/78.
Or perhaps as Burchill and Parsons say its just “… an anti oppression song. Poly herself said:
Its about being pushed into situations where you can’t be this and can’t do that… Because people tell you you can’t because you’re a girl or black or homosexual or bisexual or whatever. It’s against all forms of bondage, all forms of repression. NME 5.11.77 Tony Parsons
The Day The World Turned Dayglo / Iama Poseur (April 1978 EMI)
Punk77 says: Released in March 1978 it was the band’s first visit to the Top Of the Pops studio for national TV coverage with the single making #23 in the charts. Playing it now again in 2024 it seems surreal it even made the charts as it’s as Punk as it comes. ‘Bondage’ may have been a statement of intent, but right from the first crunching guitar chords ‘Dayglo’ and its shrill sax coda and even shriller aural assault, it rolls over you like a panzer tank. The charts may have been full of Rod Stewart and Abba, but this was the real deal.
Identity / Let’s Submerge (July 1978 EMI)
Punk 77 says: Number 3 in a line of pure classic punk singles from X Ray Spex. Trademark guitars, sax wail and glass shattering vocals merge to tell the tale of Roxy punks and mindless destruction a year earlier yet weirdly seems very relevant to the mental turmoil Poly was going through at the time.
Poly styrene wrote ‘Identity’ when she was down the Covent Garden Roxy one night in early 1977and witnessed the consequences of Street gutter Rock press Punk Nihilism Hyperbole in the form of some wrecked chick punk destroying one of the club’s numerous wall-mirrors. “She would never have done it if she weren’t a “punk,”…She was acting like she thought a punk should act.” NME 5.11.77 Tony Parsons
Tracy a sales assistant from Seditionaries crouches on the floor in a corner of the ladies powder room scratching, slashing her wrists with a razor. http://www.x-rayspex.com/diary/diary4.html
Released in July 1978 it was another visit to the Top Of the Pops studio for more national TV coverage with the single making #24 in the charts.
Identity
Identity Is the crisis Can’t you see Identity identity
When you look in the mirror Do you see yourself Do you see yourself On the t.v. screen Do you see yourself In the magazine When you see yourself Does it make you scream
When you look in the mirror Do you smash it quick Do you take the glass And slash your wrists Did you do it for fame Did you do it in a fit Did you do it before You read about it
Poly Styrene (c) 1977
Tracie & Gene Oktober Roxy Toilets 1977
Germ Free Adolescence / Age (October 1978 EMI)
Punk 77 says: Single number four and perhaps their most accessible. Radically different from the first three it featured a supremely catchy keyboard driven track a la Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ and a lilting Poly vocal with incisive anti consumerist lyrics that left windows and wine glasses untouched. I recall airplay being limited or cut because of the mention of a toothpaste ‘SR’ that was deemed advertising! Released in October 1978 it was the band’s last visit to the Top Of the Pops studio for national TV coverage with the single making #19 in the charts.
Highly Inflammable / Warrior In Woolworths (March 1979 EMI)
Punk77 says: The final X Ray Spex single and the first one to go off the boil. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a classic song but the lyrics are unwieldy strapped to the the almost jaunty ska feel start of the track. Hard to believe this was the first song by the band not written some two years previous!
By now the Spex were out of kilter with the music scene, contemporaries had long sprinted past them like Magazine, Joy Division and PIL and the band were running on empty.
Released in April 1979 it scraped to #45 in the charts.
Very soon after the band split.
EMI Harvest May 1977
Slaughter & the Dogs: Runaway & Boston Babies The Unwanted: Freedom Wire: Lowdown & 12 X U The Adverts: Bored Teenagers Johnny Moped: Hard Loving Man Eater: Don’t Need It & 15 X Ray Spex: Oh Bondage! Up Yours! Buzzcocks: Breakdown & Love Battery
The Roxy Club was a famous club in London that gave a home to nascent punk bands and was important as a base for the emergent scene. Bands like The Clash, Generation X, Heartbreakers and all the key names or faces in the emerging Punk scene played or hung out there there
In the basement, the Roxy music itself was mostly dire…but the club was a real riot of your own and when someone like the Buzzcocks or X Ray Spex played the atmosphere would be more electric than anything you’d ever experienced in your life. The Roxy would catch fire and chaos would reign. Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, The Boy Looked At Johnny, 1978
Andy Czezowski and Barry Jones the owners had the idea to record a live album and capture the sights and sounds of the Roxy for posterity. This was duly done and released on Harvest EMI reaching the top 20 in the album charts in May 1977. X Ray Spex featured on the album and were recorded on Saturday 2.4.77 along with Buzzcocks, Wire, Smak (later the Unwanted) and Johnny Moped.
