I did a telephone interview with Poly Styrene last year; alas, there was so much electronic interference between the iPhone and my dictaphone that it's almost unbearable to listen to.
She sang part of the first song I believe she ever wrote, which was a protest song about one of the dinner ladies at her school.
Poly, being a vegetarian, didn't like her because she was told she had to eat meat. She took her meat home hidden in a handkerchief and wrote the song to teach to the other children:
'Old Mother Johnson, wagging her finger, who does she think she is!'
I left work and got in the car and as the radio came on they were talking about Poly in the past tense, and what hadn't been too bad a day became a fairly crap one. Very sad.
ReplyDeleteNot made any better when the interviewee, Toyah Willcox, admitted that she 'might have met her once' which does, of course, give her the right to talk with authority.
Too young. Unfair.