Sounds Magazine - 01/03/1980

Oh god! I wore these here on the Motörhead tour," moans Kim McAuliffe, Girlschool's rampantly loquacious rhythm guitarist, as she slides into a pair of aged stretch leopard-print trousers ready for a blasting performance on Portsmouth’s Guildhall stage. '"Poor cow,' they'll be saying. 'She 'ain't got any more clothes'."

I don't know. The audience are going to be too busy headbanging to take down any fashion details, I reckon, and such garments do make a pleasant change from the slim black weeds that the band have been sporting for most of the Uriah Heep tour. Kim figures it'd be nice to wear pants with knees in 'em. I suggest that Girlschool go and demand a soundcheck.

The idea of a band such as Girlschool supporting Uriah Heep is quite ludicrous. While Heep are concentrating on all the dry ice, glittering metal stage props, wailing druid vocals and aged frilly keyboard sweeps that go to make them into the incongruous religious spectacle that they are, Girlschool just "bash out the chords and play noisy energetic music, really". Thank God!

This is Girlschool's second major tour support. The first one, with Motörhead, was one long 'orgy' of alcohol (well, almost!) that bore no faint resemblance to the rather staid 'tenth anniversary' trek that Heep are now doing to coincide with their sixteenth or so album. But Girlschool are going down like pints of hot summer lager with kids paying up the three quid going rate just to see them.

Personally speaking, there is nothing I would rather see than Girlschool blowing Uriah Heep right off stage, but as we sit in Portsmouth's Golden Egg restaurant, all the girls are doing is worrying about the previous night's disaster. It was, they insist, the worst set they'd played on the entire tour. Kim kicked her Special Brew all over Heep's electronic paraphernalia, Denise Dufort's drum kit started falling apart and Kelly Johnson's lead unplugged itself during a vital whanging break. Only Enid, bass and vocals, kept her little grin intact.

"It's 'cos you were here," jokes Kim. "It's your entire fault being a journalist. No, really, I hate it when an audience makes an effort to enjoy what we're doing and we play such a bad show. I couldn't stand it — I just wanted to run off the stage."

But Portsmouth's show is far superior. A ringing, crunching blast of energy, not so far removed from Pistols' New Wave circa '77 and closely companioned to Lemmy and Co., launches Girlschool's set into action. Ker-anng! Crash! All the heavy metal adjectives are out in force as tons of noisy, tacky energy hit out at the rows of glazed-eyed watchers; Enid's shrill voice powerfully shrieks out the - opening lines of 'Not For Sale' and Kim and Kelly totter manfully over the stage, heads down, hair shaking.

I know this band used to have immense problems with sexist reaction — the usual 'get yer knickers off crap — but tonight the crowd seems far more concerned with the immediate assault on its ears. Lust crumbles under a wall of sound and the Heep devotee dinosaur rumbles into action, greatly encouraged by Girlschool’s personal publicity unit of Newky Brown and his mate who've followed the band to almost every conceivable gig, and though I'm no HM fan, I can clearly see the motivation behind the appreciation. Girlschool are no 'heavy metal' archetype.

The macho image ridden with clichés, the ultimate euphoria of pomposity, the screaming flag of impossible self-satisfaction; none of this 'nearer to God than thou' rubbish clouds Girlschool's set, complete as it is with their strong heavy rock formula. The drumming is the basic background, humped up decisively by Enid's bass — she takes my vote as the least posed bass player of the last decade, having seemingly just wandered off a Cadbury Flake advert and on to a stage — and the combined guitar work pulls out the only embellishments that the band are willing to use. They're no great musicians but they can certainly play!

The actual songs are along a straighter heavy metal rock formula though the feminine side is given an obvious airing in the lyrics. 'Not For Sale' points out the way that general product advertising uses women in a degrading manner (the parallel between a shiny car and a shiny woman) while 'Baby Doll' pokes fun at the American beauty contest meat market.

Mind you, Girlschool wouldn't like to be accused of being a feminist band. Enid does read Spare Rib but the others have already been through the feminist mincer and they say they're just interested in being a band nowadays. Their versions of 'Roll Over Beethoven' and ZZ Top's 'Tush' would seem to confirm this fact. I lean over the balcony, thinking that they're probably having more fun than I usually do, and wait for the encore that never arrives.

"We haven't had an encore yet on this tour," explains Kim, a trifle dejectedly. "I thought we might have got one tonight but I don't think Uriah Heep are too keen on the idea of the support band doing too well and getting encores. It is their show, after all."

Girlschool, I think, regard Heep as one would a crusty old headmaster. Their opinions waver from indignation when, for example, Heep's Ken Hensley decides that they're not going to be allowed to put their gear on stage until after he's finished fiddling around with his keyboards — his fiddling is obsessive so that points to no more sound checks for the girls — to fan-like excitement when Heep are on stage playing Denise's favourite number, 'No Return'.

Kim states that she "grew up loving Uriah Heep's albums" and that it's "really weird to be actually playing with them". She drags me out to see the band playing but, not being partial to indulgent 10 or 15 minute rhythm solos, I quickly disappear again.

"I think we like them as musicians but not so much as people," explains Kelly later on as we're sitting in the chaos of the dressing room, swigging down vast amounts of vodka and orange and watching photographer Mike Laye learning the art of hyperventilation. "They are brilliant musicians after all and they really know what they're doing with their instruments, but they obviously just regard us as the 'support band'."

In my opinion, Heep's 'Band Only' dressing room sign is a fair indication of what a load of pompous old bores they are but Girlschool won't be trapped into saying such things so I ask about the Motörhead tour.

Enid: "When we heard that we were supporting Motörhead and that Lemmy was saying he was going to screw us all and that, well, we got worried. But everything turned out fine and we started going back to the hotel for drinks every night with them. We're all great friends now, but I doubt if any other band would treat their support so well." Motörhead are also of course more musically akin to Girlschool.

Kim: "They probably have the same problems as us with people saying that we're both too heavy to be New Wave and too punk to be a heavy metal band. There's a tremendous crossover between the two sorts of music; I don't know why they attract such opposite audiences."

Kim never thinks of the situation of the female HM band — she just accepts it. "I certainly prefer the heavy metal audiences. A lot of them are very young but whatever the age they only come along to gigs to watch the band. They're not after violence and not bothered about looking better than the next person. If they want to wear flares then they wear flares!"

They are also male; do Girlschool get groupies?

Kim laughs: "No! Like I said they're all usually about 15 or so and they'll come into the dressing room or walk up to us at gigs to have a chat or ask for an autograph. That's all."

My theories about audiences preferring Girlschool are confirmed when a nondescript looking guy wanders up to me by the sound desk in the Guildhall, mistakes me for Kim, shoots a despairing look at Heep's performing zoo and says: "Aren't they dreadful! I only came to see you lot and you were far better."

So if Deaf Barton's New Wave of heavy metal is taking over, Girlschool are a large part of it. "The new heavy bands are so different from the old school," says Kim. "Def Leppard and Iron Maiden for example, they don't deny that their roots are in New Wave like us and the punk type energy in the music makes it more fresh than, I dunno, Rush or something.

The next time I see Girlschool, they're hitting the bar at Uriah Heep's Hammersmith Odeon gig and gleefully telling me that they just got their first encore of the tour.

Kim's worried that she'll get pissed and make a fool of herself (again) so I tell her that Girlschool's new single, 'Emergency' is going down grand in the Sounds office and then I join her in the vodka stakes.

Who says women can't cope with rock 'n' roll?

(Robbi Millar)