A Chip off the Old Block

"Don't ask a lot of questions about me Dad!" pleads Kirsty MacColl, flicking back the glorious swathe of hair dotted with tell-tale Red Indian braids. Only minutes previously she had blown a kiss in the direction of an Adam Ant poster. Imitation is still the sincerest form of flattery.

Her family wanted her to go to university to study science but she wasn't too enthusiastic. By way of a compromise she went to art school. That didn't work out too well either. "Most other people at college were only there because their parents expected them to do something and art college is an easy way out - easier than finding a job or really applying yourself to a project. When I realised I was there for the same reason, it seemed dishonest and I left after 6 months."

So what did she do then? "I learnt snooker. They don't like girls going into the clubs much. Pool halls are like the unemployed equivalent of a men's club." While not potting a black (or cleaning flats or working in the mail order department of Bonaparte Records) she played with a combo called the Drug Addix who later shortened their name to the Addix. Why that awful name?

"We were called that for a laugh. It was the time of punk and everyone expected an outrageous, Sex Pistols type of band but we weren't. We were all slide guitar and R&B. I was just the token boiler on backup vocals... Of course that annoyed me but you've got to start somewhere. If you can't really sing and you can't play anything, you can't argue about it."

The band recorded a four track demo which Chiswick promptly released as a single. It whipped up a mini controversy because, in Kirsty's words, it was "quite rude". One song, Gay boys in bondage, became a talking point for obvious reasons. Written by Rick, it was meant to be a parody of the Lou Reed School of Seediness, a piece of camp corn that lent itself to stage dramatics.

Enter the Stiff label. They paid for the Addix to make some more demos but nothing came of the venture. The band fell apart. Kirsty stayed with Stiff who in June '79 released her first solo single, They don't know. Produced by Liam Sternberg, it was a rousing beat ballad. The radio played it endlessly but a strike in Stiff's distribution department threw a spanner in her works. You could hear the song but it wasn't easy to buy it. "It wasn't down to Stiff" explains Kirsty "it was down to industrial action. Isn't everything?"

Matters became more complicated. She recorded a follow-up called You caught me out which was co-written with Pete Briquette and Simon Crowe of the Boomtown Rats. Not only was the release date delayed as many times as a British Rail train but also no-one could agree on a final mix for the song. "There were so many people mixing it that in the end it became a joke. People literally used to come up to me in pubs and say 'You don't know me but I mixed your single.'" The single never saw the light of day.

Her relations with Stiff became tricky. "We didn't come to blows at all. Most of my best friends work at Stiff but I wanted too much control really... or more control than I was getting. There were any number of little things but I think it was really because they didn't have my publishing." In February last year (1980) they parted company.

Enter Polydor. Her hard-bitten business sense meant that everyone knew where they stood from the start. Still, there was the occasional shady spot. Bazza, engineer to such stars as Rockpile and Elvis Costello, asked her to add a vocal to a backing track of the '60s anthem Keep your hands off my baby. "It would have been an 'illegal' single but I thought 'So what?' because no-one will ever hear it. When we did it, I thought it's so much better than the stuff I'd done for Polydor that I ought to tell them. So I did and we put it out because it was ready to go."

The only problem was that it went nowhere, sinking faster than a concrete overcoat. But it paved the way for the latest toe-tapper and potential chart-topper Chip Shop. Interestingly she wrote the song with Phil Rambow, a man who has been tipped for success more times during the '70s than he'd probably care to remember. Armed with some miniatures of tequila that Stiff were using to promote Joe King Carrasco, the duo developed the title that Kirsty already had. "After the first couple of bottles" she smirked "it was easy".

This time round it looks as if the daughter of Ewan MacColl is going to have a spell on Top of the Pops. She knows what she wants and how she can get it. "Rock'n'Roll is about having a good time and just because the people who play it don't wear curtains round their heads, that doesn't mean it's not modern. That reminds me," she laughed. "I must get a blanket to put over my head. It's like being a budgie."

Ian Birch/ Stuart Franklin

Smash Hits features in 1983 and 1985

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A Chip off the Old Block

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