In March 1980, the NME carried a major cover feature about “Women in Rock”. Dolly Mixture were not interviewed or photographed but they did appear – cited as an example of what not to do. Their “cutesy” image wasn’t considered feminist.
In fact, as bassist Debsey Wykes’s memoir Teenage Daydream makes clear, the all-girl trio (Debsey, Rachel Bor and Hester Smith) were as authentic as any indie rockers. They looked young and naive because they were young and naive. After all, the three friends were only teenagers when they formed the band in 1978, and still in their early twenties when it stopped (they never officially broke up).
And they were equally serious about their music, a fact that was perhaps disguised by the way they looked. They turned up for their first ever recording session in “full Dolly Mixture finery: spotty dresses and pinafores with colourful leggings and stripey tights, platform shoes and boys’ boots.”
Dressing up wasn’t a pose; it was always part of their personality, the “make-believe and home-made fun” shared by schoolfriends Debsey and Hester. The description of their pre-band years is a very recognisable picture of teenage girl life in the mid 1970s: discovering bands, experimenting with clothes, and “a deep longing for something ‘other’.”
Diary extracts from the time give an immediacy to the story, with a newly-written narrative expanding on them with more detail and distance. And in 1976, Debsey’s diary records that halfway through listening to Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, she suddenly thought: “I’m going to play the electric guitar and be in a rock group.”
Two years later, Dolly Mixture played their first gig. Six years after that, they played their last one.
Many books about bands describe a predictable rise and fall. This one is different, but probably more typical of most groups working at a particular level: a steady rise followed by a long plateau, followed by an ending. For the six years of the band’s existence, they seemed to be on the verge of “making it” but it never quite happened.
There was no obvious reason. Their post-punk take on girl group style was appealing, and a lot of people liked them: their fans (evidenced by the fan letters included in the book) as well as influential musicians (Captain Sensible, Paul Weller, the Undertones). The music press, mostly, didn’t. The record labels that released their singles didn’t seem sure, either.
It may just be that they were in the right place at the wrong time. As Debsey recalls ruefully: “This was now the ’80s and the brief window of punk and its illusion of freedom to just ‘be’ and behave how you wanted had disappeared… We had failed to connect with either the mainstream world of pop or the alternative underground scene.”
It’s also true that being taken seriously in the music business is harder for young women. After meeting John Peel, the band were disappointed to find they were the butt of a running gag in Sounds about Peel and “helpless young girls”. (This was at a time when no-one thought it weird that Peel’s Sounds column would often make jokes about schoolgirls.) This fed into a general preconception that the band were “deliberately playing at being coy and cute” something that didn’t endear them to female music writers.
In the end, history may record that they were best known as backing singers for Captain Sensible (the 1982 number one hit “Happy Talk” got them on Top of the Pops). What is less well remembered is that Dolly Mixture had their own songs, their own ideas and their own fans. And that is recorded for posterity in this engaging and very relatable book.
Oh and, by the way, they were never called The Dolly Mixtures.
This review originally appeared on Louder Than War.
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