In August 1981, barely two years after they broke out of the south London club circuit, GIRLSCHOOL topped the first night of the Reading Festival. They were the first all-female band ever to headline it. Forty-five years later, they are still the only one.
That set is finally getting a proper release. "Nothin' To Lose (Live In Reading 1981)" arrives September 25 on CD and red-and-white splatter vinyl, previewed by a single of its earthquaking title track. It is the first of five archival GIRLSCHOOL live albums scheduled over the coming months.
Almost nothing about the day went to plan. The band's hired car — a pink Cadillac reputed to have belonged to Jayne Mansfield — was in a fender bender and turned up at the site, in the band's words, "broken and rattling." A roadie restrung lead guitarist Kelly Johnson's guitar with two D strings. Their flashing neon backdrop was sabotaged by another band on the bill.
None of it registered. "The thing with Kelly is, she was such a genius and natural player, you could put anything in front of her and she could play it," says vocalist and guitarist Kim McAuliffe. "She had an instinct. I used to watch her onstage sometimes, and I was quite amazed by her. She was such an incredible presence on stage. [The roadie] could probably have handed her a guitar with four strings and she'd still have been brilliant."
The set leaned hard on that year's "Hit And Run" — the first three songs replayed the album in order — before swerving back to 1980's "Demolition" for "Breakdown" and "Nothing To Lose", and closing on "Race With The Devil" and "Yeah Right" in front of somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 people.
McAuliffe had been in that crowd not long before. "I'd been there a couple of years before, standing on the other side in the mud, with this big plastic bag thing over me and knee deep in mud. So happy to be there, grinning away, having the time of my life. Little did I know I'd actually be headlining a couple of years later. It was absolutely nuts."
One song is missing from the tape, and there is a decent theory why. "We had the biggest pyrotechnic flashpots ever," McAuliffe says. "Huge things. And apparently they could be heard seven miles away." They went off during "Future Flash". The explosions, it seems, blew out the microphones.
GIRLSCHOOL formed in 1978 out of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, long twinned with MOTÖRHEAD, and are planning a new studio album for their fiftieth anniversary in 2028 — the follow-up to 2023's "WTFortyfive?".
Track listing:
- C'mon Let's Go
- The Hunter
- (I'm Your) Victim
- Breakdown
- Nothin' To Lose
- Hit 'N Run
- Tonight
- Race With The Devil
- Yeah Right
Source: blabbermouth.net