Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché (2021) - full transcript

My mother was a punk rock icon.

People often ask me
if she was a good mum.

It's hard to know what to say.

Sometimes I think of an answer
she might have come up with.

"A good mum?" she'd ask.

How banal.

How mundane.

The funeral was surreal.

My memory of it is a blur.

All these people I'd never met,

people who came to say goodbye
to Poly Styrene.



This famous person.

Someone so far removed
from the mother I knew.

I felt sick to my stomach.

I wasn't ready to be
the care-taker

of Poly Styrene's legacy.

I'd just lost my mum.

There was only me now.

The only child she had.

And now she'd gone and left me

to deal with it alone.

Thanks, Mum!

I know your antiseptic

Your deodorant smells nice

I'd like to get to know you



You're deep frozen Like the ice

She's a germ-free adolescent

Cleanliness is her obsession

Cleans her teeth Ten times a day

Scrub away
Scrub away, scrub away

The S.R. Way

My mother
taught me to love the sea,

for water is the beginning
and end of life on this Earth.

I find a kind of solace
in retracting her footsteps,

barely visible as they are
in the sands of time.

"July 3, 1976."

Hastings Pier.

It's my birthday
and I'll party if I want to.

Nineteen today.
What a birthday surprise.

Tacky Day-Glo sign, Sex Pistols,

market traders,
all my Freudian peers,

cockles, winkles and mussels.

"Never did like shellfish."

"I stand centrepoint
in an almost empty ballroom.

Three Swedish babes
stared at Johnny."

It took me a long
time to go through her things.

It was all too painful.

And there was so much
to sort through...

Photos, lyrics, albums.

Things of value
and cultural importance.

But I couldn't face it.

So, I didn't.

I had her ashes in a box, too.

I kept it in a wardrobe.

She wanted me
to take them to India.

But I couldn't face
that, either.

It was about five years
after she died

that I decided to
go through everything.

I was blown away
by her artistry.

She did all the artwork
for the band herself.

I enjoyed piecing together
all the parts of her puzzle.

Building a picture
of who she'd been before me.

X-Ray Spex are
one of the best exponents

of the so-called punk
or New Wave music.

Vocalist Poly Styrene
is the punkiest.

Poly Styrene chose
her name from the yellow pages.

Otherwise Marianne Elliott,
aged 19 from Brixton,

she's thought of
by the music press

as one of the most
interesting songwriters

to surface from the New Wave.

I know I'm artificial

But don't put The blame on me

I was reared with appliances

In a consumer society

One lady that's been causing

a lot of controversy
right around London,

is a lady I've got
in front of me now,

a Miss Poly Styrene.
Welcome to the program.

The name Poly Styrene,

was it given to you
by a publicist, or what?

No, I thought I'd use the name
of something around today,

you know, something plastic
and synthetic.

And I just looked
in the yellow pages

and then I saw it.

- Really?
- Yeah.

So that's how the
name Poly Styrene finally was born,

- from the yellow pages phone book.
- Yeah.

Oh, wow.

It sounded alright,

'cos I thought it was
a send up of being a pop star.

It was like a little figure,
not me, being Poly Styrene.

Just plastic, disposable.

That's what pop stars
sort of meant to me,

so therefore I thought
I might as well send it up.

Long before Poly Styrene,
there was Marianne Elliott.

Like all good heroines,

my mother cut her teeth
on a tough childhood.

A so-called "baby boomer"
born in '57,

and times, they were a-changing
in post-war Britain.

"Who am I? What the hell,"

I'm just an ordinary tough kid

"from an ordinary tough street."

We grew up in this
estate which was called Gosling Way.

It was one of those
old building estates,

where, in our flat,

we had a bath
in the kitchen with a lid on.

So there was not
a separate bathroom.

There was coal fires

in the main sitting room
and one of the bedrooms,

and in the other bedroom
there wasn't any fire at all.

We knew we were poor,

but the benefit system
wasn't as such as it is today,

and my mum
had to work full time.

She was a legal secretary.

And so in a way,

we were kind of like
the first latch-key kids.

My nanny, Joan,
was a second mother to me.

She looked after me
when Mum couldn't.

She looked after everyone,

a true matriarch.

She was well spoken, upright,

but at the same time,
something of a free spirit.

She met my grandfather
at a dance.

She was surprised
when he approached her.

She wasn't
used to male attention.

When he asked her to dance,
her heart skipped a beat.

She thought he had the darkest

and saddest eyes
she'd ever seen.

A real dapper chap, too.

Suited and booted
with impeccable style.

"Black is beautiful.
White is all right."

You're half-caste girl,
Do you wanna fight?

Black girl
carries her flick knife.

Will she cut me up
for being half white?

The national front are after me.

"I'm infiltrating,
can't you see?"

My mum was half-caste,

I'm quarter-caste,

my cousin's three-quarter caste.

Even when
I was growing up in the '90s,

these were the kinds of terms
people would use to describe you

if you were mixed race.

It annoyed the hell out of me,

and I know it upset my mum, too.

It's like saying
you're not quite whole,

you're just
a part-person, a fraction.

My mum never
had no friends as such,

because they just saw her
as a black man's whore.

It was bad enough
being a single mother.

Being a single mother
with half-black children

was absolutely "Hey, hey!"

You know, the white
community shunned Nanny, really.

Join the National Front!

The National Front!
The National Front!

Join the National Front!

The National Front!
The National Front!

When a white person
looks at a mixed-race child,

they think, "My God,

a white person
went with a black person,"

and vice versa.

It's their genes, really,
trying to preserve themselves,

because they see us as a threat
to their genetic existence.

There were
some nasty remarks sometimes.

I remember her coming home
with bruises on her legs

where the boys had kicked her.

She was a fighter,

if you said something to her,
she won't keep her mouth shut.

She's gonna
answer you back and say.

That whole mixed-race thing

would have been a fairly new
phenomena in this country.

There was no social experiment

for black-and-white couples
having kids.

And consequently,
their kids were very confused.

At school, you'd be like,

"What side should you play on?"

The attitude was that

you weren't ever
really black enough

and you weren't
light-skinned enough.

You know,
you were obviously not white

and you weren't black enough

to be part
of the black community.

