Culture, Girlschool, Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Music, Record collecting, Vinyl

Yeah Right!

‘Of course, Girlschool!’, went my thought process tonight.  When, after the recent sad news I didn’t fancy listening to any more Motörhead for a while and I fancied some rock kicks, I reached for Girlschool Hit And Run, their hand grenade from 1981.  Always associated with that band by dint of sharing bills, beds and bands, for their brilliant ‘Please Don’t Touch’ single released as Motörheadgirl*, they were much more than the ‘Motörhead with tits’, label that they got stuck with.

Girlschool Hit And Run 07 (2)

You see why within seconds of the needle hitting the beautiful red vinyl and ‘C’mon Let’s Go’ hitting your woofers and tweeters.  A cocky squall of guitar noise is overtaken by some frantic drumming and every muscle, every note is straining forwards, you don’t need the lyrics to tell you that – everything is momentum and flash.  It really is a great opener and there’s a neat touch of glam rock about it too**.  Then things turn a little slinky for ‘The Hunter’, with its’ great slow-burn guitar solo and before you know it, you’ve hurtled through the rest of Side A bumping up against their cover of ‘Tush’, which for me is the only real misstep on Hit And Run.

Girlschool Hit And Run 06 (2)

The band really fire on all cylinders here, the guitars of Kim McAuliffe and Kelly Johnson really combining and hitting out hard, the rhythm section of Enid Williams and Denise Dufort keeping it revved up.  Vic Maile, a bit of a hit or miss producer in my experience, really gets it right here keeping things just raw enough and just smooth enough to hit the bull’s-eye.

Girlschool Hit And Run 02Girlschool Hit And Run 05

Girlschool light up their rock with a nice shot of punk energy and a great sense of melody, just check out my snotty fave on the LP, ‘Yeah Right’ – basically, just imagine if Runaways^ were as good as I always wanted them to be then double it, then you’re almost scoring the same on the Righteous-o-meter.  Cue this one and the downright mean ‘Watch Your Step’ up and I’m starting to get all tingly inside, 1537-faves The Donnas owe Girlschool a fuck of a lot.  You want some classy structure and melody? just pick out Hit And Run‘s title track, or ‘The Hunter’.  Great playing, all the rock any sane person would need, really good song writing chops, what went wrong? sadly, I think it was, mostly, chromosomal^^.

Girlschool Hit And Run 03
Lovely, lovely red vinyl.

Girlschool evolved out of covers band Painted Lady long before they made their play for stardom, there’s a good interview I saw somewhere where they were asked why they didn’t write more girlie songs and, to their credit rather than just shouting ‘For fuck’s sake!’, they answer that they spent their days gigging on the pub circuit covering Hendrix and Deep Purple tracks and they just liked and wanted to write good rock songs.  The very fact that someone asked them that shows the problems they had, they were really good musicians, writers and performers but their insistence on being resolutely normal and honest, rather than playing the sex angle for all its’ worth pretty much hamstrung them in terms of their time.  If you look back at old articles on them there really is a sense that they were regarded as a strange novelty item, the metal equivalent of a skateboarding duck; in terms of sexual geography, the early 80’s were a very different world.

Girlschool Hit And Run 04

Hit And Run was a Top 5 LP in Britain.  Statistically though, if you want a full-on metal career, you need all the fan boys you can get, idiots like me who’d buy every LP, T-shirt and 4 versions of every single you release and support the band like a football team; it’s not an exclusively male phenomenon, just almost so.  My theory is that, certainly back then, maybe still, an all-girl band weren’t going to get this, without a bit of overly obvious pandering to our reproductive urges anyway.  Sure punk was making some inroads here but, for all our vaunted outlaw credentials, rock is an inherently conservative metier.

