LIVE AT THE DISCO
I’d originally left home to move to Walsall to live with Martin Degville. I met him in Bournemouth one Bank Holiday in 1977. Hordes of punks would take coaches or trains to seaside towns and roam around looking cool and causing trouble. We were barred from most pubs, so we walked up and down the promenade and went to the fairground. Teddy Boys and mods would come too and there would be endless fights, but I ran with the girls and stayed away from the fighting. I walked up to Martin and told him he looked amazing. He was wearing stiletto heels and had a massive bleached quiff and huge padded shoulders. He gave me his number and some weeks later when I visited my Auntie Teresa in Ladywood, I met up with him and his fellow freaks. They were all so much friendlier than the London equivalent.
In Spring 1979, when I was seventeen years old, I had what was to become one of many fallouts with Philip. I’d been having an affair with someone who claimed he was straight that nearly ended in violence and I felt threatened. I wanted to leave London and Martin offered me a room and a job working on his clothes stall. We shared a passion for music and dressing up though we both had very different personalities. He was cool and alien and could be a bit snotty. I was bitchy but I would talk to everyone. We both thought we were stars.
Martin didn’t pay me much at the stall and we often rowed about money. In Autumn 1979 he opened Degville’s Dispensary at Kensington Market in London. We both started to spend more time in London and we drifted apart. I was soon back in with Philip and over my Midlands experience.
I haven’t spoken to Martin in years, but I consider him to be an important figure in my life. I once took him to Mum’s for Christmas and he opened a box of chocolates from under the tree. Mum said, ‘Jaysus, your friend must have been starving.’ I reckon he was getting me back for pinching money from his cash box under the floorboards in Walsall. I did help myself to a few pounds now and then but I justified it as topping up my wages working on his concession in the Bull Ring Centre in Birmingham. Martin made bright stretch Lycra tube dresses and I convinced people to buy them.
When I moved back to London I saw him at a party but we weren’t friendly. Martin ended up getting a huge record deal with Sigue Sigue Sputnik, the band he formed with Tony James and Neil X. The hype was as big as Martin’s mohican. Their first single, ‘Love Missile F1-11’ was everything and I still play it now. The headline in Number One magazine may have sealed his fate though: ‘I Hate All Women’. It was controversial, like a line from a John Waters anti-hero, because everyone knows pop music is about girls. Talk about ‘Shoot it up.’ I know Bowie did a cover of ‘Love Missile’ though, which Martin must have loved. What a compliment and what a brilliant song.
I wrote to my friend Hilda in London asking if I could live there until I found a squat. I met Hilda at Billy’s in 1978. Her real name was Jackie but I called her Hilda because she looked like one. She shared her tiny room with a woman called Myra – whose real name was Sheila – who I knew from Blackheath near where I grew up. Philip named her Myra because she had a bleached beehive that made her resemble sixties murderess Myra Hindley.
It soon became apparent that sharing a tiny room with Hilda and Myra was never going to work, even in the short-term intended. But I was determined not to go back to Mum and Dad.
At first we all got on well. I became close to Hilda too but she and Myra needed more space. Late one night we scoured the streets for vacant properties. Squatting was a viable alternative to renting in the seventies and eighties until the law changed. Many a creative was able to develop their art without the stress of forced labour and rent.
We found a flat in a council block over the road in Kentish Town but it was padlocked like a fortress. So I borrowed a few screwdrivers and a crowbar from Dad’s tool kit and we were in. The décor was evil. I claimed the living room and covered the walls with gay porn and cut-up headlines, shoving my mattress in the corner.
While we were out one day, Mum and Dad came by with supplies and left a note:
‘Nice wallpaper. Love you, son.’
Mum hated me living rough and wanted me home.
It wasn’t long before the allure of a new squat proved irresistible to our friends. Soon Myra’s old flatmate Andy Polaris, later a pop star himself, came with his superb record collection and poetry.
Marilyn couldn’t keep away either and eventually wouldn’t keep away, making it known that life in Boreham-wood was hideous. Aware there was a spare room she turned up unannounced and broke in with her belongings in plastic bags.
Having Marilyn there was fun until the neighbour smashed a hole in the front door with an axe. He had seen Marilyn prancing up and down the landing in full leopard skin splendour. Marilyn was stunning at the time and most straight men ‘thought he was a bird’. Unlike me, he was muscular and taut. He didn’t wear false breasts but he wore dresses that hugged every inch of him.
The butch guy next door would chat to Marilyn all the time when she was in drag. But one fateful day he saw her as a boy. That night, inebriated, he came to attack us with an axe. We had to jump out the window. He had kids and apparently wanted to protect them by trying to kill us. I dislocated my ankle jumping out of the first floor window. But when the police were called they were totally unsympathetic.
‘If you stay here, we can’t protect you.’