The black kids
there, they could all say,

"We're black,
we can all stick together."

"We don't like white people."

"I could never go out
with a pork head."

But if you're half-caste
and you're with them,

you don't really feel that,

'cos, like,
your mum might be white.

And they're
slagging off white people.

And if you
go with the white kids,

you have to reject your father.

My Grandad, Osman Mohammad Said,

wasn't around much
when she was a kid.

You could say
they were estranged.

He spent his childhood years

as a nomad
in the Somali hinterland.

Then he made his way to Yemen
to seek his fortune,

ending up as a stowaway
on a British merchant navy ship.

He worked his passage
around the world,

finally ending up
in the docklands

of London's East End.

My mum came to resent

always having
to answer the question,

"Where are you from?"

She was a Londoner,
born and bred.

But she was also brown,

so her Britishness
was always questioned.

In the end, she started to
question it herself.

She had
this yearning for Africa.

She used to dream about

running away
from dreary, soggy England,

where she never felt at home.

"I wanna go back to Africa"

and find my heritage.

I wanna learn about the warrior

and how my ancestor lived.

'Cos all I've seen
is 'Jungle Book',

and I know
that ain't the way it looks.

I grew up on 'Tarzan', too.

What can he do?

What can you do?

I'm gonna cross Ethiopia

and see that ancient land.

And then I'll go to Somalia,

"barefoot across the sand."

Hardly anyone
knew my mum was Somali.

I mean, most people in the '60s

knew next to nothing
about Somalia or Somali people.

Even when I was growing up,
they didn't.

When I found
out that Poly existed,

that was, like,
such a validation for me.

I have a Somali punk icon
to look up to?

I was interested in
her story because of the difficulties

when you're growing up
between cultures.

When you come to a community,

you always want to learn
about the people

who've been here before you.

Who've pioneered
and kicked doors down

and flattened walls
for us to come through.

Identity, that's one of the

current problems
at the moment, is identity.

People try to
identify with something.

Everybody's looking desperately

to try and identify
with one thing

instead of themselves,
and that's what that's about.

Identity! One, two, three, four!

Identity is the crisis
Can't you see?

Identity

Identity

When you look in the mirror
Do you see yourself?

Do you see yourself
On the TV screen?

Do you see yourself
In the magazine?

When you see yourself
Does it make you scream?

Obviously,
identity meant something to her,

because of the song.

It was not only,
I feel, talking about

women within rock music,

it was also talking about

how many black women did you see

on the front covers
of fashion magazines?

It was, in a way I guess,

up to us to carve
our own identities.

She was a woman of
colour, working within an industry

full of white middle-class men
that had it all their own way.

It's really important
that people get that.

When you're mixed-race,
it's hard not to feel like

an outsider looking in
half the time.

You often feel like
you don't belong anywhere.

But that can be liberating, too.

I think my mum
got to the point where she said,

"I'm gonna carve out

a place in
the world for myself."

And you know what?
She did.

The daily papers and the media

refer to you
as a bit of a rebel.

Um, do you think you're a rebel
in today's society?

I mean, yeah,
I suppose I am a bit really.

Yeah?

I am a poseur And I don't care

I like to make people stare

I am a poseur And I don't care

I like to make people stare

Back then,

it was fairly unusual

to be bi-racial.

In a way,
we were embraced by punk

and we were part of punk
because it was full of people

who nobody else wanted.

We were welcome because
we were already outsiders.

I first saw Poly at World's End.

She had a little stall there.

This was just
on the very, very edge

of punk beginning, actually.

And she was sitting there
wearing...

I think it was lime-green
and orange plastic clothes,

and just looking really naughty.

It was to do

with the teenager

and how brilliant we were.

You know, just putting on
your dad's sweater

and, you know, some black tights

and running out
down the street and stuff.

You know, it was something else.

Even though

she was certainly part

of the punk explosion and scene,

she had a very distinct look

that was very individual to her.

Her home-made clothes,

making your own records,
having your own shop,

doing it yourself,

I think that
social-political thing of DIY

did inform a lot of punk
and post-punk.

But the way Poly did it
was kind of unique.

My mum was
obsessed with fashion.

She wrote songs
critiquing consumerism,

but she was
the ultimate shopaholic.

I pretty much hated
everything she wore

and felt embarrassed
to walk down the street with her

most of the time.

Especially when she forced me

into ridiculous outfits too,

like the matching
mother and daughter

Laura Ashley phase she got into.

She liked nothing more

than traipsing around
the West End.

"Let's go window shopping,"

she'd say,

and I would groan.

I couldn't think
of anything more boring

than walking around
department stores.

It was almost as boring
as sitting in a recording studio

or sitting in a restaurant
while she was being interviewed.

What an ungrateful brat I was!

Clothes are never really you.

That's why people wear them.

'Cos you can just create
an image with clothes,

they're just part of a façade.

Which is good fun
to play with sometimes.

By the time I was born,

Mum had left her punk phase
far behind her.

She always said

she never even
considered herself a punk,

that it was just a label,
coined by journalists.

At the same time, she recognised

that the scene
was the perfect vehicle

for her own
creative transformation.

She placed an ad
in the "Melody Maker" in 1976.

It said, "Young Punks
Who Want to Stick it Together."

She auditioned the band members,

and X-Ray Spex was born.

When she opened the door,

it was incredible.

She had this lovely,
beautiful smile on her face.

And when I saw her,

I just felt like
I'd always known her.

There's definitely some
previous life connection there,

some soul connection.

I sat down
with them and there was Jak

playing guitar and Poly singing,

and they sang some songs
and said, "Join in."

They gave me a cassette,
I took it home,

they rang me up and said,
"Would you like to join?

We've got a gig
Saturday at the Roxy."

Yeah, I just came in

and the outcome
was for anyone to hear me play.

I didn't play very much.
He just was very quick.

Two girls together,

it's gonna be lucrative.

Falcon Stuart
was my mum's manager.

He was also her first love.

She used to speak about him
all the time when I was a kid.

Sometimes she'd say
he was the love of her life,

other times,
that he'd ruined it.

It wasn't exactly a secret

but actually,
I wasn't quite sure

what the relationship was
with Falcon.