It was only X Ray Spex’s second gig though they were pipped at the naivety stakes by Smak who were playing their first gig. Poly Styrene in July 1977 describes their track ‘Oh Bondage Up Yours’ as lousy.
Poly Styrene: I like the song but the track is bad. I think the album is pretty bad as well… I was there when they were mixing it and they were wankers. They could have made it a little better, ‘coz albums are quite expensive, aren’t they; and doing something like that is a waste of money, really. They could have used things to make it sound better – but they didn’t. ‘It had to be a complete document, how it really was’ (she makes fun)….On the album we were rehearsing so much before the gig – that’s why my voice on it is so bad. They wouldn’t let us hear the final mixed version before it came out. They try to keep you out of it the whole time. Shews #3 July 1977 (Fanzine)
For Poly, the incompetence caught on record was a barrier to going forward not a freedom. Time hadn’t changed her opinion either and the subject of money and royalties reared it’s head in a Punk 77 interview from 2007.
Poly Styrene: I think if anything it damaged our career. If I had known before hand we were going to be recorded, I probably wouldn’t of done it. Compilations are never very good in terms of royalty payments and also credibility, as we were really only at the rehearsal stage of our playing. I’m sure that’s where the idea came from that punk rockers couldn’t play their instruments. Plus I got stuck in a time warp that people did not want me to leave. The Roxy London WC2:A Punk History. Paul Marko
That’s certainly one view; and it’s true compilations paid poorly though Czezowski tried to get the bands more.
Andy Czezowski (Roxy Club Partner) We agreed we wanted to look after the bands in a proper way. A normal band would go to a record company and be lucky to get 4-6 %. We were learning on our feet and we went to Harvest and effectively became a licensing situation. We were going to give them a complete finished product. Now when that happens you get more. I think we negotiated 12 or 13%. What Barry and me agreed was that effectively the bands would get 0.5% a track. We kept the other 6% being the licensees, producers and all the rest of it. It worked out well all round. They got their fair share and we got what we wanted.
The offer to the bands “was a percentage as against a flat fee which was probably about £50 a track which was a much as we could afford to pay at the time. The Roxy London WC2:A Punk History. Paul Marko
Another is the album catches the excitement and energy of a club at its peak as something new and exciting is created in the music. X Ray Spex’s contribution had a charm and insistency and received favourable reviews giving them a great launch pad. Released in May 1977, the album reached the Top 20 and was extensively advertised in the music press along with the featured bands names. Shortly after Virgin signed the band to a one off deal and it’s no surprise that EMI (who released this album on their Harvest offshoot label) quickly picked the band up. Without this exposure it’s not certain that the band would have enjoyed the success they did.
Hope & Anchor: Live At The Front Row Festival Warner Brothers – March 1978
Side one “Dr. Feelgood” by The Wilko Johnson Band “Straighten Out” by The Stranglers “Styrofoam” by The Tyla Gang “Don’t Munchen It” by The Pirates “Speed Kills” by The Steve Gibbons Band “I’m Bugged” by XTC “I Hate School” by The Suburban Studs
Side two “Billy” by The Pleasers (see Thamesbeat) “Science Friction” by XTC “Eastbound Train” by Dire Straits “Bizz Fizz” by Burlesque “Let’s Submerge” by X-Ray Spex “Crazy” by 999
Side three “Demolition Girl / The Saints “Quite Disappointing” / 999 “Creature Of Doom” / The Only Ones “Gibson Martin Fender” / The Pirates “Sound Check” / Steel Pulse “Zero Hero” / Roogalator
Side four “Underground Romance” / Philip Rambow “Rock & Roll Radio” / The Pleasers “On The Street” / Tyla Gang “Johnny Cool” / Steve Gibbons Band “Twenty Yards Behind” / Wilko Johnson Band “Hanging Around” / The Stranglers
Punk77 says: Look I’m not going to try and sell this to you as some great X Ray Spex contribution. It’s a live compilation full of a mix of punk and pub sounds from the late seventies from a venue that gave a lot of bands a break. X Ray Spex just happened to be one of them.
The artists all were captured as they played live between Tuesday 22 November and Thursday 15 December 1977. It made #28 in the albums chart when it was released in 1978.