That night we had to find somewhere else to live. Luckily, I had stored some of my dad’s tools for that very purpose. We had a crowbar and a screwdriver; very useful when you’re squatting. We had already scouted a new location in a block of flats a couple of streets away. We broke in and took up residence, much to the horror of the elderly residents. On the staircase you could smell over-cooked mince and murdered vegetables. At least we were safe.
After living there for a few months, we moved to Great Titchfield Street off Warren Street on the edge of the West End. The squats in Warren Street were legendary and we needed to be part of that scene; characters like Stephen Linard, Kim Bowen, Leslie and Jane Chilkes, Lee Sheldrick, David Holah and the emerging milliner Stephen Jones. The squat spread out from Warren Street to Euston Road and Barry the Rat lived in a shopfront. Barry slept with everyone, except me. I don’t know what I did wrong because I was well up for it. He was also seeing a young Tracey Emin who I only knew then as Tracey from Margate.
There were massive parties at the Warren Street squat with lots of speed and acid. There was heroin, too. I didn’t really do drugs at the time but one beautiful Japanese girl called Mitsu overdosed and died there. Her mother used to stand in the shop doorway on Euston Road and cry out her name. They say that Iggy Pop wrote ‘China Girl’ about Mitsu. I knew her very well and loved her – she definitely deserved a song. The morning we found out she died we all met in the café across the road. Everyone was devastated and it wasn’t long before the squat imploded.
Stephen Jones had his workshop there and Kim Bowen was his muse. Kim was a fashion student and wannabe stylist and would ooze around in Stephen’s creations. He made me a few amazing hats, like my Boudicca helmet made of silver leather and dashing white plumes. I didn’t like Kim to start with; I thought she looked down her nose at us, but I soon realised she was just trying to live up to Stephen’s hats. When our friend Jeremy Healy started sleeping with her, I was furious. But it was because of their love affair that we were no longer outcasts at the Warren Street squat.
The first time I heard Nina Simone was in Kim’s bedroom. She had white muslin drapes hanging in the windows and around the bed like she was Mata Hari. Hearing Nina Simone sing ‘Everything Must Change’ while Kim’s drapes floated in the breeze is a moment I’ll never forget.
Jeremy Healy and Kim Bowen fell madly in love. They held a dinner in the PX shop that both myself and Philip weren’t invited to. I accepted my rebuff with grace but Philip pushed his way in and kept shouting at Jeremy, ‘Why are you ignoring me, you fucking upstart.’ Jeremy said it was really embarrassing, but that was clearly Philip’s intention.
There were times when I was ostracised from fabulous events but being friends with Philip meant we weren’t going to take it. You had to make even more effort with your outfit and eclipse the fuckers at their own game but it was very rare that you got turned away from anything if you looked fabulous. If the cameras started flashing when you arrived, no one would dare turn you away but it did happen from time to time. We were delighted if we got mentioned in a society column. Steve Strange got the most mentions because, as Philip said, ‘He would turn up to the opening of my legs.’
It was a world of emerging everything: parties on the tube, clubs closing before they opened, pub crawls, and fashion shows. Steve Strange was wearing outfits made in shot taffeta by Judith Frankland. It was Judith who got my job in the cloakrooms at Hell and Blitz after I got fired for stealing. So I went back the next week and stole all her takings, running off with a massive handbag full of change. I hid it wrapped in bin liners in the toilet cistern. A lynch mob of clubbers arrived at the squat.
‘We know it was you. Give it back.’
I was in a kimono and had already removed my make-up for bed. I acted dumb. No one believed me but I got away with it. But I was banned from Hell and a few other clubs. I felt so guilty that the next morning I took the entire squat for breakfast at Sam’s caff. It’s amazing how people lose their conscience for a bacon sandwich. I bought make-up with the leftover money and even gave some change to beggars. I justified my behaviour by sharing the spoils.
The Warren Street squat was a disused Georgian town-house with wooden floors and no electricity. After Mitsu’s tragic death people started moving out. Some people got council flats and some went home to mother. A bunch of us stayed in the squat in Great Titchfield Street and a new set of dreamers moved in around us. Photographer Mark Lebon lived at the end of the street and would invite us in for glamorous photo sessions. His brother James was a celebrated hairdresser with his own shop, CUTS in Soho. He worked on fashion shoots and with emerging bands, and would go on to cut everyone’s hair from David Bowie to Alexander McQueen. Fashion was everywhere. One day one of the squats caught fire and we were all outside being photographed.