But it became
increasingly apparent

that they were
in a relationship,

and obviously
he was a lot older than her,

and was managing the band.

He was a bit like her patron,

in a Renaissance sense,
more than a manager.

Do you live in a
basement flat in his house?

- Yeah, why?
- I was just asking.

I'm not trying to imply you're
having an affair or anything.

No, I'm not saying that you are.

I just wondered if, what the...

What the significance of it was?

I think, well... lt's like...

well, there he can
look after you,

so it's like a patriarch deal.

Do you know what I mean?

Oh, well, no, not really.

Shall we go inside?

He seemed
to be mesmerised by her.

She was different.

She wasn't the norm,
she was different.

Definitely
I think he saw potential.

He saw it
from the very beginning.

I kind of had
a soft spot for Falcon.

I think he genuinely
cared for Marianne.

But it wasn't a relationship

which could sustain
itself in a healthy way,

because it wasn't built
on a healthy way.

Every romance
she had ended in tears.

She longed
to be loved so very much,

but she could never
sustain a relationship

longer than a few years.

"The infamous Roxy Club"

in Neal Street,
Covent Garden, London WC1.

X-Ray Spex manager
Falcon Stuart and I

drop in to check out the talent.

Names that scream out.

Billy ldol and Generation X,

The Buzzcocks,
Siouxsie and the Banshees,

Captain Sensible and The Damned,

Johnny Moped and Chrissie Hynde.

Poly Styrene and X-Ray Spex

"are booked
for the following week."

I'd never even
been to a gig, and by chance

and by great
good fortune and luck,

the first gig I ever went to
was X-Ray Spex.

I think it was 60p to get in,

went downstairs, waited,
expecting a tiny, dirty hall,

nothing much going on.

And then Poly Styrene came out

and it was... everything
changed for me right then.

I fell in love with her,
I fell in love with the band,

I fell in love with the music,
I fell in love with the idea.

To see my sister on that stage,

and the energy and the power

and the expression...

She just
was incredible to watch.

But her words are important
as well, aren't they?

If only for the titles,

even if you don't
hear all the words.

The titles are all very...

Trash really.

Her day
consisted of writing, largely,

and she'd write with a biro

on bits of paper
or in little books.

And sometimes she'd say,

"What do you think of this?
What do you think of this idea?"

I mean, nobody else
was really singing so much about

what Poly was singing about.

It was either about being funny

or being kind of pseudo angry,

or making some kind of

artful points about
the banality of daily life,

which had its own
weird excitement to it.

Some of my
earliest memories of Mum

are of her sitting
at her little typewriter,

totally absorbed
in whatever she was writing.

There was rarely a moment

when she wasn't
working on a new song.

Sometimes
I felt jealous of her music.

Her songwriting robbed me
of the attention I craved.

My grandmother
would tell Mum off

for leaving me
to my own devices.

She'd come over
and find me half-dressed

with unbrushed hair,
causing chaos,

drawing on
the walls with crayons,

while Mum was lost
in her own world.

Creative people don't always
make the best parents,

and she certainly
neglected my needs at times.

Little girls
should be seen and not heard.

Oh bondage, up yours!
One, two, three, four!

"I read a
book by William Wright,"

and discovered
a newfound sense of freedom.

Images of the Suffragettes chained
to the railings of Buckingham Palace

shot across
my photographic memory.

A faded dream
of Bowie's 'Suffragette City',

'Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am'
ringing in my ears.

Pictures of ball and chained
African slaves

were stored in my psyche,
in sepia of course.

I replayed
the biblical epic 'Moses'

on the screen in my head.

The story of the bondage
of the Israelites in Egypt.

I had an innate desire
to be free.

To be free from unwanted desires

"seemed desirable."

Bind me, tie me
Chain me to the wall

I wanna be A slave to you all

Oh bondage, up yours!

Oh bondage, no more!

Chain-store chain-smoke
I consume you all

Chain-gang chain-mail
I don't think at all

Oh bondage, up yours!

Oh bondage, no more!

Now recording-wise,
you've got a single out

called "Oh Bondage Up Yours!".

Now that has struck a bit of trouble
as far as airplay is concerned.

- True?
- Yeah, well...

I expected that, really.

A lot of men in the media

didn't want women
to step into that place,

to be given more power

and more say
and more visibility.

Everybody always
talks about "Oh Bondage Up Yours!"

because in a way,
just that sound

cuts through
a sort of glass ceiling

of what women singers
could do with their voice.

It was like a clarion call,

and it was the way she sang,

it was so urgent,

and it was like a call to arms.

It was like,
"I am so fed up!"

"The journalist
Lucy Toothpaste asked,"

'Are you liberated?'

'Are you referring

to "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" ',
I asked.

Lucy replied, 'Well, yes.
Is it about women's liberation?'

"'Yes and no, ' I replied."

I was just talking about
all forms of bondage.

You know,
repression, everything else.

Sexual bondage stems from that, so
it's all part of the same thing.

It all depends
which way you interpret it.

So it's much
to do with sexual bondage?

Yeah, it's to do
with all bondage.

And it's bondage
because it hasn't been played,

that proves it as well,
hat is bondage in itself.

I think a lot of people assume

my mum was a staunch feminist,

because of "Oh Bondage",

because of the way she subverted

conventional
ideas of femininity.

But I don't think
she felt any allegiance

to a particular
political position or stance.

She wasn't ideological.

She was an observer
rather than a critic.

There was even a part of her
that longed to be a wife,

a stay-at-home mum.

She often complained about that,

that she had to work,

to be a breadwinner
and a mother.

She secretly wished
she could be a lady of leisure.

We didn't use the word
feminist very much at the beginning.

I was never afraid of the word.

But people
had their preconceptions,

and when somebody asks you,
"Are you this,"

and you know that you are
your version of that,

but you're not the version
of the person who's asking.

It's always very difficult,

and particularly for women

to make music

that has any
social commentary to it,

without it appearing,

particularly if you're black,

that you're the archetypal
young, angry, black female.

Poly had her
own ideas about everything.

She didn't follow fashion,

she didn't follow trends.

And so, I think the idea of

anybody telling women what to do
when it came to their rights

was something
that she would oppose.

