Calling Poly Styrene from La Jolla

(Mikel Toombs takes inspiration from the late punk icon.)

Poly Styrene, who died Monday after battling breast cancer (she was 53), was the subject of the first interview feature I ever wrote. It appeared in the Triton Times, before it became the UCSD Guardian and moved in next door to the Ché Café, which you may have heard about.

And what would prompt a penniless college student to place a then-pricey phone call to London to talk to someone in a band, X-ray Spex, that had a single 1977 single (“Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” backed with “I’m a Cliché”) in a style (punk) that had yet to take hold in the US, which still wanted to get down tonight?

This: “Some people think little girls should be seen ‘n’ not heard, but I say,” Poly said, “oh bondage! Up yours!”

This We Dug: X-ray Spex!

Poly Styrene was definitely heard, delivering critiques on consumer culture (“Warrior in Woolworths”) that peaked on X-ray Spex’s sole original-period album, the glorious ’78 “Germ Free Adolescence.” (It wasn’t quite the original lineup, since Lora Logic, who played band-trademark saxophone on “Bondage,” had departed.)

And she was seen, her mouth full of braces and exuding a brash energy that, according to his PiL partner Jah Wobble, even managed to unnerve The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten: “She freaked John out.”

Of course, Poly piqued more than she freaked. Let Kathleen Hanna, who fronted riot grrrl band Bikini Kill, pick up the story: “Poly lit the way for me as a female singer who wanted to sing about ideas. She taught me, by example, that fame was less the goal than something to back away from when it started to invade your core. Her lyrics influenced EVERYONE I KNOW WHO MAKES MUSIC ”

Like Hanna, Poly liked to shout (“Identity” is a wonderful example) but, even when I talked with her early on, there seemed to be something fragile about her. At the time she was watched over by manager Falcon Stuart, who after our interview sent me (from the UK, mind you) the single “The Day the World Turned Day-Glo” (y’know) and an X-Ray Spex pin (the Zeros’ Hector Peñalosa coveted it), but they had a falling out.

This was when, post-Spex, people speculated that Poly “had caught a nervous bug,” as she herself sang on “Talk in Toy Town,” a rare pointed moment on her ’80 solo debut album, the blissed-out “Translucence.” In fact, Poly, who eventually was diagnosed as bipolar, went on to join the Hare Krishnas, a connection that Boy George seized upon in his memorial tweet (so sad about the Boy).

Here, Poly discusses her final album, the delightful “Generation Indigo,” which came out in the US the day after her passing:

— Mikel Toombs