X-Ray Spex

Hastings Pier

Marianne Elliott-Said was born in Bromley, Kent, in 1957. In 1976 she made a reggae single for GTO as Mari Elliott, Silly Billy, produced by Falcon Stuart. It did not chart. That July she saw the Sex Pistols play on Hastings Pier and decided she could do the same. She placed an advertisement in Melody Maker for young punx who want to stick it together, and took the name Poly Styrene.

The group that formed around her had Jak Airport on guitar, Paul Dean on bass and B. P. Hurding on drums. Lora Logic, still in her mid teens, played saxophone, an instrument few punk bands used. She had answered the advertisement, auditioned in the autumn of 1976 and played her first gigs with the band the following January. Stuart managed and produced them. They played twice at the Roxy club in its first hundred days, and a recording from their first Roxy show appeared on the compilation The Roxy London WC2 in June 1977.

The attention brought a one-single deal with Virgin. Oh Bondage Up Yours! came out in September 1977. It missed the charts and the BBC banned it. Logic was out in 1977. She has said she learned of it when her manager told her a new saxophonist had been found. Rudi Thompson took her place.

I chose the name Poly Styrene because it's a lightweight, disposable product.

Poly Styrene on her stage name, BBC television, 1979

Germfree Adolescents

The first two EMI International singles were The Day the World Turned Day-Glo (number 23, March 1978) and Identity (number 24, July 1978). In February the band recorded the first of two sessions for John Peel at BBC Radio 1, and they played a fortnight at CBGB in New York. On 30 April they played the Rock Against Racism concert in Victoria Park, alongside the Clash and Steel Pulse.

Germfree Adolescents followed in November 1978, produced by Falcon Stuart. It reached number 30 in Britain, and its title song, Germ Free Adolescents, reached the top 20 as a single. Five of its twelve songs had already appeared on singles, a point that both Jon Savage and Charles Shaar Murray held against it, though Murray praised its lyrics and energy. Pitchfork's Jenn Pelly later called it a brash, vivid masterpiece. Plastic Bag, the longest track, couples an environmental critique with an indictment of advertising.

Split and returns

Exhausted by touring, Poly Styrene left in the middle of 1979 and the group fell apart. Hurding and Airport went on to Classix Nouveaux, and Dean and Thompson to Agent Orange. Styrene made a solo album, Translucence, in 1980 and was initiated into the Hare Krishna movement in 1983.

X-Ray Spex played a sell-out show at the Brixton Academy in 1991. In 1995 Styrene, Dean and Logic were joined by Crispian Mills and Paul Winterhart for a second album, Conscious Consumer, which was not a commercial success. Jak Airport died on 13 August 2004, aged 46. On 6 September 2008 Styrene and Dean played the Roundhouse in London to about 3,000 people with Mark Saxby, Sid Truelove and Dave Flash Wright, performing Germfree Adolescents in full apart from Plastic Bag. A CD and DVD, Live @ the Roundhouse London 2008, followed in 2009. Poly Styrene died on 25 April 2011, aged 53.

Legacy

Trouser Press called Germfree Adolescents a masterpiece. Spin placed it fifth on its 50 Most Essential Punk Records in 2001, Mojo nineteenth on its Top 50 Punk Albums in 2003, and Rolling Stone 354th on its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums. It is in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. FKA twigs has called it her favorite album, and in a 2022 short film she and a group of dancers moved to Identity.

Titus Andronicus covered Oh Bondage Up Yours for a tribute compilation in 2012. At a CBGB show in 1978 Thurston Moore, handed the microphone in the front row, sang along to the same song. According to Moore it was the first time he had sung into a microphone. Poly Styrene is the subject of the 2021 documentary Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché, and of a biography by her daughter Celeste Bell and Zoe Howe, Day Glo: The Poly Styrene Story.