A GIRLSCHOOL FOR HEADBANGERS!

In a rehearsal room on the southwest London suburb of Putney, Girlschool lead guitar player Kelly Johnson and rhythm guitarist Kim McAuliffe are swigging from bottles of German beer during a break in their efforts to write a number of new songs for their third LP, a record they are sporadically making, with the assistance of former Police co-producer Nigel Gray.

Down the corridor, in what Kelly and Kim refer to as “the common-room,” drummer Denise Dufort and new bass player Gil Weston are watching this week’s British chartmovers on Top Of The Pops.

Disturbed only by the occasional rumble of trains on the nearby subway line the Girlschool guitarists are more concerned with considering English girls’ schools.

Kelly, it transpires, went to a mixed sex school in England in the far North London suburbs: “I thought it was really good to go to a mixed school. Mind you, the school playground had a dividing fence that the boys used to have to try and crawl over. But our classes were all mixed, with boys making up about three-quarters of them.

“But once you got out of school and onto the road not a lot that you’ve been learning seems very relevant. It depends on how much you want to learn at school, but I don’t think I wanted to learn very much at all.”

However, the south London comprehensive which Kim attended was an allgirls’ school: “Until I met Kelly I’d never known anyone who had been to a mixed school, so I didn’t think I was abnormal in any way at all. My school was really great. Even though it was an all girls’ school it had the highest pregnancy rate in London. It used to make headlines in all the South London papers. Real concrete jungle stuff.”

So is this Girlschool very different from your average all girls’ school?

“Nah,” Kim grins, “not really. We used to go out and get drunk even when I was still at my old school. So the only thing that has changed really is that the amount of booze we consume has increased. And, of course, we now wield guitars instead of pens.”

Girlschool are delighted by the current success being enjoyed by the Go-Go’s. For in their earliest incarnation, as South London pub band Painted Lady, the Girlschool guitarist was none other than Go-Go bassist Kathy Valentine. In England on holiday from her native Texas, she joined Painted Lady in 1977 in answer to a music press advertisement for a lead guitarist, she and Kim for a time sharing a flat together.

"The only thing that has changed really Is that the amount of booze we consume has Increased. -Kim McAuliffe"

“But,” Kim says, recalling one of fate’s strange little twists, “there were a couple of problems. First of all, she was only in England on a six-month holiday visa. Secondly, while Kathy was with us we’d been rehearsing really hard for our first gig at a local pub. But the; day before we were due to play she fell ill—she was in agony with’something like a blocked tube in her pancreas.

“But we couldn’t cancel the gig. So Denise said, ‘I know this girl called Kelly, she can do it.’ So we had an hour’s rehearsal, and did the gig. And Kelly ended up staying, and Kathy ended up going back to America.

“But I’m quite sure Kathy is really pleased with her life now. She is a really nice person. We used to write each other. Then she sent me a letter saying, i’m off to Hollywood to make my fame and fortune.’ And she has.”

Moreover, last year the second Girlschool album, Hit And Run, made the Top Five in the U.K album charts: the combination of their pop-inflicted hard rock and—an unavoidable sexist truism— their gender made the four girls ideal fantasy fodder for the young teenage boys who make up the fanatical Heavy Metal audience, into which cultural grouping in rigidly tribal Great Britain, Girlschool have been slotted. The broad category of Heavy Metal is, in the U.K., simply the biggest Boys’ Club in rock, and Girlschool’s tomboyish attitudes instantly qualified them as honorary members.

In fact, the definition of their musical style is a subject of some contention. They seem somewhat leery of the obvious querying as to how women cope with such a macho, musical form. “All of us in the band,” insists Kim, who with her black leather and lava-like tumbling dark brown locks bears a disarming resemblance at times to a less willfully dumb Joey Ramone, “like so many different types of music, yet we play heavy rock. Which is because, for us, that seems the best thing to play, though it doesn’t stop us liking other stuff. In fact, I hardly even know c what Heavy Metal is. Some people call Rush Heavy Metal, and others claim Mo2 tor head is. Yet those two bands are worlds | apart. Basically, we just play aggressive, ^ loud, hard rock. But we didn’t really think about it in the first place—it was a natural progression out of the 70’s pop/rock that we were into.”

“It’s all the same to me,” continues the skinny, sincere Kelly, very much the androgynous guitar hero in her mock leopard-skin coat and Rod Stewart-like haircut. “I don’t mind people calling what we do Heavy Metal. But we’d also accept the title of Heavy Rock, Hard Rock...or even plain, simple rock ’n’ roll. We can play real head-down Heavy Metal, or very straightforward pop stuff.”

Whatever the description of the Girlschool sound, the group has achieved a far greater success than any corresponding set of English female musicians. This is particularly interesting considering that Girlschool is by far the least pretentious of all the UK girl groups, lacking the self-righteousness of intent of the likes of the Slits and the Raincoats.

“But that’s why we have done well,” Kim nods to herself at the obviousness of her reply, “because we’re not pretentious. We’re basically down-to-earth, normal people,”

“Also,” Kelly further explains their success, “groups like the Belle Stars and the Modettes basically have, very much a pop following, which is much more shallow and not as die-hard or dedicated as Heavy Metal has—they are so loyal, Heavy Metal fans.

“In fact,” she continues, “that is definitely one of the reasons for our success: from the beginning we’ve built up such a loyal following, the nucleus of it has always remained intact, and it’s been getting consistently stronger and stronger. Which is how it is with heavy rock. It’s almost like a clan. They are definitely the best audiences.”

