I couldn’t get into Bikini Kill in my teens because I was angry and fearful at the idea of riot grrrl and feminism ‘outing’ me as a woman – which I felt would be a detriment to my status as a human being. I wish I had taken the time to read interviews like this one with Kathleen Hanna.

Looks like Lana Del Rey, but it’s Jill Bryson from Strawberry Switchblade, in 1984. Here’s her website. 

Presented without comment.

Looking back, it seems a foolhardy gesture to try and pull off this look. Strawberry Switchblade released Since Yesterday when I was 10 and had imploded by the time I was 13, by which time I’d started trying to ape the eyeliner. Still haven’t got it down.

They were managed by Bill Drummond and David Balfe, both of whom reminisce at this great fansite here.

According to Jill, at the time of their implosion, Rose was hanging out with Genesis P-Orridge, collecting Nazi memorabilia and practising black magic. Rose, meanwhile, says David Balfe was going around saying he’d slept with them both.

I interviewed Pamela Des Barres and Cynthia Plaster Caster about their obsessions with men in easy-wipe leather pants, and kept up correspondence until they grew weary of it…

I discovered Liquid Gold, aka poppers, through my Kerrang! penpal Karen, who lived in Nottingham. Because of its large goth population and Readers’ Wives types, Nottingham was a hotbed for Liquid Gold.

Nottingham was also a hotbed for snakebite and black. Goths like it because it goes well with black and purple, separates into trippy lava lamp globules if you let it stand for more than five minutes, and makes you go mad. I once slipped on some spilled snakebite and black at Nottingham’s Rock City and landed on a goth’s boot spur. That’s how I got the scar on my chin.

Sable Starr was said to be worse than Lori Lightning. Worse, as in better.

Lori Lightning (far left) was cast in thrillingly unfavourable light in every rock bio I read, at a time when I was trying to be too-tall jailbait.