She talked
about people treating each other

like they were commodities,

not just women
being objectified,

but all different kinds
of people being objectified.

And also not just,
"I'm the victim

and everybody's
taking advantage of me,"

but writing in this way of like,

"I live off you
and you live off of me."

"And we're like, both doing it."

That's something that

as a feminist artist
is incredibly important.

And I think these ideas
were so far ahead of their time.

Good evening,
it's "Top of the Pops".

And we're gonna make you
feel like dancing.

Here's the chart rundown.

- Okay, you're going.
- Alright, what are you gonna do

when we get rich, Jak?

Well, I wanna buy a bubble car

and a little house...

And, uh... have a harem.

A harem, woah!

Do you think X-Ray Spex

is gonna be bigger
than The Beatles?

- Um, yeah.
- Yeah. Oh, good.

- Positive.
- Good, good.

We tried to be different.
We had saxophones.

We had a female singer.

And Poly's voice, she could
blow them out of the water.

I mean, did you ever think

that you would be able to walk out
on stage and send an entire club

off their brains?

No, I don't think like that.

All going all around the place?

Richard
Branson of Virgin Records

wanted to sign X-Ray Spex.

And he was really, really keen.

But we went to EMI.

The first time I can remember

that I was aware of her

was seeing her
on "Top of the Pops".

It wouldn't really
even have occurred to me,

at the time,

that she was part
of the punk movement.

But there were things about her

that I thought
was the very best of punk.

I can definitely remember

what happened to me

the first time
I heard Poly's voice.

It was like an awakening for me.

There were a lot of men around,

but obviously being a woman,
and being a young woman,

and I think Poly
being a woman of color

on that scene,

was another reason
why she became

a huge role model for me.

And I actually started singing
because of her,

to be perfectly honest.

I was Tinkerbell

And you were Peter Pan

In the '80s, when I was little,

Poly Styrene was still

a pretty fresh memory
in the pop world.

And people would sometimes
stop my mum in the street

to tell her how much
they loved her.

It didn't really faze me,
to be honest.

It's all I knew.

Her reactions would vary

according to whatever
mood she was in.

She used to joke
that being famous but broke

was the worst of both worlds.

She had all the attention
that comes with fame,

but lacked the means
to protect herself from it.

Seeing Poly on "Top of the Pops"

with braces on her teeth,

just kind of laughing

and being a normal human being,

it was a really, really

powerful statement.

You could see
she'd made an effort,

but she hadn't made that sort of
Twiggy and Clodagh Rodgers,

soft, floaty...

She just wasn't floaty

and that was
just such a bloody relief!

For the regular pop charts,

we were supposed to all
look like Joni Mitchell.

Poly was funny looking,
with her braces and...

her unsmooth hair

and her very futuristic style.

I remember
when the album came out,

she was really annoyed

because the record company
had slimmed her image down

on the front of the album cover,

and BP's as well.
And she was really angry

that somebody
had manipulated her image.

"Why couldn't they
just put me on as I was?"

Do you
dress to make people laugh,

or to make them think?

I mean, when you
put something on,

do you think the idea is

to make people
laugh with you, or...

Somebody said to me that your...

you know, your teeth braces,

somebody said it was
just a device, you know?

- No.
- A stage prop.

- It can't come off.
- Can't it?

No, not yet, anyway.

- Is it screwed in?
- No, it's cemented on.

Then again,
with those braces on her teeth,

Poly Styrene
is hardly Linda Ronstadt.

When Mum was young,

she was pretty confident
about the way she looked.

She'd never
been short of admirers.

But the experience
of being famous

made her insecure.

The public scrutiny
over the way she looked

started to grate on her.

She felt like journalists
were celebrating her

by insinuating that she was
unattractive and overweight,

totally not getting

what she
was trying to achieve by

choosing not to over-expose
her voluptuous form on stage.

I don't want to
become totally self-indulgent,

because I write things
that other people can relate to.

If I get totally into myself,
I won't be able to do that.

What I write will just become
a reflection of me,

instead of a reflection
of everything else.

For some people that works,
but it's not what I'm about.

I don't personally want to
indulge in my own fantasy,

my own self-image.

People make difficulties

within the entertainment
industry.

Certainly,
they make difficulties

for young women of colour,

there's absolutely
no doubt about that.

Young women of any ethnicity,

I think,
find it quite difficult.

I think she needed time off.

She needed,

she definitely
needed respite periods,

and as everybody knows in the music
business and when you're setting up,

it's go, go, go, go,

and I think that
was totally destructive for her,

it really was.

"My God, our name and fame"

is spread all over
the three worlds.

'We will be famous
just for one day.'

David Bowie.

'Everybody will be famous
for 15 minutes.'

Andy Warhol.

'I am a cliché.'

"Poly Styrene."

This one is called
"Let's Submerge".

It's dark and eerie
And it's really late

Come on, kids Don't hesitate

We're going down

To the underground

We're going down

We're going down

To the underground

X-Ray Spex
were one of the first wave

of punk bands from London

to come to New York.

In New York, punk rock
was a new sort of

youth culture division
that was happening,

like investigating this more
sort of nihilist attitude,

with the fallout of hippie
and the fallout of Vietnam,

and this kind of
failed Utopian ideal.

We went for
a residency in New York

at a venue called CBGB's.

CBGB's was
like a stinky toilet of a place.

It was grungy
and ghastly and stinky.

It's dark and
eerie And it's really late

Come on, kids Don't hesitate

We're going down

To the underground

We're going down

We're going down

To the underground

Everybody
below 14th Street, New York

was at that gig.

'Cos everybody
would talk about it

throughout the summer.

I can see now

Paul Weller, The Jam,
and Debbie Harry,

sitting in the front row,

cheering us on.

Who the fuck are you?
Who the fuck is this?

Oh bondage, up yours!

What was so
exciting about it was that

when they did
"Oh Bondage Up Yours!",

Poly would hand me
the microphone

to sing "Up yours".

It was somewhat
as if I was being knighted.

That was wonderful.

When we were in New York

we did two gigs a night.

In between times,
we went drinking,

went to parties,

or met women.

All kinds of things happened.

It was totally
different to London.

Everything was open
the whole time.

Now it seems, "Well, so what?"

But at the time, that was new.