X Ray Spex at the Hope & Anchor
Germ Free Adolescents EMI 1978
Punk77 says: Hard to believe that by the time this album was released in November 1978, the Stranglers had released three albums and were already moving onto the post punk of Black and White alongside Siouxsie’sThe Scream, Magazine’sReal Life and PIL’s debut. Compared to those, this album almost feels like an historical artefact which of course it was, as it was recorded in late 1977 and that ironically gives it an urgency and freshness.
Rather than being out of kilter, its release coincided with the resurgence of of punk in the form of bands like the Angelic Upstarts, Ruts and Rezillos and for that matter the chart bound punk of the UK Subs and Sham 69. If it felt curiously familiar; well seven of the 12 tracks were either A or B sides. Add to this frequent visits to TOTP to film the chart 45’s, a slick publicity machine and the album was a hit reaching Number 30 in the UK charts though by its release. Ironic then that the band, like The Rezillos, were already heading for self implosion.
Produced by manager Falcon Stuart, it’s cover was also conceived and photographed by him and which fitted perfectly with Poly’s vision.
Classic punk songs, riffs tunes and lyrics make the album an absolute bona fide punk classic.
GERM FREE ADOLESCENTS: ***SOUNDS 4.11.78 – GIOVANNI DADOMO
Weighing in at a net length of 35.46 and with five of its twelve cuts already available on singles, ‘Germ Free Adolescents’ could hardly be described as a bargain. It’s all a bit — to use a appropriate metaphor – like opening a tube of Smarties and finding only half the expected average contents.
With regular ‘product’ the procedure’s simple — drop Rowntree’s or whoever a short note giving details of purchase and including the ‘product’ and they’ll send you a replacement. But here? I’ve only seen X-Ray Spex once, only ever shared a brief nod and smile with Poly Styrene. Like almost everyone else l know, It was won over by the singer’s natural effervescence, both on and off-stage. Bearing this in mind, plus the fact that Poly’s reportedly had quite a hard time of it in the last few months, it’s particularly hard to have to be ‘critlcal’.
Fervent readers with mastermind memories may recall some hesitance on this reviewer’s part vis-a-vis X-Ray Spex in the past. The occasion was the singles column at the time of ‘The World Turned Dayglo’, at which time l confessed a definite lack of sympathy for the screech-owl element in la Styrene’s vocals. Like ‘Bondage —- Up Yours’ before it, that disc was more assault than seduction as far as these ears were concerned. Exactly — and once again most appropriate considering the Spex’ lyrical credos like one of those TV jingles you can’t help hearing all day long – hateful, yes, but unforgettably insistent for all that. Months later, in the context of this collection, ‘The World Turned Dayglo’ becomes quite a treat.
Months later, even before I’d heard the LP, I found myself enjoying the group’s new single (and title cut here) particularly for the vocal. Somewhere along the line, Poly’s definitely learned how to sing – or, and just as likely considering the deliberate amateurishness at large when this group was conceived — Poly Styrene’s un-learned how to un-sing. And when she sings, as on the title cut and quite a few others, particularly the exquisitely titled ‘Warrior In Woolworths’ easily my favourite ‘new’ song here — it’s a very pleasing sound. It’s also, and here’s the sting, a very ‘folky’ sound. Really — Poly sounds for all the world like one of those front-persons of the Steeleye Span/Pentangle era. And to me that’s her greatest strength/ innovation.
— Her saving grace, on the other hand, is her sense of humour. ‘I Am A Poseur’ (and I don ’t care) still brings a smile to the lips on every hearing, as does the idea of a ‘polypropylene car on wheels of sponge’ (‘Dayglo’). Laffs too on ‘I Can’t Do Anything’, wherein someone called Freddy tried to strangle our heroine with her plastic popper beads, ‘But I hit him back with my pet r-r-r- rat!’ confesses Poly. There’s no lyric sheet with my advance copy, so I’m loath to quote much else, Poly’s diction and my hearing . being what they are. That said, ‘Dayglo’ still stands out as the strongest lyric here, whilst the words to ‘Genetic Engineering’ and ‘Art-I-Ficial’ seem pretty banal by comparison; ‘Plastic Bag’ (and if there’s a tongue in Poly’s cheek here, it certainly doesn’t show) isn’t even banal, simply awful.