Some chicks, apparently in a band, or something
Some chicks, apparently in a band, or something

Girlschool were brilliant, at least for a few hard years and you can tap straight into that through this LP, a good, sweaty, honest heavy album, lacking nothing – I can’t recommend it enough.  My uncle Alastair saw Girlschool on the tour for Hit And Run and tells me they were brilliant, played a blinding set, dealt with a couple of bellowing morons in the crowd easily and ten minutes after the show, they were signing things and drinking with their fans downstairs.  That’s proper rock – Yeah, right!

621 Down.

PS: Here’s a last word from Lemmy, I found an interview in old copy of Mojo from 2011 I picked out of my attic at random today on the late Kelly Johnson,

‘Kelly Johnson from Girlschool – she died young as well, which was a terrible, terrible shame.  I had a small affair with Kelly, she was a good-looking girl and a great guitarist.  People used to say, ‘She’s all right for a girl’, and I’d be like, ‘She’s better than you motherfucker!’.  On a good night Kelly played like a young Jeff Beck’. 

*their cover of ‘Bomber’ rocks harder than the original, with a better guitar solo too.

**as in Slade/Sweet I mean, none of your Hollywood nonsense here!

^ironically as Kelly Johnson later moved to LA to live with Runaways bassist Vicki Blue.

^^albeit aided and abetted by a few dubious career decisions here and there; most notably smoothing their sound and image to appeal to a notional US audience, think Saxon Innocence Is No Excuse but with even silkier leggings.

Published by

Jat Storey

A man with too much vinyl and an itch in his typing finger.

34 thoughts on “Yeah Right!”

  1. Great, well-crafted post and a great, well-crafted band. Was lucky enough to see them open for an Iron Maiden/Scorpions double bill in ’82 — they rocked just as hard as the headliners. Unfortunately, my idiot Y-chromosome did me in however; it took me until 2014 to finally add any of their output to my collection as I allowed myself to become convinced that seeing them live was the only way to fully enjoy their talents. Moron, indeed, but better a mistake amended late than never.

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    1. Yup – they rocked and if you looked at them funny, you’d end up on your ass. I’ve talked myself into buying some more of their stuff.

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      1. Really good stuff. Great mix of punk enthusiasm and NWOBHM crunchy musicianship.

        I’d talk myself into looking at them in tight leather pants for a few more hours. For sure.

  4. I’ve never understood why women don’t get the same as men. Not just in rock, I mean in general. Seriously, what the fuck. But as far as the rawk, if they kick ass and take names and are every bit as good as the guys, then hells yes they should have the same everything. I mean, duh.

    Also, this: “…every muscle, every note is straining forwards, you don’t need the lyrics to tell you that – everything is momentum and flash.”

    Yesssssssssss!!!!

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  7. I’ve got this and ‘Demolition Boys’ but I haven’t listened to them enough. Need to remedy that… don’t want to get accused of being sexy. What’s wrong with being sexy anyway? And I always loved that Lemmy “she’s better than you” quote. One of his many fine moments!

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    1. This is the only LP of theirs I’ve got (along with a couple of singles), well they’re chicks aren’t they? who wants to buy songs about ironing having babies and suchlike?

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      2. Not too sure but they must be important to them, because they tend to shout about them a lot, when they should be baking nutritious treats for their menfolk.

    1. Surely there’s a bit of room in your life for a bit of rock stomp? It’s an LP I still see around quite a bit, so I wouldn’t pay too much for it.

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      1. Okay … you’ve twisted my arm (again); I shall keep an eye out for it. Strange saying that, eh? ‘Keep an eye out’.

  9. There’s something about red vinyl, so sharp.
    The more quotes I read by Lemmy, the more I’m impressed.
    I have a book about the white album and Lemmy’s in there with a really nice tribute to George Harrison, talking about how George’s death really affected him.

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    1. That’s nice. He saw the Beatles at the Cavern Club in Liverpool when he was 16, used to be impressed by how little shit they took from their audience back in those days.

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      1. It was a great double bill. The thing is that I don’t believe I did that concert enough justice when I wrote about it in “Rock And Roll Children.”

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