Put on the TV,
had tons of channels.

We only had three at home.

In New York,
this is like the future.

Oh, is this "Tomorrow's World",
you think?

I don't know what program it is.

Unlike our grandparents,

we live in a world that we made.

We are crammed
like battery hens with stimuli.

Capitalism, plus electronics,

gave us a new habitat.

Our forest of media.

For the first time ever, save $5

on our original, realistic
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And there's only one place
you can find it.

It wasn't a
conscious attempt to be clever.

I just thought that

I'd write about
all these plastic things

because they seemed to be
creeping in more and more,

which is why New York
totally blew me apart.

You'll look so
pretty and have such fun.

I saw everything
that I'd been writing about

in extreme, but for real.

For them it wasn't a joke,
it was the way they lived.

For me, it was all a joke.

Play with it,
indulge it, have fun with it,

because there's not really
that much of it over here.

But when you go there,
it's so bad that you think,

"God, if that's
what it's gonna be like,

I don't want it."

The weird thing
about all the plastic

is that people
don't actually like it.

But in order to cope with it,

they develop a perverse
kind of fondness for it,

which is what I did.

I said,

"Oh, aren't they beautiful
because they're so horrible."

It's very perverse
and I realise that, and...

that was what was so frightening

about New York.

New York was
the start of something,

a new feeling
she couldn't quite shake.

She started to question
everything around her.

Was any of it real?

I think the
consumerism side of New York

and the advertising
and the bright lights

and dazzling lights everywhere,

that did destabilize Poly

and affect the way
she was writing songs.

- Are you gonna change, do you think?
- I dunno really.

I mean, we're just changing
already a bit, you know.

Just in the sort of...
You know, just the songs.

It's just the way
everything else

reflects everything else,
and you're just part of it.

So the music
reflects what you feel,

and also it reflects
what's happening around you.

The further she went
down the rabbit hole of fame

and all the excess
that goes with that lifestyle,

the more absorbed she became

in the dystopian futurism
of the world

she was creating
through her lyrics.

I think the artifice
and insincerity

she was surrounded by
in the music industry

influenced her.

It influenced
her imagining of a plastic,

synthetic universe,

where the natural world
has retreated,

the final triumph
of everything that's fake.

"I muse over the future"

and all it may bring.

I open Pandora's box of hope.

I envision a time
in the distant future

when synthetics rule.

The downside:

Humankind destroy
the natural environment.

The upside:

"Burgers will be cruelty-free,
veggie rubber buns."

I clambered over
Mounds and mounds

Of polystyrene foam

Then fell into A swimming pool

Filled with fairy snow

And watched the world

Turn Day-Glo You know, you know

The world turned Day-Glo
You know

I wrenched
The nylon curtains back

As far as they would go

Then peered through
Perspex window panes

At the acrylic road

And watched the world
Turn Day-Glo

You know, you know

The world turned Day-Glo
You know

Uh-oh

I think she was aware

of how society was changing

into a very consumerist society,

and probably
coming a lot from America.

She saw into the future.

She felt the
world was a monolithic,

cruel place,

and why can't it be
a nice place?

All those songs, "Art-I-Ficial",

"Highly Inflammable",
"Genetic Engineering",

all these songs were progression
from the early stuff,

which was about relationships
and about herself.

The consumer society
was there in front of her eyes.

The whole CBGB's experience

changed my mum as a person.

She was exposed
to the city's seedy underbelly.

And she lost whatever
innocence she still had left.

She told me that she
was given something to smoke

at a party there one night,

and it tipped her over the edge.

Now she'd also lost her mind.

There was
what you might call a darkness

to the New York scene

that was very different
from the British scene.

It was much more accepting

of heavy drug use.

Disco candy was everywhere.

Hip people took coke in America.

It just turned people
into demons.

And Poly was that sensitive,

that no doubt

she picked up
on that negative energy.

I went to New York.

It really turned my head.

All that attention,

they treat you
like you're really different.

It got to me.
I was worn out and doing drugs

and I was smoking a lot.

People were all around
telling me how wonderful I was.

I didn't start to
exactly believe it,

but I started to get
very insecure.

- Goodnight.
- Give us a kiss.

She didn't
like that environment,

she didn't like
"Top of the Pops".

She didn't like mixing around
all those kind of people.

She felt they were
very superficial

and very not genuine.

I remember her coming off stage

and totally collapsing

and crying her eyes out,

as if she totally forced herself

to go on stage
in the first place.

And I could see she wasn't well,

she wasn't okay.

I mean, it
isn't normal for people

to be surrounded with people...
telling them that they're great.

That isn't a normal situation,
most people do not get that.

It isn't normal to be...

up on stage and people jumping all
over you and ripping your clothes off,

that isn't a normal thing
for anybody to take.

And then you get people
coming backstage as well,

you get people
coming to your house,

and then you get people
trying to break in,

and then you just get people
surrounding you all the time.

And you just
are never on your own,

and that's just not normal.

So therefore, you just say, "Go
away, I don't want to see anybody."

The thing with Poly

is that she was

at the same time very resilient

and yet very vulnerable.

Especially being so much
in the vanguard,

her immediate support system
of people who really got her

was not that large.

We read every
week in the music trade papers

the exploits of, say,

The Sex Pistols
and Johnny Rotten.

Are you a follower
of The Sex Pistols yourself?

I mean, I like The Sex Pistols.

Yeah, I like them.

'Cos they're sort of
part of our generation, really.

John Lydon,
who she really liked a lot,

and obviously got a lot
of her inspiration from,

was living 'round the corner

at Gunter Grove at this point.

We used to see him,
sometimes, riding along,

we'd stop and say hello.

She was kind of infatuated,

or at least had a crush
of some sort on John Lydon.

But she felt
not taken seriously by him

and the rest of them.

Apparently, Sid Vicious
had locked her in a cupboard

under the stairs.

She asked where the loo was

and he tricked her
into going into this cupboard,

slammed the door and locked
her in for about an hour.

Yeah, she was really,
really upset by that.

They were
lads, they were laddiest,

unthinking, mean things.

Undercutting things,

things designed
to make you feel like nothing.

Like, worse than nothing.

As if they
had no regard for you.