Once again I don’t feel like being over critical on this point — Poly’s lyrics are certainly well above average, if only occasionally — in the diamond class. That she’s been hailed as some kind of supermarket Sylvia Plath — which she plainly isn’t, possibly, never intended to be– can only do her a disservice in the long run. To have been granted Poet Laureate status at such an early stage in her career was, I think, a bit of a bummer all round. Rather promising, I’d say. Needs to work really hard at it, l’d say. And, most important, don’t stop here.
I’d say the same for Poly’s band doubled. Once again it’s a case of what sounded triff down the Roxy eighteen months ago sounding like an earache on vinyl — there’s a Randy California-ish guitar bit on ‘Warrior In Woolworths’ and the occasional neat sax flourish and that’s about it as far as the music’s concerned. If they work their testes off for six months, write a whole bunch of really strong songs and spend a lot of time thinking about what they’re doing X·Ray Spex could still fulfil their considerable potential 0n their second album. As for this effort, take ‘adolescent’ to be the operative word. Buy the singles if you haven’t got them (the sleeve of ‘Dayglo’, by way, was far, far better than the packaging offered here). Write to EMI and ask them to plonk out ‘Warrior In Woolworths’ as the next top-side. Then you’ll have the best of X-Ray Spex so far.
I’m really depressed now. Bugger it.
GIOVANNI DADOMO
NME 18.11.1978 – Charles Shaar Murray
Smash the barriers and the truth shall make you free (as long as stocks last, anyway): barriers between humans and objects, between the natural (sic) and the Art—i—ficiaI (sicker).
Theses barriers mark the world which X—Ray—Spex inhabit and the world about which Poly Styrene writes with the sophisticated innocence that gives a tree and a supermarket equal value: never mind how it got got here (grew/cloned/came in a box), the fact remains that it’s here and what are we going to do about it? ·D0 you love it/do you hate it/here it is the way you made it/yeah.
“Germ-Free Adolescents” is the first and long-awaited X Ray Spex album, temporarily delayed while Poly Styrene recovered from the effects of letting her particular worldview get the better of her, and it neatly avoids the weakness of previous Spex gigs and records (i.e. cacophony, ramshackle playing boosted by road-drill volume) while t concentrating on the band’s strengths (great lyrics, nifty chewns, energy and a winningly knowing innocence).
A dozen songs (six per side in the grand manner, none too long, none too short) which will make sure that Poly Styrene gets the respect she deserves as a writer of rock songs and amateur social critic, gets more than simple junior-glossy notoriety as that little halfe-caste girl with the teeth-braces and the funny clothes.
The opening vision is of the world as one big supermarket, where everyone has to compete with all the other products. Opening with a shouted “Art-l-Ficial !” with a soupcon of echo, the sound is like a skinnier Pistols with Rudi Thomson’s wheezy saxophone recalling David Bowie and Andy Mackay. ln the relative comfort and stillness of the studio, Poly’s singing is more like singing and less like an air—raid siren with its tail caught in a mousetrap (can’t be bad), and the lyrics are couched in the superficially attractive but ultimately repellent terms beloved of copywriters (like the ice-lolly ad that says “New Nicer Taste” and begs the question of what it was like before).
“Obsessed With You” (usually introduced on stage as “Oo—Oo I’m Obsessed With You-oo/1-2-3—4!”) is the song that everybody used to think » was about Johnny Rotten, mainly because the way Poly sings, “You are just a concept” sounds uncannily like “You are Johnny Rotten” if you d0n’t check the lyric sheet. lt’s one of a clutch of songs about the internal and external effects of celebhood, and also touches on Poly’s perennial theme of L people—as-commodities: “You l are just a symbol/you are just a dream/you are just another figure/for the sales machine. ” ( As Poly herself now is, of course. She bites far deeper into the same theme in “ldentity”, which closes the first side. “ldentity” was the single that was on release when she had her nervous breakdown, and the lyric was harrowingly appropriate :”When you look in the mirror/do you smash it quick?/Do you take the glass/and slash your wrists?/Did you do it for fame?/Did you do it in a fit?/Did you do it before/you read about it?”
Naturally. This Modern World that we’ve all heard about so much recently is a most unhealthy place, and even grappling with the evil by nailing its colours to your masthead is not necessarily an adequate defence. “Warrior ln Woolworths” (a gently, compassionate piece with one of the album’s best vocals and a snub nosed guitar overdub straight out of “Disraeli Gears”) makes the same point: “Warrior In Woolworths/His roots are in today/Doesn’t know no history/He threw the past away/He’s the rebel on the underground/she’s the rebel in the modern town. ” Ah, remember the days when Barry Melton used to inform us that “the subway is not the underground”? He’s wrong: it is. Check out “Let’s Submerge”, a great rock and roll song in the ’50s tradition (Dave Edmunds could record it), which presents yer average tube station as a place of glamour and terror, not as a vicious arena ala Paul Weller but as something straight out of Cocteau.