“Yeah,” enthuses Kim, obviously still a real music fan herself, “when you’re up onstage and you’ve got all these crazy kids headbanging in front of you, it’s like they are part of the show as well. It’s not just that you’re standing onstage being watched. That attribute makes it a lot easier for the bands, because it tends to spur you on much more.

"We’re not pretentious. We’re basically down to-earth normal people. -Kim McAuliffe"

“Those kids,” she concludes, “get a lot of stick from fans of other music and from the music press. But, in fact, I don’t think they mind at all—it seems to bind them closer together. The whole scene is just really good fun, and I don’t think there’s anything bad about having good fun—although a lot of music writers seem to think there is. They say to us, ‘You’re having a good time, but there is no meaning in what you’re doing.’ But what they’re really doing is putting you down for enjoying yourself.”

In keeping with 80’s isolationist paranoia, the neurotic, self-consciously “hip” British rock scene has splintered into new extremes of bitchy, insecure factions. ,

“People get so into their little niches and are so concerned about what they’re supposed to like,” Kelly shakes her head in despair, “that they miss out on. what’s really going on. They should forget what their hair looks like, and concentrate instead on whether the music is good or bad.

“In fact,” she expalins, “it’s like that here because the English are such an insecure nation. People don’t grow out of their social insecurities.”

It was rock ’n’ roll’s White Knight of Notting Hill, Motorhead bassist Ian ‘Lemmy’ Kilminster, who first came across Girlschool when they were still slogging it out on the South London pub circuit. Taking the girls on as support band on the Motorhead trio’s 1979 “Overkill” tour, the generous-spirited Lemmy persuaded Doug Smith, his manager, to begin looking after the business affairs of the four girls. “I wasn’t sure at all,” admits Smith, “but Lemmy told me he was convinced they would happen. He’s usually right.”

Kelly and Kim admit that a big boost to the Girlschool career occured with the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre EP, released on February 14 last year. With Motorhead and Girlschool working together on all thre songs, radio play of this seven-piece unit’s pungent treatment of the, addictive Johnny Kidd classic, “Please Don’t Touch,” took the 45 into the Top Five English singles.

“That gave us a real leg-up,” says Kelly. “It was such a good record, one of the best things we’ve ever recorded. Motorhead are a real laugh: we had a fantastic time doing it. ‘Please Don’t Touch’ was such a crossover record: so many different people bought it.

“Motorhead have had a lot of influence on us, especially at the beginning of our career. They gave us our first big break when they asked us to support them. We’d been scraping pennies together for over a year, but Lemmy showed such enthusiasm. He was always behind us, and encouraged us very much. He’s really great.”

One hopes the young innocents of Girlschool have not learnt any bad habits from their relationship with the hedonistic Motorhead chaps.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21

“Unfortunately,” gleefully chorus the TwoK’s.

Bad playing habits, that is.

“Those as well,” they again harmonize.

Such mingling with the apolitical Ladbroke Grove radical amphetamine set has no doubt colored and broadened any feminist stance that once might have been found as a central factor within Girlschool. Early in their Painted Lady days, prior even to Kathy Valentine’s arrival, the group—who seem to have been consistently blessed with the appearance of inspirational figures—were tutored in the ways of music and the group struffle by one Deidre, an excellent feminist guitarist who for a while took the group under her wing. “She was so good she carried the rest of us along,” explains Kim.

“We do still have a few strong feminist views,” she continues, adding, however, that as much as each member of Girlschool admires the hardline stance of the Au Pairs’ Lesley Woods (“She has such a powerful voice and personality and really great songs.”), such a position was not for them.

“In fact,” Kim muses, “I think a lot of feminists slag us off, because of the way we look. After all, when we do publicity photographs, or appear on TV, we’ll always dress up a bit: we used to look really rough in the beginning, which was ideologically okay; now, though; we’re starting to look even rougher, so we try to make ourselves look more attractive. Which is very bad for our credibility.

' “Mind you, the trouble with heavy feminism is that it’s not very much fun.”

Unlike many groups, who only come together as a unit onstage, Girlschool is a very close-knit team. “When you are in a long-term band,” says Kelly, “you tend to lose all your old friends. So you have to come to an unstated argument that you should get on, whatever happens.”

At the end of last summer, during the one week’s holiday the group were allowed, they even took that vacation together, on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Or, rather, Kim, Kelly, and Denise took it together: a certain lack of compatibility with bassist Enid Williams led her to recently be replaced by Gil Weston. One problem, explains Kim, was that Enid and drummer Denise Dufort were totally dissimilar as individuals, which is none too helpful when a unified rhythm section is called for. “Enid was very much the outsider,” continues Kim. “She wasn’t into drinking or staying up late like the rest of us.

“Also,” she adds, “we really did need a much stronger bass player, because we really do seem to be becoming much less of a Heavy Metal band. With Nigel Gray we seem to be getting away from what used to be often a real New Wave thrash, and we need a strong rhythm section.”

Of course, deep down one worries about Girlschool. Is it in any way natural .for foiyr young women to be out night after night, gigging their way around the rock ’n’ roll circuit? Shouldn’t they be at home, plaiting their hair and making dresses? Or, at the very least, ignoring alcohol and wild living, and existing on alfalfa tablets and pineapple diets?”

“Probably we should,” Kelly agrees. “Except you automatically tend to get into these bad rock ’n’ roll habits. You just don’t want to go back to your hotel and go to bed. You want instead to go out to some club and get wrecked.

“And that,” she laughs, “is why we look and feel so really rough.”