That was the sort of milieu
that Poly encountered,

that encouraged her

to go into the toilet
at John's house.

I was 'round
at Johnny Rotten's place

and Poly turned up at the door.

Which was a brave thing, 'cos
you go around to John's place,

it's like baptism by fire.

I remember she was sitting there

and not really saying much.

And we were shooting the breeze
and being typical lads

and sort of ignoring her.

And at some point
during the conversation,

during the night,

she'd got up
and went into the bathroom.

And no one
thought anything of it.

And then I guess we
were talking for a while

and not realized she'd been gone

for like, half an hour.

And then we heard
the bathroom door open

and we looked up,

and she started to
walk down the stairs...

And she'd cut all her hair off.

I'll be honest with you, we were
totally insensitive to the moment.

The thing is, she
had a gig coming up.

What do you do?
She'd got a gig coming up,

at Victoria Park, massive gig.

The National
Front is a Nazi front!

We played
at Rock Against Racism,

along with Tom Robinson Band,

The Clash, Sham 69.

There were 80,000 people there.

That was a really huge gig.

If you were
ever at one of those events,

like the big events
in Victoria Park,

it made one feel that

one was part of a positive army

of like-minded people.
You felt so empowered.

You really felt
that this generation

had made racism and
fascism laughable and passé.

When we were
driving to the venue,

and Poly was wearing
a woollen scarf

wrapped around her head,
and she said,

"Oh, I shaved
my head last night."

And Falcon said,

"Well, you bloody well
do not take that scarf off

while you're performing."

And she winked
and said, "Oh no, I won't."

Halfway through
the song "Identity",

she was going "Identity..."
and she started to unravel it.

She did it in a kind of

seductive, teasing manner.

She started hovering her hand
around the top of her head

and taking
bits of it off like that.

By the time she got to the end
there was gasps at the front

of the audience,
going "Oh my God..."

"Skinhead!"

Falcon was going mad about it.

We all laughed our heads off.

She said she didn't
want to be a sex symbol.

And she'd said if she ever
thought she was turning into one,

she'd shave her hair off.

And that's what she did.

She wasn't the first woman

to shave her head
in an act of defiance,

and she certainly
wouldn't be the last.

It was a powerful statement,

but it was also a cry for help.

She really needed a break.

There was so much
pressure on her

to keep doing it.

Something had to give.

The moment
that changed me forever

was seeing a Day-Glo UFO

in Doncaster one night
after a concert.

It was a bright ball
of luminous pink,

made of energy, like a fireball.

Everyone else thought
I'd lost the plot.

It was the
last leg of their tour.

She'd gone up
to her hotel room after the gig.

And she said all of a sudden,

she saw this bright light
in the sky,

in the night sky, that...

didn't appear to be a star.

It seemed to be moving,

getting bigger and bigger,

and what's more,
it was coming towards her.

And it zoomed
right up to the window

and seemed to be
probing the room,

hovering there,
taking it all in,

and she's sat there,
like, frozen.

She'd said at
breakfast time the next day,

"Oh, I saw
a flying saucer outside."

It's told me to give up

"the electric
and plastic way of life."

"Go for a simple life."

We said,
"What are you on about?"

Took no notice, got in the car.

And in the car, she started
taking her clothes off,

saying, "I want to go back",

I want to be Marianne,
I want to go back."

She was a
very, very sensitive person.

And she
was almost like a sponge.

She would absorb

lots of things
which were going around her,

for better or for worse.

When you put somebody
which is so hyper-sensitive

and so open and so intelligent,

and then you put them
in this environment

where there's
all this different mix of people

wanting different things,

'cos, you know,
she was a commodity as well...

it wasn't a conducive place
for her to be

for who she was.

I mean, she was telling
me when she was even younger,

when she was
like three years old,

she thought that, you know, she'd
met some people from outer space.

She was such a high being.

A very high, spiritual being,

even when she
went off the rockers.

I mean, I remember
when we were walking through

Kensington Gardens
one afternoon.

She saw these crows.

You know,
she says that they're...

Like the Vikings used to say

they were the eyes of Odin,

and all that.

She said, "Watch them,
they're watching us."

People started
saying she'd lost the plot,

that she'd gone mad.

But she didn't see it that way.

She felt that
she was going through

some kind
of spiritual awakening.

That she could see things

that others
were too blind to see.

My mother
thought I was hallucinating,

and I was put in the Maudsley.

'Cos if you see things
and hear voices,

you are considered
to have schizophrenia.

The first time she saw
herself singing on the telly,

she was on a psychiatric ward.

Men in white coats
carted her away

after an episode.

There were lots of episodes.

One worse than the other.

She was misdiagnosed
with schizophrenia

when in fact she was suffering
from acute bipolar disorder.

It felt like a bad omen.

Like I was
doing something wrong.

Misguiding people.

I was dealing with a lot,

and then to be given
a label like that,

only to find out later
that I wasn't,

and that they had got it wrong,
was really difficult.

They said to me,

"You're a young girl
who has got out of her depth

and you will never
be able to work again."

That is a very hard thing
to be told at 21.

I'm sorry I
didn't treat her very good.

I wasn't really
sympathetic at the time.

I was worried,
but mainly for my own self.

Selfish.

The only
thing that really worked

were the drugs they gave her
when she was sectioned.

They would pin her down
and inject her

with tranquillisers

strong enough
to knock a horse out.

I saw my mum
being sedated many times.

I must have been
about four years old

when I realised
something wasn't right.

Suddenly I was able to detect
the changes in her mood,

the constant cycle
of elation and despair.

I'll never forget those nights

when the sensation
that someone was watching me

was so strong
that I'd wake up in a panic,

only to see her shadow
at the foot of my bed.

She'd stand
in the corner of my room

watching me as I slept...

her eyes wide with fear.

I was scared too,

scared of her.

I know your antiseptic

Your deodorant smells nice

The show must go on, they said.

So, she tried to
keep it together.

Keep singing, keep performing.

The medication
helped for a period,

but she was starting
to push back

against the pressure.

To keep up the façade
of Poly Styrene.

I'm like an
actress that's something else.

On stage I'm one thing

and off stage
I'm something else.

But most people are not.