“Genetic Engineering”, which opens side two sets the theme for the cover: the band in test-tubes. Appropriately enough, Poly counts in the song in German, and there’s a faint aftertaste of Bowie’s European experiment in the texture, but the lyric is less than penetrating. Perhaps the album’s most endearing piece is “l Can’t Do Anything”, which begins like The Bishops’ “Baby You’re Wrong” (really) and goes on to set a softer, warmer variant of a Ramones pinhead song to a melody not a million miles away from “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” The brilliance of this album is by no means uniform: “I Live Off You” is routine and “Plastic Bag” is by no means as excellently realised as it was on the original ‘ X-Ray—Spex demo tapes of a year or so back (this allusion is not elitism: I just wish you could have heard that version). Plus three A—sides (the title track, “ldentity”, and the immortal “The Day The World Turned Dayglo”) and one B-side (“I Am A Poseur”) on an album makes for poor value in this man’s supermarket.
Still its nice having the (almost) complete works of X—Ray-Spex in one place. What makes Poly Styrene a more appealing commodity than many of her fellow chroniclers of the urban delusion is the warmth and ’ wit of her writing and singing, and her refusal to capitulate to the Big Freeze by reducing herself to yet another blueprint on a different drawing board. l hope she wins (just as l hope that we don’t get buried in an avalanche of albums with diagrams of washing machines and refrigerators on the innersleeves), because despite her subject matter- or even because of it – her music says that human resources beat mechanical resources every time. And while the difference between the two is till discernible, that’s the wonder of Spex.
Charles Shaar Murray
A lot of people focus on me and think it’s all me…I’m at the front because that’s what I do and I write the songs, but each and everyone of them in their own right is as good as anyone else and as good as me. Poly NME 13/5/’78
Well yes this was kind of true and a very admirable sentiment but…
The whole show was in essence Poly and Falcon. They chose the players, the direction and who was involved. Three saxophonists, overdubs by a session musician and two drummers tells the story. In the hundreds of interviews with X Ray Spex 99% of them focus on Poly with barely a nod to the rest of the band. In fact, even in late 1978, interviewers were still calling BP Hurding ‘Richard Tee’, the drummer who had been ousted a year previously. So much for being a band.
The band tied their future to Poly and when she had the breakdown they stayed the course waiting for an album they had recorded 12 months earlier to be released living on subsistence from their manager. While Poly may have come up with the lyrics and rough tunes, there’s no doubt that the band added their own ingredient to the heady mix that was the X Ray Spex sound; from the sub metal sonic barrage of Jak Airport’s guitar to the wail of Lora’s/Rudi’s sax providing the counterpoint to Poly’s vocal assault.
In the end Poly’s reluctance to tour, her erratic behaviour and wanting to do more acoustic/quiet music finally broke the band apart and for a while in Classix Nouveaux Jak and BP were a band and composers in their own right.
Poly Styrene – Vocals.
Laura Logic – Original Saxophone.
Paul Dean – Bass.
Rudi Thompson – Saxophone.
Jak Airport – Guitar.
B.P.Hurding – Drums
Not forgetting Rich T (Drums) , Glynn Johns and Ted Bunting (saxaphone)
Sadly in April 2011, Poly, real name Marianne Elliot-Said, died of cancer of the spine and breast aged 53. A statement on her Twitter feed said:
“We can confirm that the beautiful Poly Styrene, who has been a true fighter, won her battle on Monday evening to go to higher places.”
In 1977 we said ”some people think little girls should be seen and not heard but I think………Oh Bondage Up Yours. 1.2.3.4.’
POLY. The fact that we could go out and people were shocked was brilliant wasn’t it? When you’re 18 and everybody hates you, you’re getting a reaction from all these people ”oh no, you’re dangerous,” ”you’re our future”, ”the future generation – what’s going to happen to society?” I suppose we loved it at the time. Myself, I think it was a great teenage adolescent outlet really. Sort of creative expression.”
POLY. ”When we were around you couldn’t buy youth culture. We made Youth Culture.’
Indeed Poly; indeed!
TalkPunk
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