I moved from Great Titchfield Street round the corner to Carburton Street and a bunch of new people occupied the shop on the corner. Artist Grayson Perry lived there with his then-girlfriend Jennifer Binnie. My friend Christine and Jennifer Binnie would perform cabaret shows in the disused squatted shop. There was an old typewriter and I used to bash out bitchy poems about everyone, possibly honing my future lyrical skills. One day Grayson was climbing into a pair of tights. Marilyn said, ‘You look like you’ve done that before’ and Grayson blushed. It was a long time before he became his alter-ego, Claire. I would never have known it was the same person had Grayson not told me himself. I love his art.
I was living in Carburton Street when Steve Strange turned up at the squat one night in a black taxi with his girlfriend, Scottish Jenny and Kirk Brandon. Steve looked amazing, dressed head to toe in Melissa Caplan with completely black contact lenses. I know for a fact he turned up to show off his new look. I had to quickly pull an outfit together and join them in the pub over the road. After the pub we ended up at the Blitz. Steve got us a table, free food and free drinks, and we spent the night talking. A week later Kirk turned up at the Blitz on his own and hung out with me in the cloakroom. Kirk became a big part of my life but he sued me about comments I made about our relationship in my first book. He lost, by the way, but I’m not out for revenge so won’t comment further here. You can go and read about it elsewhere if you want to.
I was dressed as a nun that night. It was a costume from a show I was rehearsing with Marilyn. We had been recruited by a wannabe producer for a cabaret in the South of France and were rehearsing in Heaven nightclub during the day. Marilyn appeared from a coffin dressed as Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’. I did a performance as Marc Bolan and another as Boudicca, which is why Stephen Jones made me the headdress. I thought this was going to be my big break. We were going to France and were going to make some money and possibly become massive superstars. Marilyn was iffy about the whole thing. He had met a man called John, a posh boy whose family had a stately home in Scotland. This was an easier gig for Marilyn and on a whim he said, ‘I’m not going to France,’ and moved into John’s flat in Knightsbridge – much to the horror of John’s mother. I was furious that Marilyn didn’t want to go to France and without him there was no show. After I found out we weren’t going, I shoved all my costumes into a suitcase and took them back to the squat. The producer turned up one afternoon to see if he could get them back and, again I played innocent. A few days later I wore the nun’s outfit to the Blitz. I took the view that who else was going to wear them? I had earned those clothes, rehearsing for weeks and I hadn’t been paid. The good news is I had upgraded my wardrobe in one fell swoop.
Eventually the council took action to get us out of the squats. I went to the High Court with a green face for my eviction hearing. The court lawyer told me, ‘If you go into court like that, you’ll be chucked out of the flat today. Leave it with me and I’ll get you six months.’
I have so many fun memories of living in Carburton Street and it was sad to leave. For a while Marilyn lived in the basement with John after his mother banned them from Knightsbridge. I already knew we were being evicted by that point but the basement was a no-go area full of rubbish so I said to Marilyn, ‘You clear it, you can have it.’ It was John who did the clearing and in they moved. John had a sports car which Marilyn would drive and park outside the squat. It was comical that Marilyn had lured a blue blood into the catacombs of Carburton Street.
Marilyn was like a cat. He would disappear with a bunch of cool friends that he didn’t want me to know, characters like make-up artists Stevie Hughes and photographer Johnny Rozsa. He’s always kept his friends separate. And he was obsessed with John. The fights were endless. I was always called to mop up the tears. One afternoon Marilyn invited me to Johnny Rozsa’s flat in Belsize Park and a young Susan Sarandon was there. Johnny took photos of me topless with a bunch of net wrapped around my shoulders. Even on a boring Sunday I was in full war paint with my hair backcombed and hairsprayed to look like I was hanging upside down. The shots were incredible. There’s one of Marilyn from that shoot in the National Portrait Gallery collection.
It seemed like everyone in fashion or the arts was connected at the time. There were obvious cliques and some people looked down on you if you hadn’t been to fashion or art college. But if you spent long enough getting spruced up you could easily eclipse the lot of them – and on a shoestring. My imagination and belligerence took over. I sometimes spent an entire day getting ready to go out. I had no money except for a few quid I made doing the windows for a funky shop called Street Theatre in Old Compton Street, Soho. I also got dole money from the Government, which was a life saver for any freak. It wasn’t much and they constantly tried to get you to work as a pot washer or shelf stacker. Looking how I did I would only ever get sent to places where I wouldn’t be seen. Kitchens or warehouses were ideal. Every now and then you had to take work or risk not getting your dole money. My parents helped me loads too though. Especially Dad. And especially if you got him on the right day after a win on the horses. When I was living in the squats, I was constantly going home to Shooters Hill to eat and get my washing done. I wasn’t living the nightmare like everyone else. I took outrageous friends home and Mum always made room at the table. Dad would ask, ‘How d’ya get hair like that? Plug yourself in?’ I went to Clare Thom’s parents’ place in Esher. It was fun to discover that my mates, however outrageous, came from ordinary families. Probably hoping at some point they would grow out of it. Some did. Not me.