I just consider myself
as a person first,

and anything else,

what anybody else
might call you, well,

they're just names,
really, aren't they?

Just given to trends and people

and things like that.

I think a lot of people thought,

"Oh, Poly Styrene's gone mad."

She had a brilliant band,

she had all the success,

and suddenly
just walked away from it.

It took an
incredible amount of strength

for my mum to walk away
from X-Ray Spex,

the band she herself
had put together,

the band that was doing so well.

They were at the height
of their success.

I think she understood that

the only way she could
continue to exist

as an authentic person,

as someone
who was true to herself,

was to kill the persona
she'd created.

Poly Styrene had to die

so Marianne Elliott
could survive.

"Read Time magazine"

over continental breakfast
in the south of France.

Genetic possibilities
filled glossy pages.

On a golden stretch
of sand in Cannes,

I worshipped the sun god,

"in a sunshine yellow
towelling bikini."

When I'd met her,

she'd been
in a convalescence place

to get over the traumas.

I was staying in a flat,
just off the King's Road,

and one night, we walked past
this quite flashy designer shop.

And she was outside,
looking in the window.

She was dressed in
a sort of '50s-type flared skirt

and hair sort of
straightened and long

and white stilettos.

Anyway, I thought,
"I can't let this go."

So as we were
walking past, I said,

"Ah, you're Poly,"

and invited her to come
and have a drink with us.

All alone In a tropical garden

Parakeet trills Slowly harden

It was all rather whirlwind.

They were
inseparable for a time.

They didn't even tell anyone
when they got married

at the Chelsea Registry Office
on the King's Road.

Oh, yeah, we got married.

We got married in the September,

we only met in June.

After, I dunno,
three months of meeting Poly

she was pregnant.

Mum was 24
years old when I was born.

She told me that having me
was the best thing she ever did.

But motherhood was a challenge.

Her mental
health was still fragile

and there were times
when she couldn't look after me.

It was hard for my father,
he was so young.

They were both kids, really.

I knew that
Poly had been admitted,

you know,
sectioned and all that.

I still loved her, though.

I'm obviously gonna
stick it out no matter what.

Just as I met her,

her album was coming out,
Translucence.

The solo album.

If you listen to the lyrics,
it's totally different.

How you make such a jump
from that power pop

to something almost akin
to Joan Armatrading?

It seemed like she'd been

through some kind of trauma.

And music was her way
of dealing with that.

For people that have had
bad times in life in some way,

music can be a way of,
like, healing themselves.

She was after that
in her own music.

So, I was
there for all the interviews,

and, you know,
journalists coming 'round.

But their reviews
were really damning.

Like totally. Like,
"What is this bollocks?" almost.

EMI, dismayed

at the negative
response from the press,

said "That's it."

They obviously had the option
on their side.

Now it just went
from bad to worse,

to be honest with you.

I was on the dole.

There was mass unemployment
back then, really.

We ended up at my mum's

and then her mum's,

and then,
she'd had enough of it.

She went off to lndia.

And Celeste and I,
we stayed at my mum's.

I think she really decided then

she was gonna go head-first
into the Indian scene.

She started dressing
like proper saris

and with a dot on the forehead.

And so she went back to London

and threw her lot in
with the Hare Krishna.

And I mean everything,
all her furniture, everything.

Moved in with them.

This is Bhaktivedanta
Manor in Hertfordshire,

European Headquarters
of the Hare Krishna movement.

George Harrison
bought it for them last year.

Most of their day
is spent worshipping Krishna

and learning his philosophy
of perfect consciousness.

I think it was The
Beatles and George Harrison,

that's how we got into it.

She was a hippie, really.

Too sensitive for the world.

She needed something to give her
some stability in her life.

I was a small child

when we went
to live in the manor.

I understand
why she wanted us to live there,

surrounded by nature,

and full of little
Hare Krishna children

I could play with.

She changed her name yet again.

This time it was a name

given to her
by her guru, Bhagavan.

Now she went by Maharani.

He gave me a name too,
Radha Shakti.

X-Ray Spex saxophone player
Lora Logic

joined the Hare Krishna movement

at around the same time
as my mum.

They'd fallen out after Mum
cruelly sacked her from the band

during the Roxy era,

but they found a common purpose
in Krishna consciousness,

which brought them
back together.

I don't
think it was coincidence,

I think it was highly planned

by the universal laws,
'cos nothing's an accident.

But I was a bit surprised.

We had to relate
on the platform of the fact

that we were equal spirit souls,

and a platform where
there's no false ego or pride.

Yeah, she changed,
she changed a lot.

I went to
the Hare Krishna temple

with her a few times,
actually into the temple.

And she was very different
in the temple.

She was very hypnotised by it.

The Hare Krishna kind of
saved her in a sense,

it gave her
another world to exist in.

She's fragile, you know,

and I think they provided
a family for her,

and a comfort.

More than punk, than music,
more than being creative,

the Hare Krishna was
a central pillar of her life,

and it was
really important to her.

As hard as she tried,

my mother couldn't completely
escape her past life.

Those past traumas
continued to haunt her,

and she would suffer
a series of nervous breakdowns

during our time in the temple.

She was very
mentally unstable then,

and she looked so disturbed.

It was probably triggered
by so many things: hormones,

giving birth,

and then
the whole new experience

of living in a temple.

She used to do some
wacky things in the temple.

I mean, she'd be, like,

in the temple room
with no clothes on.

She'd be chasing
celibate monks around,

who were in their pyjamas.

She went to lndia,

and she'd have to be
put on a plane and flown home

because she completely lost it.

I think a lot of it
was just due to lack of sleep.

She didn't sleep.

She didn't know how to
look after herself very well.

It's like she was
never quite in her body,

she was always somewhere else.

It was probably
all too much for her.

Our heaven had become a hell,

and it was
about to get much worse.

We moved into a house
near the temple,

and my mother eventually

took me out
of the children's ashram,

which was a kind of
Hare Krishna boarding school.

I was truly isolated now.

She hadn't been able
to leave the house for weeks,

and my little stomach

was as empty
as the kitchen cupboards.

One day I climbed out of
my bedroom window

and left home
with the social workers.

The nosy neighbours
were concerned for my welfare.

I had to leave,

for the sake
of my own mental health.

I know it broke her heart.

I abandoned my mother

and the world
she had created for me.

And it had been
a beautiful world, Mataji.

I was eight years old

when I went to live
with my grandmother,

who was eventually
granted custody of me

after a long
and bitter court case.

It was clear
Mum had neglected me.

I was three and a half stone

when I was removed
from her care.

I needed years of therapy.

To say that I was an angry kid

would be an understatement.

I told the court
I wanted to live with my nan,

the ultimate betrayal

as far as my mother
was concerned.

Our relationship
was pretty rough for a while,

lots of shouting,
slammed doors and angry tears.

She pushed me
down the stairs once,

and I never let her forget it.

She wasn't in her right
mind of course,

but I blamed her for ever
bringing me into this world.

But time is the greatest
healer, they say.

And we eventually

found it in our hearts
to forgive one another.

She moved to Hastings
in the early 2000s

and I moved to Madrid,

but despite,

or maybe thanks to being
thousands of miles apart,

we were closer than ever.

The slow pace of the town

and the calming effect
of the sea

restored a kind
of mental balance

my mother had lost
all those years ago.

She was refreshed and energised,

ready to start
creating once more.

She was even ready
to get on stage,

something she had sworn
she would never do again.

How do you feel now?

I want to know

Clear as a crystal

I can see your face

I think it was Poly's last gig,

which none of us were to know.

But I remember
she was on fine form,

and you gotta understand, I hadn't
seen her since the Roxy days.

And she'd
been through a whole load

of trials and tribulations.

And to see her
come through all of that,

it looked like
the sky was the limit,

and that there was

a whole new lease
of life in front of her.

Up until a few hours before,

I never really was sure
if she was gonna do it.

It was very, very difficult
for her to get the confidence.

Mum had been
taking medication on and off

for her bipolar disorder

since her first breakdown.

I'd always felt that

she didn't take her meds
as often as she should have,

and it was a real source
of contention between us.

She felt the medication

had a dampening effect
on her creative expression.

But she realised

she wouldn't be able to get
through the gig without it.

She was terrified that
the anxiety of performing live

would lead to
yet another breakdown.

But despite all that,

she gathered
the courage she needed

to get on stage
in front of thousands of people.

And even if she was
pretty heavily medicated,

she kicked arse out there,

gave it all she had.

I was so proud of her.

One, two, three, four!

I joined her on stage

for an encore
of "Oh Bondage Up Yours!".

It was beyond amazing.

Bind me,
tie me Chain me to the wall

I wanna be A slave to you all

Oh bondage, up yours!

Oh bondage, no more!

Oh bondage, up yours!

Oh bondage, no more!

Now the moment
had come, I felt strange.

Half scared, half excited.

It was weird
looking at the things

I'd always taken for granted.

Never bothered to think about.

Things like pets,

friends,

places I went to.

But I knew I had to go then,
or I never would.

She had just finished recording

a new album, Generation Indigo,

when we found out

she had breast cancer.

Those last months,

when we were blissfully unaware

of the disease that had
already spread to her bones,

were some of the happiest times

I ever spent with my mother.

We worked together on the album,

writing and recording
new tracks.

She was in her element, really,

doing what she knew best.

And I was so lucky
to be able to do it with her.

I hit the button called send

You're my virtual boyfriend

You're like a MySpace friend
That's all

Just a text or a missed call

I just thought it was funny, 'cos everybody
were having these relationships online.

And it's great,
but you never see each other.

Well, you probably do sometimes.

But I just thought,

why not write
a love song about that?

You're not meeting,
but you're actually...

And then at the end,
just press delete to end.

I found working with her

very life-affirming.

Even when she was
at death's door, ironically.

She had a great
spiritual perception

that was wrought
from hard experience.

I finally took
my mum's ashes to India,

to Vrindavan,

the holy city on the banks
of the Yamuna River,

the place
where Krishna was born.

This was her last request.

Being there was almost
metamorphic for me.

I saw with my own eyes

everything she had told me
about the place.

Everywhere I went,
I felt her presence,

and I was able to understand her
a little better.

She'd wanted to take me there
for many years.

But a spiritual pilgrimage
to India

didn't have much appeal
when I was a teenager.

I went through a period

where I rejected everything
that my mum cared about,

including her religious beliefs.

I was angry for a long time.

I felt my mum
hadn't lived up to my idea

of what a good mother should be.

I just wished
I had normal parents

and a normal childhood,

where my mother
didn't have a mental illness,

wasn't a Hare Krishna,

had a regular job,

didn't have
so many crazy friends.

But by the time I started
to really appreciate

how lucky I was
to have such a remarkable woman

as a mother and a role model,

it was too late.

She was leaving her body.

Everything
about her was inspirational.

She was born an inspiration.

She was, she was just...

That's who she was.

That's who she was.

The legacy of someone like Poly

cannot be overstated.

What she did

stands as a great example
for women,

not only in the 21st century,
I think it'll stand forever.

Because she was brave, man.

There is something

in Poly's sound
and in her voice,

in her expression, in her lyrics

and in who she was.

You could say
it's anti-establishment,

or it's anti-this and anti-...
But for me it was like,

I could see
that it was possible.

That it was important

to fight against
the predictable holes

that we are all surrounded by
as human beings,

but particularly women.

For me, her
legacy was to open up the box,

give everyone new tools,

and new ideas
and new possibilities.

The world is playing catch-up

with Poly Styrene,

not the other way around.

When I saw her,
like, three days before she passed,

she said to me,

"You see the lights
on the trees?"

"Every one of those lights
is like a soul who's passed."

There was something out there

and in the
not-too-distant future

she was going to be part of.

I remember
the last time I saw her

like it was yesterday.

A piece of me died that day.

I cried even though

my Mum always told me
not to cry for the dead.

She said
it's just the beginning,

even if it feels like the end.

I am a cliché.

I'm a cliché I'm a cliché

I'm a cliché I'm a cliché

I'm a cliché You've seen before

I'm a cliché Live next door

I'm a cliché
You know what I mean

I'm a cliché Pink is obscene

Huri yama yama Huri yama yama

Boredom, boredom

Huri yama yama Huri yama yama

Boredom, boredom